All posts by Paul Raven

Kim Stanley Robinson interviewed

Kim_Stanley_Robinson BLDGBLOG has an excellent in-depth interview with Kim Stanley Robinson, in which he discusses his attempts to redefine utopias, the ideological bankruptcy of primitivism, how rational design in architecture and technology is one of the crucial keys to surmounting the problems presented by our changing environment, and much more.

A brilliant interview with a brilliant thinker … and hosted on a brilliant blog. You may think you’re not really interested in architecture, but I think an exploration of BLDGBLOG‘s archive would prove you wrong. Go read. [Image from Wikipedia]

[tags]Kim Stanley Robinson, climate change, science fiction, interview[/tags]

Live longer, die suddenly – the double-edged sword of longevity drugs

CGI drug capsules Everything comes with a price. Research in lab animals suggests that drugs designed to rejuvenate mitochondria (the “power generator” component of living cells) could fend off many of the diseases we associate with ageing and senescence, like Alzheimer’s, cancer, heart disease and so forth. The pay-off? It appears that when death finally does arrive, it does so with little or no warning, and seemingly no reason. [Image by Rodrigo Senna]

Personally, I’d consider that a fair trade – I’m less scared of death itself than I am of dying, if you see what I mean. But is death itself unconquerable, or is it just the next hurdle in line?

[tags]longevity, drugs, mortality, ageing[/tags]

Births and deaths in computing

the first transistor Here’s a little reminder of just how quickly things have moved in recent times: the humble silicon transistor was born sixty years ago to the day. [Image cribbed from linked article.]

And if it strikes you as strange that we should celebrate the birthday of the semiconductor, you’ll probably get an even bigger state of cognitive dissonance from this funeral held for a mainframe computer. [Via BoingBoing]

All we need now to complete the set is for someone to legally marry their laptop … I’ve proposed to mine, but she says I’m too demanding of her time and resources already. 🙁 </3

[tags]semiconductor, transistor, technology, mainframe, funeral[/tags]

Friday Free Fiction for 14th December

Friday night is free fiction night! Here’s your weekly dose of the good stuff from all across the intarwebs …

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New (well, new/old) free fiction at ManyBooks.net:

And a pair of much loved classics (thanks, SF Signal):

The Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon, and

The Ultimate Weapon by John W. Campbell, Jr.

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I spotted another gem at The Daily Cabal; Sarah Genge‘s “Listen to the Hum” is my sort of flash.

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John Klima of the wondrous Electric Velocipede print zine recently edited an anthology called Logorrhea, and now he’s sharing lots of extras, including behind-the-scenes creation stories and podcasts:

“Part of the fun of putting together Logorrhea was seeing what the authors did with the words. While I have no favorites (that’s like picking your favorite child!) Jeff VanderMeer’s “Appoggiatura” was something else altogether. Not only did Jeff have his own word to write about (appoggiatura) he incorporated all the other words that the other contributors had written about.

At one time, Jeff had mentioned the idea of recording each section as a podcast. And I also thought it would be great to incorporate the rest of the contributors and come full circle. The contributors are going to post the section of Jeff’s story that features the word they wrote about. In addition, they’ll talk a little bit about why they chose their word.”

Click on through – there’s lots of good stuff to read and listen to right there.

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More from Jay Lake:

The current installment in this series is a 4,600 word story entitled “The Dying Dream of Water”. This originally appeared in Flytrap #3 back in 2004, ed. Tim Pratt and Heather Shaw [ Tropism Press ]. It was also the subject of last week’s podcast, if you’d like to hear me read this in my own voice.

This story is part of my ongoing unpublished (and unfinished) Old West fantasy, Original Destiny, Manifest Sin. As I said before, watch for it in a bookstore near you around 2017.

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Nick Mamatas on the return of Whirligig Zine:

It’s a paying market now and takes reprints. Or at least, it took my reprint of “April 29th“, which originally appeared in the slick Razor back in September 2003.

Check out [other] good schtuff from Jeff Somers, Kevin Dole 2, and other loveable scamps.

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Chris Roberson‘s back in the fiction-giveaway saddle. This time out he’s offering “Long Night, Holy Night“.

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Friday Flash Fictioneers – form up!

Shaun C Green has insects on the brain: “‘Farewell!’ Sings The Swarm“.

Neil Beynon is thinking about “Paths“.

Gareth D Jones has been lurking in the “X Factory“.

And yours truly has been thinking about grief – “Daddy in the Stone“.

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And if you were wanting to read ebooks on the go, but are resistant to the idea of carting a computer with you everywhere (and can’t afford a Kindle), you might want to download some software called eBook To Images – which, as the name suggests, will convert many ebook formats so you can read them on your iPod.

[Thanks to the indispensable Lifehacker for that little tip.]

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That’s your lot for this week, people. Don’t forget to tip us off to good free fiction, wherever you find it!

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