Future Science Fiction Digest Issue 10


Book Description

Future SF is a magazine focusing on international science fiction. This issue features stories from Mexico, China, Croatia, and the United States. “The Second Celeste” by Alberto Chimal (Mexico), translated by Patrick Weill “The Two Festivals that Cannot Coexist” by Liu Cixin (China), translated by Nathan Faries “The Office Drone” by Nic Lipitz (USA)“Perfect Date” by Jelena Dunato (Croatia)| “The Final Test” by Ti Sha (China), translated by Judith Huang




Science Fiction Prototyping


Book Description

Science fiction is the playground of the imagination. If you are interested in science or fascinated with the future then science fiction is where you explore new ideas and let your dreams and nightmares duke it out on the safety of the page or screen. But what if we could use science fiction to do more than that? What if we could use science fiction based on science fact to not only imagine our future but develop new technologies and products? What if we could use stories, movies and comics as a kind of tool to explore the real world implications and uses of future technologies today? Science Fiction Prototyping is a practical guide to using fiction as a way to imagine our future in a whole new way. Filled with history, real world examples and conversations with experts like best selling science fiction author Cory Doctorow, senior editor at Dark Horse Comics Chris Warner and Hollywood science expert Sidney Perkowitz, Science Fiction Prototyping will give you the tools you need to begin designing the future with science fiction. The future is Brian David Johnson’s business. As a futurist at Intel Corporation, his charter is to develop an actionable vision for computing in 2021. His work is called “future casting”—using ethnographic field studies, technology research, trend data, and even science fiction to create a pragmatic vision of consumers and computing. Johnson has been pioneering development in artificial intelligence, robotics, and reinventing TV. He speaks and writes extensively about future technologies in articles and scientific papers as well as science fiction short stories and novels (Fake Plastic Love and Screen Future: The Future of Entertainment, Computing and the Devices We Love). He has directed two feature films and is an illustrator and commissioned painter. Table of Contents: Preface / Foreword / Epilogue / Dedication / Acknowledgments / 1. The Future Is in Your Hands / 2. Religious Robots and Runaway Were-Tigers: A Brief Overview of the Science and the Fiction that Went Into Two SF Prototypes / 3. How to Build Your Own SF Prototype in Five Steps or Less / 4. I, Robot: From Asimov to Doctorow: Exploring Short Fiction as an SF Prototype and a Conversation With Cory Doctorow / 5. The Men in the Moon: Exploring Movies as an SF Prototype and a Conversation with Sidney Perkowitz / 6. Science in the Gutters: Exploring Comics as an SF Prototype and a Conversation With Chris Warner / 7. Making the Future: Now that You Have Developed Your SF Prototype, What’s Next? / 8. Einstein’s Thought Experiments and Asimov’s Second Dream / Appendix A: The SF Prototypes / Notes / Author Biography




Future Science Fiction Digest Issue 10


Book Description

Future SF is a magazine focusing on international science fiction.This issue features stories from Mexico, China, Croatia, and the United States."The Second Celeste" by Alberto Chimal (Mexico), translated by Patrick Weill"The Two Festivals that Cannot Coexist" by Liu Cixin (China), translated by Nathan Faries"The Office Drone" by Nic Lipitz (USA)"Perfect Date" by Jelena Dunato (Croatia) "The Final Test" by Ti Sha (China), translated by Judith Huang.




The Middling Affliction


Book Description

The Dresden Files meets American Gods in New York City. What would you do if you lost everything that mattered to you, as well as all means to protect yourself and others, but still had to save the day? Conrad Brent is about to find out. Conrad Brent protects the people of Brooklyn from monsters and magical threats. The snarky, wisecracking guardian also has a dangerous secret: he's one in a million - literally. Magical ability comes to about one in every 30,000 and can manifest at any age. Conrad is rarer than this, however. He's a middling, one of the half-gifted and totally despised. Most of the gifted community feels that middlings should be instantly killed. The few who don't flat out hate them still aren't excited to be around middlings. Meaning Conrad can't tell anyone, not even his best friends, what he really is. Conrad hides in plain sight by being a part of the volunteer Watch, those magically gifted who protect their cities from dangerous, arcane threats. And, to pay the bills, Conrad moonlights as a private detective and monster hunter for the gifted community. Which helps him keep up his personal fiction - that he's a magical version of Batman. Conrad does both jobs thanks to charms, artifacts, and his wits, along with copious amounts of coffee. But little does he know that events are about to change his life...forever. When Conrad discovers the Traveling Fair auction house has another middling who's just manifested her so-called powers on the auction block, he's determined to save her, regardless of risk. But what he finds out while doing so is even worse - the winning bidder works for a company that's just created the most dangerous chemical weapon to ever hit the magical community. Before Conrad can convince anyone at the Watch of the danger, he's exposed for what he really is. Now, stripped of rank, magical objects, friends and allies, Conrad has to try to save the world with only his wits. Thankfully though, no one's taken away his coffee.




The World of Science Fiction, 1926-1976


Book Description

This book, first published in 1980, is a guide to the major forces in the subculture of science fiction. It analyses the history of the field and the related developments, for instance the Bomb, that have shaped the literature. It examines the complex of activity and background tradition, the body of accepted beliefs and conventions, and the ethics and values of the world of science fiction.




The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 7


Book Description

A remote village is determined to keep their robot teacher from being fired. A poetry-loving AI controls the wastewater treatment facility, but a series of malfunctions are beginning to cause concern. The biggest pop idol of the twenty-second century is trapped on Enceladus, and deeply alone. Latchko can talk to the banned AIs and now that his secret is out things are about to get complicated. A former child soldier is raised by a plant-like species but struggles to understand them. Ice fishing on Europa just keeps turning up rocks and things just got worse ... something is changing the world, making it better, but for whom? Short fiction is the heart of science fiction, introducing new voices, experimenting with ideas and technique, and paving the way for the future of the field. Thousands of stories are published every year in the many genre magazines, anthologies, collections, podcasts, and websites, as well as other less common venues. Each year, Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning editor Neil Clarke sifts through the myriad of offerings to select works that represent the best and the brightest, report on the state of the field, and recommend additional stories for further reading. In this volume, covering 2021, you'll find works by Aliette de Bodard, Meg Elison, Rich Larson, Ken Liu, Ray Nayler, Suzanne Palmer, Hannu Rajaniemi, Robert Reed, Karl Schroeder, Vandana Singh, Tade Thompson, and many more.




Science Fiction and the Prediction of the Future


Book Description

Science fiction has always challenged readers with depictions of the future. Can the genre actually provide glimpses of the world of tomorrow? This collection of fifteen international and interdisciplinary essays examines the genre's predictions and breaks new ground by considering the prophetic functions of science fiction films as well as SF literature. Among the texts and topics examined are classic stories by Murray Leinster, C. L. Moore, and Cordwainer Smith; 2001: A Space Odyssey and its sequels, Japanese anime and Hong Kong cinema; and electronic fiction.




Infinite Detail


Book Description

A LOCUS AWARD FINALIST FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL! The Guardian's Pick for Best Science Fiction Book of the Year! A timely and uncanny portrait of a world in the wake of fake news, diminished privacy, and a total shutdown of the Internet BEFORE: In Bristol’s center lies the Croft, a digital no-man’s-land cut off from the surveillance, Big Data dependence, and corporate-sponsored, globally hegemonic aspirations that have overrun the rest of the world. Ten years in, it’s become a center of creative counterculture. But it’s fraying at the edges, radicalizing from inside. How will it fare when its chief architect, Rushdi Mannan, takes off to meet his boyfriend in New York City—now the apotheosis of the new techno-utopian global metropolis? AFTER: An act of anonymous cyberterrorism has permanently switched off the Internet. Global trade, travel, and communication have collapsed. The luxuries that characterized modern life are scarce. In the Croft, Mary—who has visions of people presumed dead—is sought out by grieving families seeking connections to lost ones. But does Mary have a gift or is she just hustling to stay alive? Like Grids, who runs the Croft’s black market like personal turf. Or like Tyrone, who hoards music (culled from cassettes, the only medium to survive the crash) and tattered sneakers like treasure. The world of Infinite Detail is a small step shy of our own: utterly dependent on technology, constantly brokering autonomy and privacy for comfort and convenience. With Infinite Detail, Tim Maughan makes the hitherto-unimaginable come true: the End of the Internet, the End of the World as We Know It.




The Worlds of Back to the Future


Book Description

A critical examination of the cultural, cinematic, and historical contexts of the Back to the Future trilogy, this book provides a multi-focal representation of the trilogy from several interdisciplinary fields, including philosophy, literature, music, pop culture, and media and gender studies. Topics include sexual symbolism in the trilogy and the oedipal plotting of the first film; nostalgia and the suburban dream in the cultural climate of the 1980s; generic play and performance throughout the trilogy; the emotional and narrative force provided by the films' renowned musical scores; the trilogy's post-modern references and allusions to the Western genre; female representations across the trilogy; and the Lacanian philosophical constructs in the characterizations of Doc Brown and George and Marty McFly.




Steaming Into a Victorian Future


Book Description

This collection of essays explores the social and cultural aspects of steampunk, examining the various manifestations of this multi-faceted genre, in order to better understand the steampunk sub-culture and its effect on--and interrelationship with--popular culture and the wider society.