All posts by Paul Raven

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New blog on the block: Gawker’s io9

io9addict Doubtless after realising that the Futurismic team, as awesome as we are, just don’t have the resources to cover everything, the folk at Gawker Media have started a new science fiction blog, io9, headed up by none other than Annalee Newlitz. [Image lifted from i09 introductory post]

From the looks of it so far, they’re going to be covering all sorts of funky science fictional stuff, and not just the written fiction and plausible technogeekery we try to stick to here – so I’m guessing there’s room in your RSS reader for both. 🙂 And as Scalzi points out, fandom will not be slighted lightly … still, they’re off to a good start from my point of view, with a post that faces the rotting elephant carcass in the room and points out six reasons that Star Trek should stay dead. Amen, brothers and sisters.

[tags]science fiction, blog, io9[/tags]

Blog

Geoengineering – a new form for warfare?

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flooded city Jamais Cascio has been having some unsettling thoughts about the potential of geoengineering technologies to provide nation-states with subtle yet powerful alternatives to conventional warfare:

“Geoengineering as a military strategy would appear to offer a variety of benefits. Research can be done out in the open, taking advantage of civilian work on anti-global warming geoengineering ideas. If my argument that nuclear weapons and open-source warfare have made conventional warfare essentially obsolete is correct, climate-based warfare would offer an alternative non-nuclear weapon, one that would be out of the reach of non-state actors. And the more we learn about how human activities alter the climate — in order to alter those activities — the more options might open up for intentionally harmful manipulation.”

Yikes. How’s that for taking the edge off your new year optimism, eh? 😉

Still, it strengthens my theory that nation-states are a root cause of a lot of the challenges we face. Call me a hippie if you will, but isn’t it high time we got over this arbitrary geographical factionalism and realised we’re all in the same boat? [Image by Cikaga Jamie]

[tags]climate change, geoengineering, warfare, politics[/tags]
Blog

Friday Free Fiction for 28 December

Unsurprisingly, there’s not exactly a flood of free fiction this week … but the river still flows. This should tide you over until the new year!

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Newly arrived free fiction at ManyBooks.net:

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The guys and girls at Baen Books know the value of free reading material; three new titles have been added to the Baen Free Library.

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Matthew Jarpe is giving away a short story originally published in Asimov’s: “Chicken Soup for Mars and Venus”

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Via Gary Gibson:

“… I have finally – finally – put together an online excerpt of [recently published novel] Stealing Light, being the first couple of chapters thereof. Somehow it seemed the right thing to do. There’s already an excerpt up at Pan Macmillan’s website, but it’s very small. I figure something slightly more substantial might be a better idea. So here it is.”

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Most of the Friday Flash Fictioneer battalion are (quite understandably) missing in action this week. But a few of us are still manning the trenches:

Gareth D Jones suggests that you “Get Knitted“.

Neil Beynon continues his experimental phase with “Clockwork Songs“.

And yours truly has been writing “Against the Clock“.

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That’s it for this week – and indeed for this year! But we’ll be back with more free fiction every Friday in the coming year, so don’t forget to send us tips and links to anything you think might be of interest. In the meantime, have a great New Year!

[tags]free, fiction, stories, online[/tags]
Blog

Friday Free Fiction for 21 December

1 Comment

Looks like things are winding down for the holidays – I know I certainly am! But there’s still free fiction to be had …

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Much of the following comes courtesy of the SF Signal gang.

Recently-free fiction at ManyBooks.net:

Jeff Patterson continues his tradition of Christmas stories with “The Harbinger of All Things Glorious“.

Bonus! Free audio fiction: SFF Audio has a reading of “Trunk And Disorderly” by Charles Stross.

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Chris Roberson rolls out a festive re-run: “Timmy Gromp Saves Christmas“.

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Oh, so you’d like some non-fiction, would you? Well, thank MetaFilter for this little pointer:

Gutenberg-e now offers open access to Columbia University Press history ebooks.

“These award winning monographs, coordinated with the American Historical Association, afford emerging scholars new possibilities for online publications, weaving traditional narrative with digitized primary sources, including maps, photographs, and oral histories.”

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Make way for the Friday Flash Fiction crew … a few troops short, but still soldiering on despite the weather!

Somewhat appropriately for the season, Dan Pawley has “A Kind Of Homecoming“.

Neil Beynon has either been at the funny mushrooms, or he’s visited a different “Centre Point” to the one in London.

Gareth L Powell will twist your head with “The Red King’s Nursery“.

Very appropriately for the season, Gareth D Jones is “Frozen“.

And yours truly chronicles the adventures of “Alex in Hinterland“.

Flash fiction bonus! As noted by Gareth D Jones, Guy Hogan doesn’t just post flash fiction at his blog, but provides tips and advice on writing the stuff too.

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Looks like that’s your lot for this week – but then I expect you’ll have plenty of other stuff to keep you busy, too.

From me (and on behalf of the whole Futurismic gang) have the best holiday you possibly can, whatever you may call it in your household! Take care, folks.

[tags]freedom, fiction, stories, online[/tags]
Blog

Reality mining: what your phone knows about you

mobile phone close-up The next big frontier for the software and web corporations is in your pocket – your mobile phone. But have you ever wondered why exactly the search giants like Yahoo and Google are so keen to get access to your handset? Sandy Pentland, an MIT researcher, explains in an interview at Technology Review:

“It knows where you are, and this is obviously sort of useful. But the generalization is that maybe it can know lots of things about you. Take your Facebook friends as an example. The phone could know which ones you socialize with in person, which ones are your work friends, and which friends you’ve never seen in your life. That’s an interesting distinction, and reality mining can make it automatic. It’s about making the “dumb” information-technology infrastructure know something about your social life. All this sort-of Web 2.0 stuff is nice, but you have to type stuff in.”

Quite. But as Nicholas Carr points out, that’s not quite as utopian as it might initially seem:

“… it’s easy to see the vast commercial value of automatically harvesting a continuous stream of data on a person’s location, activities, relationships, and social roles and using it to personalize services and advertisements or, in the extreme, manipulate behavior for profit-making ends.”

Well, it’s not like we’re unused to having our behaviour analysed and manipulated for commercial purposes … or to the idea that external agencies can spy on us by subverting our gadgets. But the point is that technologies in their default states are making it much easier – rather than rejecting Big Brother, have we instead slipped him into our back pocket? [Image by Milica Sekulic]

[tags]reality mining, phones, surveillance, technology[/tags]