All posts by Paul Raven

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Friday Free Fiction for 14th March

A slimmer week than the one before, but there’s still plenty out there. Let’s see what’s on the fiction menu at Free’s Bar and Grill …

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A decent fistful from ManyBooks.net:

Plus …

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Subterranean Press are giving away Charlie Stross’s comic novella Trunk and Disorderly, originally printed in Asimov’s, in audio format:

“Charles Stross is damned funny, both in person and on the page. You’ll have to take my word on the first count. As to the second, here’s a P. G. Wodehouse meets Robert A. Heinlein as filtered through Mr. Stross’s sensibilities. In other words, [Trunk and Disorderly is] funny and indescribable as hell, and probably my favorite story this year.”

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Peter Watts is on the case. He’s just added his short story “Repeating The Past” (originally published in Nature Magazine, as per this PDF if you prefer) to his free short fiction selection, and recent post “A Passing Phase” might be a piece of flash, a fragment of something bigger, or who knows what else. It’s good, though.

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Futurismic‘s own Edward Willett (currently assailed by book-related deadlines) belatedly informs us about SF Canada (Canada’s SFWA equivalent, hopefully minus a Burt equivalent) and its free fiction offerings:

“I just updated the site last week, and currently we’re featuring “Among You” by Phyllis Gotlieb on the home page. Everything we put up (pretty much) stays up indefinitely: the permanent URL will be where the continuation of the story from the home page is now.

Previously featured fiction is all archived, and there’s also a linked list of free fiction.”

Cheers Ed – good luck with that deadline.

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Chris Roberson is subjecting Timmy Gromp to further grief in a tale that came out of a writing workshop he attended recently: “Timmy Gromp and the Golden Hen of Time“.

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Don’t forget that SF Signal has damn near the entire 2008 Nebula ballot list linked to in free online form, all but two novellas.

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Here’s your weekly chunk of work from the Friday Flash Fictioneers.

Gareth L Powell reports on a “Close Encounter“, while Jay Lake writes “In The Green Jungles Of Envy“; Neil Beynon‘s hands are in his “Pockets“, which might make it easier for him to follow Shaun C Green‘s advice to “Carry These Songs Like A Comfort Wherever You Go“. Yours truly has been “Deflowered“, but it’s not what you think.

As an added bonus, Ian Hocking podcasts a piece of flash by Tom Vowler called “Breathe“.

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And that’s it for this week; don’t forget we’re always open for your tips and plugs, just mouse on over to the Contact page and drop us a line.

In the meantime, have a great weekend!

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ILLUMINATIONS – Creative Commons charity flash fiction anthology announced

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Illuminations-Friday-Flash-Fiction-Anthology-cover Along with Odd Two Out Publishing, I’m extremely pleased to announce that ILLUMINATIONS: The Friday Flash Fiction Anthology will be launched at Orbital 2008 next weekend.

Regular readers will be familiar with the Friday Flash Fictioneers from Futurismic‘s free fiction round-ups. We’ve teamed up and collected over sixty of our best flash stories from the last nine months, and yours truly has edited them into ILLUMINATIONS, all profits from which will be donated to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children here in the UK.

ILLUMINATIONS is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial licence – the stories are already out there in the magical tubes of the internets, so we thought we’d like to set them free formally at the same time as making them available in one convenient and attractive package!

ILLUMINATIONS will be available in book form from Odd Two Out Publishing after 25th March 2008 (or from the authors themselves) for GB£6.99, or as a downloadable PDF for an as yet unannounced price.

The Friday Flash Fictioneers are Gareth L Powell, Gareth D Jones, Martin McGrath, Dan Pawley, Justin Pickard, Neil Beynon, Shaun C Green and yours truly, Paul Graham Raven. You can read the entire official announcement at Velcro City Tourist Board; I’ll be reporting any further developments here at Futurismic as well.

And with the formal stuff out of the way, I’d just like to say that seeing my own name on the front of a book is probably the most amazing feeling I’ve had in my life so far!

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Heart monitors hacked

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heart-mosaic I don’t need to remind you that computers are everywhere – this is the intarwub, after all. But even I get a bit surprised at some of the specific places computers end up – I never knew that people are being implanted with heart monitor/defibrillators that can broadcast data about the patient’s condition back to their doctor. [image by CarbonNYC]

Having found that out, though, I’m not at all surprised to hear that researchers have found a security vulnerability that could potentially allow an attacker to compromise and deactivate the device and prevent it from delivering the heart-restarting shocks it is designed for.

Repeat after me – everything can and will be hacked.

On the subject of electric shocks to the body, you can choose to have them for fun as opposed to for your health; the grinders point out the arrival of the Mindwire V5 electroshock force-feedback device, which will interface with your games console and deliver a brisk jolt to your hands when you get PWNED. Pain is fun, kids!

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Transparency bites – Brin blasts back

transparent-train-carriage Wired has given David Brin some rebuttal space to defend his Transparent Society concept in response to Bruce Schneier’s recent criticisms (as covered earlier here on Futurismic):

“How did we get the freedom we already have, becoming the first civilization in history to (somewhat) defy ancient patterns? Yes, it’s imperfect, always under threat. We swim against hard currents of human nature. But reciprocal accountability is the innovation that lets us even try.

Schneier claims that The Transparent Society doesn’t address “the inherent value of privacy.” But several chapters do, and I conclude that privacy is an inherent human need, too important to leave in the hands of state elites, who are themselves following ornate information-control rules written by other elites — rules, by the way, that never work. (Robert Heinlein said “‘privacy laws’ only make the bugs smaller.”)”

Going back and reading Schneier’s piece again, it does seem like he’s arguing a similar point from a different direction – they’re both opposed to top-heavy hierarchies of control. It would be great if Wired could arrange some sort of formal public debate between Schneier and Brin – the topic has never been more relevant, after all, and as Cory Doctorow points out, talking about these issues is the best way to ensure things don’t get any worse. [image by David de Groot]

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Second Life artificial intelligence passes basic cognitive test

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Second-Life-AI-Sally-Anne-test I think we’ve got an early candidate for futurist talking-point of the week right here: researchers from New York’s Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed artificial intelligence software that appears to possess a rudimentary “theory of mind” – a cognitive ability not manifest in human children until the age of four or five. [image from NewWorldNotes]

The researchers are using the software to control a Second Life avatar called Eddie:

“Two avatars controlled by humans stand with Eddie next to one red and one green suitcase. One human avatar then leaves and while they are gone the remaining human avatar moves the gun from the red suitcase into the green one.

Eddie is then asked where the character that left would look for the gun. The AI software correctly realises they will look in the red suitcase.”

Doesn’t sound too impressive at first, but it’s being hailed as a significant advance in the capabilities of artificially intelligent software by some – though others are less impressed, as Eddie’s reasoning engine has to be seeded with a simple logical statement before he can pass the test.

Even so, the Rensselaer guys reckon it’ll be great for making games with more realistic computer-controlled enemies … but I imagine there’s a number of people in the assorted military-industrial complexes of the globe thinking waaaay bigger than that right now.