Category Archives: Blog

The science fiction art of L E Spry

It’s not often we feature artwork here at Futurismic, and it often occurs to me that I should look into addressing that oversight.

A recent spur of reminder came while browsing for images on Flickr recently, when I stumbled across the striking CGI images created by one L E Spry. While he’s quite keen on glistening starships and serried ranks of grumpy robots, he also produces images that fit into the near-future remit of Futurismic‘s aesthetic. Behold:

New Heights by L E Spry

Containment Zone by L E Spry

Channel by L E Spry

The uppermost one reminded me almost instantly of the Fastness from Iain M BanksFeersum Endjinn, one of my favourite science fiction novels, but it could just as easily be a conurbation from a much closer future than the one depicted in that book. Some savvy publisher should be dropping Mr Spry a message, I think…

Do you think we should host more artwork here at Futurismic? Are there any waiting-to-be-discovered artists you think we should be checking out?

Publishers suddenly bullish on ebooks

iPhone ebook download screenWe’ve had years of foot-dragging and protests that ‘no-one wants to read from a screen, anyway‘, but all of a sudden (thanks partly to a Zeitgeist gizmo and an economic slump, perhaps), publishers are looking afresh at the ebook. [image by henribergius]

I mentioned Pan Macmillan’s new iPhone offer the other week, but it looks as if they’re not the only publishing house realising that, actually, people will pay for accessibility and convenience after all. Who knew?

Futurismic closed to fiction submissions until January 2nd!

Hi folks – just a quick note to let you know that Futurismic is closing down its fiction submissions form for the month of December. This will not only give hard-workin’ Chris East, our relentless Fiction Editor, a chance to catch up with the slush pile, but hopefully give the poor guy enough time to leave his desk and actually see his family and friends over the festive season – I reckon he’s earned it!

We’ll re-open to submissions on January 2nd; in the meantime, everything will continue pretty much as usual. Look out for the latest piece of fiction later today!

[Apex Online is doing a December shut-down, too – great minds think alike, I guess. 😉 ]

DVD gift ideas for science-minded kids

My son, age eight, has always been interested in animals, extinct or otherwise. But he’s played to death the three-DVD documentary series The Future Is Wild, which depicts the evolution of life on Earth millions of years into the future. The CGI animation is pretty good; the extrapolated life forms in the post-human world are mind-bending.

My son doesn’t seem frightened or depressed by the depiction of a universe without human intelligence or galactic empires, which is more than I can say for his dad. You don’t have to be a kid to get into this. And if you’re even considering writing an sf story about nonhuman aliens, please see it.

There’s an animated TV adventure series on Discovery Kids, but my son and I agree that it’s not as good as the original.

Just as good, and getting almost as much screen time in my house, is Alien Planet, exploring via space probe the planet Darwin IV, where evolution produced creatures like nothing on Earth.

I hope they go over as well in your home as they have in mine.

[Bladderhorn from Alien Planet]

New UK smart CCTV cameras detect ‘precrimes’

"one nation under cctv" by BanksyLiving in a small city like mine, it’s not often one gets to feel that one is at the cutting edge of an emerging future society.

So how lucky for myself and the other residents of the over-stretched city of Portsmouth that we are the first town in the UK to be under the observation of Phildickian ‘smart’ CCTV cameras that are programmed to flag up an alert when they observe ‘suspicious behaviour’ that might indicate a crime is about to be committed.

You know, those sure-fire indicators of criminality… such as standing still for a while, or stopping to talk to someone. I would like to take this opportunity to praise the glorious leadership of Airstrip One for going to such efforts to ensure that any and all double-plus-ungood actions can be eradicated before they even have a chance to occur!

If anyone needs me, I’ll be typing a letter to the German Embassy requesting political asylum. [image by JapanBlack]