Tag Archives: Second-Life

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The Future Fire e-zine’s Second Life short fiction contest

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Wow! Here’s a bit of news that combines two of my favourite things – short-form speculative fiction and Second Life.

Cover art for issue 9 of The Future Fire

The Future Fire is a UK-based speculative fiction e-zine, and they’ve just released their ninth issue as a free-to-download PDF file. Normally that would just be a prime candidate for a Friday Free Fiction mention, but there’s a little extra involved this time round.

The Future Fire is running a short fiction writing competition … but with a twist. Take it away, editor Djibril:

"… in this issue, we launch the The Future Fire / Black Swan writing competition with a first prize of $500.

"There’s a small technical barrier to entry, but no cost involved: the contest requires you to register and enter the Second Life virtual world and visit the Black Swan sim, which is a spooky, atmospheric island with a raised pathway, sculptures, events, and inhabitants.

"Visit for as long and as often as you like, and then write a story of up to 2,000 words inspired by your experience and submit it to The Future Fire by midnight on December 10th 2007."

Full details (and the SLURL for The Black Swan) can be found on The Future Fire‘s website.

So, all you writers who have yet to investigate Second Life, now you have a great excuse! Drop me an email if you’d like some guidance from someone who knows the lay of the land.

Thanks to Ariel at UK SF Book News Network for the heads-up.

[tags]writing, competition, short, story, Second Life[/tags]
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Psychology researchers inadvertently enable Second Life spam-bots?

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giant laptop in Second Life A group of UK based psychology researchers were interested in seeing how Second Life users reacted to invasions of personal space within the virtual world. So, they developed a way around the built-in limitations that Linden Lab put in place to prevent software-controlled avatars being deployed, enabling them to send an avatar on autopilot to interact with other residents and record their reactions.

To which your response might be "so what?" – especially if you’re skeptical about Second Life to start with, which is not an uncommon stance. But as the heads-up on SlashDot points out, what can be done by psychology researchers in the name of science could just as easily be done by spammers seeking a automated method of advertising in the metaverse … which would seem to reinforce the adage that no platform will ever remain completely immune to spam techniques. Still, at least in SL you can always teleport away from an annoying avatar, which is more than you can do when confronted by a Scientologist or insurance hawker in the high street … [Image by PsychoAl]

[tags]metaverse, Second Life, spam, software, psychology[/tags]
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Thought-controlled avatars for Second Life

Second Life avatars While it may obviously be some time before this technology becomes widely available to the average consumer, I’m fascinated to see a Japanese team of scientists developing a thought-control interface device that can direct the movement of a Second Life avatar. Something like that could really revolutionize the platform … although given the slightly hysterical media reports of, er, dubious pastimes in the virtual world, I’m sure people will leap to conclusions about why users would want their hands free … [Image by Pathfinder Linden]

[tags]metaverse, Second Life, interface, brain[/tags]
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First steps for open source Second Life

If there’s one thing that everyone (even the most enthusiastic) has to say about Second Life, it’s that the software is ferociously resource-hungry and more bug-ridden than a hobo’s sleeping bag. Numerous projects are running toward the goal of a more user-friendly interface based on open source code, and one of them has just become the darling of the SL blogosphere by creating an AJAX-based text-only version of the client software – in non-geek language, that means it can run in your web browser. Which is pretty good going for a fifteen year old.