Future Science Fiction Digest Issue 9


Book Description

Future SF is a magazine focusing on international science fiction. In this oversized issue we've collected stories from the established masters as well as some exciting up-and-comers in China, Japan, and South Korea. From machine societies to ocean depths, from interstellar migrations to genetically engineered mermaids, these tales envision very different, often dark, but always fascinating futures. Includes the following stories: Rœsin by Wu Guan (translated from Chinese by Judith Huang) Raising Mermaids by Dai Da (translated from Chinese by S. Quouyi Lu) Butterfly Blue by Gustavo Bondoni (Argentina) Reflection by Gu Shi (translated from Chinese by Ken Liu; reprint) Whale Snows Down by Kim Bo-Young (translated from Korean by Sophie Bowman) Formerly Slow by Wei Ma (translated from Chinese by Andy Dudak) Just Like Migratory Birds by Taiyo Fujii (translated from Japanese by Emily Balistrieri)




Future Science Fiction Digest Issue 0


Book Description

Inaugural issue of a new science fiction magazine with an added focus on international fiction and translation. Ranging from lyrical to humorous, from optimistic to jaded, from earthbound to interstellar, these stories offer six very different glimpses into the future. Matthew Kressel's "The History Within Us" takes place during the final stages of the heat death of the universe, where a ship filled with refugees of different species is huddled near one of the last burning stars, and that star is about to go nova. Tatiana Ivanova's satirical "Impress Me, Then We'll Talk About the Money" imagines the consequences of unscrupulous pharmacologists creating drugs that allow people to fulfill their deepest desire, which is to change. In "Earthrise," Lavie Tidhar examines what it means to be an artist in a futuristic society where humanity has colonized the solar system. In Alvaro Zinos-Amaro's "e^h" human colonists encounter a region of space in which their junk DNA mutates, revealing information encoded there by aliens. Teng Ye's "Universal Cigarettes" is a tongue-in-cheek tale of a grandiose marketing stunt with a dark twist reminiscent of Philip K. Dick's work. In the Nebula Award-nominated "Utopia, LOL?" by Jamie Wahls, a modern-day human wakes from cryogenic suspension in a utopian future overseen by a benevolent computer.




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.




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




Building New Worlds, 1946-1959


Book Description

Building New Worlds is a history of a pivotal decades-long episode in the birth and growth of today's science fiction. Enthralling and amusing, it's written with affection and wit. This is no dry, modishly theorized academic analysis. Nor is it a rah-rah celebration of the "Good Old Days." Here is a candid and astute reader's response to a magazine that, by today's standards, was often comically bad--but was also immensely important in its time, and improved, like the Little Engine (or maybe Starship) That Could. New Worlds is best remembered today as the fountainhead of the New Wave of audacious experimental SF in the second half of the 1960s, under editor Michael Moorcock. But these first pioneering issues, from 1946-59, were edited by the magazine’s founder, John "Ted" Carnell (1912-72). Carnell was a pillar of the old-style UK SF establishment, but gamely supportive of innovators--most famously, of the brilliant J. G. Ballard, Brian W. Aldiss, and John Brunner, whose early work he nurtured. The story of how New Worlds got started, survived, and got better is essential to the history of the genres of the fantastic in the UK--and indeed, the world. And huge fun to read. Watch for the companion volumes, New Worlds: Before the New Wave, and Strange Highways, dealing with New World's companion magazine, Science Fantasy.




Science Fiction, Canonization, Marginalization, and the Academy


Book Description

Science fiction occupies a peculiar place in the academic study of literature. For decades, scholars have looked at science fiction with disdain and have criticized it for being inferior to other types of literature. But despite the sentiments of these traditionalists, many works of science fiction engage recognized canonical texts, such as the Odyssey, and many traditionally canonical works contain elements of science fiction. More recently, the canon has been subject to revision, as scholars have deliberately sought to include works that reflect diversity and have participated in the serious study of popular culture. But these attempts to create a more inclusive canon have nonetheless continued to marginalize science fiction. This book examines the treatment of science fiction within the academy. The expert contributors to this volume explore a wide range of topics related to the place of science fiction in literary studies. These include academic attitudes toward science fiction, the role of journals and cultural gatekeepers in canon formation, and the marginalization of specific works and authors by literary critics. In addition, the volume gives special attention to multicultural and feminist concerns. In discussing these topics, the book sheds considerable light on much broader issues related to the politics of literary studies and academic inquiry.




Resources in Education


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The History of the Science-fiction Magazine


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This third volume in Mike Ashley's four-volume study of the science-fiction magazines focuses on the turbulent years of the 1970s, when the United States emerged from the Vietnam War into an economic crisis. It saw the end of the Apollo moon programme and the start of the ecology movement. This proved to be one of the most complicated periods for the science-fiction magazines. Not only were they struggling to survive within the economic climate, they also had to cope with the death of the father of modern science fiction, John W. Campbell, Jr., while facing new and potentially threatening opposition. The market for science fiction diversified as never before, with the growth in new anthologies, the emergence of semi-professional magazines, the explosion of science fiction in college, the start of role-playing gaming magazines, underground and adult comics and, with the success of Star Wars, media magazines. This volume explores how the traditional science-fiction magazines coped with this, from the




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.




Paper Collectibles


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