Tag: scifi

Passages

1.2b years from now, in a galaxy 20m light-years from the Milky Way

This story combines every worst-case assumption from the Rare Earth theory with a nearly total absence of new high-tech modalities. Even if we are alone in the Universe, trapped by the speed of light, and beset by catastrophe, there will be stories to tell.

Fallen Angels

That government, dedicated to saving the environment from the evils of technology, had been voted into power because everybody knew that the Greenhouse Effect had to be controlled, whatever the cost. But who would have thought that the cost of ending pollution would include not only total government control of day-to-day life, but the onset of a new Ice Age?

Stranded in the anti-technological heartland of America, paralyzed by Earth’s gravity, the “Angels” had no way back to the Space Habs, the last bastions of high technology and intellectual freedom on or over the Earth.

Matter, by Iain M. Banks

In his more recent Culture novels, Banks seems to be exploring different aspects of his fictional universe, and Matter is no exception. This time we are seeing something of the galaxy beyond the Culture, both the other advanced civilizations which the Culture interacts with (a sub-sub plot is that relations between the Culture and the Morthenveld are at a rather delicate juncture) and some lower tech cultures that have a very different relationship with galactic civilization than anything Banks has described before.

Wikihistory

International Association of Time Travelers: Members’ Forum Subforum: Europe – Twentieth Century – Second World War At 14:52:28, FreedomFighter69 wrote: Reporting my first temporal excursion since joining IATT: have just returned from 1936 Berlin, having taken the place of one of Leni Riefenstahl’s cameramen and assassinated Adolf Hitler during the opening of the Olympic Games. Let a free world rejoice!

time travelers hanging out on the talk page.

Daemon

Matthew Sobol was a legendary computer game designer–the architect behind 6 popular online games. His premature death from brain cancer depressed both gamers and his company’s stock price. But Sobol’s fans weren’t the only ones to note his passing. He left behind something that was scanning Internet obituaries, too–something that put in motion a whole series of programs upon his death. Programs that moved money. Programs that recruited people. Programs that killed.

Confronted with a killer from beyond the grave, Detective Peter Sebeck comes face-to-face with the full implications of our increasingly complex and interconnected world–one where the dead can read headlines, steal identities, and carry out far-reaching plans without fear of retribution. Sebeck must find a way to stop Sobol’s web of programs–his Daemon–before it achieves its ultimate purpose. And to do so, he must uncover what that purpose is . .

a shelley for our times?