Category Archives: Blog

Blog

My book is out, and I’m giving it away–the sequel!

Terra Insegura resized Paul recently accused me of being too modest to promote myself here on Futurismic, but this should prove him wrong!

My latest science fiction novel, Terra Insegura, is out from DAW Books tomorrow, and to promote it, I’m running a month-long giveaway at my blog (details here). You’re welcome to enter over there, but as I did last year for Marseguro, I’m also offering a special for Futurismic readers only.

Email me at edward(at)edwardwillett.com and put “Futurismic contest” in the subject line, and I’ll enter you in a Futurismic-only draw. The first name drawn receives a copy of Terra Insegura, and the second name drawn a copy of last year’s Aurora Award-nominated Marseguro. (I’ll only ask for mailing information from the winners after they win, and don’t worry: I’ll ship anywhere in the world.)

I’ll keep this draw open for two weeks, closing it at midnight GMT on Sunday, May 17.

And just a reminder: you can read the first two chapters of the book and/or listen to me read them on my website.

We now return you to your regular Futurismic programming.

(Image: Cover art by Stephan Martiniere.)

[tags]Edward Willett,science fiction, books, novels, contests[/tags]

Blog

RepRap creates circuits

just-finishedA moment of history. The RepRap project has created circuits for the first time:

Ed and I have a final-year student – Rhys Jones – who’s working on RepRap for his MEng research project. He’s been taking the old idea of depositing metal in channels and an observation of Forrest’s and Nophead’s (that you don’t need a low-melting-point alloy because the specific heat of metals is so low that they shouldn’t melt the plastic anyway).

Also worth a look: Bruce Sterling points to Darwinian Marxism as a means of ensuring the proletariat gain possession of the means of production sans revolution.

[via the Yorkshire Ranter][image from the Reprap blog]

Blog

The city considered as a very large organism

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Roads - the veins of the living city?A few days ago Cosmic Variance was plugging a talk by a chap called Geoffrey West, a complex-systems boffin, which sounded like it had some very interesting angles. Here’s an extract from his abstract:

… to what extent are cities or corporations an extension of biology? Are they “just” very large organisms? Analogous scaling laws reflecting underlying social network structure point to general principles of organization common to all cities, but, counter to biological systems, the pace of social life systematically increases with size. This has dramatic implications for growth, development and particularly for sustainability: innovation and wealth creation that fuel social systems, if left unchecked, potentially sow the seeds for their inevitable collapse.

Man, I love this sort of stuff; that’s the sort of question that pushes the same buttons as good science fiction, at least for me. So much so, in fact, that I’ve spent much of the holiday weekend here in the UK expounding similar ideas to inebriated friends, accompanied by brisk hand-waving. There’s a certain innate logic to the analogy that I feel anyone who’s lived a long time in one city – or maybe many – would instantly glom onto. Of course the city is alive, of course it is a system, an organism – how could it be anything else? [image by Nrbelex]

Once that assumption is agreed, though, the challenge is to work out what that actually means in human terms – which is more of a book-sized challenge than one suitable for a blog post, I suspect[1]. But I’m leaping ahead here, assuming that everyone feels the same way; maybe it sounds daft to you.

So, tell me: do you think cities can be considered to have a kind of life of their own, an organismic existence of emergent phenomena? Or is this a case of anthropomorphic projection? Or maybe both at once?

[ 1 – I’m imagining some sort of hybrid authorial chimera of Jeff VanderMeer, Geoff Manaugh and Mervyn Peake, with a sprinkling of Bicycle Repairman-era Chairman Bruce for the techno-weirdness element… ]

Blog

Better living through chemistry – lithium, for a saner society

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water tapsI like to think I’m mostly over my twenty-something’s obsession with conspiracy theories and government-as-competent-ubiquitous-control-system paranoia… but stories like this still hold the power to make me start thinking about where I left the tin-foil. You see, it turns out that populations who drink tap water that contains lithium are statistically less inclined to suicide; so, why don’t we engineer a happier society by giving everyone lithium?

High doses of lithium are already used to treat serious mood disorders.

But the team from the universities of Oita and Hiroshima found that even relatively low levels appeared to have a positive impact of suicide rates.

Levels ranged from 0.7 to 59 micrograms per litre. The researchers speculated that while these levels were low, there may be a cumulative protective effect on the brain from years of drinking this tap water.

At least one previous study has suggested an association between lithium in tap water and suicide. That research on data collected from the 1980s also found a significantly lower rate of suicide in areas with relatively high lithium levels.

A spokesperson from a mental health charity points out that:

“… lithium also has significant and an unpleasant side effects in higher doses, and can be toxic. Any suggestion that it should be added, even in tiny amounts, to drinking water should be treated with caution and researched very thoroughly.”

Or perhaps simply deployed on the quiet for the good of the nation; after all, if you wait until after the lithium has been soaking into the population to tell them about, they’re less likely to get upset about it. It’s all for their own good, poor lambs; best to shelter them from the miseries of reality as completely as possible. Think of it as a method of extending governance beyond its traditional border – the oh-so-intransigent skull.

Yeah, I know, there’s probably no Western government that could get away with it… but you can’t try to tell me there aren’t certain elements in the halls of power who’d find it a very appealing prospect nonetheless. [via Jamais Cascio on Twitter; image by koshyk]

Blog

Futurismic closing to fiction submissions until 1st June

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You’d probably be amazed just how many fiction submissions we get here at Futurismic – it’s more than I ever imagined we’d get, and the number grows by the month.

And that means our fearless fiction editor Chris East has a lot of work to do, none of which makes him a red cent, and it’s high time the poor guy had a holiday. So as of today, Futurismic is closed to fiction submissions until June 1st 2009; we’re in the fortunate position of having a decent inventory of contracted pieces for the next few months, so we want to give Chris a chance to hit Inbox Zero on the submissions and take a week or so off.

So, if you’ve got a piece you’re almost ready to send in, put it in a drawer for a few weeks, and then whip it out for a final polish (ahem) before sending it in when we reopen at the beginning of June. Sound like a plan? Lovely!

Enjoy your weekend, folks. 🙂