Tag: scifi
The Algebraist
In The Algebraist, Iain M. Banks takes us to a time 1000s of years in the future. The galaxy is very old and has seen wave after wave of civilization come and go. In the current era the bureaucratic, hierarchy obsessed Mercatoria is the dominant galactic civilization and humanity is but one race among many and a pretty minor one at that. And at the edge of the galaxy, in the Ulubis system, is the gas giant Nasqueron and the setting for our story.
OA-like, onto the to read pile
Fall From Grace
i love steve bowers orionsarm stories
Janex Robotics
what a personal robot would be like
Wikiworld
After governments are disassembled, only the cooperative way of life remains to help society flourish. But with the wrong person as head coordinator, this utopia is headed for a crash. From prolific, genre-breaking writer Paul Di Filippo’s Wikiworld, this short story is one of a set of mind-bending tales of humanity’s alternate pasts, all too recognizable present, and far-flung futures.
Fast Forward 1
sci fi is not dead yet, i guess
Scifi Architecture
stuff like this makes me want to be an architect. but then again i would not have wanted to sleep on the floor in school, hunched over my cardboard model
Tom Foster, then, proposes a “swarm of hyper crystallisation submersible robots” that will spend an entire winter underwater in the Gulf of Helsinki, “artificially enhancing the ice sheet from underneath.” This – referred to as “ice periphery management” – is done in the service of an “ice suburb” that “will exist [out on the ice] for 5 months of each year.” The ice sheet can be strengthened with “coolant filled reinforcement bars,” and the ice suburb will generate its own energy “from high winter winds and sea/ice movements.”
So you’ve got an entire sci-fi trilogy, economically compressed into a few renderings and photo captions.
2007-03-21:
So what does all this have to do with cinema and architecture – or even with science fiction and the city? Well, by talking not to architects but instead to the people who actually design the sets, backdrops, cityscapes, environments, buildings, rooms, etc., in which cinematic action takes place – from X-Men 3 to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – you should be able to get at least some sense for what architecture can mean, on a narrative level, to those outside the architectural field.
man, the only time ever that i regret not being in LA
2007-05-14:
There’s a not-so-hidden influence on contemporary architects that’s widely acknowledged but rarely discussed: the speculative architectures in fantasy and science fiction movies.
crossing boundaries
Blindsight
about first contact. i wish my laptop batteries allowed me to read this on the daily train ride. why does SBB not have plugs, just like amtrak?
Hard SF Economics
Maybe a true hard sf author in 2020 will have to master not just physics, biology, computer science, economics, sociology, psychology – and write well, of course. We better invent brain enhancements quickly if we are to get anybody with that kind of expertise.
Online Firefly
Landing Firefly on the Multiverse platform would seem to be a sure-fire promotional move. But satisfying the show’s committed fans will not be easy. Online communities like FireflyFans.net, the show’s premier fan site, have generated an endless stream of fan fiction, art, blogs, podcasts, meet-ups and even a fan-produced documentary, Done the Impossible, which briefly broke into the top 1000 in DVD sales on Amazon.com.
this has the potential for awesomeness and a huge timesuck. fuck that elves / mage shit