Imagine never having to take a pill again for anxiety, depression, or your heart condition. Imagine epilepsy or Parkinson’s disease being managed by the patient without drug interventions. What if control of these conditions were possible with a thought? Kiki Sanford reports on the advent of mind-genetic interfaces.
Austin Grossman, a novelist and game developer who worked on Ultima Online, Tomb Raider, Thief and Dishonored, is a fan of imaginary games. They're at the center of his latest novel, YOU, just out in paperback, which revolves around a decades-long quest by a group of friends to realize the ultimate game, bringing them fortune, fame, death, misery, love and adventure. Here he offers a tour of his favorite games from the parallel worlds of film and fiction.
Geoffrey sez, "In April of 2011, Boing Boing posted that Michael Moorcock's New Worlds was coming back to life. Well, Issue 1 went live this past October. The website is slick and the stories are great, there is only one problem: no one seems to know that New Worlds has returned. — Read the rest
Fred "the shred" Goodwin, who presided over the collapse of the Royal Bank of Scotland and is now collecting a £200,000/year pension at taxpayer's expense (over and above his £3m bonus) for his work in helping to destroy one of Britain's great financial institutions, has secured a "super-injunction" prohibiting the press from discussing his affairs. — Read the rest
This clever video pieces together scenes depicting the already-hoary suspense-film cliche in which a cellular phone's signal (or battery) gives out at just the wrong (right) time so that the characters will have something to be in suspense about. One thing I will always and forever love Iain Banks for is his 2003 novel Dead Air, a gripping, taut suspense novel in which everyone has a cellphone that always works. — Read the rest
Wouldya lookit that! I've won the Libertarian Futurist's Society's Prometheus Award for my novel Little Brother! As with all the other awards LB has been up for this year, I'm even more honored by the company I'm in than the award itself; this year's Prometheus nominees included Charlie Stross's Saturn's Children, Matter by Iain Banks, The January Dancer by Michael Flyn, Opening Atlantis by Harry Turtledove, and Half a Crown, the wrenching conclusion to Jo Walton brilliant Farthing/Ha'penny alternate history trilogy. — Read the rest
The Libertarian Futurist Society has released its slate of nominees for this year's Prometheus Awards, the award for the best "pro-freedom" science fiction of the year. I'm proud to say that my novel Little Brother made the cut, as did five other standout books, including a couple personal favorites: Half a Crown by Jo Walton and Saturn's Children by Charlie Stross. — Read the rest
Charlie Stross's latest novel Halting State starts out as a hilarious post-cyberpunk police procedural, turns into a gripping post-cyberpunk technothriller, and escalates into a Big Ideas book about the future of economics, virtual worlds, the nation state and policing, while managing to crack a string of geeky in-jokes, play off a heaping helping of gripping action scenes, and telling a pretty good love story. — Read the rest
