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2 Science Publishers Delve Into Science Fiction

Posted by timothy on from the parallel-universes dept.

braindrainbahrain writes "Coincidence or conspiracy? Two new science fiction magazines have just been announced and they are both being published by more serious science publications. New Scientist magazine has announced the publication of Arc, 'A new digital magazine about the future.' Arc features such articles as 'The best time travel movie ever made' and 'The future of science fiction, games, galleries — and futurism.' They are advertising new fact and fiction from the likes of Maragret Atwood and Alastair Reynold. The MIT Technology Review has announced the TRSF, dubbed 'the first installment of a to-be-annual "hard" SF collection.' Some authors: Joe Haldeman and Cory Doctorow. As an interesting note, both publications will be printed on paper for the first ('collectable') issue only; all forthcoming ones will be e-books."

17 of 67 comments (clear)

  1. Science publishers always published SciFi by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Science publications have always published science fiction. For example, articles and studies about "Global Warming".

    --Yours,

    Fox News.

  2. Science Fiction growing or dying? by ShooterNeo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    On the one hand, traditional publishing has been dying. No biggie, direct e-publishing is drastically more efficient. Books cost 99 cents to $2.99 (sometimes a buck or two more) and the author makes MORE money per copy sold that they would make with a $15 hardcover. No advances, and the author has to pay for editing out of pocket, but there's solutions to this. Several authors I know of would release a "beta version" of their stories as an ebook, make some money, and pay editors to help them make a cleaned up and improved version.

    Not to mention that you can communicate directly with fans and get feedback immediately, rather than the letter writing days of the past.

    However, I've also read that fantasy as a genre is far more lucrative than science fiction. Lots more sales, hence the reason there seems to be a shrinking number of good science fiction authors.

    Furthermore, the dreams of the past have proven dead. The hopes of the atomic age and space age have turned out to be far more difficult to achieve in reality. Instead, it now looks like the world of the future is going to be far weirder and harder to understand than than we dreamed of. Humans are NOT going to just pack their stuff into spaceships and start colonizing the moons and local planets, then somehow cheat physics and do the same thing at other stars. (that will conveniently have worlds just like earth, with compatible biology and biochemistry but no sentient life)

    In fact, a rational view of other future, one based on the current trajectories of how things are heading, is that human beings will NEVER colonize anywhere else. "Apes in a can" spaceship will never happen. Us short lived jumped up primates are too fragile and too dumb, instead we will bootstrap our way to creating entities that do not have our human weaknesses.

    1. Re:Science Fiction growing or dying? by khallow · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Furthermore, the dreams of the past have proven dead. The hopes of the atomic age and space age have turned out to be far more difficult to achieve in reality.

      Far more difficult than what? Writing a quick pulp fiction book?

      Humans are NOT going to just pack their stuff into spaceships and start colonizing the moons and local planets, then somehow cheat physics and do the same thing at other stars.

      Eh, while I agree that humans aren't cheating physics any time soon (never being more likely), why aren't humans going to "just pack their stuff into spaceships and start colonizing the moons and local planets"? Do you have any evidence for that assertion other than it turns out to be more difficult than some 50s sci fi writers alleged?

      In fact, a rational view of other future, one based on the current trajectories of how things are heading, is that human beings will NEVER colonize anywhere else.

      Uh huh. I assume you've considered such trends as declining costs of putting things into space (a trend operating over decades), declining costs of making reliable things, the human desire to go elsewhere, including into space, and other such things?

      "Apes in a can" spaceship will never happen.

      We have more than half a century of counterexamples.

      Us short lived jumped up primates are too fragile and too dumb, instead we will bootstrap our way to creating entities that do not have our human weaknesses.

      Such as longer lived, smarter humans? Or merely continuing to do difficult tasks with the remarkable intelligence we already have?

      I have good news. You have somehow been transported to a planet that doesn't have the insurmountable problems which you speak of.

    2. Re:Science Fiction growing or dying? by arcite · · Score: 2

      Of course, you realize that NO ONE predicted the impact that the internet would have a scant 30 years ago. A little over 100 years ago NO ONE predicted the impact that intercontinental flight would have, let alone the advanced made with war machines throughout the 20th century. Frankly, I pity your lack of imagination. In the next few years, there will be more space tourists visiting space than there have been professional astronauts in the past sixty years. Things change, some people can predict them, most cannot. I haven't even mentioned advances that are happening in artificial intelligence, Human-machine interfaces, drones, sub-atomic computing, even advances in harnessing energy. The list is endless.

    3. Re:Science Fiction growing or dying? by rbrander · · Score: 2

      I believe his point was that those dreams are economically unachievable, not technically.

      Charlie Stross has made that point more clearly than either of us could:

      http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high_frontier_redux.html
      http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/08/space-cadets.html

      I only read those after I realized it myself - we were enjoying a review of all the episodes of "Firefly" and while I love the show, I was griping about the utter silliness of space travelers in cowboy hats saying "ain't" when it hit me that all my favourite Heinlein novels were pretty much the same deal. Between Planets (Venus), Red Planet (Mars), Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Farmer in the Sky (Ganymede) all made colonizing the solar system sound exactly like being a pioneer on the American frontier.

      Don't crap on us, we're broken up about it, too. But science is also about accepting reality and attempting to imagine what world technology is likely to put us in - and a replay of the colonization of earthly continents is very unlikely, unless you have Larry Niven's Reactionless Drive powered by zero-point energy about to come out of your home lab.

    4. Re:Science Fiction growing or dying? by witherstaff · · Score: 2

      I don't really see us suddenly having a colonized space in a decade, or a hundred years. But I am sure it will happen. Now that you have private companies like spaceX launching into space it doesn't take much imagination to see a few wealthy individuals setting up shop. Once you start being able to mine some asteroids for material easier than on Earth there is an economic reason for it. I forget the book series, but it had the moon colonized because Earth refused to allow nanotechnology to be allowed on it. So people went to the moon or other system locations to live. It won't be like the American Wild West, it will be a slow and boring progression that wouldn't merit a sci fi book or a tv show.

    5. Re:Science Fiction growing or dying? by khallow · · Score: 2

      I don't really see us suddenly having a colonized space in a decade, or a hundred years.

      I don't either. I do see a gradual rather than sudden colonization as possible in a hundred years.

      It won't be like the American Wild West, it will be a slow and boring progression that wouldn't merit a sci fi book or a tv show.

      Like the real world colonization of the New World. I'm not sure where you're going with this. The myths and fictions of historical colonization downplayed a lot of things as well too.

  3. This is an important development by GLMDesigns · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The future is upon us. Changes in technology brings up issues in ethics and politics from cloning to privacy to immortality to fears of an all pervasive police state. What was fiction a few years ago (TV ads in subways, personalized advertising) is now on the verge of being real. Many of us walk around with TVs in our pocket and take it forgranted. Thoughts of how new technology and society mesh used to be the province of science fiction writers. Now it is the province of anyone interested in their lives in the very near future.

    --
    If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
    Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
  4. Good news to me by MDillenbeck · · Score: 2

    I enjoy a good science fiction story as much or even more than science fantasy - the difference? Science fiction is based on our current understanding of science and stays within the realm of possibility. However, both science fiction and science fantasy spur the imaginations of our future innovators, so lets hope the next generation of inventors will be reading these stories (or at least hope they read something, even if it is Harry Potter).

    1. Re:Good news to me by CanEHdian · · Score: 2

      I agree with you there, although this should apply to the physics side of things, not practical barriers. Just because we don't know how to do something now, shouldn't stop a writer from assuming we might know how to do it in the future.

      For instance, the human life span. It's totally possible that this might be extended considerably (all the way up to indefinitely). A 134-year trip (one way) to some far-away destination would no longer require "generation-ships" to do. The business-side of things (how such things might be financed) is of course a whole other matter, but one might assume that these ships are assembled in the asteroid belt by a system semi-autonomous drones and factories, networked together and under the control of an AI using "free" energy from the Sun. A whole lot more believable that "finding" an alien ship under the Antarctic ice, capable of FTL travel.

      --
      When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
  5. News? by Ambitwistor · · Score: 3, Funny

    I thought New Scientist already was science fiction.

  6. Huh? by Hognoxious · · Score: 2

    Arc features such articles as 'The best time travel movie ever made'

    At least until the one based on a true story did will have camed out.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  7. Science Fiction often inspires Science by Poltron+Inconnu · · Score: 2

    There's a long list of scientists that are also science fiction authors. Many of the best and brightest scientists were inspired to become scientists by the fiction they read. Even so, science fiction has long been treated as an unwanted step-child by both the literature and science crowds with neither taking it seriously. It's nice to see serious science magazines recognizing and supporting that important link.

  8. Re:Omni magazine redux? by dwye · · Score: 2

    Say what you will, I miss Omni, goofy pseudo-science and all. It was usually entertaining, as long as you didn't take it too seriously...

    I just read it for the fiction.

    OTOH, I *do* remember reading about GRID (later renamed AIDS) in OMNI well before I did anywhere else. Actually, I think that I read about it before it was named, even.

  9. Looking for ideas? by boddhisatva · · Score: 2

    In the 30-year (or so) old film "Three Days of the Condor", Robert Redford works for a little CIA branch that reads books and magazines looking for ideas. They strike a nerve somewhere and the shooting starts. There's "fantasy" science fiction which is wonderfully imaginative and there is "science" science fiction a la Arthur C. Clarke who described telecommunications and global positioning satellites in the 1950s, Star Trek's "Warp Drive" prompted the idea of the Alcubierre drive which is theoretically but not technologically possible. Of course flying was known to be theoretically possible but not technologically possible until the last century.

    1. Re:Looking for ideas? by khallow · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Star Trek's "Warp Drive" prompted the idea of the Alcubierre drive which is theoretically but not technologically possible. Of course flying was known to be theoretically possible but not technologically possible until the last century.

      Not the same. Flying was known to be technologically possible because we see plenty of things which already fly. Birds, bats, etc have already the technology to fly. But even if they didn't exist, we could come up with models, such as the flying wing or hot air balloon that would strongly indicate that flying was technologically possible.

      The Alcubierre drive is merely not obviously prohibited by our current theoretical understanding of physics. That's a vastly weaker claim.

  10. You apparently haven't read Vernor Vinge by xmark · · Score: 2

    Of course, you realize that NO ONE predicted the impact that the internet would have a scant 30 years ago.

    True Names was published in 1981, which is a scant 31 years ago. Read it first of all to see that someone DID envision the impact of the global internet, and its resultant creation of cyberspace. But more importantly, read it because it is a brilliant example of what science fiction can be.