#speculition

[caregiver-twylas-daycare]

ber gets trowed at u >:) also im doin speculitive evlution an makin a rat-lik creture cuz i like rats :D on of my uncls is nicnamed rat an hes souper cool (i lov rats ther soft an smart!)

Woah! 💨🧸👐🏻😊 hugs🫂 😊👐🏻💨🧸 throwing bear back

Yeah, rats are pretty cool!

[tachyonpub]

Peter Watts’ intense THE FREEZE-FRAME REVOLUTION is the best novella of the year

FILE 770 praises Peter Watts’ THE FREEZE-FRAME REVOLUTION.

It’s clear that the full story of this universe is something which Watts has had in development for at least a decade, because the worldbuilding in the novelettes “The Island” (which won a Hugo in 2010), “Giants” (2013), and “Hotshot” (2014) is solidly intertwined with that of THE FREEZE-FRAME REVOLUTION. And it is a wonderfully-rich, hard science fiction universe, filled with big concepts and unique imagery woven together in a plausible execution.

I was just as blown away by this fantastic story as I have been by all of his other works. THE FREEZE-FRAME REVOLUTION has earned a place at the top of my Hugo Novella nomination ballot next year – and I will be very surprised if I read anything this year to displace it from its Number 1 spot.

SPECULICTION likes the story.

In the end, THE FREEZE-FRAME REVOLUTION is a story that begins a bit ragged, but congeals into a tight climax that, Watts being Watts, addresses the inevitably of humans beating their heads against the very walls that make us human.  The contrast between Chimp (har har) and the human crew is real.  THE FREEZE-FRAME REVOLUTION A quick read, said wobbling at the outset does not last long, allowing the setup to swiftly reveal and resolve itself, making for satisfying reading.

Scott Schlueter enjoys the book.

Intense as a standalone, though part of a larger body. Hard Science fiction, exquisitely character driven, and very interesting / unique journey. Could not put it down until it was completed. Still need to digest the ending, so I am without doubt reading the rest of the Sunflower cycle to give it a new spin.

THE FREEZE-FRAME REVOLUTION engenders two separate REDDIT discussions.

Peter Watts' new novel(la) The Freeze-Frame Revolution is out:

[–]sblinn 6 points 13 days ago

Official publication date appears to be June 12 in the US, with the (already available) Kindle edition listing a June 19 publication date.

[–]sinebubble 4 points 13 days ago

I was able to download it last night and got about 25% in before going to bed. Weird.

[–]doctorbranius[🍰] 4 points 13 days ago

What's it about?

[–]X-51[S] 13 points 13 days ago

Humanity sends out an AI controlled ship with a human crew coming and going out of stasis to build stargates and then you can't really say much more without getting spoilery

[–]punninglinguist 5 points 13 days ago

Same setting as The Island?

[–]X-51[S] 5 points 12 days ago

Yes this is all in the Sunflowers setting

<snip>

[–]shamivr 4 points 13 days ago*

ATTENTION, SPOILER

Does anyone know what the deal is with the red letters? I've got the URL, but don't understand the gene map thing...

[–]sellanra 2 points 13 days ago

mind PMing me what you found? i noticed something was up but im not patient enough to piece them together right now...

[–]demiller 2 points 13 days ago

I'm in the same boat. Noticed, but haven't taken the time to piece it together. Far too absorbed in the story. I think this is my favorite Watts setting.

[SPOILERS] Discussion of 'The Freeze-Frame Revolution' by Peter Watts (and its hidden message):

[–]whywhisperwhy 5 points 6 days ago

Regarding the main work (I haven't had a chance to read Sundays eighth notes yet)-

I thought it was a well-written and enjoyable, and it's a good anchor for the series. I will also say that I wish it had been the first work I'd read in the setting. Mainly, it took a lot of the suspense out when you can guess very early on that the plot is about the 'spores rebellion, which is doomed to failure. Even the twist about the presence of the smart AI felt a bit anticlimactic to me, unfortunately. So it'd still be a highly-rated novella for me, but it didn't cover much new ground, as you said there were a few extra tidbits about the 'spores history and Society, as well as a glance at Eriophora.

In general there just wasn't a lot of new information about the setting, either, although it fleshed out Sunday a bit. Then again, Watts can be a pretty subtle author and maybe I'll need to reread it to really get anything...

[–]sinebubble 6 points 6 days ago

Bingo. The story fleshed out the world a bit, but given what we knew from the future stories, it seemed a bit anti-climatic. Probably best to have been trimmed a bit more and presented as a short story. Or bundled with the rest of the other stories in the series and sold as a book.

And like Siri, this Sunday character seems to just float around. Never really felt like I had a deep grasp on her.

The bit at the end about the additional AI... Paranoid speculation? It does seems like the original designers were waaaay too focused on keeping the mission going and never really wanted it to complete. I think the real plan was to keep the mission wiring the galaxy until heat death.

I'd like to see more situations like the Ahzmundin story where they actually interact with the beings outside the ship. Particularly anything coming through the wormholes.

For more info on THE FREEZE-FRAME REVOLUTION, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Elizabeth Story

[decadentbeatmistress]

{ god crypto is so dumb | the artafishal scarcity not only makes it pretty much inaxessable to all but the wealthy elite but also creates an envirement of infinite deflation which disinsentavizes spending, | completely undermining the concept of a currency and making it just a speculitive investment doomed to eventualy fail unless you get a sucker to buy just before the bubble pops ||

{ god i hate c*pitalism ||

[400mcneillecologies]

Another concept that is a bit more subtle could be utalizing items that exist in the rythum of the every day and seeing how people react when these stay in place and dont move with the citys and urban ecosystem, it looks normal but when these things dont have activation and there own rythyms it disrupts peoples paths and comfortablity in space, i believe this would really communicate how a manifactured beach does effect the ecosystem even if the effects of that isnt obvious. By shifting to this part of my TOC (theory of change) it will have a more tangible and greater effect that being speculitive and creating more assumptions about the way the beach should look. I think its more importiant that people have the knowledge about it before changing the beach and i think that by this instalation and intervention into public space is a new way of designing compared to campaigns and posters or online polls/petitions 

[the-inkfrastructure]

Mission Statement:

Hi! I’m Jessica Betts and I am an author. I focus on thrillers, sci-fi, and good characters finding their darker sides. This account is to keep me accountable because I spend too much time hiding away the amazing stories that I’ve always wanted to share. They’ve never been ‘good enough’ or ‘ready’ or ‘relatable’. I know there are people out there who will love what I’m writing, though, and other writers who have the same style or like the same subjects. These are the people I’m hoping to connect with here. 

In the following months I’ll be focusing on my upcoming Tech Noir Conspiracy Thriller; Trade Secrets. 

I’ll be adding updates on The Horror Of Our Love, an anthology of short stories regarding twisted romances and the downward spiral caused by human relationships.

Finally, I’ll be adding several short stories from my series of stories inspired by prompts found in the Cards Against Humanity cards. Irreverant and unpolished, these stories are my warm-ups that I hope can spark some inspiration for myself, and perhaps for you as well. 

tl;dr: I’m another writer just trying to find my tribe and build my platform. Visit jessicabettsbooks.com if you want to see previous publications or to join my mailing list.  :D

[kendrixtermina]

You know “I hopal for more Opal”. Now get ready for:

I speculite for more Sugilite

[swipestream]

Sensor Sweep: Paperback Fanatic, Ben Bova, Tros of Samothrace, Warhammer

Popular Culture (Men’s Pulp Mags): Justin Marriott and Paul Bishop are two of my favorite pulp culture mavens. (“Pulp culture” is a term I borrowed from the book of that name by Frank M. Robinson and Lawrence Davidson and expanded to encompass both early pulp magazines and pulp art and later magazines, books and movies that have pulpy DNA, such as men’s adventure magazines and action/adventure paperbacks and movies.)

Justin is a publisher of fanzines that focus primarily on mid- to late-20th Century pulp paperbacks, including THE PAPERBACK FANATIC, THE SLEAZY READER, PULP HORROR, and MEN OF VIOLENCE.

  Culture Wars (Lou Antonelli): Once the sci-fi establishment stuffed the ballot box by buying thousands of WorldCon memberships to euthanize the Sad Puppies in the 2015 Hugo vote, it assured the irrelevance of the award.

  Authors (Black Gate): The 1973 Hugo Award for Best Editor went to Ben Bova. This was the first year of the Best Editor Hugo. It has been awarded every year since then, though in 2007 it was split in two, with a Best Editor Award given for Short Form and Long Form editors. This last reflected the fact that the Best Editor was a de facto award for Best Editor Short Form all along. (While I completely agree that “Long Form” editors are tremendously important to the field, and deserve recognition, I still think that the Hugo voters – even people, like me, who are pretty well connected – are not really competent to evaluate Long Form editing.)

      Authors (DMR Books): The other early S&S scribe to really admire Mundy was Fritz Leiber. As he said in his glowing tribute to Mundy, “The Glory of Tros”:

“Talbot Mundy’s Tros of Samothrace is one of the half-dozen novels I have re-read most often in the course of my life, or rather during the thirty-eight years since I first devoured it. Such books inevitably become part of our lives, closely interwoven with all of our thoughts and actions…”

      Fiction (Track of Words): While it carries on the naming convention started with the Age of Sigmar anthology Gods & Mortals, for which you can read my review here, Lords and Tyrants is a slightly different beast in that its 16 Warhammer 40,000 short stories have all been previously released as standalone e-shorts. I’ve read and reviewed all of these stories individually on Track of Words, and while I would love to kick back and re-read most of these, I just don’t really have time to do so.

      Authors (Kairos): Most readers of this blog will have heard by now that science fiction grand master Gene Wolfe passed away last week. If you just wandered in out of the rain, you may not have heard of him.

  Authors (The Federalist): Science fiction writer Gene Wolfe died on April 14 at the age of 87. Even though I consider it one the greatest science fiction novels ever written, I taught Wolfe’s The Shadow of the Torturer (1980) for only one term, back when I was teaching my Introduction to the Literature of Fantasy and Science Fiction class. Like The Sound and the Fury and Swann’s Way, both of which it resembles in ways, it’s a hard book to teach to a general undergraduate class. And Shadow is one of the most accessible of Wolfe’s novels.

  Sherlock Holmes (Factor Daily): The Science-Fictional Sherlock Holmes containing a total of seven stories, each a science fictional pastiche of Sherlock Holmes, and an introduction – ‘Sherlock Holmes and Science Fiction’ – by the mystery writer Anthony Boucher and writer of many radio dramas featuring the detective. Two of the stories featured August Derleth’s detective Solar Pons, a character inspired by and based on Sherlock Holmes.

  J. R. R. Tolkien (Black Gate): The fragment begins in Pen-arduin, a suburb of Minas Tirith — indeed, the towers of the White City are descried across the waves of the Anduin River, upon whose banks the town is built. Our perspective character, Borlas, who once served as “the first Captain of the Guard of Prince Faramir,” says aloud one eventide in his garden in June, “Deep indeed run the roots of Evil.”

  Robert E. Howard (Black Gate): “Red Nails” happens to be one of this writer’s favourite Conan stories, of that particular length, along with “People of the Black Circle” and “The Black Stranger” (which REH also wrote as a Black Vulmea pirate yarn, “Swords of the Red Brotherhood”).

          Gaming (Speculition): I think it’s fair to say ninjas are a fascination of the West. Silent, acrobatic killers, masked, and wielding a variety of neat weapons and tools, they appear in all forms of media: books, movies, comics, tv, and beyond. And they are perfect for video games. From the early 2D action-platformer Ninja Gaiden to Sub Zero, Scorpion, and Reptile in Mortal Kombat, Shinobi 3D to all the games which feature the famous mutant, pizza-devouring turtles, ninjas have been captured in a variety of forms.

  Comic Books (Porpor Books Blog): After finishing ‘James Warren: Empire of Monsters’, I did some additional online digging into the circumstances of the lawsuit filed by Bill DuBay’s nephew Ben DuBay against Stephen King.

  Fiction (Vintage Pop Fictions): The Saint’s Getaway was originally published in 1932 as Getaway, although two earlier versions of the story appeared in Thriller magazine earlier that year.

Simon Templar, his beloved Patricia Holm and his pal Monty Hayward are enjoying a well-earned holiday in Innsbruck. They are lying low, or at least are supposed to be lying low, after their previous adventure

      RPG (Goodman Games): We are thrilled that our Original Adventures Reincarnated line has been such a big hit. The fan reception to Into the Borderland and The Isle of Dread has been nothing short of amazing. And at Gary Con we announced the next volume in the series, Original Adventures Reincarnated #3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.

    Sensor Sweep: Paperback Fanatic, Ben Bova, Tros of Samothrace, Warhammer published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

[tachyonpub]

Get Bruce Sterling’s provocative, entertaining PIRATE UTOPIA  for only $1.99!

Bruce Sterling’s sly, smart, and subversive PIRATE UTOPIA is a Kindle Daily Deal for Monday, February 11.

For today only, the ebook is available for just $1.99!

A Kirkus 9 Great Books to Round Out 2016

An io9 16 Must-Read Science Fiction and Fantasy Books for November

A Speculition Best of 2016

A Village Voice Must-Read

2016 Locus Recommended Reading List

Who are these bold rebels pillaging their European neighbors in the name of revolution? The Futurists! Utopian pirate-warriors of the tiny Regency of Carnaro, the unlikely scourge of the Adriatic Sea. Mortal enemies of communists, capitalists, and even fascists (to whom they are not entirely unsympathetic).

“Fritz Lang directing Buckaroo Banzai.” —Locus

The ambitious Soldier-Citizens of Carnaro are lead by a brilliant and passionate coterie of the perhaps insane. Lorenzo Secondari, World War I veteran, engineering genius, and leader of Croatian raiders. Frau Piffer, Syndicalist manufacturer of torpedos at a factory run by and for women. The Ace of Hearts, a dashing Milanese aristocrat, spymaster, and tactical savant. And the Prophet, a seductive warrior-poet who leads via free love and military ruthlessness.

Fresh off of a worldwide demonstration of their might, can the Futurists engage the aid of sinister American traitors and establish world domination?

Original introduction by Warren Ellis

Cover, illustrations, design, and design notes by John Coulthart

Afterword by Christopher Brown

Interview with Bruce Sterling by Rick Klaw

[STARRED REVIEW] “Cyberpunk progenitor Sterling’s alternate history novella is bizarre, chock-full of famous people in improbable situations, and wildly entertaining, even when the world-building seems to go a little off the rails. Lorenzo Secondari, a veteran of the recently ended Great War and forever changed by it, is the head engineer of the titular utopia, the Italian free state of Fiume. He and his compatriots build flying boats and fight communism while dealing with American secret agents, including Harry Houdini and Howard Lovecraft (who’s now working as Houdini’s publicity agent after going into advertising). Hitler died saving another man’s life in a bar fight, Wilson was poisoned, and Mussolini’s been disabled by a pair of bullets aimed “where a man least likes to be shot,” so the Europe in which Secondari is attempting to create his radio-controlled airborne torpedoes and other gizmos is already massively different from ours. An introduction by Warren Ellis and an interview with Sterling sandwich the novel, both bearing an air of false gravitas, but the actual story is wacky and fun what-if-ing at its finest.” —Publishers Weekly

[STARRED REVIEW] “Noted sci-fi maven and futurologist Sterling (Love Is Strange, 2012, etc.) takes a side turn in the slipstream in this offbeat, sometimes-puzzling work of dieselpunk-y alternative history. Resident in Turin, hometown of Calvino, for a dozen years, Sterling has long been experimenting with what the Italians call fantascienza, a mashup of history and speculation that’s not quite science fiction but is kin to it. Take, for example, the fact that Harry Houdini once worked for the Secret Service, add to it the fact that H.P. Lovecraft once worked for Houdini, and ecco: why not posit Lovecraft as a particularly American kind of spook, “not that old-fashioned, cloak-and-dagger, European style of spy,” who trundles out to Fiume to see what’s what in the birthplace of Italian futurism-turned-fascism? Lovecraft is just one of the historical figures who flits across Sterling’s pages, which bear suitably futuristic artwork, quite wonderful, by British illustrator John Coulthart. Among the others are Woodrow Wilson and Adolf Hitler, to say nothing of Gabriele D’Annunzio and Benito Mussolini. “Seen from upstream, most previous times seem mad,” notes graphic novelist Warren Ellis in a brief introduction, but the Futurist project seems particularly nutty from this distance; personified by Lorenzo Secondari, a veteran of World War I who leads the outlaw coalition called the Strike of the Hand Committee in the “pirate utopia” of the soi disant Republic of Carnaro, its first task is to build some torpedoes and then turn them into “radio-controlled, airborne Futurist torpedoes,” not the easiest thing considering the technological limitations of the time. A leader of the “Desperates,” who “came from anywhere where life was hard, but honor was still bright,” Secondari and The Prophet—D’Annunzio, that is—recognize no such limitations and discard anything that doesn’t push toward the future. So why not a flying pontoon boat with which to sail off to Chicago, and why not a partnership with Houdini to combat world communism? A kind of Ragtime for our time: provocative, exotic, and very entertaining.” —Kirkus

“A fantastic, comical, alternate historical dieselpunk affair … filled with astonishing characters, fine dialogue, and an abundance of ideas and is packaged with John Coulthart’s cool Futurist-Constructivist-inspired graphics, an introduction by graphic novelist Warren Ellis, and an interview with the author.” —Booklist

“Quite brilliant.” —Michael Swanwick, author of The Dragons of Babel

“Between 1920 and 1924, the Free State of Fiume was a real-world “pirate utopia,” an ungoverned place of blazing futurism, military triumphalism, transgression, sex, art, dada, and high weirdness. In Bruce Sterling’s equally blazing dieselpunk novella Pirate Utopia, the author turns the same wry and gimlet eye that found the keen edges for steampunk’s seminal The Difference Engine to the strange business of futurism.” —Cory Doctorow, Boingboing

“Pirate Utopia is a rollicking, full-bodied, intelligent satire of a country that might have been a world player, had not events conspired against it in real life.” —Strange Alliances

“An alternate history clusterfuck of brilliant, whacky world-building and hilarious, bizarre characters.” —LitReactor

“A wild satire about serious issues. Sterling’s wonder-romp is perfectly matched by Coulthart’s superb designs. The best of their brilliant generation, Sterling and his collaborator have produced a book to treasure. Bravo!” —Michael Moorcock, author of the Elric of Melniboné series and The Whispering Swarm

“Spiky, provocative, drenched in his trademark wit, Sterling delivers us a brilliant and surprising jolt of vividly rendered counter-factualism.” —Alastair Reynolds, author of Revenger and the Revelation Space series

“Imagine if Hunter S. Thompson traveled in time to the Great War in order to write The Futurist Manifesto and you’d come a little closer to envisioning the surreal, madcap—and yet almost entirely factual! —adventure that is Bruce Sterling’s Pirate Utopia. It is sly, smart, and subversive—and also very, very funny.” —Lavie Tidhar, author of Central Station and A Man Lies Dreaming

“Satirically glamorous, Bruce Sterling’s Pirate Utopia captures a comically refined view of the proceedings as only Bruce Sterling can…delightful…engaging…a visual treat.” —Speculiction

“Pirate Utopia may seem to be about an ancient and almost forgotten struggle between Italy and Yugoslavia, but its themes are as relevant as this year’s presidential politics.” —Locus  

For more info on PIRATE UTOPIA, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover and illustration by John Coulthart