The irrepressible Scott “Basic Instructions” Meyer has the lowdown if you’re thinking of a career in futurism:
Click through for the whole thing. But take it from me, being a futurist is a lot of work for no money. Or maybe that’s just the way I do it… and I’ve never been featured in a world-famous pixelated webcomic, unlike another more notable futurist (late of this parish, and many others). I should have stuck to kitchen portering, I guess. Selah. 🙂
There’s a book called Zero History coming out soon, written by some guy called William Gibson…
Kinda surprised that the first place I saw this was at Wired… but then the Bigend trilogy (of which this is the third instalment) has rather conspicuously not been marketed as (or should that be to?) science fiction. Maybe the publishers figure all us geeks are gonna buy it anyway?
They may have a point. 🙂
This month’s fiction from Nancy Jane Moore takes us back to a post-collapse America, but this isn’t your average post-apocalyptic story. “Or We Will Hang Separately” brings together a bunch of favourite Futurismic themes – post-capitalist lifestyles, changes in climate (environmental, political and social), and resilient communities – and dares to dream that the end of an era doesn’t have to be the end of the line, that our technology can rebuild as well as destroy. Quiet, powerful and optimistic, this is where determined people work together to transcend a difficult future. Enjoy!
Marty Shendo knew both the truck and the roads best, so she drove. Ooljee Yzaguirre rode shotgun – literally: She kept a rifle in her lap. Tomas Perez sat in the back, his gun also in easy reach. Within most communities – or at least the ones Ooljee knew – no one went armed. Traveling between them, everyone did.
The dust blowing in the open windows made it difficult to talk. Both Marty and Ooljee had covered their mouths and noses with kerchiefs, like old fashioned bandits, and Tomas had pulled his cap down over his face to block the worst of it. It was too hot to close the windows.
Ooljee stared out at the parched southern New Mexico landscape. Even before the extended droughts brought on by climate change, this had been harsh country to live in. Now, though, most people had given up trying to make a living out here. Even goats, who can survive on land incompatible with any other domesticated animal, need water.
She wondered what they would find up at Los Alamos — the enclave of scientists they were hoping for or just another group of people trying to survive in a world in which few things worked any more. Or maybe bandits, or, even worse, nothing at all. It was a long way to travel if it turned out to be nothing, especially in a jerry-rigged solar-powered truck that hit its high of 25 miles per hour only on downhill stretches.
“Please don’t let it be for nothing,” Ooljee thought. It might have been a prayer, if she’d known of any gods to pray to. Continue reading NEW FICTION: OR WE WILL ALL HANG SEPARATELY by Nancy Jane Moore
The 2010 space elevator conference is coming soon to Microsoft. It turns out there is also a space elevator event coming to The Seattle Library (on getting a space elevator to the moon). Coincidence? Probably not. But it got me researching, and thinking I might just see a wire to orbit in my lifetime. Continue reading Riding the Wire: Space Elevators
Major General (retired) Robert Scales is a big fan of Orson Scott Card, and he’s found a receptive market for his own fictionalised visions of the future: the guy who may well end up in charge of US Central Command.
Earlier this year, Scales and Mattis were sharing ideas about the next generation of small units — something the two iconoclastic senior officers have done repeatedly over the last six years.
But rather than codify the notions into a formal policy paper or into a PowerPoint briefing, Mattis asked Scales to write him a story. “One of his favorite pieces is Ender’s Game,” Scales says, referring to the science-fiction classic. In that spirit, Scales penned “Jerry Smith’s War: 2025.”
I’m not sure he’s quite up to the prose standard we choose to publish here at Futurismic… 😉
In truth, Scales has been doing futurist work for the US military for years, and this latest effort is part of his push to upgrade small in-the-field units with networked technologies: head-up displays, multiple channels of communication between memebers of the unit as well as between the unit and the command and support infrastructure, so on and so forth.The sort of stuff we’ve been reading about in novels for decades, in other words.
In fact, I wonder just how many ideas Scales has pitched which were thought up by (proper) sf writers first? I hope he does his due diligence searches on Technovelgy so he can give credit where it’s due… after all, I bet he’s raking down much more than SFWA professional per-word rates from his buddies at the Pentagon.