Science Corner: Immanuel Velikovsky

"History is written by the winners, including that of science. Unorthodoxies that flourish at the grassroots are often beneath the contempt of historians. Zetetic astronomy (flat-Earth science) was a household term in Victorian England, but not a single reference to it is found in conventional histories. We ignore such histories at our peril."
~from Worlds of Their Own: A Brief History of Misguided Ideas: Creationism, Flat-Earthism, Energy Scams, and the Velikovsky Affair by Robert Schadewald

"For one thing Velikfovskianism, and indeed, any exoheretical view that becomes prominent enough to force itself on science, acts to puncture scientific complacency-and that is good. An exoheresy may cause scientists to bestir themselves for the purpose of reexamining the bases of their beliefs, even if only to gather firm and logical reasons for the rejection of the exoheresy-and that is good too. An exoheresy may cause scientific activity which, in a serendipitous fashion, may uncover something worthwhile that has nothing to do with the exoheresy-and that is very good, if it happens."
~Isaac Asimov

Immanuel Velikovsky was a Russian-born American "futurist, prophet, mythologist, historian, scientific renegade." His most famous work is probably 1950's Worlds in Collision, which was criticized & controversial-& a New York Times bestseller. The book "proposes that many myths and traditions of ancient peoples and cultures are based on actual events: worldwide global catastrophes of a celestial origin, which had a profound effect on the lives, beliefs and writings of early mankind." Velikovsky's theory was that Venus was originally a comet made from a piece of Jupiter, & that, as a comet, it travelled the solar system, its gravitational field causing catastrophes on our planet along the way. The controversy surrounding his work and its reception is often referred to as "the Velikovsky affair". Carl Sagan was one of Velikovsky's most vocal critics.

Despite his detractors, Velikovsky's theories still have many followers & in fact his theories got a mention in the article "Quakes, Tectonic and Theoretical" in the New York Times on January 15th.

For more on Velikovsky:

Find Velikovsky's books in the catalog. Or in our Science in Context database with your valid library card!

Find Velikovsky in...The UnMuseum

...The Immanuel Velikovsky Archive

...The Immanuel Velikovsky Encyclopedia

Adventures in Deltiology

deltiology (ˌdɛltɪˈɒlədʒɪ)
— n, the collection and study of picture postcards
[C20: from Greek deltion, diminutive of deltos a writing tablet + -logy ]
~from Dictionary.com

Every day, I still visit my mailbox when I get home with a sense of hope-even though the bulk of my correspondence is online these days. There's such a thrill in receiving "snail mail", I always think. My father used to write me regularly, & still sends postcards when he travels. Postcards have always been my favorite mail-whenever someone leaves town, I'll be begging them to send me a postcard from wherever their journey takes them.

Since I love mail but rarely find anything in the mailbox but bills & ads, I have joined an online project called Postcrossing. The website explains: "The goal of this project is to allow people to receive postcards from all over the world, for free. Well, almost free! The main idea is that: if you send a postcard, you will receive at least one back from a random Postcrosser from somewhere in the world." How does it work? After you sign up for your (free) account, it works like this:

1.Request an address and a Postcard ID
2.Mail the postcard to that address
3.Receive a postcard from another postcrosser!
4.Register the Postcard ID you have received
5.Go to number 1 to receive more postcards!

Postcrossing boasts 214,501 members in 205 countries; 766 postcards/hour; 6,154,685 postcards received; 207,549 postcards traveling; 33,699,683,074 km traveled! I have had a lot of fun with it over the last couple of years, sending postcards to the Netherlands, Taiwan, Brazil, & Iceland, & receiving cards from Japan, Iran, Thailand, Finland, & Estonia.

If, like me, you love postcards, consider checking out these offerings from the library catalog:

Griffin & Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence written and illustrated by Nick Bantock

Frank Warren's Postsecret books (PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard. See more on the website.)

Real Photo Postcards: Unbelievable Images from the Collection of Harvey Tulcenskyedited by Laetitia Wolff

Postcards from the Boys by Ringo Starr

Had a Good Time: Stories from American Postcards by Robert Olen Butler

Delivering Views: Distant Cultures in Early Postcards edited by Christraud M. Geary and Virginia-Lee Webb

A Postcard Memoir by Lawrence Sutin

Border Fury: A Picture Postcard Record of Mexico's Revolution and U.S. War Preparedness, 1910-1917 by Paul J. Vanderwood and Frank N. Samponaro

For children, try a subject search under "Postcards Juvenile".

The Game Begins April 17th!

George R.R. Martin fans! Are you ready to watch A Game of Thrones on HBO this spring? This series, starring Sean Bean, Peter Dinklage, & Lena Headey, is based on Martin's A Song of Fire & Ice books:

o A Game of Thrones
o A Clash of Kings
o A Storm of Swords
o A Feast for Crows
o A Dance with Dragons (forthcoming)
o The Winds of Winter (forthcoming)
o A Dream of Spring (forthcoming)




For more titles by George R. R. Martin, pay your local library catalog a visit!

Looking to find out the latest news & award winners in science fiction? Check out SF Signal & Science Fiction Awards Watch.

Buy India a Library!

Buy India a Library is an appeal from four librarians on Twitter. They want to raise enough money via PayPal donations, to buy a mobile library in India, or even a permanent library with books, furniture and staff! The video below tells more about how it works.



As of January 14th, £750 has been raised! That’s 60% of what is needed to build a library in India.

90-Second Newbery Film Festival

Blogger & YA fiction author James Kennedy (check out The Order of Odd-Fish in our catalog)has inaugurated the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival contest on his blog! Watch the video below to get a taste of what's to come.

"A Wrinkle In Time" In 90 Seconds from James Kennedy on Vimeo.

"That’s a lot of Newbery winners. Maybe too many? You can’t read all 90 books! But you do have 90 seconds to spare, right? So here’s our contest, open to anyone: make a video that compresses the story of a Newbery award-winning book into 90 seconds or less." ~from the blog

Also check for Newbery Awards in the library catalog.

Falling into a Series Relationship

Library Journal had a great article back in November called "Falling into a Series Relationship: Six Top Mysteries". I say great, probably because I agree with their choices: Martha Grimes' Richard Jury series (I love Richard Jury & Melrose Plant as characters, even if the writing can sometimes be uneven); Margaret Maron's Deborah Knott series; the Adam Dalgliesh books by P.D. James; the Two Pines mysteries by Louise Penny, featuring Armand Gamache. I haven't read anything by Elizabeth Peters or Ruth Downie as yet, but now I'm considering them based on the article's other recommendations!

I love to read books in a series, especially mysteries. I am a real stickler for reading them in chronological order, so Fictfact has been a really useful tool for me. Here's a sampling of the many series I'm wading through, as viewed on Fictfact:

Another good source for mysteries is the site Stop, You're Killing Me. This site has many great features, include links to lists of the latest mystery award winners & a great selection of indexes-location, job, historical, diversity, genre. I tend to like mysteries from the British Isles & Police Procedurals. One of my co-workers is a Cozy Mystery fan, with an emphasis on Food & Drink or Crafts & Needlework. What's your poison, so to speak?

If you are a mystery reader, three of the ABC Libraries' branches have book groups that focus on mysteries-Main has The Wide World of Mystery book group, Tony Hillerman has the Who Dunnit? Mystery Book Club & there's also the Mystery Book Group at Cherry Hills Library.

Litquake!

We have literary festival envy.

In our peregrinations around the interwebs, we sometimes discover things we've never heard of before. Such is the case with San Francisco's literary festival, Litquake, which has been going on since 2002. This weeklong event includes Off the Scale Readings, a literary film festival, literary walking tours, a new writers night, Litquake in the Bookstore, Kidquake, & a Literary Death Match. As the website explains, "Now grown to the largest independent literary festival on the West Coast, Litquake continues its mission as a week-long literary spectacle for booklovers, complete with cutting-edge panel discussions, unique cross-media events, and hundreds of readings. Litquake seeks to foster interest in literature for people of all ages, perpetuate a sense of literary community, and provide a vibrant forum for Bay Area writing as a complement to the city’s music, film, and cultural festivals."

Other notable North American literary festivals include Wordstock (Ontario), the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature (New York City), the Baltimore Book Festival, the Virginia Festival of the Book, the Brattleboro Literary Festival, & the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival.

What do you think, Albuquerque? Are we ready to host a literary festival? Let's get Litquerque!