All posts by Paul Raven

Blog

Friday Free Fiction for 19th October

2 Comments

It’s that time of week again! Here’s your free fiction to keep you busy over the weekend … or at work this afternoon, for those of you in the US! 🙂

***

New old stories at ManyBooks.net: "The Stoker and the Stars" by Algis Budrys, "Gravity’s Angel" by Tom Maddox, "Toy Shop" by Harry Harrison, and "One-Shot" by James Blish.

And at Project Gutenberg: "Second Sight" by Alan E. Nourse.

***

The unstoppably prolific Chris Roberson has a pretty hefty back-catalogue to draw on for his free fiction offerings: I missed last week’s "So Far From Us In All Ways" due to time restrictions, and this week there’s a chunk from his recently published novel Set The Seas On Fire, "A Fencing Lesson".

***

An email from Nancy Jane Moore:

"I’m doing some serious blogging about self defense these days, and I
also happen to have a science fiction story — "Survival Skills" — that
illustrates some of my points."

***

We’ve mentioned Strange Horizons more than a few times, but that’s not going to stop me doing it again, as Jason Stoddard (who has had stories published here at Futurismic and in loads of other venues) points out that one of his shorter pieces, the 4000-word "Making Payments", is up on SH right now.

***

Friday Flashers in action this week: Gareth L Powell’s sliver of a story, "Fifty-Four Dodge"; Neil Beynon’s "The Anniversary", Shaun C Green’s racy and more than a trifle weird "Slip It In", and my own "I am a camera".

***

As always – please get in touch with any announcements you’d like included here next time, be they stories, excerpts or podcasts. We don’t care about the format, as long as it’s free!

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

Space Elevator Games 2007

University of Saskatchewan's space elevator climber This week sees the 2007 Space Elevator Games taking place near Salt Lake City, Utah; contestants from all over the world will be attempting to break records with their climber, tether and power transmission system designs in an attempt to win the $1million prize. Think what you like about the feasibility of space elevators, but you can’t deny the almost Quixotic glory of such an event – a testament to the human ability to dream big. Follow the progress of the event at the aptly-named Space Elevator Blog, which has been posting vigorously on the preliminary rounds. [Image from SpaceElevatorBlog]

[tags]space elevator, competition, space station, technology[/tags]
Blog

Are you game for a secret service job?

3 Comments

The British secret service has been suffering from a paucity of computer-savvy employees, and so they’ve turned their recruitment radar in a different direction – they’re advertising inside MMO computer games. But budding Bonds with a Halo jones should take note – they’re looking for signals and decryption types to work at GCHQ, so you won’t be getting your Walther PPK any time soon.

[tags]recruitment, secret service, MMO, games[/tags]
Blog

Cloned meat already on the menu

2 Comments

two_cows Wired has a lengthy piece on the increasing trend of cloned livestock – livestock that go on to produce the milk you drink, or the choice cuts you eat. Little more than a decade since the birth of Dolly the sheep, cloning is becoming accepted by the agricultural industry, if not the average consumer.

Whether Joe Average’s reaction to cloning (and similar technologies like GM foods) is a natural knee-jerk or a media-fueled disgust (or a combination of the two) is unknown to me, but it’s certainly not based on rational facts – animals are animals are animals, no matter how their birth was brought about. But if cloned livestock can freak people out, the reactions we’ll see when vat-grown meat becomes available should be pretty spectacular … [Image by FiskFisk]

[tags]agriculture, biotech, cloning, livestock[/tags]
Blog

Ray Kurzweil takes the Singularity to the movies

1 Comment

Portrait of Ray Kurzweil Tired of technophobic portrayals of Artificial Intelligence in movies? Convinced that the Technological Singularity is more than just "The Rapture of the Nerds"? Then you’ll be looking forward to the movie that Singularity advocate and inventor Ray Kurzweil has in the works. Based on his book of the same title, "The Singularity Is Near" will be a blend of documentary interviews and science fictional narrative, intended to communicate Kurzweil’s ideas about the near-future destiny of mankind and its machines. [Via AdvancedNanotech] [Image from KurzweilAI.net]

[tags]Ray Kurzweil, AI, Singularity, movie[/tags]