Galaxy Magazine Collection Free Online


This has to be the coolest thing I have found in a while. The entire collection of Science Fiction Galaxy Magazines are available on-line for free. So you have no excuse to catch up on all of your vintage sci-fi on your commute.

Galaxy Magazine


Galaxy Science Fiction was an American digest-size science fiction magazine, published from 1950 to 1980. It was founded by an Italian company, World Editions, which was looking to break in to the American market. World Editions hired as editor H. L. Gold, who rapidly made Galaxy the leading science fiction (sf) magazine of its time, focusing on stories about social issues rather than technology.

Gold published many notable stories during his tenure, including Ray Bradbury's "The Fireman", later expanded as Fahrenheit 451; Robert A. Heinlein's The Puppet Masters; and Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man. In 1952, the magazine was acquired by Robert Guinn, its printer. By the late 1950s, Frederik Pohl was helping Gold with most aspects of the magazine's production. When Gold's health worsened, Pohl took over as editor, starting officially at the end of 1961, though he had been doing the majority of the production work for some time.




Under Pohl Galaxy had continued success, regularly publishing fiction by major writers such as Cordwainer Smith, Jack Vance, Harlan Ellison, and Robert Silverberg. However, Pohl never won the annual Hugo Award for his stewardship of Galaxy, winning three Hugos instead for its sister magazine, If. In 1969 Guinn sold Galaxy to Universal Publishing and Distribution Corporation (UPD) and Pohl resigned, to be replaced by Ejler Jakobsson. Under Jakobsson the magazine declined in quality. It recovered under James Baen, who took over in mid-1974, but when he left at the end of 1977 the deterioration resumed, and there were financial problems—writers were not paid on time and the schedule became erratic. By the end of the 1970s the gaps between issues were lengthening, and the title was finally sold to Vincent McCaffrey, who brought out just one issue in 1980. A brief revival as a semi-professional magazine followed in 1994, edited by H. L. Gold's son, E. J. Gold; this lasted for eight bimonthly issues.



At its peak, Galaxy greatly influenced in the science fiction field. It was regarded as one of the leading sf magazines almost from the start, and its influence did not wane until Pohl's departure in 1969. Gold brought a "sophisticated intellectual subtlety" to magazine science fiction according to Pohl, who added that "after Galaxy it was impossible to go on being naive."[1] SF historian David Kyle agrees, commenting that "of all the editors in and out of the post-war scene, the most influential beyond any doubt was H. L. Gold".[2] Kyle suggests that the new direction Gold set "inevitably" led to the experimental New Wave, the defining science fiction literary movement of the 1960s.

Enjoy the read. Click here for the entire collection Free.





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Author: admin
Artist, writer, sculptor, drawing comic books, storyboards for film and television, character design for animation, illustrating children’s books and painting for 30 years. Walk with purpose.

Close up of the GRIFON 1 Rover used in the film

All Props and Animatronics and practical effects will be updated on this page now. Check out the new stuff.



G.R.I.F.O.N. 1 (Geological Research Instrument for Foraging and Observation in Nature) 

Oil effects painted onto the side of the robotic rover. If you can't figure out what you are looking at, go here to see the concept drawings.



These are are two images of the animatronic robot prop G.R.I.F.O.N. 1 rover from the work bench of the artist.


Here's a shot of the aging detail on this bot.


Here is a shot of this little robot explorer in the wild.


Here we are changing out batteries and preparing for another scene.


We will have a full write up on this rover complete with build log and video in the coming months prior to release of the film.

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Author: admin
Artist, writer, sculptor, drawing comic books, storyboards for film and television, character design for animation, illustrating children’s books and painting for 30 years. Walk with purpose.

Jupiter, WOW!

Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt /Seán Doran

This striking Jovian vista was created by citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran using data from the JunoCam imager on NASA’s Juno spacecraft.

The tumultuous Great Red Spot is fading from Juno's view while the dynamic bands of the southern region of Jupiter come into focus. North is to the left of the image, and south is on the right.


Larger version of the above image.

The image was taken on July 10, 2017 at 7:12 p.m. PDT (10:12 p.m. EDT), as the Juno spacecraft performed its seventh close flyby of Jupiter. At the time the image was taken, the spacecraft was 10,274 miles (16,535 kilometers) from the tops of the clouds of the planet at a latitude of -36.9 degrees.

JunoCam's raw images are available for the public to peruse and process into image products at: www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam












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Author: admin
Artist, writer, sculptor, drawing comic books, storyboards for film and television, character design for animation, illustrating children’s books and painting for 30 years. Walk with purpose.

New poster and IMDB listing for Quantum Enigma


As Black Fly Productions finishes up post production on this exciting film project, we have also finished the film poster and we have our IMDB listing here. Check back for more updates in the future.


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Author: admin
Artist, writer, sculptor, drawing comic books, storyboards for film and television, character design for animation, illustrating children’s books and painting for 30 years. Walk with purpose.

Researchers detect exoplanet with glowing water atmosphere

Story by Staff Writers College Park MD (SPX) Aug 03, 2017

Researchers have found that a "hot Jupiter" exoplanet named WASP-121b (left) has a stratosphere hot enough to boil iron. The planet is as close to its host star as possible without the star's gravity ripping the planet apart.

Scientists have found compelling evidence for a stratosphere on an enormous planet outside our solar system. The planet's stratosphere - a layer of atmosphere where temperature increases with higher altitudes - is hot enough to boil iron. WASP-121b, located approximately 900 light years from Earth, is a gas giant exoplanet commonly referred to as a "hot Jupiter."

An international team of researchers, led by the University of Exeter with contributions from the University of Maryland, made the new discovery by observing glowing water molecules in WASP-121b's atmosphere using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The research is published in the August 3, 2017 issue of the journal Nature.

Previous research spanning the past decade has indicated possible evidence for stratospheres on other exoplanets, but this is the first time that glowing water molecules have been detected - the clearest signal yet to indicate an exoplanet stratosphere.

"When it comes to distant exoplanets, which we can't see in the same detail as other planets here in our own solar system, we have to rely on proxy techniques to reveal their structure," said Drake Deming, a professor of astronomy at UMD and a co-author of the study. "The stratosphere of WASP-121b so hot it can make water vapor glow, which is the basis for our analysis."

To study the gas giant's stratosphere, scientists used spectroscopy to analyze how the planet's brightness changed at different wavelengths of light. Water vapor in the planet's atmosphere, for example, behaves in predictable ways in response to certain wavelengths of light, depending on the temperature of the water. At cooler temperatures, water vapor blocks light from beneath it. But at higher temperatures, the water molecules glow.

The phenomenon is similar to what happens with fireworks, which get their colors when metallic substances are heated and vaporized, moving their electrons into higher energy states. Depending on the material, these electrons will emit light at specific wavelengths as they lose energy. For example, sodium produces orange-yellow light and strontium produces red light.

The water molecules in the atmosphere of WASP-121b similarly give off radiation as they lose energy, but it is in the form of infrared light, which the human eye is unable to detect.

"Theoretical models have suggested that stratospheres may define a special class of ultra-hot exoplanets, with important implications for the atmospheric physics and chemistry," said Tom Evans, research fellow at the University of Exeter and lead author of the study. "When we pointed Hubble at WASP-121b, we saw glowing water molecules, implying that the planet has a strong stratosphere."

WASP-121b has a greater mass and radius than Jupiter, making it much puffier.

The exoplanet orbits its host star every 1.3 days, and the two bodies are about as close as they can be to each other without the star's gravity ripping the planet apart. This close proximity also means that the top of the atmosphere is heated to a blazing hot 2,500 degrees Celsius - the temperature at which iron exists in gas rather than solid form.

"This new research is the smoking gun evidence scientists have been searching for when studying hot exoplanets," said Professor David Sing, an associate professor of astrophysics at the University of Exeter and a co-author of the research paper. "We have discovered this hot Jupiter has a stratosphere, a common feature seen in most of our solar system planets."

In Earth's stratosphere, ozone traps ultraviolet radiation from the sun, which raises the temperature of this layer of atmosphere. Other solar system bodies have stratospheres, too - methane is responsible for heating in the stratospheres of Jupiter and Saturn's moon Titan, for example. In solar system planets, the change in temperature within a stratosphere is typically less than 100 degrees Celsius. However, on WASP-121b, the temperature in the stratosphere rises by 1,000 degrees Celsius.

"We've measured a strong rise in the temperature of WASP-121b's atmosphere at higher altitudes, but we don't yet know what's causing this dramatic heating," said Nikolay Nikolov, co-author and research fellow at the University of Exeter. "We hope to address this mystery with upcoming observations at other wavelengths."

Vanadium oxide and titanium oxide gases are candidate heat sources, as they strongly absorb starlight at visible wavelengths, much like ozone absorbs UV radiation. These compounds are expected to be present in only the hottest of hot Jupiters, such as WASP-121b, as high temperatures are required to keep them in the gaseous state. Indeed, vanadium oxide and titanium oxide are commonly seen in brown dwarfs, 'failed stars' that have some commonalities with exoplanets.

NASA's forthcoming James Webb Space Telescope will be able to follow up on the atmospheres of planets like WASP-121b with higher sensitivity than any telescope currently in space.

"This super-hot exoplanet is going to be a benchmark for our atmospheric models, and will be a great observational target moving into the Webb era," said Hannah Wakeford, a research fellow at the University of Exeter and a co-author of the research paper.

The research paper, "An ultra-hot gas-giant exoplanet with a stratosphere," Thomas Evans et al., was published in the journal Nature on August 3, 2017.


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Author: admin
Artist, writer, sculptor, drawing comic books, storyboards for film and television, character design for animation, illustrating children’s books and painting for 30 years. Walk with purpose.

Alien Blaster concept art and prop design

All Props and Animatronics and practical effects will be updated on this page now. Check out the new stuff.



Above is a close up of the finished blaster. Below concept art.


Here are some very cool concept illustrations and the prop design of the alien blaster seen in the QE teaser for the upcoming Quantum Enigma comic book release. Linder started off with some basic outline illustrations based on a movie weapon used in G. I. Joe and later released as a toy blaster from Hasbro. Further down you can this page, we have included a photo of it of the basic toy before the heavy modifications.



The shear amount of work required to create something like this is amazing. There are several designs here that we would love to see come to life.


These all look pretty cool, but in the end I guess you can only pick one. Below is the finished product, we are waiting for additional photos of the detail work and build.

There are all sorts of little greeblies added to this, including brass and aluminum parts, it looks like leather handles and heat/ battle damaged paint job with a whole lot of weathering.



Here is another image below that we use on the site.


Here is the neon plastic toy gun by Hasbro that was used as the base unit.


Screen matched image of the gun in holster from the QE teaser.





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Author: admin
Artist, writer, sculptor, drawing comic books, storyboards for film and television, character design for animation, illustrating children’s books and painting for 30 years. Walk with purpose.