Russian science fiction is rarely cheerful or upbeat, but if you want to read some fantastic dystopian futures, Red Star Tales is the collection for you.
Yvonne Howell has collected 18 science fiction stories from Russia, spanning over 100 years of social development. Spanning everything from pre-revolutionary work, to Stalinism, and the post-Soviet era this volume also covers every style science fiction had to offer.
My favorites, the Strugatsky brothers and included in a long list of fantastic Russian authors. Fyodorov, Valery Tsiolkovsky, and Alexander Belyaev are stand outs.
Red Star Tales: A Century of Russian and Soviet Science Fiction via Amazon
One genre of 19th Cen illustrated pamphlet was the "Cries of London" (previously), which celebrated the market traders' characteristic sales patter, which were catalogued as a kind of urban birdsong.
The waves of protests and walkouts that swept Google last year had many grievances and concerns, from the company's Pentagon contract to supply AI for drones to the secret creation of a censored search tool for the Chinese market, but one central flashpoint was the revelation that the company had paid Android exec $90 million […]
Pro Idee's £369 Paper Bed is made of folds of rigid paper that collapse to a narrow sliver and then expand to 200cm length when needed; the materials are lightweight (total weight, 14.5k) and it can support up to 300kg, and the manufacturer claims it's comfortable, albeit with the addition of a foam pad. (via […]
Use a single password for every website, and you’re compromising your security. Use a different one each time, and you’re bound to lose track of them. The solution? RoboForm Everywhere, a catch-all tool that will not only manage the passwords on every site you visit but generate better ones. As a simple password database, it’s […]
Just a reminder: Print isn’t dead. And now that printers are becoming as portable as cell phones, it might be around for quite some time. Enter the MEMOBIRD Mobile Thermal Printer, a mini-printer that is versatile, portable – and most importantly, never needs a refill on ink or toner. Measuring just a few inches around, […]
What do Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google all have in common? Somewhere in their framework, they all use MySQL, that most versatile (and free!) of database management systems. And they’re not alone. If your company or the one you’d like to work for wrangles data (and who doesn’t?), they’re going to need someone with a […]
