All posts by Paul Raven

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Climate change steps on the gas

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melting Arctic iceHoooooo-boy. Just in case global financial disasters and geopolitical instabilities haven’t given you enough things to worry about, here’s a another: remember when scientists suggested that melting ice-caps at the poles of the planet could end up releasing massive reservoirs of sub-oceanic methane into the atmosphere, amplifying the greenhouse effect and accelerating climate change to an even greater degree?

Turns out that we’re finding more evidence for that theory than anyone really wants to find. Anyone wanna buy us out of this little problem? [via WorldChanging; image from linked Independent article]

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Doug Rushkoff blogging at BoingBoing

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Douglas RushkoffThose of you who follow the Double-Boing may have noticed that they’ve started getting guest bloggers on board again. This week sees a visitation from Douglas Rushkoff; there are few thinkers and writers that I would recommend without reservation, but Rushkoff is one of them. [image from biography page of Rushkoff’s website]

He’s written (sometimes with great influence) on politics, cyberculture, religion, ethics, finance, viral marketing, reality hacking and all sorts of other stuff, and he never fails to come up with something challenging. So if you’re not a regular BoingBoing reader, I’d suggest grabbing the RSS feed, if only for this week. Here’s a snippet from his ‘Open-Source Democracy’ post:

Back when everyone was thinking about digital democracy as some sort of voting scheme or mass feedback polling operation, I wrote a short book called Open Source Democracy in an effort to extend people’s thinking beyond elections to include participation in civics. Yes, we have representatives, but they’re only good as their ability to respond to the needs that come from the bottom up.

Rushkoff’s a blogger in his own right, and a novelist too. More recently he did an excellent comic-format series on DC Vertigo called Testament – Old Testament fables meet dark near-future corporate dystopia. Recommended.

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Who killed Thomas M Disch?

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This week’s non-fiction piece over at Strange Horizons is by friend-of-Futurismic Sam J Miller; it’s a rumination on the recent suicide of sf writer and poet Thomas M Disch, and an attempt to divine what the trigger of the tragedy might have been. From Sam’s introduction:

Suicide is always a speculative matter. Even in a case like Tom’s, where a number of negative factors clearly contributed, the survivors are left to wonder. What was really going on? Where do we put the blame? What do we do with our grief? With our guilt? Murder and disease and acts of God give us something concrete on which to focus our rage and grief, but suicide thumps us over the head with the ugly truth about human mortality.

Grieving the death of a favorite writer is not so different from mourning the death of a friend: there’s the same sense of frustration and impotence, of loss and loneliness. Literature is a kind of intercourse, and we crave a closer communion with the writers who send those shivers up our spines. So I wonder: who killed Thomas Disch?

It’s an interesting and sensitively-written essay, and well worth your time – go take a look.

Disch is one of the ever-growing list of writers whom I’m painfully aware I should have read by now – are there any Disch fans among Futurismic‘s readers? If so, which of his works would you recommend as his best?

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42Blips – do you digg science fiction?

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Via Tobias Buckell (who got an early beta invitation, don’tcha know) comes news of 42Blips, a community bookmarking site that aims to bring the functionality of Digg to the sphere of science fiction.

42Blips logo

Having taken a look, the first of my fears was allayed – there are actually quite a few front-page stories about sf books and writers, as well as the inevitable TV show puff-pieces. However, there haven’t been many votes cast yet, so all that could change… which brings me to my second concern, which is whether or not science fiction is a big enough community to sustain (or even need) a project like 42Blips. It’s not like online fandom isn’t pretty close-knit already, AMIRITE?

But hey, that’s for fandom to determine, not me – so go take a look if you fancy it. Just one request – don’t turn it into the sort of puerile fool-fest that Digg itself has become, PLS? KTHXBAI.

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Friday Free Fiction for 19th September

The world of finance may be in a flux, but there’s no shortage of free fiction flooding through the marketplace. Thrifty science fiction readers, get clicking!

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Just the one from Manybooks, an Uncanny Tales anthology from 1916.

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Feedbooks have been on a little Mary Robinette Kowal binge:

And they’ve a couple of titles for Doctor Who fen, also:

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Via SF Signal, more classic shorts at the bizarrely-named Munseys:

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Aussie pop-sci outpost COSMOS Magazine has published “Micro Expressions” by Stephen Gaskell.

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This week’s red-letter free-fiction announcement (in my humble opinion) is issue #6 of the irregular sf webzine Flurb, as curated by the endearingly oddball Rudy Rucker. In this issue, we have some Futurismic favourites among the new names:

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This week’s offering at Strange Horizons: “Cowboy Angel (part 1 of 2)” by Samantha Cope

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Some topical Alaskan political sf courtesy of Gordon van Gelder at F&SF:

…in the meantime, all the recent light cast on the political scene in Alaska (compliments of the nomination of the state’s governor for Republican V.P.), we’ve gotten permission to reprint George Guthridge‘s “Nine Whispered Opinions Regarding the Alaskan Secession” for a month. This story first appeared in our July 2004 All-American issue. It will only be on our site until October 20, 2008.

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Mind you don’t cut yourself on Jayme Lyn Blaschke‘s 24th sliver of Memory.

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Subterranean Online has a timely reminder…

… that we’re in the homestretch for Mike Resnick’s companion novella to his multi-award winning Kirinyaga series of stories. We think Kilimanjaro stands proudly with those earlier stories.

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Paul McAuley has posted up the second chapter of his new novel The Quiet War for you to read. I finished the book a few weeks ago, and I think it’s well worth your time, but go take a taste and decide for yourself.

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Via John Joseph Adams, Shimmer Magazine is getting into the spirit of International Talk Like A Pirate Day:

In honor of this most glorious holiday, Shimmer is making the electronic edition of the Pirate Issue freely available, for September 19th only.

Won’t you help us spread the word? Free pirate booty, there for the taking!

Wired’s GeekDad blog is in on the act as well; they’ve got a sample story from the forthcoming anthology of piratical fiction from the ever-prolific VanderMeers:

… top of my list so far has been Boojum, by Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette.  And, as a special bonus for GeekDad readers [and anyone else, I guess], the publisher [Night Shade Books] has agreed to make this story available as an exclusive [pdf] download.

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Thanks to the tireless SF Signal gang for spotting this one; Antipodean SF is up to issue number 124, which is a pretty impressive run. There’s a big old bunch of stories to be found there, too.

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A brief message from Ben Rawluk:

A flash fiction piece I wrote is available [over at NegativeSpace.net]; it’s called “Phone System World“.

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And finally, some Friday Flash Fiction:

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And that’s it for another week, free fiction fans. I’m off to dose the heck out of the head-cold I seem to have acquired; in the meantime, keep your tip-offs and plugs coming in, and have a great weekend!