Martha Harbison

Rip open a Pleo, get the run down on hybrids, and learn about the military's futuristic flying laser gun as Chuck Cage and the editors of PopSci take a behind-the-scenes tour of the third annual How it Works issue. Learn the stories behind the stories of some of the world's most sophisticated machines.

Arthur C. Clarke:  the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation

Clarke, author of some of the genre's classics such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Childhood's End, was a tireless enthusiast for science and technology. Arguably, though, Clarke's most striking contribution to humanity, published in a paper in 1945, was his idea of using geostationary satellites as communications relay stations.

For scientists, having to retract a paper is like a kick to the gut. It means that your work cannot be verified, and thus is likely either 1) an error or 2) a fabrication. So it comes as something of a surprise that Nobel prize-winning scientist Linda B. Buck had to retract a 2001 Nature paper this week, citing an inability to reproduce the reported findings, and "inconsistencies between some of the figures and data published in the paper and the original data."

E. Gary Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, has rolled his last d20. He was 69.

I could go on and on about the impact D&D had on multiple generations of geeks, freaks and nerds, or its influence on modern computer gaming (World of Warcraft, LotROnline and Everquest), or even its rather checkered history with the civilian population. (Who remembers the anti-D&D hysteria in the 80s?)