literature
Science fiction's most popular literary writers from Isaac Asimov to Stephen King and Frank Herbert, and the rising stars of today.
Six Degrees at Ten
When Six Degrees was published, climate refugees in America were languishing far from their homes on the Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast. In the Arctic sea ice had shrunk to its lowest ebb in recorded history. The year was 2007 and climate change seemed fated to loom over the lives of all in the new century. The book, written by environmental campaigner Mark Lynas, collected the best guesses of scientists to project a degree-by-degree vision of our warming world, detailing the consequences for humans and nature as the mercury climbed. In 2007 the carbon in our atmosphere hovered around 385 parts per million, but today it is well over 400. Since then global temperatures have also crossed the fateful threshold of 1 degrees Celsius outlined in the book. Each chapter deals with a degree Celsius increment, climaxing as the title would suggest with a climate six degrees warmer than that which has prevailed for most of human existence. So, how closely does our world today follow the trajectory plotted a decade earlier? Reading the first chapter now, and counting the things which have since become ordinary, is startling.
By Jack Elliot Marley9 years ago in Futurism
Outrun Stories #22
Hope’s a funny kind of pain. I mean, in comparison to everything else it holds its own. You can be bruised and battered and hammered into the fucking ground with bullets and bats and fuck, that all hurts like hell, but hoping that it will end. Hoping that something better is coming. Hoping that you’ll get out. That’s a different type of pain all together.
By Outrun Stories9 years ago in Futurism
Robosexuality: The Science Fiction That Predicted Humans Falling In Love With Robots
Twenty years ago, if you would have said that there would be people out there who have robotic girlfriends or digital girls, most people would have laughed. However, nobody's laughing today. The demand for robotic lovers is growing - and companies are legitimately working to give people the robo-lovers they want.
By Ossiana Tepfenhart9 years ago in Futurism
Outrun Stories #21
What the fuck am I doing here, why the fuck did I even take this job? Out of all the jobs in all the cities I end up here with this fucking kid hacking into this rich asshole’s private stash, not my sort of job, but Backstorm isn’t the sort of guy that you just walk away from when he makes you an offer.
By Outrun Stories9 years ago in Futurism
Brutalist Stories #21
A lifetime of preparation coming down to a moment. The training, all the hours, the pain, the suffering that we all had to go through, now all boiling down to this instance, this next step, and if we succeed, the other world, and if we fail, well…
By Brutalist Stories9 years ago in Futurism
In the Author’s Universe: Interview with Author Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood is a poet, a novelist, and an inventor. She was born in Ottawa, Canada in 1939 to Margaret (maiden name Killam), a nutritionist and to Carl Atwood, an entomologist. With her father’s research in entomology, her early childhood was spent deep in the forests of Canada. Always a voracious reader, she knew by the age of sixteen that writing would be her vocation. Atwood graduated in 1961 with a Bachelor’s degree in English from Victoria College in the University of Toronto, and in 1962, received a Master’s Degree from Radcliffe College, Cambridge, MA.
By K.E. Lanning9 years ago in Futurism
Brutalist Stories #20
I have a dream where I’m breathing water, and I’m only ever breathing in. I’m not under water, there’s a mask attached to my face that supplies the water. I breathe in, deep and deeper still, the water flows, down into my lungs and I don’t choke and I don’t breathe out. I just stop. It holds and holds and then it’s gone, then I breathe in again. Only ever in. Only ever water.
By Brutalist Stories9 years ago in Futurism
The Lathe of Heaven Proves Idealists Can Be the Most Dangerous Among Us
I read Poland by James Michener a number of years ago and came to a startling conclusion after reading the chapters on the Nazi Occupation during World War II. I certainly know of the Holocaust and that Hitler wasn’t particularly fond of Poles in general. But I was not aware that his long term goal was to not only eradicate every single Polish person from that country but from the face of the earth. Wow. The question that then arose is how do you get an entire occupying force – especially professional soldiers and officers - to carry out such a definitive and horrific action? Well, if they think they are making the world a better place, it’s easy, and that’s what Nazi indoctrination made them think. In this, I determined that idealists can be the most dangerous among us, and that was what came to me as I watched the 1980 PBS adaptation of Ursula Le Guin’s, The Lathe of Heaven.
By Rich Monetti9 years ago in Futurism
