This is a great blog series in which experts in various fields talk about ideas in science fiction and fantasy. Thought Lisa Cohen might like this one – and also might want to contribute? The blog owner is looking for experts, and I know you know quite a bit about injuries…
Faster-growing, closer to markets, and safer – there are advantages to vertical farm produce, though price is, so far, not one of them.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Europe’s Huge New Vertical Farm http://suhub.co/2tMWK0V
Mysterion is kickstarting their second volume. The first volume was very good, and not what you might expect from a Christian-themed SFF anthology; my review is at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1742617394.
I don’t have anything to submit at the moment, but they’re not open yet, and something may yet come to me. If it does, I’ll be in good company.
Science-positive and at least generally accurate SF. Too much to ask?
Originally shared by David Brin
Revered colleague and friend Nancy Kress offers up wisdom here on whether science fiction does its part to encourage problem solving… or goes for cheap undermining of both science and confidence.
Should we model robot ethics on human ethics? Or should we try to do better than that? And what is “better” anyway?
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
Should Self-Driving Cars Make Ethical Decisions Like We Do? http://suhub.co/2tEQ7xP
Interesting in itself, and with application to worldbuilding. Via Adriel Wiggins.
Originally shared by Jeff Baker
This is a very well-written and interesting article about how DNA is changing our perception of domestication of both plants and animals. I’m wondering if part of the issue with rice in India may be that after domesticated rice was imported from China, if a wild version of rice in India was cross-bred with the Chinese rice. This could have been either intentional or accidental. It is possible that the ancient Indians may have been cultivating a wild rice (and not having domesticated it yet). I don’t know if wild rices in India are/were fertile with the Chinese rice, but, in the Americas, there is some suggestion that maize was crossbred with wild strains of teosinte that were not present in the Balsa River Valley (where maize was first domesticated).
I was completely unaware of how recently rabbits were domesticated (nor why), nor the even more recent domestication of hamsters.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/dna-evidence-rewriting-domestication-origin-stories
Sharing to read later. Their articles are usually good, and I use food in my books already.
Originally shared by Standout Books
Your story doesn’t have to be about food to use it well.
Androids. Huge in Japan?
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
What These Lifelike Androids Can Teach Us About Being Human http://suhub.co/2sMosXS
My Gryphon Clerks series explores some social issues directly, others indirectly, and still others by showing them simply not being issues.
For example: the earlier books just showed men and women being equal in society. No discussion, really; that was just how it was.
Then I got into the politics of gnomes, and decided that they would have a very clear division of labour between male and female gnomes, and (with them being newly freed from service to the dwarves, and interacting more with humans) that this tradition would come into question. Mister Bucket for Assembly explored that. And, of course, ethnic prejudice against gnomes and the ways in which ethnic prejudice plays out, whether the Other is short and pale with pointy ears or… distinguishable in some other way.
My current WIP takes it further: young gnomes are being cast out of their families and having to live on the streets because they refuse to conform to the gendered division of labour. That doesn’t really happen in our society, but parallel things do.
And also in the current WIP, two gnome women are attracted to one another, and that is Not OK in their society, and they have to figure out how to work with that.
So I read this piece by Kay Solo on different approaches to representation with interest.
Originally shared by Kay Solo
tl;dr, there’s more than one way to confront a societal issue in writing, and it’d be nice to see more that doesn’t do so by using real-world prejudices. And at least for me, who often uses books as an escape from real life, I don’t want that stuff following me into what I read. At least not so frequently that I’m still wanting for media without it.
General-purpose hardware that can run software which its creators never thought of is what really makes the smartphone transformative.
How can you take that principle and apply it to a different technology for story purposes?
For example, my novella Gu (http://csidemedia.com/gu) is an extended metaphor of the internet by way of programmable matter.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
Understanding the Real Innovation Behind the iPhone http://suhub.co/2sFjUTd