Huygens Lands on Titan

How did I miss this? Back in 2005, the European Space Agency's Huygens probe got a lift from Cassini and made its way to the surface of Saturn's moon Titan, recording the journey and 90 minutes on the surface. For all the carping about space exploration being dead because the shuttle program ended, I think it's astonishing to see these images from a planet no human eye has previously glimpsed. Titan is shrouded in dense clouds, opaque to visible light.

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Memories of Octavia Butler

New from Book View Cafe:

Eleven original stories by recipients of the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship (2007 through 2012), plus a reprint of "Speech Sounds" by the scholarship's namesake, Octavia E. Butler. This anthology also includes a brief memoir of Butler by her Clarion classmate Vonda N. McIntyre and an introduction by Nalo Hopkinson. Edited by Nisi Shawl and published by the Carl Brandon Society, the administrator of the Butler Scholarship Fund.

Nisi Shawl is reviews editor for The Cascadia Subduction Zone, a member of the Clarion West board of directors, and a founding member of the Carl Brandon Society, which administers the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship Fund. Her collection Filter House won the 2009 James Tiptree, Jr. Award.