Tag Archives: science fiction

Fiction

DRY FRUGAL WITH DEATH RAYS by Alex Wilson

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This month’s slice of Futurismic fiction comes from the widely-published Alex Wilson. Dry Frugal With Death Rays is a dark satire of office politics, corporate bureaucracy, thwarted ambition and revenge gone awry – enjoy!

Dry Frugal With Death Rays

by Alex Wilson

The ergonomic cubicle gel came up to Sal’s chin. Five hours of immersion had left the pads of his fingers wrinkled and slimy. He couldn’t wipe his eyes without making it worse. It was the most important morning of his life, and he was stuck in his cubicle corral with a computer that insisted he wasn’t.

“And you’ve looked, right?” Tech support asked, clearly siding with the computer on this one. “At the latch? You’ve tried turning around and looking to see whether it’s open or closed?”

“Yes,” Sal said. “I’ve looked.” He tried emphasizing the urgency with his arms. In training videos, they iterated how body language carried over into the voice, even though Sal found sloshing around in gel more distracting than helpful on client calls.

Continue reading DRY FRUGAL WITH DEATH RAYS by Alex Wilson →

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Stage adaptation of stories by Bradbury, Lem, Malzberg and Pronzini at NYC Fringe

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 SoftRains

I’ve recently been falling down on my self-appointed task of keeping track of SF-related stage productions for you, but here’s a fresh one: There Will Come Soft Rains, a stage adaptation of several classic science fiction stories by Ray Bradbury, Stanislaw Lem, Barry N. Malzberg, and Bill Pronzini. (Via SF Scope.)

The 90-minute play will be presented as part of the 11th annual New York International Fringe Festival. From the press release:

To bring the stark, powerful imagery of these stories to the stage, director/adaptor Jon Levin (recently singled out by nytheatre.com for his “remarkable” puppet work) uses a combination of bunraku-inspired puppets, object manipulation, dance, live music and a versatile ensemble of performers.

The FringeNY site is more direct:

Stories by Ray Bradbury and others are told with actors, puppets, lightbulbs, bedsheets, live video and an upright bass.

Director/adaptor Levin says,  “There’s something inherently theatrical about a certain kind of science fiction. The stories are a reflection of our world, a way of seeing familiar things in a new light.”

Here’s a review of There Will Come Soft Rains when it was a work in progress at Oberlin College.

There Will Come Soft Rains runs at The New School for Drama Theater (151 Bank Street, between West and Washington Streets, New York, New York) on Friday, August 8 (10 p.m.), Wednesday, August 13 (7:30 p.m.), Sunday, August 17 (4:15 p.m.), Thursday, August 21 (5:15 p.m.) and Saturday, August 23 (7:30 p.m.). Tickets are $15 and are available by calling 866-468-7619 or visiting fringenyc.org.

(Image: There Will Come Soft Rains poster)

[tags]plays, theatre, science fiction, short stories[/tags]

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Criticism of criticism… Fruitless Recursion is go!

Fruitless RecursionHere’s a heads-up for Futurismic regulars who don’t just like reading genre fiction, but who also like reading writing about genre fiction, and who would be interested in reading writing written about writing about genre fiction*…

Blasphemous Geometries columnist Jonathan McCalmont has just committed multiple counts of meta-criticism by posting the first full issue of Fruitless Recursion. Here’s the list of articles for you to get your teeth into:

  • Alvaro Zinos-Amaro’s review of Barry N. Malzberg’s Breakfast in the Ruins.
  • Martin Lewis’ review of Roz Kavenay’s From Alien to the Matrix.
  • Paul Kincaid’s review of David Hajdu’s The Ten Cent Plague.
  • Jonathan McCalmont’s field report on Paul Kincaid interviewing Christopher Priest.

Something for everyone, then. Aspiring meta-critics, take note – Fruitless Recursion is a paying market for critical works, so get writing!

[ * Try saying that quickly before the first coffee of the day has kicked in. ]

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Shira’s spontaneous free fiction blogathon for charity

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A message arrived in the Futurismic inbox from Shira Lipkin, a regular contributor in our Friday roundups. Says Shira:

I’m doing a blogathon this Saturday, July 26 – posting to my LiveJournal every half hour for 24 hours to raise money for the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center. This is my sixth year blogathonning, and I write spontaneous short fiction every year. It usually tends to have an urban fantasy bent (as in fantasy in a city, not paranormal romance), but this year, I’m taking a distinctly SF angle on it. For 24 hours, I’ll be in character as a xenoarchaeologist, trying to make sense of precollapse Earth… with the help of over 50 artists who donated “artifacts” to this project, including a few SF/F authors themselves. All artifacts are being auctioned, with a story card.

It all goes down on Shira’s Livejournal, and the auctions are findable on eBay.

And there’s a lot more info on my LJ about why I do this, and why BARCC.

Sounds like a super project for a great cause; I hope some of Futurismic‘s readership will lend their support! We hope it goes well, Shira.