Adam Roberts @ 28-04-2008
Wednesday 30th April sees the presentation ceremony for this year’s Arthur C Clarke Award for the best science fiction novel published in 2007. Never short on controversy, this year’s shortlist has generated plenty of discussion and debate - no less for the novels that are missing from it than for those that are present.
It’s Futurismic’s great privilege to feature this round-up review of the Clarke Award shortlist by noted science fiction novelist, critic and academic Adam Roberts. So settle down with a good big cup of coffee, let Professor Roberts walk you through the shortlist … and then place your bets on the winner in the comments!
The Shortlist:
- Stephen Baxter, The H-Bomb Girl (Faber 2007)
- Matthew De Abaitua, The Red Men (Octopus 2007)
- Sarah Hall, The Carhullan Army (Faber 2007)
- Stephen Hall, The Raw Shark Texts (Canongate 2007)
- Ken MacLeod, The Execution Channel (2007)
- Richard Morgan, Black Man (Gollancz, 2007)
There’s been a deal of pother about this year’s Clarke shortlist, more even than this often-controversial event usually generates. Surprise at the omission of a number of highly regarded titles - we might mention, say, McDonald’s Brasyl and Chabon’s Yiddish Policemen’s Union - fuelled bloggish mutterings about hidden agendas, panderings to Evil Mainstream Lit and a desire to generate Turner Award-style notoriety rather than simply to choose last year’s best SF novel.
The muttering boiled down to a sense that the Clarke judges were liable to corrupt the nation’s youth and ought all to drink hemlock without ado. The question, though. is a simple one: do these six titles constitute a list of the best sf novels published in the UK last year? Continue reading “The Arthur C Clarke Award Shortlist 2008 - a Round-up Review”
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Jonathan McCalmont @ 23-04-2008
Welcome to Blasphemous Geometries, a cross-media criticism column where Jonathan McCalmont pokes the foetid corpse of genre to see what oozes out.
In his introductory column, Jonathan examines new ways in which retailers might decide what to place in our paths next time we’re shopping around for some sf-nal entertainment. Continue reading “The Future of Book Recommendations”
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Mac Tonnies @ 16-04-2008
It’s the return of the Mac! In this instalment of his Loving The Alien column, transhuman ufologist Mac Tonnies has been thinking about a subject that is dear to us all … but whose dearness is inexplicable when observed from a rational perspective.
Which leads you to wondering - what will Posthuman Sex look like? Continue reading “Posthuman Sex”
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C Sven Johnson @ 09-04-2008
OK ladies and gents, please give a warm welcome to our second new non-fiction columnist here at Futurismic - Sven Johnson.
Sven is what I might call a philosopher of design (although I image he’ll hate me having done so in public). In his inaugural column he gets all eschatological on our asses and asks whether, as a species, we collectively design our own doom. Continue reading “Designing for the Apocalypse”
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Mac Tonnies @ 16-03-2008
Welcome to the return of non-fiction essays to Futurismic! And welcome also to the inaugural Loving The Alien column, in which Mac Tonnies sets out his pitch for “transhuman ufology”.
How can Kurzweilian Singularitarianism and informed ufological speculation be reconciled? Read on to find out …
Continue reading “Transhuman Ufology”
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Paul Raven @ 17-12-2006
In space exploration and colonisation, as in all endeavour, vision is a great thing - but it needs to be tempered with realistic thinking. Surely it would be the course of wisdom to establish a colony in orbit before building one on the moon?
Continue reading “New Column: Armchair Anarchist on Viable Space Colonies”
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Paul Raven @ 04-12-2006
What happens when digital imaging technology and the means to share the results worldwide become ubiquitous? The participatory panopticon happens - and it’s already here. Jamais Cascio looks at the benefits and pitfalls of a society where all of us are becoming Big Brother to one another.
Continue reading “New Column: Jamais Cascio on the Participatory Panopticon”
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Paul Raven @ 19-11-2006
Modern communication technologies such as the internet are providing new tools and channels for citizens to use in their interaction with governments - and vice versa. Is it time for citizens and governments alike to accept the changed landscape of politics, and begin opening up the ’source code’ of democracy to closer inspection?
Continue reading “New Column: Democracy 2.0″
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Paul Raven @ 05-11-2006
In the latest instalment of his regular column here at Futurismic, Jamais Cascio examines a potential ethical framework for those who engage in futurist thinking, professionally or otherwise.
Continue reading “New Column: Jamais Cascio on Ethical Futurism”
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Paul Raven @ 15-10-2006
This week, AA takes a look at Infoquake, the highly praised debut novel by David Louis Edelman, and asks whether it lives up to its recent acclaim.
Continue reading “Book Review: Infoquake by David Louis Edelman”
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Paul Raven @ 01-10-2006
Jamais Cascio returns to Futurismic to examine our potential choices in the face of environmental catastrophe. If the worst-case scenario ends up as the only game in town, geoengineering may not be the best or most sensible option - but we need to consider it now, before it becomes the only option.
Continue reading “New Column: Jamais Cascio on The Geoengineering Option”
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Paul Raven @ 17-09-2006
Synthetic worlds - simulated spaces like World of Warcraft and Second Life - are proliferating rapidly. But are they more than just games? Their similarities to reality at an economic level is already evident. How might they develop and grow, and could they be used for greater purposes than mere entertainment?
Continue reading “New Column: The Potential Of Synthetic Worlds”
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Paul Raven @ 03-09-2006
This week, Jamais Cascio returns to Futurismic for his monthly column. This latest essay concerns disaster recovery programs, forward planning, and ‘awareness windows’ - the periods immediately after major disasters when people are most open to changes in policy and approach to mitigation.
Continue reading “New Column: Jamais Cascio on Awareness Windows”
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Paul Raven @ 20-08-2006
Futurismic is proud to present a guest column from David Louis Edelman, who is a journalist, programmer and web designer - and the author of a fresh new science fiction novel, ‘Infoquake’. David’s essay discusses the outcomes of our ongoing ability to digitise, well, pretty much everything.
Continue reading “New Column: David Louis Edelman on the Digitisation of Objects”
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Paul Raven @ 06-08-2006
I am extremely proud to present the first monthly column by Futurismic’s new regular contributor, the esteemed Jamais Cascio, a co-founder of Worldchanging.com as well as a prolific writer, blogger, public speaker and pundit. In it he discusses futurism as a way of thinking, and whether our current focus on the material products of science and technology is the best approach.
Continue reading “New Column: Jamais Cascio on Re-evaluating Futurism”
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Paul Raven @ 23-07-2006
AA holds forth on the debate sparked off by Stephen Hawking’s comments on the human race’s long term future - isn’t it time that all the futurists started pulling in the same direction?
Continue reading “New Column: Armchair Anarchist on Hawking’s Diaspora”
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Paul Raven @ 12-05-2006
I have been a science fiction reader from the age of nine. It eventually became my staple literary diet over the years, after a teenage phase of reading RPG spin-off novels. But it was only comparatively recently that I discovered the science fiction community – the world of ‘fandom’. Once I started reading SF magazines, and writing articles for SF publications (such as this esteemed website) I realised there was a lot more to it than just reading novels in the isolation of my flat. Late last year, I decided that it was time I attended my first convention.
Continue reading “New Column: Armchair Anarchist on SF Conventions”
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Jeremy Lyon @ 28-04-2006
Michael Pierce exhorts all those who subscribe to the future to stand firm against the forces of ignorance in this, his inaugural column.
Continue reading “New Column: Michael Pierce Issues “A Call To Arms””
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Paul Raven @ 04-04-2006
In our second weekly column, Futurismic’s Armchair Anarchist takes a survey of the state of the art in nanotechnology.
Continue reading “New Essay: Nanotechnology Now”
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Jeremy Lyon @ 26-03-2006
I’ve just published the first of what will become a regular feature on Futurismic — weekly columns, each week covered by a different editor. This week I take the podium to talk about politics, why I think it’s a suitable topic for Futurismic and what I intend to cover in future columns
Continue reading “New Column Now Available”
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