"Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, the nation's most valuable semiconductor company, with a stock price of $645 a share and a market cap of $400 billion, is out to create the metaverse," writes Time magazine.

Huang defines it as "a virtual world that is a digital twin of ours." Huang credits author Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, filled with collectives of shared 3-D spaces and virtually enhanced physical spaces that are extensions of the Internet, for conjuring the metaverse. This is already playing out with the massively popular online games like Fortnite and Minecraft, where users create richly imagined virtual worlds. Now the concept is being put to work by Nvidia and others.

Partnering with Nvidia, BMW is using a virtual digital twin of a factory in Regensburg, Germany, to virtually plan new workflows before deploying the changes in real time in their physical factory. The metaverse, says Huang, "is where we will create the future" and transform how the world's biggest industries operate...

Not to make any value judgments about the importance of video games, but do you find it ironic that a company that has its roots in entertainment is now providing vitally important computing power for drug discovery, basic research and reinventing manufacturing?

No, not at all. It's actually the opposite. We always started as a computing company. It just turned out that our first killer app was video games...

How important is the advent and the adaptation of digital twins for manufacturing, business and society at large?

In the future, the digital world or the virtual world will be thousands of times bigger than the physical world. There will be a new New York City. There'll be a new Shanghai. Every single factory and every single building will have a digital twin that will simulate and track the physical version of it. Always. By doing so, engineers and software programmers could simulate new software that will ultimately run in the physical version of the car, the physical version of the robot, the physical version of the airport, the physical version of the building. All of the software that's going to be running in these physical things will be simulated in the digital twin first, and then it will be downloaded into the physical version. And as a result, the product keeps getting better at an exponential rate.

The second thing is, you're going to be able to go in and out of the two worlds through wormholes. We'll go into the virtual world using virtual reality, and the objects in the virtual world, in the digital world, will come into the physical world, using augmented reality. So what's going to happen is pieces of the digital world will be temporarily, or even semipermanently, augmenting our physical world. It's ultimately about the fusion of the virtual world and the physical world.
See also this possibly related story, "Nvidia's newest AI model can transform single images into realistic 3D models."

"Fans of science fiction learned last week that the word 'robot' was first used in 1920 — a full three years earlier than originally thought," according to a blog post at Archive.org. They call it "a major SciFi discovery hiding in plain sight": The "massively important yet obvious" change in date was confirmed with a search of the Internet Archive, which has a digitized first edition of the Czech play, R.U.R. Rossum's Universal Robots, published in 1920. There on the title page, hiding in plain sight in an English-language subtitle to the work, is the earliest known use of the word "robot."

This important piece of information is one of many little-known facts captured in the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction. The project was completed this year by historian Jesse Sheidlower, who credits two things that enabled him to publish this project, decades in the making. "One, we had a pandemic so I had a lot of enforced time at home that I could spend on it," explained Sheidlower. "The second was the existence of the Internet Archive. Because it turns out the Internet Archive has the Pulp Magazine collection that holds almost all the science fiction pulps from this core period...."

The comprehensive online dictionary includes not only definitions, but also how nearly 1,800 sci-fi terms were first used, and their context over time...

The project began nearly twenty years ago at Oxford English Dictionary as the Science Fiction Citations Project.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: U.S. military pilots and satellites have recorded "a lot more" sightings of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, than have been made public, Donald Trump's former intelligence director John Ratcliffe said. Asked on Fox News about a forthcoming government report on "unidentified aerial phenomena," Ratcliffe said the report would document previously unknown sightings from "all over the world." "Frankly, there are a lot more sightings than have been made public," he said. "Some of those have been declassified. And when we talk about sightings, we are talking about objects that have been seen by navy or air force pilots, or have been picked up by satellite imagery, that frankly engage in actions that are difficult to explain, movements that are hard to replicate, that we don't have the technology for. Or traveling at speeds that exceed the sound barrier without a sonic boom."

The UFO report must be published by early June, pursuant to a clause in a Covid relief and spending package signed by Trump before he left office. [...] The forthcoming report is to be issued by the defense department and intelligence agencies. When an unidentified aerial phenomena is identified, Ratcliffe said, analysts try to explain it as a potential weather disturbance or other routine spectacle.

"We always look for a plausible application," he said. "Sometimes we wonder whether our adversaries have technologies that are a little but farther down the road than we thought or that we realized. But there are instances where we don't have good explanations. So in short, things that we are observing that are difficult to explain -- and so there's actually quite a few of those, and I think that that info has been gathered and will be put out in a way the American people can see." Asked by Bartiromo where the unidentified phenomena were sighted, Ratcliffe replied, "actually all over the world, there have been sightings all over the world. "Multiple sensors that are picking up these things. They're unexplained phenomenon, and there's actually quite a few more than have been made public."

New submitter dkoneill writes: A soon-to-be-released, crowdfunded book based on the personal archives of Douglas Adams (author of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, episodes of Doctor Who and other beloved science fiction), reveals that he occasionally found writing torturous. In a "General note to myself" the author states, "Writing isn't so bad really when you get through the worry. Forget about the worry, just press on. Don't be embarrassed about the bad bits. Don't strain at them." "Writing can be good...You can get pleasure out of it."

His sister Jane responded to the General note, "I love it, but I just wish he'd read it to himself more often. I think it [writing] was a tortuous process for him, not all the time, but when it was difficult for him it was really difficult." When stuck, the author would even tear down his own work. On another page of notes, he wrote, "Arthur Dent is a burk. He does not interest me. Ford Prefect is a burk. He does not interest me. Zaphod Beeblebrox is a burk. He does not interest me. Marvin is a burk. He does not interest me. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a burk. It does not interest me."

When the Star Trek franchise was awarded a special Emmy in 2018, it was William "Captain Kirk" Shatner who'd co-delivered its acceptance speech, remembers ComicBook.com. "Thank you so much. 52 years. What a gift. We're grateful... Star Trek has endured because it represents an idea — one that's greater than the sum of our parts... we watch and we reach to see the best version of ourselves..."

And now three years later, they report that Shatner "will celebrate his 90th birthday back on the bridge of the USS Enterprise." Sort of... Shatner will partake in a two-day event at the Star Trek: The Original Series Set Tour site in Ticonderoga, New York. The exhibit is famed among fans for its replica of the bridge set where Shatner gave orders as Captain James T. Kirk in Star Trek: The Original Series.

The two-day event begins on July 23rd (a belated celebration coming a few months after his actual birthday in March), with the COVID-19 mask and social distancing rules still in effect... The limited $1500 all-inclusive packages will let fans participate in Shatner's 90th Birthday Dinner Celebration, take a set tour with Shatner, plus a Bridge Chat, a photo, and an autograph. Regular admission is $80 for a standard tour with a la carte photos and autographs available... The replica set is likely the closest fans will ever come to seeing Shatner return to a Starfleet bridge.
So what is William Shatner doing on Monday, the actual date of his 90th birthday? The New York Daily News reports: He's got a series airing on the History channel, he's heading overseas to shoot an episode of a television show, and is in the middle of promoting his latest feature film, a romantic comedy called "Senior Moment..."

The indie film features Shatner as Victor, a former test pilot who dates younger women and loves burning rubber behind the wheel of his beautiful 1955 Porsche.
The movie also stars Watchmen actress Jean Smart, along with Christopher Lloyd (who memorably played a Klingon in the 1984 movie Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.)

And meanwhile Priceline.com plans a special series of deals this week to honor Shatner's years as their spokesperson (as well as his singing in their earliest dotcom-era commercials, which revived Shatner's spoken-word singing career).

In Captain Kirk's final appearance in 1994's Star Trek: Generations, one of the last things he says is "It was fun." But it looks like in real life, William Shatner is living long and prospering.

Here's that great moment in Slashdot history when Shatner actually answered questions from Slashdot's readers. Have your own favorite William Shatner memory? Share it in the comments to help celebrate his 90th birthday!

ComicBook.com reports: Back in 2019, Avengers: Endgame hit theatres and after a couple of months, it ended up knocking Avatar out of the highest-grossing film spot. The James Cameron movie was number one for an entire decade before the Marvel film came along, but thanks to a recent re-release in China, Avatar is back on top...

When the news broke yesterday, many people took to social media to point out that the "real" winner was actually Zoe Saldana, who plays Gamora in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Neytiri in Avatar. No matter which movie ultimately wins the box office wars, Saldana can't lose... Saldana is expected to return for both Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Avatar 2.
Deadline reports the directors of Marvel's Avengers: Endgame, Joe and Anthony Russo, "have graciously saluted James Cameron's film Avatar for edging past them in the all-time worldwide box office totals," by tweeting a custom piece of artwork merging the Avatar and Avengers logos. James Cameron himself shared the tweet he'd received from Marvel Studios congratulating "ALL of Na'vi Nation for reclaiming the box office crown" (which also included a memorable line from Avengers: Endgame).

Deadline says it's part of a long-standing Hollywood tradition: A practice of taking out ads to pat each other on the back began in 1977 when Steven Spielberg congratulated buddy George Lucas after Star Wars overtook Jaws at the domestic box office. It carried on from there including when Lucas later gave a shout-out to Cameron as Titanic unseated Star Wars in 1998.

In 2015, Disney/Marvel and The Avengers paid tribute to Universal's Jurassic World and its record-smashing opening weekend. Later that year, Uni returned the hat tip as Disney/Lucasfilm's The Force Awakens rode past the dinosaurs, moving to social media for the first time. Then in 2019, Cameron saluted Endgame for overtaking Titanic and in July that year Cameron again said bravo when Endgame crossed Avatar.

Variety magazine reports that Netflix has ordered Terminator anime series: "'Terminator' is one of the most iconic sci-fi stories ever created -- and has only grown more relevant to our world over time," said John Derderian, Netflix's vice president of Japan and anime. "The new animated series will explore this universe in a way that has never been done before. We can't wait for fans to experience this amazing new chapter in the epic battle between machines and humans."

Mattson Tomlin will serve as showrunner and executive producer on the series. Tomlin most recently wrote the Netflix original film "Project Power" and worked on the screenplay for Matt Reeves' upcoming film "The Batman...."

"Anyone who knows my writing knows I believe in taking big swings and going for the heart," Tomlin said. "I'm honored that Netflix and Skydance have given me the opportunity to approach 'Terminator' in a way that breaks conventions, subverts expectations and has real guts."

Slashdot reader The Grim Reefer shares a report from the BBC: Babylon 5 and Lost actress Mira Furlan has died at the age of 65, her family and management have confirmed. Furlan played Minbari Ambassador Delenn in the 1990s sci-fi TV drama, Babylon 5, and Danielle Rousseau in the noughties mystery drama, Lost.

Her family told the BBC the Croatian actress died on Wednesday due to complications with West Nile Virus... A message on Furlan's Twitter account, confirmed to be taken from the autobiography she was working on, read: "I look at the stars. It's a clear night and the Milky Way seems so near. That's where I'll be going soon."
Babylon 5 J Michael Straczynski wrote on Twitter, "It is a night of great sadness, for our friend and comrade had gone down the road where we cannot reach her. But as with all things, we will catch up with her in time, and I believe she will have many stories to tell us, and many new roles to share with the universe."

Long-time Slashdot reader serviscope_minor wanted to remind us that 2020 also saw the death of science fiction/fantasy author Debra Doyle at the age of 67 from a sudden cardiac event. "Her works were co-written with her husband, James D. Macdonald," notes her entry on Wikipedia: Her first work written with Macdonald was "Bad Blood" in 1988. Their novel Knight's Wyrd was awarded the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children's Literature in 1992 and appeared on the New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age list in 1993. They published two series, Mageworlds (7 novels) and The Wizard Apprentice (8 novels), and two alternate history novels, Land of Mist and Snow and Lincoln's Sword.

Doyle and Macdonald also published together under other names. They published their first novel, Night of Ghosts and Lightning, in 1989 under the house name Robyn Tallis; two Tom Swift novels under the house name Victor Appleton; Pep Rally, Blood Brothers, and Vampire's Kiss under the house name Nicholas Adams; and two Spider-Man novels as Martin Delrio.

Together Doyle and Macdonald made up part of the core membership of the sff.net website and rec.arts.sff newsgroup. Doyle also taught at the Viable Paradise genre writer's workshop on Martha's Vineyard.

While publishers and stores feared COVID-19 would be an extinction-level threat, the industry has proved more resilient than thought. From a report: In March, when COVID-19 hit the comic industry in earnest, many retailers and publishers feared it would be an apocalyptic event for the business. Stay-at-home orders shuttered stores, and shipments of new product ceased for several months when Diamond Comics Distributors hit pause. Stores have struggled to survive, and some have shuttered permanently. However, months after the comic book industry restarted -- accompanied by a publicity campaign proclaiming that the industry's "comeback will be bigger than [the] setback" -- there are multiple signs that comics has proven to be far stronger than anyone, including those inside the industry, expected in the face of an uncertain year. "The biggest surprise started during May and June, as we were allowed to reopen, comics started shipping again, and customers were slowly starting to come back to the shop. Customers were buying comics. A lot of comics," California retailer Ryan Higgins tells THR. With comic conventions canceled and people not taking vacations, many fans concentrated on making their collections more complete.

"Comic supplies sales skyrocketed right away as people took this time to clean up their collection," says Higgins. "New titles were selling better than we ever expected, graphic novel sales spiked, and back issues jumped dramatically in price and flew out the door just as fast. Sales during the summer and early fall months were just unbelievable." [...] A key metric for the health of the industry is how many comics stores are ordering. Those numbers are moving in the right direction. "March 2020 saw Diamond ship 5.9 million comics; September and October were both over 7 million copies each," writes analyst John Jackson Miller in an email to THR. "Those are both behind the equivalent months in 2019; October 2019, with the X-Men relaunch, was the fourth best month of the decade of the 2010s. But per release, the sales levels are improved, and as the number of releases continues to build back, you can see it fully catching up." As Higgins suggests, it's not just new titles that are seeing a bump; multiple publishers told THR that back orders for already released material still available directly from the publisher scaled up in the latter half of the year, as well.

New submitter Arthur, KBE writes: Harrison Ford will be grabbing his whip and ramming on his hat for a fifth "Indiana Jones" movie, Disney has confirmed -- a mere 41 years after the first installment, "Raiders of the Lost Ark," was released. Disney said in a tweet on Friday that the movie would be produced by its production arm Lucasfilm and released in July 2022, and that "Indy himself, Harrison Ford, will be back to continue his iconic character's journey." The entertainment giant also confirmed the news in an investor presentation, saying the movie was currently in "pre-production." There had been mounting speculation that a new movie was in the works. In February, Ford told Ellen DeGeneres in an appearance on her talk show that production on a new Indiana Jones movie would begin this year. "It's going to be fun. I am excited," he said on the show. "They're great fun to make." The last film from the franchise was 2008's "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," which came almost 20 years after the third movie, "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," which was released in 1989.

Joe2020 shares a report with the caption, "Yeah, this happened." NPR reports: Less than two weeks after authorities stumbled across a mysterious metal object standing freely in the Utah desert -- and just days after it disappeared -- a similar monolith has been reported nearly halfway around the world. Residents in the Romanian city of Piatra Neamt say they have found another odd item that could have been ripped from the set of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The local newspaper reports that the monolith, like the one discovered in Utah, is about 10 to 12 feet tall and apparently composed entirely of a dimly reflective metal. It was reportedly found standing on the Batca Doamnei plateau, near an archaeological site overlooking the city. Jurnal FM, a local radio station, recorded video of the purported object, revealing an eye-aching sheen and looped markings along its surface. Andrei Carabelea, mayor of Piatra Neamt, appears to be taking the news in stride. "There is no reason to panic for those who think there is still life in the universe," Carabelea quipped, according to a translation by The Independent. "My guess is that some alien, cheeky and terrible teenagers left home with their parents' UFO and started planting metal monoliths around the world. First in Utah and then at Piatra Neamt," he added. "I am honored that they chose our city." According to The New York Times, an adventure photographer said he spotted four men dismantling the structure. The Bureau of Land Management denied moving the structure.

fahrbot-bot shares a report from CNN: A team of physicists at a university in the Netherlands have 3D-printed a microscopic version of the USS Voyager, an Intrepid-class starship from Star Trek. The miniature Voyager, which measures 15 micrometers (0.015 millimeters) long, is part of a project researchers at Leiden University conducted to understand how shape affects the motion and interactions of microswimmers.

Microswimmers are small particles that can move through liquid on their own by interacting with their environment through chemical reactions. The platinum coating on the microswimmers reacts to a hydrogen peroxide solution they are placed in, and that propels them through the liquid. "By studying synthetic microswimmers, we would like to understand biological microswimmers," Samia Ouhajji, one of the study's authors, told CNN. "This understanding could aid in developing new drug delivery vehicles; for example, microrobots that swim autonomously and deliver drugs at the desired location in the human body." In their project, the physicists also printed shapes like boats, trimers and helices, with each object's shape affecting their swimming behaviors.

Marvel Entertainment has announced that it is halving the wait time for fans choosing to read releases on its digital subscription Marvel Unlimited, with titles now appearing on the service just three months after print release. The change takes effect immediately. From a report: Marvel Unlimited launched in 2007, and offers access to the publisher's digital library of titles -- currently numbering more than 27,000 issues -- for either a monthly or annual subscription fee. The service is available as an iOS, Android and web app.

"Anyone who has ever fallen in love with technology knows the amount of control that it gives you," says Cory Doctorow. But in a new interview about his recently-released scifi novel Attack Surface, he argues that many Silicon Valley employees are now having second thoughts: If you can express yourself well to a computer it will do exactly what you tell it to do perfectly, as many times as you want. Across the tech sector, there are a bunch of workers who are waking up and going: "How did I end up rationalising my love for technology and all the power it gives me to take away that power from other people?"

As a society, we have a great fallacy, the fallacy of the ledger, which is that if you do some bad things, and then you do some good things, you can talk them up. And if your balance is positive, then you're a good person. And if the balance is negative, you're a bad person. But no amount of goodness cancels out the badness, they coexist — the people you hurt will still be hurt, irrespective of the other things you do to make amends. We're flawed vessels, and we need a better moral discourse. That's one of the things this book is trying to establish...

[F]iction gives you an emotional fly-through. It invites you to consider the lived experience of what is otherwise a very abstract and technical debate. And in the same way that Orwell bequeathed us this incredibly useful adjective Orwellian, as a way to talk about not the technical characteristics of the technology, but who does it and whom it does it to, these stories are a way of intervening in the world.
In the real world, Doctorow believes our moment in time includes the possibility of a growing coalition of anti-monopoly sentiment. But he also believes that fears of technology-induced unemployment may ultimately be offset by climate change.

"We've got 200 to 300 years of full employment for every working pair of hands, to do things like relocate every city on a coast 20km inland. The extended amounts of labour ahead of us are more than any technology could offset."

At the Creative Arts Emmys on Wednesday night, The Mandalorian not only scored its first Emmy but also won the first Emmy for Disney+. Deadline reports: As a brand new streamer, this year marks the first year of eligibility for Disney+. The Mandalorian has racked up a staggering 15 Emmy nominations with 8 of those trophies being handed out tonight. Outstanding Special Visual Effects is the first win for the sci-fi series that stars Pedro Pascal as the titular masked hero and introduced the world to Baby Yoda -- which won everyone's hearts. This win will likely be the first of many tonight and at Sunday's ceremony. The Mandalorian is also up for Outstanding Drama Series as well as Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance for Taika Waitti's role as droid IG-11 and Outstanding Guest Actor In A Drama Series for Giancarlo Esposito's performance as Moff Gideon.

Science fiction writer Cory Doctorow (also a former EFF staffer and activist) explains why he's crowdfunding his new audiobook online. Despite the large publishers for his print editions, "I can't get anyone to do my audiobooks. Amazon and its subsidiary Audible, which controls 90% of the audiobook sales, won't carry any of my audiobooks because I won't let them put any of their digital rights management on it.

"I don't want you locked in with their DRM as a condition of experiencing my work," he explains in a video on Kickstarter. "And so I have to do it myself."

He's promising to sell the completed book through all the usual platforms "except Audible," because "I want to send a message. If we get a lot of pre-orders for this, it's going to tell something to Amazon and Audible about how people prioritize the stories they love over the technology they hate, and why technological freedom matters to people.

"It's also going to help my publisher and other major publishers understand that there is an opportunity here to work with crowdfunding platforms in concert with the major publishers' platforms to sell a lot of books in ways that side-step the monopolists, and that connect artists and audiences directly."

it's the third book in a series which began with the dystopian thriller Little Brother (recommended by Neil Gaiman) and continued with a sequel named Homeland. ("You may have seen Edward Snowden grab it off his bedstand and put it in his go bag and go into permanent exile in Hong Kong in the documentary Citizen 4," Doctorow says in his fundraising video.) The newest book, Attack Surface, finds a "technologist from the other side" — a surveillance contractor — now reckoning with their conscience while being hunted with the very cyber-weapons they'd helped to build. "There are a lot of technologists who are reckoning with the moral consequences of their actions these days," Doctorow says, adding "that's part of what inspired me to write this...

"Anyone who's been paying attention knows that there's been a collision between our freedom and our technology brewing for a long time."

Just three days after launching the Kickstarter campaign, Doctorow had already raised over $120,000 over his original goal of $7,000 — with 26 days left to go. And he also promises that the top pledge premium is for real....

$10,000	You and Cory together come up with the premise for his next story in the "Little Brother" universe.
$75 or more	All three novels as both audiobooks and ebooks
$40 or more	All three novels as audiobooks
$35 or more	All three novels as ebooks
$25 or more	The audiobook and the ebook of Cory's new novel, Attack Surface
$15 or more	The audiobook for Attack Surface
$14 or more	The new book Attack Surface in ebook format as a .mobi/.epub file
$11 or more	The second book in the series, Homeland, in ebook format as a .mobi/.epub file
$10 or more	The first novel in the series in ebook format as a .mobi/.epub file
$1 or more	Cory will email you the complete text of "Little Brother," the first book in the series, cryptographically signed with his private key

A reader shares a report from Space.com: It's been an incredible 54 years since "Star Trek" first debuted. On Tuesday (Sept. 8), actors from across the multi-decade franchise will celebrate an online "Star Trek" day with panels and discussions, while discussing the series' emphasis on diversity. More than three hours of free virtual panels will play at the Star Trek Day website here starting at 12 p.m. PDT (3 p.m. EDT or 1900 GMT). The multi-hour online event comes in the wake of a CBS announcement Sept. 2 that "Star Trek" will feature its first nonbinary and transgender characters in Season 3 of "Star Trek: Discovery," which premieres Oct. 15. Adira will be a nonbinary character played by non-binary actor Blu del Barrio, while transgender actor Ian Alexander will play Gray.

CBS All Access also pledged to donate $1 for every person who tweets the hashtag #StarTrekUnitedGives on Tuesday between 12 a.m. and 11:59 a.m. PDT (between 3 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 8 and 2:59 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 9 EDT, or between 0700 Tuesday, Sept. 8 and 0659 Wednesday, Sept. 9 GMT). The donations will go to "organizations who do the real-world work of championing equality, social justice and the pursuit of scientific advancements," CBS said in a statement. The organizations include the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering and the Equal Justice Initiative. The article has included the full schedule for the event.

Entrepreneur magazine writes: Although his days are presumably filled with Tesla, SpaceX, cyber pigs and lots and lots of tweeting, it seems Elon Musk also finds the time to make reading part of his routine. The billionaire businessman is known for sharing (and oversharing) all his recommendations and thoughts on Twitter, so it's no surprise that books are part of that.

Most Recommended Books compiled a list of all the books Musk has commented on in the past several years, and you can see all 61 here. But if you're short on time today, click through to see 11 of the most interesting picks from his list.
The list includes Peter Thiel's 2014 best-seller Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future, as well as business magnate Richard Branson's 2011 book Screw Business As Usual.

Musk also calls a 2004 biography of Howard Hughes "a cautionary tale," and a 2005 biography of Stalin "One of the few books so dark I had to stop reading." And for a 2011 biography of Catherine the Great, he wrote "I know what you're probably thinking ... did she really f* a horse?"

His favorite books about space include John Drury Clark's Ignition! as well as Modern Engineering for Design of Liquid Propellant Rocket Engines. But there's also Robert A. Heinlein's science fiction novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. ("My favorite spaceship ever is in [this book].") And he calls Isaac Asimov's Foundation series "fundamental to [the] creation of SpaceX."

Also on the list is Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (which Bill Gates also named as one of his 10 favorite books about technology) as well as Frank Herbert's Dune, which Musk calls "Brilliant," while noting that Herbert "advocates placing limits on machine intelligence." In fact, for eight different books on the list he'd added the same cautionary warning: "Hopefully not too optimistic about AI."

He also says he read Karl Marx's Das Kapital at the age of 14, and also read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (which Musk called "a counterpoint to communism and useful as such, but should be tempered with kindness.")

But Musk says his favorite book ever is J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.

AmiMoJo shares a report from the BBC: Sci-fi franchise Star Trek is set to introduce its first transgender and non-binary characters. The characters are to appear in the third series of Star Trek: Discovery, producers said on Wednesday. The trans character, Gray, will be played by trans actor Ian Alexander, and likewise non-binary Adira will be portrayed by Blu del Barrio. "Star Trek has always made a mission of giving visibility to underrepresented communities," said a producer. The show's co-runner and executive producer Michelle Paradise added: "It believes in showing people that a future without division on the basis of race, gender, gender identity or sexual orientation is entirely within our reach."