So. I wrote a book. I tried to do this once before. It was a gritty, noir-ish detective story, undoubtedly born out of repeated viewings of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and Sundays spent watching Mystery! with my mom. I wrote two pages, sketched out a cover design, decided that the whole thing would take way too much time, and went back to playing The Secret Island of Dr. Quandary. My hopes of being the first second grader ever (ever, I tell you) to write a book fell to the wayside.

It took twenty years for my patience to improve, but I finally did what seven-year-old me could not. This time around, I went for science fiction, a more constant love of mine. My younger self had a lot to learn about her genre preferences, but she was right about one thing — books take time. And as I’m about to set off on the hunt for a publisher, I need a little more to get it right.

Come with me, into a world of infinite possibilities. No, not the genre of science fiction. No, not the actual future lineup of the Syfy channel. This is just the projects that Syfy has announced it is putting into development, which means that they’ve got writers and producers and maybe directors and if everything miraculously works out, the channel might some day do something as awesome as Battlestar Galactica ever again.

That’s what I mean by infinite possibilities.

This fan video about starships and the folks who crew them, set to Niki Minaj’s “Starships,” might be a little old, but it’s the first post of the day and everybody needs a little pick-me-up. If you haven’t seen your favorite movie or television starship in the video yet, be it historically fictional, fictional, or just in that one episode of the not-usually-space-themed show that you like, just wait.

…somebody’s done one of these for Mass Effect, right?

If I say the phrase “space marine,” you probably know what I’m talking about, right? Halo, Aliens, Starship Troopers, Starcraft… highly trained men and women equipped with oversized future weaponry, a thirst for alien blood, and a disdain for intellectual pursuits (except for that one guy… there’s always that one guy). It’s a name that writers and readers of science fiction have been using to describe a kind of character since Heinlein.

“Space marine” is also a registered trademark of Games Workshop, the publishers of the Warhammer 4000 strategy games, and you’d think that in deference to the history of the term and the sources that inspired the genre in which Warhammer is set, they wouldn’t throw their weight around too much on its account. But as author M.C.A. Hogarth found last year, and the writing community found out this week, you’d be wrong.

2012 marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of Dawn, the first book in Octavia Butler‘s famous Xenogenesis series (also known as Lilith’s Brood). Butler was, and perhaps still is, probably the best known African-American female writer in science fiction. She’s also the first science fiction writer to receive a MacArthur genius grant, and a list of other science fiction writers who would list her as an inspiration is long. Here, author N.K. Jemesin (whose Inheritance Trilogy is very much worth the read) talks about the effect Butler had on her life and writing.

If you’re not an avid video gamer, you might not be familiar with the Humble Indie Bundle, or you might not have had an avid video gamer friend accost you and demand that you immediately take what’s offered by the habitual organizer and offerer of DRM-free indie developed games on a pay-what-you-want system where funds go directly to the game makers and game-related charities.

This summer, the Humble Bundle branched out a bit, offering a bundle entirely of nerdy musical artists like MC Frontalot, They Might Be Giants, and Jonathan Coulton. Now the Bundle tackles another frontier: books. Here’s how it works:

Comic writer, and Babylon 5 creator, J. Michael Straczynski announced via his Facebook page this weekend that star Michael O’Hare had passed away from a heart attack at the age of 60.

Catwoman and Thor together in the same movie!? It might just happen if Steven Spielberg has his way. Anne Hathaway and Chris Hemsworth are up for roles in his sci-fi action film, Robopocalypse.

Etsy user LennyMud has an interesting profile. “Lenny is the name of my studio cat. I make the pots and Lenny breaks them: this way I never run out of shelf space. Lenny is not for sale. Probably not. I know my shop name makes me sound like a 50 year old man who smokes cigars, but I am a female who is sometimes told that she looks ten years younger than her real age. (My husband says the nicest things in the dark. When he’s drunk.) I am the mother to two adorable children that I like to call The Spawn.” If that’s not enough to get you to purchase her wares, I don’t know what is. Take a look at her ceramics from Star Wars, pop-culture, and beyond!

Theoretical physicists Michio Kaku and Jim Al Khalili, and space scientist Maggie Aderin Pocock joined Steven Moffat in a BBC America special last weekend titled The Science of Doctor Who. In it, they attempted to break down some of the science-fiction of the show and decide how close we are to making it become a reality. Here we have one segment of the episode in which they talk about the most important part of Doctor Who – time travel. I’m still waiting for my psychic paper.