During the past decade, there has been a revolution in the field of ultrafast science. Visible light pulses of only a few optical cycles in duration can be generated from a simple laser. Using extreme nonlinear optics, we can directly convert visible ultrafast laser pulses to shorter wavelengths, to generate coherent, soft-x-ray beams at photon energies > 0.5keV. The pulse duration of the generated soft-x-ray pulses is much less than that of the input pulses, and may approach attosecond durations (10^-18 sec) in the future. Many new applications of these highly spatially and temporally x-ray sources are possible in the future.