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July 24 2010
Insufficient data [Charles Stross]
SF writer Charles Stross tackles the question of how many people it takes to maintain our technological civilization [he guesses at least 100 million] and the political implications thereof. One consequence is that autonomous space colonies aren't feasible because they'd need huge numbers of people to keep their technology going.Insufficient data [Charles Stross]
SF writer Charles Stross tackles the question of how many people it takes to maintain our technological civilization [he guesses at least 100 million] and the political implications thereof. One consequence is that autonomous space colonies aren't feasible because they'd need huge numbers of people to keep their technology going.June 20 2010
Recalculating
A short story narrated by a GPS device.Recalculating
A short story narrated by a GPS device.June 01 2010
Six Writers on Their Favorite Reading -- New York Magazine
William Gibson's list of ten suggested SF books is terrific -- four of them I've read and love, the others sound excellent too.May 24 2010
The Random Pulp Science Fiction Title Generator from Cornelius Zappencackler's DERANGE-O-LAB
Makes up random pulp sci-fi titles. "Vanquished by the Sacred Lizard", "The Coming of the Lightning", "The Time Machine of Tumithak's Moons", etc.
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March 09 2010
What It Might Be Like to Live in Viriconium
Fantasy/SF author M. John Harrison: "The great modern fantasies were written out of religious, philosophical and psychological landscapes. They were sermons. They were metaphors. They were rhetoric. They were books, which means that the one thing they actually weren’t was countries with people in them. The commercial fantasy that has replaced them is often based on a mistaken attempt to literalise someone else’s metaphor, or realise someone else’s rhetorical imagery. For instance, the moment you begin to ask (or rather to answer) questions like, “Yes, but what did Sauron look like?”; or, “Just how might an Orc regiment organise itself?”; the moment you concern yourself with the economic geography of pseudo-feudal societies, with the real way to use swords, with the politics of courts, you have diluted the poetic power of Tolkien’s images."January 06 2010
Patricia C. Wrede's Worldbuilder Questions
A large set of questions to ask yourself when designing a world, country or culture for fiction or a game. Originally posted by the fantasy author Patricia Wrede to FIDOnet in the dark ages of the Net.December 24 2009
Overtime by Charles Stross [Tor]
New Xmas-themed short story set in Stross's "Laundry" series (horror / spy / humor).December 11 2009
Is time travel allowed?
"In our fifth online poll to find out what Plus readers would most like to know about the Universe you told us that you'd like to find out if time travel is allowed. We took the question to Kip Thorne, Feynmann Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus, at the California Institute of Technology, and here is his answer. "In brief: The laws of physics allow members of an exceedingly advanced civilisation to travel forward in time as fast as they might wish. Backward time travel is another matter; we do not know whether it is allowed by the laws of physics, and the answer is likely controlled by a set of physical laws that we do not yet understand at all well: the laws of quantum gravity...."November 29 2009
Boing Boing Gift Guide 2009: Fiction!
Dozens of SF & fantasy novel recommendations from Cory Doctorow and Mark Frauenfelder, with links to the full reviews in Boing Boing.November 12 2009
Designing society for posterity [Charles Stross]
Really thought-provoking essay by SF writer Charles Stross on the social and political challenge of keeping a society going in a closed system: "You, and a quarter of a million other folks, have embarked on a 1000-year voyage aboard a hollowed-out asteroid. What sort of governance and society do you think would be most comfortable, not to mention likely to survive the trip without civil war, famine, and reigns of terror?"
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c3o
c3o
October 19 2009
Slime Story: Playtest Version 2 « Yaruki Zero Games
A roleplaying game about a parallel America where "one-way magical portals provide a constant stream of cute monsters, and many teenagers go out and hunt those monsters. They collect parts from the monsters, and trade those in at the Monster Mart at the mall. They get exercise, spending money, and time with friends. Of course, that doesn’t stop them from acting like teenagers."September 27 2009
"Like A Wisp of Steam" [Circlet Press]
"Five erotic steampunk stories. Lust & leaping 'technologie' meet in a Victorian era that never was. Jason Rubis, Thomas S. Roche, Vanessa Vaughn, Peter Tupper, and Kaysee Renee Robichaud create fascinating tales of airships, corsetry, mad scientists, and drama. "September 01 2009
Good Novels Don’t Have to Be Hard Work - WSJ.com
"The revolution is under way. The novel is getting entertaining again. Writers like Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Donna Tartt, Kelly Link, Audrey Niffenegger, Richard Price, Kate Atkinson, Neil Gaiman, and Susanna Clarke, to name just a few, are busily grafting the sophisticated, intensely aware literary language of Modernism onto the sturdy narrative roots of genre fiction: fantasy, science fiction, detective fiction, romance. They're forging connections between literary spheres that have been hermetically sealed off from one another for a century."August 12 2009
Eclipse Phase
"Eclipse Phase is a pen & paper roleplaying game of post-apocalyptic transhuman conspiracy and horror. "An "eclipse phase" is the period between when a cell is infected by a virus and when the virus appears within the cell and transforms it. During this period, the cell does not appear to be infected, but it is. "Players take part in a cross-faction secret network dubbed Firewall that is dedicated to counteracting "existential risks" — threats to the existence of transhumanity, whether they be biowar plagues, self-replicating nanoswarms, nuclear proliferation, terrorists with WMDs, net-breaking computer attacks, rogue AIs, alien encounters, or anything else that could drive an already decimated transhumanity to extinction." Just introduced, CC-licensed, at GenCon 2009.EVE Online creates exotic financial instrument to combat gold-farming - Boing Boing
More proof that real life is slowly transmuting into a Charles Stross novel. "EVE Online is trying to combat gold-farming (working on repetitive in-game tasks to amass wealth and levels that can be sold to wealthy, time-poor players) by tinkering with its monetary supply, creating a special instrument call the PLEX that entitles a player to an extra 30 days' playtime."July 15 2009
Let Us Now Praise Awesome Dinosaurs, by Leonard Richardson [Strange Horizons]
"I want to buy a gun," said the Thymomenoraptor. He moved his foreclaw along the glass case of pistols, counting them off: one, two, three, four. "That one." He tapped the case; the glass squeaked. "Why would a dinosaur need a gun?" asked the shop owner. "Self-defense." The owner's gaze dropped to the three-inch claw that had chipped his display case. "These are killing claws," said the dinosaur, whose name was Tark. "For sheep, or cows. I merely want to disable an attacker with a precision shot to the leg or other uh, limbal region." "Uh-huh," the owner said. "Or maybe you figure humans shoot each other all the time, but if someone turns up ripped in half the cops are gonna start lookin' for dinosaurs." Tark carefully pounded the counter. "There used to be a time," he said, "when gun dealers would actually sell people guns! A time . . . called America. I miss that time." ...[It gets even better!]...March 07 2009
Suvudu Free Book Library
SF e-book site by Random House; they're giving away the first books of some series as *free* PDFs, to get people hooked. The first five include Kim Stanley Robinson's "Red Mars", which is probably the best hard-SF book I've ever read -- a very realistic epic of colonizing Mars, which also has well-drawn characters and interesting political and ecological ideas. There's also Naomi Novik's "His Majesty's Dragon", which my wife says is a kick-ass combination of Patrick O'Brien style 19th-century seafaring plus dragons.September 28 2008
Living through Interesting Times [Charles Stross]
Superb, thought-provoking new essay on near-future politics/economics from an SF perspective, by one of the best current SF writers. And read the comments, too — they're all good, including Stross's responses. "We are living in interesting times; in fact, they're so interesting that it is not currently possible to write near-future SF ... it can take three years for a writer's idea to find its way onto the bookshelves. Pity the authors responsible for the rash of cold war novels that came out in 1990-91". "Put yourself in the shoes of an SF author trying to construct an accurate (or at least believable) scenario for the USA in 2019. Imagine you are constructing your future-USA in 2006, then again in 2007, and finally now, with talk of $700Bn bailouts and nationalization of banks in the background. Each of those projections is going to come out looking different."
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