It’s the return of the Mac! In this instalment of his Loving The Alien column, transhuman ufologist Mac Tonnies has been thinking about a subject that is dear to us all … but whose dearness is inexplicable when observed from a rational perspective.
Which leads you to wondering – what will Posthuman Sex look like? Continue reading Posthuman Sex
Yes indeed – you enquired, cajoled and begged, and the day has finally arrived – Futurismic is open to fiction submissions once again!
Chris East, our hard-working Fiction Editor, is a busy man – and with the submissions coming in he’s going to be even more busy than usual. So please be considerate: read the entirety of the Guidelines page thoroughly – twice – and check your story is a good fit before clicking through to the submissions webform (linked from the Guidelines page).
That way you save Chris time and save yourself from a rejection you didn’t need to get, right? Right!
Also, a few words on file formatting. Three words, actually, or rather two words and an acronym:
The webform shouldn’t let you upload anything else; if you manage to subvert the process, your submission will just be deleted anyway, so just convert in your favourite word processor package first.
And finally – we will ONLY accept fiction submissions through the webform. All attempted submissions by regular email, comment fields, Twitter, psychic projection, good old-fashioned snail-mail or any other channels WILL BE IGNORED AND DELETED/DESTROYED UNREAD AND UNREPLIED TO.
OK, with all that out of the way, get to work! Do you think you can beat Leonard Richardson‘s 37-deep comments thread? Because that’s the caliber of work we’re looking for – and we’re looking forward to your submissions!
A new month means a new story here at Futurismic … and this one has got everything.
Seriously – geek hackers and classic arcade games, electronic Darwinism and domestic espionage, venture capital and Valley-esque start-ups … and a healthy dose of intellectual property panic. Leonard Richardson‘s Futurismic début is quite a piece of work!
I should also point out for the benefit of the easily-offended that there’s a generous sprinkling of profanity in “Mallory”, right from the outset. Still keen? Good – you won’t regret it! Click on through and read the whole thing … and please leave comments for Leonard to let him know what you thought of the story.
Vijay had been playing video games his whole life, but he’d never really become addicted to one until the first incarnation of Fuck Me. Adding an element of real-time strategy to the already-frenetic Gestalt Warrior combined construction, emergent behavior, and blob-themed violence in a way that both Vijay and the Selfish GAME found satisfying.
Conventions are the social backbone of the science fiction scene, and the old adage says that there’s always one taking place somewhere. Question is, how do you locate them?
John Joseph Adams suggested some fan with web-smarts should step into the breach and knock together a website for locating conventions by US zip code, and within less than a day Nathan Lilly (who is also the editor of SpaceWesterns.com, by the way) had done exactly that with Con Finder.
Who says fandom can’t get things done quickly, eh? Now, Nathan, if you could just upgrade it to global coverage – let’s say by Sunday night?
Here’s some science fictional theatre with a difference. Called Untitled Mars (This Title May Change), it’s a collaboration between Budapest’s Pont Muhley theatre ensemble and a team of research scientists who will be (literally) phoning in their performance, live via satellite from the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah. The production previews Tuesday, April 8, and opens Sunday, April 13, at Performance Space 122, 150 First Avenue at East 9th Street, New York. (Via Broadway World.)
Directed by Jay Scheib, it’s the first in a trilogy of live performance pieces collectively known as SimulatedCities/Simulated Systems. According to the press release:
Untitled Mars is a mind-bending excursion into an interplanetary future defined by Scheib’s signature multi-media aesthetic. Rewriting fiction with reality, Untitled Mars caps a year of collaboration with an international team of Space industry visionaries, artists, and research scientists and students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Is it possible to live on Mars? Just ask people who are selling real estate on the Red Planet. Going to Mars with a one-way ticket was out of the question years ago but how far away from that idea are we today? Mars Analog Research Stations are working hard to learn how to live and work on another planet. Are you ready to pick up and leave? Scheib’s creation will be able to give you an idea.
Meanwhile, the theatre’s own website describes it thusly:
Taking a cue from the space industry, Jay Scheib’s latest work pits hard Science against Philip K. Dick as interplanetary speculation runs amok, the indigenous population gets screwed, and a strange “anomalous” kid seems to hold all the answers.
Whereas Jay Scheib’s website says:
Would you go to Mars knowing that you wouldn’t be coming back? Ever. The proposed one-way mission to colonize Mars continues to gain momentum, since its suggestion by the legendary Joe Gavin, former director of the Apollo Lunar Module Program. Through a series of cinéma-vérité portraits and an intense physical performance style, Untitled Mars puts the scientists who are working to make life on the Red Planet a reality, side by side, with some of the fictions that have captured our imagination for over a century. Science vs. Fiction in this new work for six performers and a simulated Martian environment–a story about moving society to Mars–and what happens when we succeed…
So what will you see if you go? Your guess is as good as mine. But it ought to be interesting!
(Image: Sunset on Mars, NASA/JPL/Texas A&M/Cornell)
[tags]science fiction,Mars,theatre,plays[/tags]