All posts by Paul Raven

Blog

Friday Free Fiction for 26th October

It’s Friday – and Friday means free fiction here at Futurismic. So here’s some stuff to fill up the spare hours of your Halloween weekend …

***

The  big-name free fiction sites just keep churning out SF&F:

Project Gutenberg: "Sodom and Gomorrah, Texas" by R.A. Lafferty and "The Creature from Cleveland Depths" by Fritz Leiber.

ManyBooks.net: "The Big Bounce" by Walter Tevis, and "Daddy’s Caliban" by Jay Lake.

***

Via SF Signal – Forbes magazine commissioned five writers with the following remit: "It’s the year 2027, and the world is undergoing a global financial crisis. The scene is an American workplace."

Here are the results:

***

Chris Roberson‘s free fiction just keeps coming. Here’s something seasonal from his days with the Clockwork Storybook webzine – "Trick or Treat – A Public Service Announcement".

***

Orbit Books has posted the first chapter of Devices and Desires by K.J. Parker.

***

John C Wright is sharing the first chapter of his forthcoming Null-A Continuum novel.

***

Via Warren Ellis: "Deadnauts" by Ted Kosmatka at IDEOMANCER – a webzine that’s new to me.

***

Make way for the Friday Flash Fictioneers!

A double-whammy from Martin McGrath as he makes good his promise of playing catch-up – "The Fighter" and "The Unexpectedly Existential Life of Margaret Tome"; Shaun C Green presents "She Dances"; Gareth D Jones celebrates the birth of his daughter with "Precious Cargo"; Gareth L Powell provides an excerpt from an as-yet unpublished story, "Hot Rain"; and Dan Pawley gives us "Doppelgangers".

I’m smacking my metaphorical wrist for it, but I’ve not managed my time well enough to contribute this week. But that’s understandable – as Gareth Jones explains, we Flash Fictioneers are busy taking over the world.

***

Have a good weekend!

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

Semi-sentient Storm botnet fights back

1 Comment

computer innards OK, I might be stretching the point with "semi-sentient", but it still has all the hallmarks of a bad AI thriller movie plot. The infamous and still-growing botnet created by the Storm worm virus is able to detect when its command and control structure is being probed by computer security types, and launch denial-of-service attacks at them in retaliation. While some experts believe that Storm has pretty much run its course, others estimate that it may be sitting on a power-base of more than 15 million infected machines, waiting to be hired out to the highest bidder. It’s a long step from the golden era of the Christmas Tree and Friday The Thirteenth viruses. [Via BoingBoing] [Image by RileyRoxx]

[tags]computer, security, Storm, virus, botnet[/tags]
Blog

Seeing with sound – the boy who echolocates

I’ve got an enduring interest in the use of technology to overcome deficiencies of the human form (as regular readers will doubtless already be aware), but I’m equally fascinated by the ways that the same problems can be overcome with what you might describe as the "vanilla hardware configuration" – in other words, working around the problem without any external assistance. The human body and brain are astonishingly adaptable – witness Ben Underwood, a blind teenager who has taught himself to "see" using echolocation.

[tags]human, senses, blindness, echolocation[/tags]
Blog

HIV ‘cured’?

5 Comments

HIVparticles A new type of "combination therapy" is being hailed by researchers as being an effective cure for the HIV virus. I’m sure I’ve read similar headlines before, but given recent advances in biotechnology, I’ve a little more hope of this being the real deal. However, although I’m no biologist, I’m not entirely sure "cure" is the right word – the article mentions that the therapy "prevents HIV from mutating and spreading", which doesn’t sound quite the same as actually eradicating it from the host body. Still, it’s satisfying to think that perhaps the most frightening disease of the Twentieth Century may soon be little more than a bad memory. [Via OurTechnologicalFuture] [Image from ScienceDaily article, credited to CDC/Dr. A. Harrison; Dr. P. Feorino]

[tags]HIV, medicine, biotech, therapy[/tags]
Blog

Haptic body-hacks – the braille tattoo

1 Comment

haptic tattoo While we’re still a way off from being able to meaningfully extend the functional capabilities of the human body through elective surgery (at least affordably), there’s still plenty of more cosmetic tweaks available. But the lines between personal decoration and function can be blurred, especially when art comes in to play – like this "haptic tattoo" concept from the digital media art department of Berlin University, which could theoretically allow people with restricted or low-function vision to parse information about a person by touch. Granted, it’s not a use that I can envisage a huge demand for, but the concept is interesting – and as a body-modder of sorts, it’s refreshing for me to see things like sub-dermal implants being taken seriously by academia, as opposed to being castigated as a form of primitivism. [Via Technovelgy]

[tags]haptics, braille, tattoo, body-mod[/tags]