Category Archives: Blog

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Friday Free Fiction for 16th May

It’s a slim week for free fiction once again, but we’ve still scoured the web for every morsel we could find. And isn’t anything a feast to a starving person? So get stuck in!

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One story and one novel from Manybooks.net:

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Episode 7 of Shadow Unit is Elizabeth Bear’s “Overkill“:

It always started with the phone.

Tonight, that was the only familiar thing, because when Chaz Villette woke groaning to its warble the first thing he remembered was that he wasn’t in his own bed. The second thing he remembered was to try not to disturb the warm, heavy weight pillowed on his numb left arm as he fumbled for the night stand with his right. Her hair was in his mouth, her breath warm against his neck as he opened the phone without bothering to squint at the name on the display. He whispered, “Villette.”

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The thirteenth instalment of Memory will hopefully not prove unlucky for Jayme Lynn Blaschke:

Parric’s wingtip slapped Flavius with a glancing blow across the side of his head, sending him sprawling to the ground. Flavius sprang back up, his face scarlet and eyes blazing.

“Wha’d ya go and do that for?” he shouted at Parric, one fist held ready as his other hand rubbed the side of his head.

“Your obsessings with the Empress is getting you dead once already,” Parric shot back, his featherscales ruffled with agitation. “And almosting me, too. You are needing to self-examining, Flavius, and asking yourself if your ruttings with the Empress are worth the consequences.”

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After a brief interlude Warren Ellis‘s Freakangels are back for episode 13. If you’ve been following it, you’ll know it’s already showing lots of promise. If you’ve not been following it, why not start now, huh?

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And let’s round it all off with the measured marching pace of the Friday Flash Fictioneers:

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Looks like that’s your lot for this week – though there’s still masses of good stuff over in the Sidebar Of Free-Fictional Justice, so why not do another webzine a favour and pay them a visit?

In the meantime, keep us posted with your tips – and have a great weekend!

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Verizon to carry Linux-powered phones

Cellphone KeypadVia m1k3y of grinding.be I hear the rumour that US mobile telco Verizon will begin offering cellphone handsets based on Linux operating systems alongside the usual proprietary offerings next year.

Though it may not be immediately apparent, that’s good news for more than just the OS-OS wonks. Why? Because it opens up the cellphone software market to those unable or unwilling to buy an API licence for a proprietary system, and allows people to build on a reliable platform. [image by khedara]

It’s not a perfect situation, of course – individual carriers and handset makers will be able to control the operating system’s capabilities. But hey, if the iPhone got hacked that quick, a Linux-based handset is going to crack like an eggshell …

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Fusion Man flys his jetpack over the Alps

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OK, so this is going to make two OMGtehAWESOME posts in one week, but this is waaaay cooler than wall-sized touchscreen Missile Command.

Swiss lunatic Yves Rossy has achieved the ultimate pulp-sf dream of flying on a personal jetpack. The unit is shaped like a small set of wings strapped to his back, equipped with four jet engines; it has taken five years to build. But he has nailed it – behold!

There’s a much better video with the article on The Guardian’s website, but it isn’t embeddable (sorry). But seriously, click through and check it out. And envy.

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Science fiction series that suck

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Complete series of Nero Wolfe booksOver at io9, Charlie Jane Anders digs for the root cause of an accepted truism of genre (and, I think, all) writing: the longer a series gets, the more it starts to suck.

I guess you could put it down to the law of diminishing returns, which is far from being exclusive to media and entertainment. But whatever the cause, there are a number of cases where all but the most ardent uncritical fanboy starts thinking “you should have let it be”. [image by deadeyebart]

Anders uses the obvious (but extremely valid) example of the seemingly endless Dune saga; while I’ll agree that Frank Herbert‘s sequels were less than brilliant, their level of suck completely pales when held up against the Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson continuations.

Personally, as much as I’d jump in front of a speeding train for Douglas Adams it was plain to see by the last few Hitchhikers books that he should have moved on and focussed on some of his other ideas. Also, dreadful sequels and series in general are the main reason I gave up television completely eight years ago.

And if you want uncompromising sequel-rage, you should try asking Jonathan McCalmont about Laurell K Hamilton’s Anita Blake books …

What are the sequels you love to hate? And which ones have you continued with – despite the suck?

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Virtual reality and PTSD

virtual reality tape One of the little-recognized horrors from the Vietnam War was the amount of soldiers coming back from duty, only to be unable to reintegrate properly back into society, often leading to drug use and homelessness (at least, this is the stereotype I’ve grown up with – it may or may not be true).  As a child, there were always rumors of someone-or-other’s father or uncle or who was a vet and would jump at loud noises and always checked their surroundings for ambushes.  Of course, we also believed that the woods nearby was a secret testing ground for mutant animals, but hey – we were kids.

Now, in a bid to prevent this from happening to returning Iraq veterans, the US Department of Defense is attempting to treat Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with virtual reality as one of the main components.  The treatment is called “prolonged-exposure therapy,” meant to help people deal with traumatic memories by exposing soldiers to an environment similar to what they experienced in Iraq, but without people actually trying to kill them.  The details in the article explain it better than I can.  It’s not the first time this has been tried, but computing power is better now, and results seem promising. 

(photo via entro_py)