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North African Solar project could provide a sixth of Europe’s electricity

December 3, 2007 Tomas Martin 4 Comments

Now this is very positive. Last week there was talk of a giant ‘supergrid’ connecting much of Europe to wind turbines across the continent, to take advantage of whenever the wind was blowing.

Now the Guardian reports on Desertec, the plans to put hundreds of solar concentrating plants on the North African coasts and in the Middle East. Two thirds of the estimated 100 Billion Watts would stay in the countries producing the energy, with another 30 Billion Watts (around of all of Europe’s use) being pumped via underwater cables to the EU, which would provide a chunk of the funding for the project. With the Bali talks now underway to find a new version of the Kyoto treaty, projects like this could be a major facet of reducing carbon emissions. German energy expert Gregor Czeich reckons with new higher efficiency power lines a 100% renewable powered Europe could be possible in the near future without costing much more than the current fossil fuel system.

[via the guardian, picture by TREC]

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The Kindle – not so closed as might have been suggested?

December 3, 2007 Paul Raven 5 Comments

The smoke has cleared after the Kindle’s launch (although our evaluation devices are still lost in the mail, it appears), and people have been poking through the detritus. One such person is sf author Gary Gibson, who’s been following the Kindle’s media trail quite closely … and has found a review that suggests Amazon’s new ebook reader may not be anywhere near as restricted in function as Amazon themselves may have claimed:

… the implication to some is that back-doors to the device’s software have been more or less left deliberately left wide-open. Not only that, but many of the purported limitations – you can only read books downloaded through Amazon’s website, you can’t copy books, it doesn’t work as a web browser – are, according to some, manifestly not true. For instance, the majority of blogs you purportedly have to pay to be able to read are accessible for free using RSS feeds through the Kindle’s basic web browser, as in fact are the free online contents of many of the newspapers now selling Kindle subscriptions.

Interesting stuff – though I think we’ll need some more corroboration on these points before getting too excited. And, wider functionality or not, it’s still very ugly … but I guess I could live with that.

[tags]Kindle, ebook, reader, functionality, technology[/tags]

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The internet is a major feature of reducing carbon emissions

November 30, 2007 Tomas Martin 13 Comments

A lot of the plans for sustainability try to provide the energy for what we already do using new sources of power. Whether you subscribe to the peak oil camp or you fear global warming or even if you want to prudent ahead of a possible recession caused by sub-prime mortgages, each problem has the same solution: use less. Buying less consumables, reducing food miles, rebuilding soils and producing electricity from renewables can only do so much.

Transport is a huge part of the energy (and money) we spend. A future coming to terms with the ‘Peak Century’ will need to travel much less distance for work, play and neccessity. The 50 mile commute seems illogical now at close to $100 dollar a barrel of oil. If oil gets harder to extract and prices rise, that commute won’t just be an annoying expense, it’ll mean bankruptcy. Fortunately new technology has arrived, seemingly perfect timed to coincide with reducing our carbon footprint and energy consumption.

A geologist recently said “My hopeful view is that we’ll be living like we did at the turn of the 20th century, but with computers.” I like the analogy. The internet and low-energy computers offer us a real potential of making a low carbon economy yet still providing jobs and a worldwide community. As Worldchanging puts it, the ‘High bandwidth, Low Carbon future’ could be both sustainable and more personally fulfilling. Google is investing $100Million in Green computing and the Asus EEE laptop uses 11 watts. All this talk of choose your own price music, online markets for fiction and e-readers is important because it’s a first step to creating an entertainment economy that could work in the low-energy world that’s coming, sooner or later.

[picture by jaaron]

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Friday Free Fiction for 30th November

November 30, 2007 Paul Raven 1 Comment

After last week’s short shrift, we return with another bumper crop of free fiction. Eyes down for a full house …

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From Futurismic blogger Ed Willett (who’s off treading the boards in a production of Beauty And The Beast at the moment), a special recommendation:

Brett Alexander Savory’s collection No Further Messages and his novel The Distance Travelled are available to download in full from his bibliography page at ChiZine.

They are indeed – cheers Ed! ChiZine is in the sidebar, but we’re more than happy to announce special recommendations from Futurismic readers even if they’re located somewhere we’ve mentioned before. Drop us a line, and share your under-rated favourites with the world!

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And in the same spirit, a recommendation from Jeremy Tolbert:

Fantasy continues to please me with this week’s story, “Possession”. There are some nicely odd worldbuilding touches and even some steampunk elements. You have to kind of appreciate a story that takes place entirely inside a gigantic hole.

Leave the Freudian analysis alone, folks.

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I got mail! From Nancy Jane Moore, to be precise:

The folks at Farrago’s Wainscot have finally given Behind the Wainscot – where they publish short-shorts and other oddities between the regular quarterly issues of Farrago’s Wainscot [also in the sidebar, folks!] – its own website. These stories were online before, but a little hard to find. Now those craving an interstitial fix can gorge on them all at once.

Cheers, Nancy!

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Via lots of people:

Weird Tales has a new website, and there’s free fiction to be had there, too – as well as non-fiction and lots of other webby rich-media type malarkey. Get to it!

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Chris Roberson fans, prepare to rejoice!

First spotted at Iain Emsley‘s Yatterings blog (but plenty of other places since then):

Those excellent folk over at Solaris have started publishing chapters from Chris Roberson’s forthcoming novel, Three Unbroken, on their website for free. The actual paperbook will appear in 2009.

And from Roberson himself, another Friday freebie: “The Likeness Of A Wolf“.

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Jay Lake is posting up free stories, too:

The current installment in this series is a short-short entitled “A Conspiracy of Dentists.” At 800 words of length, this originally appeared in Lady Churchill’s Rosebd Wristlet, #14 June, 2004 [ Tangent Online Review ]. It has not been reprinted before now.
This is based on something that actually happened to me as a teenager, when we were clearing out my grandparents’ house after the death of my Granddaddy Lake. A bit more detail is available here. If you like this story, please consider supporting Small Beer Press and LCRW. In any case, enjoy.

A conspiracy of dentists? Has to be a horror story, surely …

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Hello, Paul McAuley:

I’ve just put up my short story “Interstitial“ on [my] web site. It’s an end-of-the-world story that takes off from the theory that life had survived at least one bottleneck caused by a runaway effect that created a snowball Earth and ends in the kind of conflict between the military and scientists that powered most 1950’s sci-fi movies, with a tip of the hat to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Imagine it in scratchy black-and-white, with John Agar playing the hero.

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Those folk at Subterranean just keep rolling it out:

We’re closing out the Fall Issue of Subterranean Online in the next week or so. Among the features just posted are a short, dark tale by Caitlin R. Kiernan, “In the Dreamtime of Lady Resurrection,” and the final travails of the madcap characters in Daniel Abraham’s screwball serial, “The Support Technician Tango”

In the Winter issue, look for a novella by Thomas M. Disch, plus short stories by Michael Bishop, Tia V. Travis, Mike Resnick (surprise, a Lucifer Jones tale!) as well as hot new writer Rachel Swirsky.

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Welcome to the realm of Flash (ah-aaaaah!) …

First of all, a piece I found via Warren Ellis: Simon Bisson‘s “Getting in is easy. Getting out is the hard bit.“

A feral Matrioshka Brain is a dangerous place. The wild evolution of self-replicating machines makes it a playground for Darwin – and deadly for anyone that tries to venture in. But if you’re scavenging the ruins of dead civilisations, there’s really no other place to go.

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And a new recruit of sorts. Brendan Adkins writes:

I’ve only just discovered Futurismic, and I’m happy to be learning for
the first time about the Friday Flash Fictioneers. I’ve been writing
stories of exactly 101 words every weekday since 2003 and posting them at xorph.com/anacrusis/, so I’m embarrassingly enthusiastic about this kind of stuff (and everything else you post in your roundups). Thanks for providing such an interesting service!

We do our best, Brendan – but it pales against your flash output! After receiving Brendan’s email, I started doing a mental calculation of how many words of flash he must have produced in that time period, but I had to stop because my brain couldn’t handle the number of decimal places.

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And so, to the regular irregulars, those fine and forthright Friday Flash Fictioneers …

Sean C Green is playing catch-up this week – the excellent “Vote Now!” appeared over last weekend.
Martin McGrath is back in the saddle after server problems and illness, but he’s taking no prisoners – only “Rum and Slaves“.
Gareth L Powell is back to full strength again, too – here’s his “Dead Twin“.
Gareth D Jones is gonna get all palendromic on your ass: “Time Did Emit“.
Dan Pawley sees something spooky among the bookshelves … it’s “The Library Visitor“.
And here’s a little something from yours truly – a tale of shock, horror, and jealous kitchen appliances: “The New Arrival“.

***

Oh, good grief! Is that not enough for you?

OK, so try some non-fiction, via Jason Ellis: the classic Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway.

What, you still want more? Well, if this doesn’t keep you busy, nothing ever will. Via SF Signal:

The Universal Digital Library has completed the digitization of 1.5 million books and on Tuesday made them free and publicly available.

One and a half million? I think you’ll survive until next Friday on that little lot.

In the meantime, we’re always happy to receive tip-offs and recommendations of free fiction online, new or old, as long as it’s all legal. So drop me a line if you’ve got something to share.

Have a good weekend!

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

Blog

Taser firing flying saucer drone

November 30, 2007 Stephen Years 1 Comment

At the very end of an article discussing the ongoing controversy of using stun guns (which often quotes Antoine di Zazzo, founder of the French company Taser) we find this gem:

Di Zazzo’s French company is developing a mini-flying saucer like drone which could also fire Taser stun rounds on criminal suspects or rioting crowds. He expects it to be launched next year and to be sold internationally by Taser.

Is it just me, or does this sound like an incredibly bad idea?

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