Spike Lee is set to direct a biopic on Ron Mallett, the African American UConn physics professor, who in his spare time conducted basement experiments hoping to eventually develop a time machine. Mallett, by the way, is completely aware his interest seems crazy to an outsider. I had tears in my eyes when he appeared on This American Life last year. Mallett’s motivation was to see his father again, (who died when he was ten — around the time he was getting into sci-fi comic books.) His autobiography is Time Traveler: A Scientist’s Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality.
Iain Sinclair on HG Wells’s The War of the Worlds, “The impact of this 1898 novel lies in its topographic verisimilitude, its forensic examination of the comfortably mundane, the complacency of Surrey suburbia, railway towns surrounded by golf links, tame heathland, somewhere to walk a dog… The War of the Worlds is told with tabloid speed and the lovely poetry of the commonplace.” (And if you don’t know what happened during Orson Wells’ 1938 radio broadcast, Radiolab’s March episode is worth a listen.)
“Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.” — H. G. Wells (via.)
-
A collection of interesting ideas curated by
Joanne McNeil. About ➚
Sponsors
