All posts by Paul Raven

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New Olympic sport – intellectual property whack-a-mole

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The Beijing Bay logoDid you know that the International Olympic Committee threatens non-sponsor advertisers just for mentioning the Olympics?

Lucky for us that Futurismic‘s too small to show up on their radar, then… but that’s not all. The IOC’s latest move in Beijing is to cover up the brand names of anything that isn’t an official Olympic sponsor – things like bathroom furnishings, or the headphones of press reporters… or entire non-sponsor hotels. And there we were questioning the ethics of the Olympics taking place in totalitarian China. Looks like a perfect match after all, no? [via TechDirt]

In more Olympics-related news, those wily Swedes behind legendary torrent-tracker site The Pirate Bay have fallen foul of the IOC as well, in this case for acting as a tracker for Olympic footage.

But far from capitulating, The Pirates have yet again used the Streisand effect to turn legal threats to their advantage and boost their public profile… which is why, should you head over there to download a video of some weightlifter popping his elbow joint out or something, you’ll notice the site has been temporarily named The Beijing Bay. Zing – gold medal for Team Sweden! [via Wired]

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Is “young adult” science fiction a force for good or evil?

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Unattended children will be towed at owner's expenseThe ladies of io9 kicked off a neatly polarised debate over the weekend with two opposing articles about YA or “young adult” science fiction. Charlie Jane Anders says that YA is science fiction’s salvation:

“While the “real” science fiction publishers are chasing a shrinking — and graying — readership, tweens and teens are discovering SF for themselves, thanks to books from a diverse range of writers. Best of all, YA science fiction isn’t aimed at a subculture, but at everybody of a particular age.”

Meanwhile Annalee Newitz begs us to stop writing young adult sf:

“… I object to the idea that young people need their own special, segregated genre of books, as if their minds are so dramatically different from adult minds that they require their own category of fantasy. Once a person has reached adolescence, relegating their reading material to its own gated subgenre seems at best condescending and at worst censorious.”

I’ll happily admit to falling into the latter camp. It’s not even a science fiction specific issue for me; no teenager enjoys being patronised with material specially designed for their age demographic, because all a teenager wants is to be treated like an adult. Plus I’ve worked in a public library, and I can tell you that a lot more adults borrow supposedly YA titles than kids in their early teens. [image by pingnews.com]

So, “Young Adult” books – a shot-in-the-arm for genre fiction, or a flash-in-the-pan from the marketing people?

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Spimes – making computers more recyclable

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junk computer hardwareComputer hardware can be a real bitch to recycle, as attested by massive landfills in developing nations and closer to home. Someone in an organisation called EPCglobal has evidently been paying attention to Bruce Sterling, because their plan to tag all new-built computer components with unique RFID chips containing data about how, where and when they were made sounds pretty similar to Sterling’s “spimes”. [image by southernpixel]

Now, if we could just give them GPS devices so they could navigate themselves back to their point of manufacture…

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Friday Free Fiction for 15th August

Ah, Friday afternoon – the sweet smell of impending freedom from the workplace. And the appetising aroma of all the free genre fiction the web has to offer, too! Get busy with the buffet…

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A trio in the inbox from Manybooks.net:

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Feedbooks‘ science fiction output has this week consisted entirely of rolling out stories from the Futurismic back-catalogue in useful formats (as mentioned earlier), so stock up on some of our greatest hits for your commute:

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The latest dose from Apex Online is from George Mann, top dog at Solaris Books, no less: “The Nature Of Blood“.

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Small Beer Press are on the give-away tip once more; right now you can get the entirety of The Ant King and Other Stories by Benjamin Rosenbaum in digital format over there.

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John Joseph Adams is celebrating the release of his new Seeds Of Change anthology by releasing a bunch of stories and excerpts from it for free on its website. You can find links to them all in various convenient formats like PDF and MobiPocket, but here are links direct to the HTML versions of the full stories to be getting on with:

I might point out that all three of those writers have worked with Futurismic; Jay Lake has a story here co-written with Ruth Nestvold, and both Tobias and Jeremy have been bloggers here. A lot of talent passes through this site, y’know. 🙂

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Via the Scalzi:

Mary Robinette Kowal has a page that will point you to some of her fiction online. Find out why she’s this year’s Campbell Award winner, and enjoy!

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There’s yet more “deleted scenes” in the seemingly endless stream of DVD extras from the production team at Shadow Unit.

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Via Nathan Lilly, here’s what’s new at SpaceWesterns.com:

  • “The Hard Deal” by John M. Whalen – A young man plans revenge on a rich industrialist for the death of his father, but his plans go awry when he encounters an indigenous life form.
  • “Corazón”—Part 2 by Jens Rushing – Jens Rushing brings us a Space Western/Fantasy, in three parts. In Part 2 Dixie O’Dell winds her way along the Ghost Trail to track down Gomez.
  • Space Western Senryū Contest Winners by Alana Joli Abbott, Mark L. Van Name & Seamus Kevin Fahey

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Email from Lise Andreasen in Copenhagen:

Here is Chapter 4 in my Intervention story.

And as you’re supposed to do with chapter 4 of an SF story, it’s animated. So… does 23 pictures qualify as flash? Oh no, wait. A picture is worth a 1000 words.

Thanks, Lise!

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And finally, a trio of Friday Flashes:

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There we go – should keep you busy for a while. In the meantime, we need your plugs and tip-offs; deadline is 1800 GMT on Friday, as always. Have a great weekend!

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True Dungeon – D&D without the dice

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LARP dungeon warriorFantasy roleplaying games are either played out around a snack-strewn table or sat at a high-powered gaming rig, right? Well, not necessarily. LARPing is a fairly old phenomenon, but True Dungeon is an interesting twist on the idea that I’d not heard of before:

“Each year at Gen Con Indy, a massive gaming convention held in Indianapolis, Martin and a cadre of volunteers assemble a life-size dungeon, complete with traps, monsters and treasure. More than 3,000 people — some dressed for the part — take on the role of a fantasy adventurer and travel through the dungeon each year, attempting to avoid traps, defeat monsters and claim treasure.

From the 6,000 hand-carved stones that make up the walls to True Dungeon‘s immersive sound effects, Martin strives to provide the ambiance of a classic fantasy dungeon. Some monsters are portrayed by volunteers in makeup, while others are sculpted creations or animatronic puppets. Martin adds more detail and complexity each year, within the limits of the space available.”

So yeah, my inner geek thinks that would probably be a guilty pleasure it’d quite enjoy as well. But I wonder if there’d be enough interest in it that a permanent installation somewhere would be a viable business proposition? Both fantasy worlds and RPGs are big business these days by comparison to their outsider status of a few decades ago, after all. [image by Danielle Blue]

Imagine what you could do with a couple of empty warehouses… and you wouldn’t have to stick to fantasy settings, you could just as easily whomp up something more science fictional. Hell, why stop at a couple of warehouses – once they’ve been emptied by the urban drift, you could make an entire town into an RPG setting! Oh, wait, hang on…