Because your near-future stuff has a chance of getting into print before it diverges forever from our time-line. Case in point: “Willpower” is already up at Futurismic. So, if you like my stuff, stop by and have a read and let me know what you think. Or even if you don’t like my stuff.

Edit: and it looks like io9 has now picked up on the story here.

Legal disclaimer: The preceding statement and all subsequent statements in this intartube blogpost (hereinafter referred to as “POST”) in no way (a) negates my love for print publications (b) implies that print is inferior to online publications or vice-versa (c) implies that online is inferior to print publications or vice-versa (d) will cause the overall amount of climate change, economic meltdown, or other scary things in the world to decrease or increase (e) will cause the amount of strange and happy things in the universe to increase (f) enhance the likelihood that I will be able to sell a client on an idea I have used in a story, thereby creating a future I can point at as having predicted (g) result in the discovery of a cuddly venture capitalist.

New bumper sticker: Science fiction doesn’t become obsolete, it just turns into alternate history.

December 2nd, 2008 / 1,585 Comments »

So, has everyone been keeping up on their Interzone subscriptions? My novella, “Far Horizon,” has been listed by two reviewers as being amongst the best of 2008:

Jason Sanford

Blue Tyson

For those who don’t have Interzone subscriptions, an electronic version of Issue 214 is available at Fictionwise.

November 27th, 2008 / 558 Comments »

I don’t normally post links to current events, even when they’re as significant as the person who received a new trachea made of her own stem cells the other day. But this is so big, so SFnal, that it’s worth taking a look at:

Augmented reality is here.

It’s on an open-source platform, completely free for anyone to develop on.

And it’s pulling data from user-generated content.

Yes, it’s primitive. Yes, it’s limited. But so was the web, circa ten years ago.

This is another of those points in time when the game changes, just like the release of the iPhone development platform about 8 months ago. We may not know the game has changed, yet.

But it has.

November 21st, 2008 / 852 Comments »

It’s that time again—my short story “Willpower” has been accepted by Futurismic, which is the best place online to get your near-future science fiction fix. That’s all they publish!

And yes, “Willpower” is positive. That is, if you look at it from an oblique angle and accept that the transition from a scarcity-based economy to a postscarcity scenario isn’t necessarily going to be all roses and teddy bears.

(And no, it does not feature any cuddly investment bankers or venture capitalists.)

Look for it shortly at Futurismic.

November 15th, 2008 / 908 Comments »

We’re living in a magical age, and we don’t even recognize it.

For example, with a single click I can point you at this article, which was originally in Italian, but Google Translations turns into rough-but-understandable English. Let’s take a moment and count the things that couldn’t have happened when I was a tyke:

1. No machine translation available.

2. No free service to translate dozens of languages into dozens of other languages.

3. No internet at the consumer level.

4. No personal computers to speak of.

5. No mobile devices able to access free machine translation services and display web pages.

6. No visual internet.

7. No blogging.

8. No social media.

9. No such thing as many-to-many communications.

10. No electronic publishing, period.

No, it isn’t a flying car, but it is a whole boatload of change. And this is in just one tiny corner of consumer electronics. Consider that we’ll be looking at the same amount of change in the next 12-15 years, and tell me why there shouldn’t be room for optimism?

If you’d like, you can read the original in Italian via this link.

November 5th, 2008 / 1,604 Comments »