Latest Stories
Most recently published stories in Futurism.
On Languages and Perceptions of the World
Language is a means by which the world is described, observed, explained, and, ultimately, understood. It unites a people by providing them with a universal way to talk about the world through a consensus on what words mean, how phrases are structured, and grammatical manifestations of greater ideologies. However, this universality exists only within an individual culture, as language itself varies slightly, and sometimes, drastically from one people to the next. The course of this essay intends to ethnographically explore the relationship between language and culture through considering the impact that various languages have on the social thinking within their designated cultures. Moreover, it will evaluate how the thinkings of these cultures differ as a result of their linguistically-rooted ideologies, and how these drastically different languages result in drastically different cultural understandings of anything from time, to behaviour, to quantity, to sounds.
By Channing Cook6 years ago in Futurism
Introducing Mr. S. Claus
Introducing Mr. S. Claus His contorted face will haunt the rest of my life, they all do, as his blood splatters adorned the wall in a macabre painting adding to the festive colors of the yuletide season. Making sure my contract was fulfilled I pumped two more silenced bullets into his body. The mob didn’t hire amateurs to take out those they needed to have disposed of, and with a six-figure contract I wasn’t about to make a mistake. I’d done this enough times to know not to take chances.
By Frank Talaber6 years ago in Futurism
Ponce de Leon Was Such A Bloody Idiot
Ponce de Leon Was Such A Bloody Idiot I screamed in agony for a week; burning, every cell in my body on fire. The injections were easy enough, once a day for seven days. Being strapped up in bed beside several others screaming in a symphony of holy torture wasn't.
By Frank Talaber6 years ago in Futurism
WE ARE THE UNIVERSE : ALEXIS KARPOUZOS
We live in a universe that can be seen and experienced from many different perspectives. We therefore need to look at the universe from many different angles. Everything and everyone is a form of the universe being expressed in a particular way. In other words, each one of us can say with absolute certainly “We are the Universe!” Since we are the universe, each one of us provides a valuable perspective that complements the contributions of everyone and everything else around us.Each of us is the universe being expressed in a particular location in a specific way. We’re all part of the same moving and evolving cosmos, but the view of it is unique from each of our respective locations.
By Alexis Karpouzos6 years ago in Futurism
The Mysterious Mr. Jones
The Mysterious Mr. Jones "Can't say I've ever seen that before." He counted again tapping his double ended pigtail explorer tool along the row of teeth and asked his assistant to take x-rays. The dentist, Dr. Mark Huang, pronounced Wong, to his clients and customers but, on occasion, his wife would call him Dr. M. HU-ang, because she knew how much he disliked it. When she full-named him Mark knew he was in the doghouse. Mark stared again at the man's overly mouthful of teeth. The other thing that struck as odd was their size, they were about a third smaller than usual. Which would account for his rather normal sized jaw and not some hulking chimpanzee-sized jaw.
By Frank Talaber6 years ago in Futurism
Telum
Episode 1 I rolled over again, restlessly lying in bed trying to close my eyes and sleep, but it seemed as if it would never come. Every time my eyelids became heavy and fell shut, I would see horrific images. Monsters, beasts, and what I thought was myself wrapped in combat against them. I wasn’t sure where the images were coming from, and I tried shaking my head to clear the dream. I should probably have not eaten that Indian food.
By Kat Jadzia6 years ago in Futurism
Huntresses
“So, we got a new target?” I asked as Dolos sat back down at the metal table. She tapped her wristwatch a couple of times and a holographic projection of a guy came up. To be honest, I could instantly tell he was a dick. He just had that dick look: all snooty posture, fancy clothes, perfectly groomed brown hair, and an expression that said “I’m better than you, peasants.”
By Riley Julian Minnich6 years ago in Futurism
The Answer
One bright, ninety-degree summer morning, two brothers played basketball in an apartment division basketball court. Their names were Atlas and Apollo. Their similarities only stretched to appearances; their brown curls tangled together with the antics of boyhood, their dark skin becoming darker with the heat of the sun. On a day such as this, Apollo felt light as a feather, while Atlas felt that he had the world on his shoulders.
By Aimee Pieper6 years ago in Futurism
Clockworks Chronicles of Zahn
17) The Board Is Set Mitzi was doing her best to find her way to the palace. However, she was new to this town, so she had, at some point, gotten hopelessly lost. So, something her grandfather taught her, “When you’re lost, backtrack to the place where you started and regather your reckoning”. So that was what she did, still being mindful of her surroundings and being careful she wasn’t being tracked.
By Scott Hawver6 years ago in Futurism
The Digital Artist
Resurrection Well, I’m turning 150 this year and I’ve finally returned to Tasmania after a long time away. Back in 2055 I was really old and on deaths door when they finally found a way to upload human consciousness into the grid. I was one of the first and was able to get most of the family on the list. Some people were nowhere near dying yet went digital anyway. The world had become a pretty nasty place. No more America after Yellowstone erupted. The whole northern hemisphere was impacted then came the War. After the fall of America and the World Wide Web, the Chinese and Europeans created the grid and that’s where I’ve been the last sixty or so years on and off.
By Chris Beck6 years ago in Futurism
The Evolution of Aliens
In Extraterrestrial Civilizations (1979), Isaac Asimov calculated that there are likely 390 million civilizations in the galaxy, the vast majority of which are far more advanced than we are. He’s not alone in his assumption that there are many intelligent alien species, capable of space flight and therefore a visit to Earth. As human creators and thinkers have attempted to wrap their brain around what these other civilizations’ members might look like.
By The Geeky Chica6 years ago in Futurism
