On this date three visitors from the future were due to arrive in San Francisco. Benjamin Sisco, Julian Bashir, and Jadzia Dax (respectively a normal human male, and augmented human male, and a Joined Trill) were accidentally sent back from 2371 to 30th August 2024 by a transporter malfunction. Their communications badges having been stolen and having no other forms of ID, Sisco and Bashir were mistaken for vagrants and placed in the gigantic informal prison called "Sanctuary District A" consisting of 20 city blocks of San Fransisco with a wall around it, like a ghetto for the poor and dispossessed. The story is told in the Star Trek Deep Space Nine episodes "Past Tense" parts one and two. At one point during their visit to the past, Bashir asks the question      "...there is one thing I don't understand: how could they have let things get so bad?" Sisco replies:      "That's a good question. I wish I had an answer." Fortunately in real h...

The world science fiction convention 2024, Worldcon, has just taken place in Glasgow. The events included the Hugo awards for the world's best science fiction. Interestingly this was one of the first times there was a Hugo award for the best SF/Fantasy game (won by Baldur's Gate III.) I think this represents something important in the way SF is likely to develop in the future. The Star Wars universe canon seems to be moving to recognise characters and events from some of the games set in the galaxy far, far away, with Dave Filoni bringing characters from games like Jedi Survivor into canon projects like "Tales of the Empire" and events from those games such as Operation Cinder into the backstory of characters in The Mandalorian season II. Last year's Worldcon took place in China, and unfortunately that appears to have had consequences for the freedom of speech and expression on which science fiction absolutely depends, with one or two authors being prevented from ...