Web Round-Up

Here (re)begins a weekly sampling of some cool things on the internet!

• Futurama might return to Comedy Central with 13 more episodes!  (via io9)
• On that note, musings on whether Firefly might ever be resurrected. I know, I know, it will never happen, but I need a fix and OH GOD, I can’t stop looking for signs. (via Sci Fi Scanner)
• It might be more productive to start drawing floor plans for Jay Garmon’s ideal Serenity restaurant, or the geek project of my own lotto-winning dreams. (Library + armory = librarmory?)
• Laser etchings can make liquid flow uphill. (via Futurismic)
• New art for a UK version of Brandon Sanderson’s The Final Empire. I think it’s lovely and creepy and would like to hang it by my bed, but it is more surreal/slipstream than straight-up invented-world fantasy, so I’m not sure how I feel about it on a Sanderson book.
• Nerd word of the week: unobtainium!

• Subterranean Press announces a limited edition of Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles with previously-unpublished works, all-new color illustrations by Edward Miller, and introductions by John Scalzi and Joe Hill. (via Books On Mars)
• Name of the Wind author Pat Rothfuss relates his writing process to little girls and drunken frat boys. But not, like, together. Ew.
• Graeme McMillan explores some of the difficulties behind a Wonder Woman reboot; maybe her complexities are too much to handle with that distracting bustier in the way?
• Who says candles have to burn straight down? I love how these multiple wicks look like little honeycombs or carbon rings.
• Some highlights from Locus‘s special urban fantasy issue, including quotes from “Kim Harrison,” Patricia Briggs, Marjorie M. Liu, Charlaine Harris, Kelley Armstrong and more.
• Mihir Wanchoo tells you who’s who in Indian speculative fiction, as well as where Indian mythology comes into play in familiar science fiction and fantasy.
• Did Aboriginal societies build a mega-calendar on the order of Stonehenge? (via Cheryl Morgan)
• The newly-established Ham-Sized Fist Award, for heroic fantasy or sword-and-sorcery published in 2009, gets my Best-Named Award Award.
• Talking mice! If by talking mice I mean an interesting experiment with one of the “cascade” of genes that affects speech…and I do.