Sci-Fi Guru Forrest Ackerman Dead at 92

'Motor Trend' picks Chevy Volt as car of year; Rush not pleased

(NEWSER) - Rush Limbaugh really, really hates the Chevy Volt, and when Motor Trend named it the 2011 car of the year, he railed against the magazine, asking "How in the world do they have any credibility?" Now a Motor Trend editor has fired back, ThinkProgress reports. “If you can stop shilling for your favorite political party long enough to go for a drive, you might really enjoy the Chevy Volt,” writes Todd Lassa. “Just remember: driving and Oxycontin don’t mix.” More»

An editor was likely the one to polish her prose, says professor

(NEWSER) - Jane Austen is known as a “perfect stylist,” but those perfectly crafted sentences may not actually be hers. After studying 1,100 pages of Austen’s handwritten, unpublished manuscripts, an Oxford professor concluded that “the polished punctuation and epigrammatic style … is simply not there,” she tells the BBC . In its place is a more free-flowing, somewhat untidy style, featuring limited punctuation. More»

(NEWSER) - British author JG Ballard died this morning "with great sadness" after many years of poor health, his agent said today. The 78-year-old novelist and short story writer was most famous for his semi-autobiographical book Empire of the Sun, later made into a film by Steven Spielberg, and his controversial novel Crash, adapted for the screen by David Cronenberg. More»

Storied career included helming New York , Harper's Bazaar

(NEWSER) - James Brady, a veteran of numerous publications who rose from business reporting to become the editor of New York and Harper’s Bazaar, has died. He was 80. Brady is credited with founding two long-lived New York gossip standbys, the New York Post’s Page Six and New York magazine’s Intelligencer. Brady was also an Emmy Award winner during his time as a TV talk show host. More»

Actor moved the suit, but never said "Danger, Will Robinson"

(NEWSER) - Bob May, famous for inhabiting the robot suit on 1960s sci-fi hit Lost in Space, has died at 69 of heart failure, the AP reports. “He always said he got the job because he fit in the robot suit,” a co-star said. May did not voice the robot—and so didn't get to say "Danger, Will Robinson"—but his job wasn’t easy: He would memorize the script to respond to cues and stayed in the suit during breaks. More»