Tag Archives: science fiction

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Playing games with time

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Timewarp Time has a strange attraction for many people – it’s the one dimension that we can perceive but can’t control. But we can hack at the edges of it, like the Time Nuts: a 400-strong geek clade who collect high-precision atomic time-pieces. If you find you never have enough time to spend with your family, you may want to look into their methods – it’ll help you scrape up a few precious extra nanoseconds. [Awesome ‘shopped image by fdecomite]

Other people are trying to map time, instead – MetaFilter points out Miomi, a web2.0 startup with the tagline “user generated history” that aims to round up all the information in the world and assemble it into one coherent browsable time-line. Insert your own joke about conspiracy theorists and alternate history writers here.

On the subject of writers and time, the relentlessly provocative and controversial Mundane SF blog reminds us of DeSmogBlog’s “100 Year Letter” project, and decries the fact that science fiction writers seem to have taken no interest in it at all. Of course, they may simply not have know about it – this is the first I’ve heard of it, at least – but the Mundanistas lay a much weightier charge:

“… here, in 2007, the Science Fiction community has abandoned the future; or the future has abandoned it and gone on its merry way, following the laws of physics and thermodynamics with absolutely no consideration for our fantastic dreams. What a shame.”

What do you think – is it science fiction’s duty to deal with contemporary issues, or is it just for escapist purposes?

[tags]time, clocks, history, mundane, science fiction[/tags]
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Wish Sir Arthur C Clarke a happy birthday

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The title says it all; Sir Arthur C Clarke, living legend of science fiction, turns 90 on 16th December 2007 – that’s this coming Sunday. The Astronomical Association of Sri Lanka (where Clarke has been resident for many years) have set up a special blog where you can leave a message for the man himself. [Via SpaceElevatorBlog]

[tags]science fiction, writers, Arthur C Clarke, birthday[/tags]
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Online publishing: how can we do it right?

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Clarkesworld produces regular quality online fictionAs you may have noticed, Paul has been putting lots of links to other online fiction markets over the last week or so – we hope to encourage people to read the stories from all over the interweb. The topic of internet vs traditional publishing has been sweeping the sf blogosphere recently and there are some superb opinions on the subject. Some notable contributions include Erin Hoffman at Homeless Moon, the editor of Clarkesworld, Tobias Buckell, Booksquare on the viability of the iphone as a ebook reader, Paolo Bacigalupi’s superb 5-part critique of the state of the current print mags. Heavyweights John Scalzi, Cory Doctorow and Warren Ellis all helped start the debate.

The print medium hasn’t had such a quick transition into the internet world of the twentieth century, giving it the advantage of seeing how badly its brethren in the music and film industry have dealt with change. By stubbornly trying to hold on to old business models and suing many of those uptaking new technology, music and film executives alienated large quantities of their target audience and only recently has there been movement towards a sensible model. As digital paper and ebook readers get closer to producing an enjoyable reading experience, editors and authors will have to adapt to the digital age too.

The print digital revolution has the advantage of hindsight – we’ve seen how badly avoiding the idea is and have some element of time to start thinking about alternatives. Whether by email weekly story subscriptions, ebook purchases, tipjars for individual stories or community collection before posting, the internet is offering alternatives. I’d be interested to know what Futurismic readers feel about the debate. Of course, we can’t move to a new writing paradigm if people aren’t reading – so travel to some of the links on the side and read some of the great SF out there on the internet already!

[via Tobias Buckell, image from the latest cover of Clarkesworld magazine]

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Bruce Sterling publishes new short story in Technology Review

sterling.jpgBruce Sterling has published his new short story Interoperation in the MIT Technology Review journal. Says Bruce on his Wired blog: “One of my better efforts lately, and a rare example of a science fiction work that belongs by its nature in TECHNOLOGY REVIEW.”

Yuri pulled his sons from school to watch the big robot wreck the motel. His wife had packed a tasty picnic lunch, but 11-year-old Tommy was a hard kid to please. “You said a giant robot would blow that place up,” Tommy said. “No, son, I told you a robot would ‘take it down,'” said Yuri. “Go shoot some pictures for your mom.” Tommy swung his little camera, hopped his bamboo bike, and took off. Yuri patiently pushed his younger son’s smaller bike across the sunlit tarmac. Nick, age seven, was learning to ride. His mother had dressed him for the ordeal, so Nick’s head, knees, feet, fists, and elbows were all lavishly padded with brightly colored foam. Nick had the lumpy plastic look of a Japanese action figure.

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Foldable, crushable Epaper offers glimpse at the future of textual media

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The new way to readSome media have crossed into the digital realm so completely the older version is struggling. Music seems to be first on the chopping block, with DRM-free mp3s small, easily transported and potentially cheaper yet still providing artists with a living, whether by the Radiohead route or by promoting their tours. Television is feeling the pinch, with UK police shutting down the popular link site tv-links earlier this week (although they don’t know if they can actually charge him with anything for just providing links to non-hosted content). The MPAA has been fighting new media for years but movies are becoming legally available on sites like Jaman and Joost.

As of yet print media hasn’t caught on. There’s some ebook piracy and sales out there but the share is small – authors like Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross have seen increases rather than decreases in their book sales by offering their ebooks for free. More and more people use blogs and online newspapers for current events but staring at a computer screen isn’t conducive to reading long tracts of text. Whilst the short story market is dwindling, there hasn’t really been a consistent idea about what will replace chapbooks and magazine.

Advances in epaper might be getting us to the point where that might happen. Bridgestone’s new epaper that bends and folds like real paper whilst displaying digital information is a really promising start. Together with advances in wireless internet coverage and computer size, epaper offers a promising new business model for fiction, especially shorter works. Imagine subscribing your epaper to posts on economy from the Guardian, breaking news from the Washington Post, sport highlights from nfl.com and BBC, fiction from Asimovs and Strange Horizons and maybe a few stories and posts from Futurismic, all arriving on publication to the paper in your hands, ready to read. But like all these new media markets, it’ll need to be sustainable, DRM-free and reasonably priced. Are we prepared to make that change?

[link and image via technovelgy]