Many a science fiction novel is based on the assumption that life has evolved on other worlds around other stars. We still don't know if such life exists. We don't even know how life began on this planet.

The most popular theory is that lightning and ultraviolet radiation from the sun cooked chemicals in the early Earth atmosphere to generate amino acids which eventually organized themselves into replicating organisms. It's a nice theory, but at least one scientist things that life might have actually arisen in the depths of the ocean around hydrothermal vents.

If proven true, that theory would certainly add weight to the thought that life might exist in the dark oceans of Jupiter's moon Europa.

Another hope for life within our own solar system is on Jupiter's moon Titan. The discovery of lakes of liquid methane have prompted one suggestion that future robot probes explore the world by boat.

Too late for boat travel is Mars, but there is growing evidence that it was once a watery world. If the life arose in the ocean depths theory holds water (no pun intended), then maybe we should be looking for evidendence of life on Mars in the areas where the former ocean bottoms lie.

Other oceans in this solar system that certainly won't harbour for life, but would be incredibly cool is the oceans that lie beneath the clouds of Uranus and Nepute. Some scientists think they have ocean of diamonds.

And then there's Jupiter. Is it possible that having a protector like that gas giant is a necessary prequisite for the origin of life on a planet like Earth? Some theorize that it's massive gravity acts as a sort of vacuum cleaner for big chunks of rock that might hit smaller worlds and exterminate any life that is evolving there.

Here is the plot of the movie aliens as told in a rap song. One wonders how many other scifi movies could be described in the same manner.

February is Black History Month so why not spend some time honouring those blacks who have made contribution to science fiction in some form or another?

First off is this interesting list of African-American science fiction authors. My favourite of the ones listed on that site is Octavia Butler. Samuel Delaney gets the most attention, but I've always thought his work was over-rated.

Next up is this list of top black characters in science fiction TV and movies. I'm glad to see that none of Wil Smith's characters are on the list, but give a big thumbs up to Avery Brooks for his role as Captain Benjamin Sisko on Star Trek: Deep Space 9.

So who is your favourite black SF character or author?

You've no doubt read reports quoting director James Cameron saying there will be a sequel to his highly successful movie Avatar. News Corp. is working on making that a reality. While Cameron may have the idea for another movie, they're the folks with the money and they are negotiating with him to make it happen, although News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch says to not hold your breath about a second movie coming any time soon since Cameron likes to take his time when making movies.

More intriguing is a rumour that Fox wants to make another remake of The Planet of the Apes. Given that the last "reboot" was a disaster, it's amazing they want to revisit that franchise so soon. I have my doubts that they can succeed, but the reports claim that the movie is a sort of origins story so that might be more interesting than remaking the original film.

Another new science ficiton movie in the works is The Electric Church, based on the Jeff Somers novel of the same name. The book is the first in a trilogy so if the movie succeeds, you can bet there will be two more to follow.

I am gobsmacked at the size of the recommended reading list for science fiction and fantasy books for 2009 as presented by Locus Online. It includes 52 novels, an even larger number of anthologies, related non-fiction titles, YA books, novellas, novellettes and short stories. If I were to actually read everything on the list, I think it would take me more than 12 months and by then their 2010 list would be out. I do own a few of the books on the list already, so maybe I'll start with those and see how it goes.

As for other books to add to your potential reading list, here are some reviews that offer possibilities. The first is for Robert Sawyer's new book, Wake. My wife just read it and thought highly of it.

Kim Stanley Robinson has a new book out called Galileo's Dream which is part sci-fi and part historical fiction which sounds something like what Neal Stephenson was trying to accomplish with his Baroque Cycle.

I am not familiar with Charlie Huston, but he recently wrote a book called Sleepless which, judging from this interview, sounds like an interesting story.

Another title that sounds like one worth seeking out is Adam Roberts's Yellow Blue Tibia, a book that was pegged as being a possible Booker Prize winner, but which was ultimately snubbed.

As you probably know by now, two science fiction movies were revealed Tuesday to be among the nominees for an Academy Award for best motion picture. Those films were Avatar and District 9.

They most likely slipped in there since the number of nominees was doubled this year from the usual 5 to 10.  I think a good indicator of the front-runners are the movies which also received nominations for best director. Avatar was the only one of the two that did so you can probably scratch District 9 off your prediction list.

Tellingly, Avatar has no other nominations for any acting awards or screenplay awards, but instead has nominations in the usual technical categories which are the bread and butter of genre movies at the Oscars. Star Trek and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince are the only other genre movies to get any recognition and they are for technical awards.

I think the lack of acting awards will probably work against Avatar and there just might be a backlash against James "King of the World" Cameron who already cleaned up at the Academy Awards the year he won it all with Titanic. My money is on the Hurt Locker.

Do you think Avatar has what it takes to win the Best Picture Award this year? Do you think any other genre movies were snubbed? What about Moon? It could have received a nod for best adapted screenplay or best actor for Sam Rockwell.

Don't forget to vote in our Oscar poll.

With the announcement last week of Apple's new iPad, it looks like Amazon's ebook reader, the Kindle, will have some serious competition. While the iPad isn't more of a multi-purpose device than the Kindle, many readers are intrigued by the possibilities of the new Apple tablet, especially comic book fans.

If that wasn't enough bad news, Amazon got into a public fight with the book publisher Macmillan over setting the price of electronic books. Macmillan, which operates the science fiction imprint Tor, wants to control pricing, but Amazon wouldn't let them, so they delisted all of their books from their site over the weekend.

It wasn't long before Amazon caved in and agreed to let the publisher sell the books at prices higher than the $9.99 set by the online retailer. SF author John Scalzi thinks the move has tarnished the company's reputation with its users as well as authors.

Amazon has been working hard to get people to buy their electronic books and one strategy they have is to give away free books for people to download to their Kindles although they are primarily public domain classics.

Meanwhile, the company which is most likely to prevail in all of these electronic book skirmishes is Google. They have been quielty digitizing books for years and are slowly building a massive online library of electronic titles and are poised to begin selling them. One author who is pissed off at Google's strategy is Ursula LeGuin. She's been mobilizing other authors against the agreement to let Google sell their books because she sees it as surrendering of copyright to a huge corporation.

In other electronic book developments, futurist Ray Kurzweil is entering into the fray with a new reader platform called Blio. It's not a device, but is software that will run on computers and mobile devices.

While all of this posturing for market share continues, the Chinese are working on their electronic book readers that will ultimately force reader prices downwards and probably outsell all of their American competitors by a wide margin.

So much for man's return to the moon. The United States government will scrap the Constellation program with its newest budget which is pretty much what I predicted would happen the day the program was announced. How could the U.S. afford to run a huge deficit and finance two ruinous wars and still be able to send people to the moon? Obviously, they cannot.

NASA has said that the program's cancellation won't stop them from sending people to the moon, but will instead outsource the transportation of astronauts to private companies and they will themselves work on spacecraft that can take astronauts even farther.

There are no shortage of people with suggestions of how NASA should be run. A former astronaut who now works for Google suggests the space adminstration take the same approach as Silicon Valley companies and launch early and launch often which means try lots of smaller projects and not get bogged down in a few megaprojects. It sounds like the new budget might have them moving in that direction.

It was an approach that was used recently with their unmanned projects that had the agency launching a lot of cheaper, less complicated probes. There were some failures, but a lot more hits, such as the Mars rovers which were designed to last a mere 90 days, but are now going on six years of operation and even though one of them is now permanently stuck in a sand trap they still hope to continue to perform scientific observations with it.

Some are suggesting NASA bring back its "crazy idea factory" to work on projects that are truly revolutionary. One of those crazy ideas is to build an interstellar spaceship. As crazy as it sounds, there are some theories as to how such a ship might move out of the pages of science fiction into the pages of science fact.

The most interesting part of these budget announcements is the decision to rely more on private companies to build manned spaceships. Perhaps one of the many companies working on sending tourists into space will be ready for the challenge. If someone can come up with an economic reason for visiting the moon, you can bet that we'll be back there in no time.

Much noise has been made about Avatar becoming the biggest box-office money maker of all time, but consider the fact that much of its haul comes from premium pricing for 3D and Imax admission, not to mention tickes are more expensive today than they were a decade or more ago. What happens if you actually rank movies by the number of tickets sold? Isn't that a better indicator of a film's success?

If you do that, Avatar doesn't even sit in the top 10. It rests nicely at number 26 and has a long way to go before it catches up the current leader which has been champion since 1939, Gone with the Wind. Star Wars is entrenched at number 2, but Avatar still has time to make its way up the chart.

The previous record holder for biggest money maker was another James Cameron film, Titanic. When that film reached the top, it beat out Star Wars for the honour. When that happened, director George Lucas took out ads in the trade magazines to congraluate Cameron. Star Wars fans would certainly get a kick out of the ad.

Some of Avatar's success is from repeat business from die-hard fans who can't get enough of the movie. The fans are being dubbed by some as Avatards. If Trekkers are annoyed at being called Trekkies, then I think Avatards have even more cause for being upset.

Do you have aspirations of being a prolific writer of science fiction short stories? Here are 12 tips to get you on your way which are actually very useful.

One of their suggestions was to write in a shared universe. You may not be able to publish your work professionally, but being able to write a story set in an established world with known characters saves you some work and will help you get started. Who knows? If you get good enough at it, maybe you can do it for money. If you want to know what it's like to be a "hack" writing in someone else's universe, read it from someone's who been there.

Another idea is to join an online writing community. The feedback from other writers can be invaluable for improving your work. Once such community is Necrotania, although there are plenty of others.

While you are writing, remember to avoid using clichés. This writer offers some concepts that she considers to not belong in a good science fiction story.

So what do you do with your story once it's done? You can always self-publish it. The technology of today certainly makes it easy. Some mainstream publishers are teaming up with self-publishing companies to build electronic imprints to publish new authors. They've taken some heat for it from writers' organizations, but the CEO of one-such company defends the practice.