David Louis Edelman asks a big question over at the author group-blog Deep Genre – when will science fiction end? In his own words: “I’m not asking this from a commercial standpoint so much as from an epistemological standpoint. Will there always be new science fiction? Or will the genre just wither up at some point and go away?” What do you think? Are we so immunised to the exponential curve of technological change that fiction based in extrapolated futures will cease to have any effect on us other than, perhaps, nostalgia?
Tag Archives: science fiction
Australian police boss fears clones and cyborgs
It sounds as if the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police is a science fiction fan – one who takes it a little too seriously. During a recent conference, he suggested that the police forces of the near future will have to deal with a variety of new threats to law and order, ranging from tech-savvy small-time crooks to rogue clones and human-robot hybrids. Personally, I’m not entirely convinced this isn’t just a viral marketing ploy for the forthcoming Blade Runner re-release.
Jay Lake’s New Novel
Past Futurismic contributor Jay Lake has just published “Mainspring,” a novel about the gears of the universe, the Archangel Gabriel, and a clockmaker’s apprentice. I haven’t read it yet, but knowing Jay’s penchant for the inventive and his storyteller’s intuition, I’m sure I’ll like it. If you’ve read it, let us know what you think in the comments. [boingboing]
Stross on the future of lifelogging
Charles Stross has an essay up on the BBC website about lifelogging and the future of compact data storage. If you’ve read a lot of his novels or followed his blog closely, a lot of these ideas won’t be totally new to you, but it’s interesting to read them pared down and packaged for Joe Average.
THE TOWERS OF ST. MICHAEL’S by David Walton
April’s story, “The Towers of St. Michael’s” from Futurismic alumnus David Walton is a pensive piece about the sensory world and the barriers between two people separated by sight. Check out David’s earlier “Diamond Dust” afterwards, if you haven’t already read it.
The Towers Of St. Michael’s
by David Walton
Paul watched Bartalan Varga slash egg-yellow paint across his canvas, adding a sparkle of reflected sunlight to a traffic scene from his native Budapest. On Paul’s fMRI screen, Bartalan’s visual cortex lit up, just as if he were seeing the colorful buildings and buses and pedestrians in his painting. But even a cursory glance at the stunted buds where his eyes should have been contradicted this. Bartalan Varga was totally blind. Continue reading THE TOWERS OF ST. MICHAEL’S by David Walton