All posts by Paul Raven

Fiction

NEW FICTION: OUT WALKING THE STREETS by Eric Del Carlo

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After his excellent study of gender politics in “Fluidity” last autumn, Eric Del Carlo returns to Futurismic with another look at the unanswered yet imminent questions of posthuman identity. Short, sharp and timely – enjoy!

Out Walking The Streets

by Eric Del Carlo

I’m ravenous for sights and sensations, for the leathery creak of the seat beneath me, for the subtle reassuring hum in the metaplastic hull of the train car.  I feel the speed; I record in my mind the tug of force against my body, basic physical principles acting upon me at every moment.  It is new.  It is all worthy of my acute attention.

It is not new.  I am thirty-four years old, and the laws which oversee reality are as familiar–and discountable in day to day life–as the thump of blood in my veins.

I exert the effort not to make a spectacle of myself.  I’m hardly alone on the train, but no others, I feel sure, are as mesmerized by the cityscape streaming past both rows of windows.  I want to, but do not, press my nose to the clear ‘plastic and cry out at the pearlescent architectural wonder on display.  They’ve put me on this train, among regular people.  I’ve promised to control myself, and my promises have convinced those who needed convincing. Continue reading NEW FICTION: OUT WALKING THE STREETS by Eric Del Carlo →

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Futurismic fiction submissions form closed! (But not for long.)

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The title says it all, folks – as of April 1st (no joke) we’re shutting down the fiction submissions webform here at Futurismic so that hard-workin’ Chris East can catch up on the slush mountain and get some well-deserved time away.

So if you’ve been working on something to send to us, you’ve got a chance to rest your manuscript a little before doing another edit or rewrite, to familiarise yourself with our guidelines (a huge percentage of the stories we reject are rejected simply because they ignored the guidelines, so the five minutes it’ll take to read ’em will be well spent) and perhaps researching some of the other fine paying venues for genre fiction that are open to new material, be they online or off.

(Do bear in mind that the good people at Apex Magazine are closing to subs for a while, too… which if nothing else suggests that fiction editors approach burnout at similar speeds. 😉 )

But fear not – we’ve got a whole bunch of super new stories waiting in inventory, and we’ll be reopening for submissions again real soon. In the meantime, we hope you’ll keep reading along… there’ll be a brand new story later today!

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Nation-building 101

Fancy starting up your own micronation? It’s not enough to just think up a flag and occupy your turf; there’s paperwork to be done. Luckily, Wired UK has a four-point beginner’s guide, as suggested by former UN strategy co-ordinator  Carne Ross, to get you started. Step one:

Play by the rules – Meet the criteria outlined in Article 1 of the 1933 Montevideo Convention (which applies to all subjects of international law): a permanent population; defined territory, and control of the territory; the capacity to enter into relations with other states. These are not binding — “You can have a state which is recognised by many other states but does not control its territory, such as Palestine” — but generally it would be hard to operate without them .

Once you’re up and running, drop me a line with any further tips, would you? I’m also available for diplomacy work on a contract basis.

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Sci-fi no more: bionic eyeball implants

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Another genre cliché becomes reality, as the imaginatively-named company Bionic Vision Australia prepares to install the first in-human deployment of a prototype eyeball implant designed to “deliver improved quality of life for patients suffering from degenerative vision loss caused by retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration” [via KurzweilAI.net]. Er, what?

The device, which is currently undergoing testing, consists of a miniature camera mounted on glasses that captures visual input, transforming it into electrical signals that directly stimulate surviving neurons in the retina. The implant will enable recipients to perceive points of light in the visual field that the brain can then reconstruct into an image.

Ah, right. Why didn’t you just say so, eh? Here’s a video:

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Unspinning the coal-powered cloud

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All the anti-tech curmudgeons and doomsayers have leapt all over Greenpeace’s new campaign attacking cloud computing and the forthcoming Apple iYawn for their carbon footprint. (Fans of irony should note that the campaign documents can be downloaded in the ubiquitous PDF format from Greenpeace’s website.)

Of course, the energy appetite of any technology should be under scrutiny, but Greenpeace’s sloganeering is disproportionate when you actually look at the real numbers:

Computing accounts for a bit less than 3% of U.S. energy usage, according to Lawrence Livermore Labs. The global IT industry as a whole generates about 2% of global CO2 emissions.

Cars, on the other hand, which the vast majority of the people Greenpeace is trying to target also own, are the single largest contributor to climate change, according to NASA, exceeding all other sources in their impacts, and exceeding computing’s global impacts by more than a factor of ten. Greenpeace (I’m a supporter) has made a lot of noise about computing’s climate impacts, while the average commute or drive to the mall is likely far, far more a threat to the future than the average month’s Google searching…

That said, suggesting people drive less is an old tactic that’s had little success, so I suppose you can’t blame them for chasing a target that’s a little more trendy and newsworthy. Seeing this story bouncing around the blogs of the world is akin seeing “Drive Less, Walk More” billboards at a monster truck meet…

In other internet news, the rapid viral expansion of Chatroulette suggests that the internet’s cultural clock is running faster and faster… which means more irritating memes per year, I guess, though if you extend the logic they probably won’t last as long. Mixed blessings, AMIRITE?

And finally, Jeff Jarvis has penned a Cyberspace Bill Of Rights over at The Guardian. It’s all very sensible stuff, carefully worded… and hence lacks all of the naive flash and glorious geek bravado of John Perry Barlow’s Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace from back in 1996. Amazing how we’ve gone from wild frontier to corporate federation in just fifteen years, eh?