@prologic@twtxt.net yep for sure. The part about concentrating too much power and reliance on the wealthy elite also resonated with me. Seems a good way to potentially end up in one of those dystopian futures you usually see in fictions where massive corporations have too much power and control over people.

@xuu@txt.sour.is a Star Wars series, eh? Never been a fan. I am Trekkie instead; it comes across as more science fiction, less fantasy. Still, I would see it if only we had Disney+. 😩

@aelaraji@aelaraji.com I’ve only seen the first two episodes so far. S7E01 was just barely watchable for me, it’s way too realistic. This is supposed to be fiction, not a documentary! 😂

I realise now that the referred post might just be fiction. I am slow Ferengi these days. LOL.

Recent #fiction #scifi #reading:

• The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa. Lovely writing. Very understated; reminded me of Kazuo Ishiguro. Sort of like Nineteen Eighty-Four but not. (I first heard it recommended in comparison to that work.)

• Subcutanean by Aaron Reed; https://subcutanean.textories.com/ . Every copy of the book is different, which is a cool idea. I read two of them (one from the library, actually not different from the other printed copies, and one personalized e-book). I don’t read much horror so managed to be a little creeped out by it, which was fun.

• The Wind from Nowhere, a 1962 novel by J. G. Ballard. A random pick from the sci-fi section; I think I picked it up because it made me imagine some weird 4-dimensional effect (“from nowhere” meaning not in a normal direction) but actually (spoiler) it was just about a lot of wind for no reason. The book was moderately entertaining but there was nothing special about it.

Currently reading Scale by Greg Egan and Inversion by Aric McBay.

Hello twtxt! I’m James (or @falsifian@www.falsifian.org). I live in Toronto. Recent interests include space complexity, simple software, and science fiction.

Art is not the medium.

The medium can be material or conceptual, permanent or fleating, truthful or fictional, of human, animal, or artificial origin.

Art is the reconveyance of human emotion or experience to another via some medium.

the bright sessions. a science fiction podcast [[https://www.thebrightsessions.com/season-one]] #links

Grether Archive https://themanofstone.com/random/science_fiction_generator

Interactive Fiction https://www.eblong.com/zarf/if.html

Science Fiction | Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/mickythepixel/sets/72157616819585543

Robert Heinlein and the Harsh Politics of Science Fiction | Leaping Robot Blog | Patrick McCray http://www.patrickmccray.com/2013/09/12/robert-heinlein-and-the-harsh-politics-of-science-fiction/

I wrote an essay about folk horror as seen as a subgenre of speculative fiction, on May Day of 2017: https://modernmythology.net/folk-horror-as-speculative-sociology-c1e24d0c106?source=friends_link&sk=1573bafd20abaf410c71c44a472c1d85

Lessons learned: writing really long fiction - Charlie’s Diary http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2019/03/lessons-learned-writing-really.html

“Before it was a particular kind of story or plot, science fiction was a way of thinking about and interacting with emerging media.” https://manifold.umn.edu/read/the-perversity-of-things-hugo-gernsback-on-media-tinkering-and-scientifiction/section/71ba6e6b-b4b2-40a2-bdb1-af133fc6b93b

It looks like OpenAI has announced their marginal progress on the coherence problem in narrative prose generation in the most clickbaity possible way again: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47249163 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/feb/14/elon-musk-backed-ai-writes-convincing-news-fiction

Masters of Science Fiction is actually pretty good if you can get over the extremely post-9/11 vibe, the use of the Star Trek Voyager font everywhere, & the ‘hosting’ being somebody using the Hawking synth to speak a line after every episode

List of vampire traits in folklore and fiction - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_vampire_traits_in_folklore_and_fiction

Interactive Fiction http://electronicbookreview.com/essay/interactive-fiction/

Making Interactive Fiction: Branching Choices - sub-Q Magazine https://sub-q.com/making-interactive-fiction-branching-choices/

Hopepunk can’t fix our broken science fiction. https://slate.com/technology/2019/01/hopepunk-cyberpunk-solarpunk-science-fiction-broken.html

Telling the China Story: The Rise and Rise of Chinese Science Fiction | FactorDaily https://factordaily.com/china-science-fiction/

Email icon https://www.topic.com/cory-doctorow-how-writing-fiction-can-influence-the-future

Paris Review - Don DeLillo, The Art of Fiction No. 135 https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1887/don-delillo-the-art-of-fiction-no-135-don-delillo

Fan fiction site AO3 is dealing with a free speech debate of its own - The Verge https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/8/18072622/fanfic-ao3-free-speech-censorship-fandom

Truth as a Vehicle for Enhancing Fiction, Fiction as a Vehicle for Discovering Truth | http://dreamcafe.com/2018/11/19/truth-as-a-vehicle-for-enhancing-fiction-fiction-as-a-vehicle-for-discovering-truth/

William Gibson: Technology, Science Fiction & the Apocalypse - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dlvle5YBv4

Sole and Despotic Dominion: Fiction - Reason.com https://reason.com/archives/2018/11/17/sole-and-despotic-dominion

Hot take: science fiction movies are extremely rare. Most films that are sold as science fiction are actually action-adventure with fantasy elements that are coded as scientistic.

Curveship: Interactive Fiction + Interactive Narrating https://curveship.com/

Science Fiction Is Not Social Reality - Motherboard https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/43pxjd/science-fiction-is-not-social-reality

How to Teach Computer Ethics through Science Fiction | August 2018 | Communications of the ACM https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2018/8/229765-how-to-teach-computer-ethics-through-science-fiction/fulltext

“The Daemon Lover” by Shirley Jackson | Literary Fictions https://literaryfictions.com/fiction-1/the-daemon-lover-by-shirley-jackson/

Why You Should Read Fiction http://nautil.us/issue/65/in-plain-sight/why-doesnt-ancient-fiction-talk-about-feelings-rp

Neal Stephenson demonstrated that people will read (and love) infodumps so long as they’re funny or fun to read. In other words: infodumps in fiction are fine so long as the author is also an essayist.

Maybe I should start doing writing exercises. You know, write a pastiche of an M.R. James story, and then one in Gibson’s style, a Stephenson version, a Lovecraft, etc. Fiction is pretty hard.

Who Are the Forgotten Greats of Science Fiction? | Tor.com https://www.tor.com/2018/09/04/who-are-the-forgotten-greats-of-science-fiction/

Escaping the Default Future When Writing Science Fiction | Tor.com https://www.tor.com/2018/08/16/escaping-the-default-future-when-writing-science-fiction/

Bad idea of the day: an anthology of human-selected machine-generated fiction and poetry from various codebases, with introductions explaining the generation method, selected on the same lines as a literary anthology

The Maze and the Other in Interactive Fiction – samplereality http://www.samplereality.com/2018/07/17/the-maze-and-the-other-in-interactive-fiction/

365 tomorrows : A New Flash of Science Fiction Every Day https://365tomorrows.com/

Fiction generator post-mortem: comic book generation https://medium.com/@/fiction-generator-post-mortem-comic-book-generation-9df847dd4ada

How to Live in a Dystopian Fiction https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/06/28/how-to-live-in-a-dystopian-fiction/

Science Fiction Writer Robert J. Sawyer: WordStar: A Writer’s Word Processor https://www.sfwriter.com/wordstar.htm

Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy : The Things by Peter Watts http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/

“Science Fiction & Information Law” Essay Competition - IVIR https://www.ivir.nl/science-fiction-information-law-essay-competition/

The “Baccano” of Pulp Fiction: Omake | The Bugblog https://baguburagu.wordpress.com/2018/06/16/the-baccano-of-pulp-fiction-omake/

Making Interactive Fiction: Using Generative Prose - sub-Q Magazine https://sub-q.com/making-interactive-fiction-using-generative-prose/

Flying Saucerers: The Role of Science Fiction and the Occult in the Birth of the UFO Era – The Daily Grail https://www.dailygrail.com/2018/05/flying-saucerers-the-role-of-science-fiction-and-the-occult-in-the-birth-of-the-ufo-era/

Making Interactive Fiction: Using Generative Prose - sub-Q Magazine https://sub-q.com/making-interactive-fiction-using-generative-prose/

How science fiction feeds the fuel solutions of the future | Aeon Essays https://aeon.co/essays/how-science-fiction-feeds-the-fuel-solutions-of-the-future

Some free short stories from Soviet-era science fiction author Anat… https://boingboing.net/2018/02/22/some-free-short-stories-from-s.html

Black Mirror and The History of Science Fiction - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hr9_DcO6G3A

Bad idea of the day: A book-length work of fiction that contains no nouns

Self-Contained Cities: … https://99percentinvisible.org/article/self-contained-cities-hyperdense-arcologies-urban-fiction-utopian-fantasy/

Opening Up Digital Fiction Writing Competition http://openingup.wonderboxpublishing.com/

Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy : A Series of Steaks by Vina Jie-Min Prasad http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/prasad_01_17/

The Interactive Fiction Competition https://ifcomp.org/

GitHub - eykd/plottoxml: Plotto—A new method of plot suggestion for writers of creative fiction by William Wallace Cook, 1867-1933 https://github.com/eykd/plottoxml

Boffin rediscovers 1960s attempt to write fiction with computers • The Register https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/29/ibm_1960s_story_writing_software/?mt=1504125155672

The Surprising Things Statistics Tell Us About Fiction | The New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-surprising-things-statistics-tell-us-about-fiction

More science fiction can help us create a better tomorrow. http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2017/06/more_science_fiction_can_help_us_create_a_better_tomorrow.html