Tag Archives: science fiction

Fiction

MAQUECH by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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First of the month means fiction time at Futurismic; this month’s offering is “Maquech” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, a haunting and darkly beautiful tale of dreams and desperation set in a scarcity-riddled near-future Mexico City.

So get stuck in, and don’t forget to leave Silvia some feedback in the comments at the end!

Maquech

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

The jewel encrusted beetle walked slowly across the table, dragging its golden chain behind. It was bigger than any other maquech he’d ever seen before and more richly decorated.

Gerardo put down the eyeglass.

“It’s not my usual purchase,” he said.

“It’s rare,” Mario replied. “This is the last one my grandfather made before he passed away.”

“Monkeys are the thing now. Everyone wants a monkey.”

“But it doesn’t need a lot of food or water,” Mario protested. “That’s a benefit.”

“Do you think my clients worry about things like food or water? Listen, I sold five ostriches two months ago. People want large animals now.”

It was a lie. He sold fish and birds and maybe a reptile or two. He could not afford extravagant purchases like ostriches.

“I need the money,” Mario confessed. “I want to go to Canada.”

“What for?”

“I want to see the polar bears before they disappear. Before all the ice melts away.” Continue reading MAQUECH by Silvia Moreno-Garcia →

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Kelly and Eno’s Unthinkable Futures – ready-made science fiction scenarios

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Depressed thinker statueMaybe you noticed it when it cropped up on BoingBoing last week, but having re-read it a few times I thought I’d point out Kevin Kelly and Brian Eno’s Unthinkable Futures. [image by fabiovenni]

Kelly and Eno used to make a game of dreaming up the unthinkable futures of the title as an exercise to loosen their minds, and this list of them was originally published fifteen years ago. It’s a fascinating read for three reasons. Firstly, for the scenarios that are even more untenable now than they were in 1993:

  • Smoking is proven to be good exercise for the lungs.

Secondly, for the scenarios that have either already happened or become inevitable:

  • Nobody wants to be a doctor. It becomes an over-whelming bureaucratic job with low status. Women and minorities become working doctors; men do medical research. [Certainly becoming the case here in the UK]
  • Video phones inspire a new sexual revolution whereby everybody sits at home doing rude things electronically with everyone else. Productivity slumps; video screens get bigger and bigger. [Nuff said]
  • A new type of artist arises: someone whose task is to gather together existing but overlooked pieces of amateur art, and, by directing attention onto them, to make them important. [Blogging, anyone?]

And thirdly, for the scenarios which are the core nugget of a great science fiction story waiting to be written – which is most of them, to be honest, though some more obviously than others:

  • Software gains allow a certain portion of taxes to fall to the discretion of the payer. John Public can assign X amount of his taxes toward one service, to the exclusion of another. It’s a second vote that politicians watch closely. [Bruce Sterling needs to write this one]
  • Traveling as a process enjoys a revival. People abandon the idea of “getting from A to B” and begin to develop (or re-discover) a culture of traveling: semi-nomadism. Lots of people acquire super new faxed-and-modemed versions of the mobile home. It becomes distinctly “lower-class” to live in a fixed location. Fast forms of transport come to be viewed like fast food is viewed now — tacky, undesirable, fake.

It’s a goldmine, go take a look. And I reckon we can play this game just as well ourselves – leave your own Unthinkable Future in the comments!

Blasphemous Geometries

How to define a genre … and why not to bother

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Blasphemous Geometries returns, ready to bask in your merciless indifference.

Blasphemous Geometries by Jonathan McCalmont

This month Jonathan McCalmont has been thinking about that perennial discussion that is mathematically certain to arise in any situation where three or more sf fans or critics are gathered – how do we define science fiction? Jonathan has decided that we should stop trying. Continue reading How to define a genre … and why not to bother →

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Get your space opera poetry on at the SpaceWesterns.com Senryū competition

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I don’t know how many budding (or even accomplished) science fiction poets we have in the audience here at Futurismic – but if there are any, they should take heed to this announcement from Nathan Lilly: ?

“SpaceWesterns.com is holding another poetry contest. This time we’re looking for your Space Western Senryū! All submissions must be sent electronically via our contest form by July 15th, 2008. The winners will be published on August 6th, 2008.

Our judges will be:

  • Alana Joli Abbott—comic-writer, Cowboys and Aliens 2; game-writer Steampunk Musha, Serenity Adventures
  • Mark L. Van Name—author, One Jump Ahead, Slanted Jack
  • Seamus Kevin Fahey—screen-writer, Battlestar Galactica; comic-writer, Battlestar Galactica: Origins

More details on the contest page at the site.”

In case (like myself) you’ve never heard of senryū before, here’s the definition from Wikipedia:

“Senryū is a Japanese form of short poetry similar to haiku in construction: three lines with 17 or fewer “on” (not syllables) in total. However, senryū tend to be about human foibles while haiku tend to be about nature, and senryū are often cynical or darkly humorous while haiku are more serious. Unlike haiku, senryū do not include a kireji (cutting word), and do not generally include a kigo, or season word.”

I tend to stick to iambic pentameter myself … but then my poetry’s never won anything or been published! Good luck, if you choose to enter.

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How much science knowledge do you need to write science fiction?

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Tom Swift Cover On her blog, author Jo Walton laments that:

I can’t write science fiction because I know both too much and not enough science.

I know too much to spout total crap and not care, and I don’t know enough to inherently get it right. So I can write it and be sort of right and I need to get it checked.

(Via io9.)

But getting it checked, she goes on to complain, slows her down so much that she can lose momentum and be unable to write the story at all:

The way I write, I inclue as I go along and plot develops as I go along and background develops out of that, and my understanding of the world develops (even if lots of it doesn’t end up on the page) and if half of what I think turns out to be wrong then it just gets to the point where it isn’t worth doing in the first place. The people who know science suggest alternatives that totally screw up what I wanted to do and why I wanted to do it, and I lose all confidence in it and decide I should stick to stuff I understand.

She then gives a specific example.

I know where she’s coming from: I got held up quite a bit on my most recent novel, Marseguro, while I tracked down the information I needed to ensure that my spaceship’s habitat ring rotated at the correct speed, given its diameter, to generate something approaching 1 G in the outermost layer–and that at the central core my characters could believably make the transition from non-rotating section to rotating section without getting their arms ripped off.

Non-SF writers never have to worry about stuff like that.

So: if you’re a writer, how much time do you devote to getting the science right, and if you’re a reader, how much accuracy do you demand? (Movies, of course, are a whole different kettle of fish where even non-SF films never get the physics right.)

(Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

[tags]science fiction, books, writing, novels[/tags]