As you probably know, I’m responsible for the best-kept secret in your favourite weekly professional science magazine beginning with N. Some of you will know the secret – Richard, Jenny, Kristi and Erika all know about it, as does Professor Trellis of North Wales and other people who drop by to offer comments. I refer, of course, notwithstanding inasmuch as which and hereuntofore, to the Futures page – a weekly (very) short SF story, which you can find on the back page, and – for some months now – free on the Nature website. The latest example is here.
You might like to know that Futures has a page on Facebook where you can discuss the column and the stories, and post relevant alerts of your own. As I write, this page has 591 fans. Let’s see if we can make it a round 600 by day’s end. So, saddle up, and let’s do something zany like charge the Russian guns. The 600th fan will get his or her head blown off be received into the Grand Order of the Unicycling Girrafe.
Sorry, Henry, don’t do Facebook. Is there a Futures Twitter feed? Can you compress summaries into 140 characters?
/unhelpful
GOUG needs an E.
It’s Grand Order OF The Unicycling Girrafe. GOOFTUG.
oh, that is one scary story (sice it’s imho very close to what can happen in the future…. maybe not the flame throwers but the “you’re not allowed to keep unregistred old school seeds without logo on them”).
Excellent. Now, what about those Future compilations that was taked about before… is there another one in the works? or rather, in the Future?
There are no immediate plans for a second anthology. Which in some way is a relief. You’d think that putting out an anthology is as easy as peasy – just reprint some old stories and put a cover around them. Alas, no – the legal and contractual issues can be an utter nightmare. The last one was quite enough hard work on top of a regular job. Without the expert advice from the publisher (Tor) and NPG’s in-house publishing and legal mavens, I’m sure I’d have gone dribblingly insane.
ah, the famous “legal contracts that need signatures etc”. I know. I guess I’ll cozy up with the old one and read the new ones as “singles”
That reminds me, I need to finish a story that I started writing about a year ago. It may very well be crap, but I won’t know for sure until I submit it for Croxeditorial review, will I?
The one that was deemed worthy fits nowhere on the university eCV. Which says more about the eCV system than it does about Futures, I’m sure.
No Facebook for me either, sorry.
I’d love to see it!
Kristi, I have one in extremely early draft format, i.e. shorthand scribbles in a notebook. It will most likely be complete crap, since it’s my first attempt at fiction since high school!
Henry, I <3 Futures, I read it every week. My only problem with it is that it's very hard to pick out in the Nature Table of Contents RSS feed. It used to be easy, because it was the last item in each week's feed, but not any more. I always try to open up the link that I think corresponds to Futures, but I still sometimes miss it. Any chance of getting the word "FUTURES" into each story's RSS feed title, for ease of identification?
Thanks, Cath. I shall pass your comment on to the Grand Mekon.
BTW, I’m enjoying that CD you sent. Yiddish rap. That’s new.
Thank you muchly!
Glad you’re enjoying the CD! I thought you might like the Socalled stuff – it’s my favourite of all the new music I’ve found in the last year or so. He’s from Montreal, which (as I’m sure you know) has a large Jewish population, and (according to Wikipedia) recently put on a concert called “Hip Hop Hanukkah” in Toronto.
sorry, my last comment made no sense. The rapper Socalled put on the concert in Toronto. Montreal did not put on a concert in Toronto.
The sibling and I have something standing at around 850 words that should be finished by the weekend for the Croxeditorium to have a laugh over. I’m not keeping my hopes up, but poor sibling doesn’t handle rejection well…
oo er missus.
Bless TiddlesMinor. I told him i was having trouble getting my thoughts around something in our story; his repsonse:
>> All I’m saying is you need to use that geek mind you’ve been given for
>> something useful!
>> Those other science geeks need to know they can be bettered by the
>> working man.