Category Archives: Thoughts and speculation

Call for Submissions: Prediction, Innovation, & Futures

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I am guest-editing a special issue of Vector, the critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association. We are looking for proposals from academics of all disciplines, and from industry, policy, and practice backgrounds, on the theme of speculative fiction in relation to prediction, innovation, and futures.

We seek contributions that are carefully grounded in research, while also being clear, engaging, and suitable for a broad audience (including non-academics).

Please submit proposals by 5 September 2021; articles will be due by 1 February 2022 – details can be found here.

Tales from the CyberSalon – #2 A New High Street

Events Flash fiction News Thoughts and speculation No Comments

The Crunch is the story I wrote for the CyberSalon event on the future of the high street. It’s one of those stories where the more I researched and thought about the future of our communal spaces, our town centres, the more layers I wanted to include in the story.

But, with only six minutes reading time to play with—well, see for yourself.

The Crunch – now available on Medium.

Smart Health?

Events Flash fiction News Short stories Thoughts and speculation No Comments

Recently, I wrote a story for the first in a CyberSalon series of interdisciplinary, technology and policy investigations through science-fiction storytelling.

The first was on health and it’s worth taking a look; you can read the summary, watch the event and read the stories.

Lost in translation – what has gone wrong in digital health!

Eva Pascoe, chair of CyberSalon, describes the four stories as: “ranging from Robo-Bot for Health Insurance app going tragically wrong (by Jule Owen), a food-whores brothel where people pay vagrants to eat the unhealthy food for them (by Stephen Oram), examining the case of elderly medical surveillance app gone rouge (Britta F Schulte), to being lured into swapping your health data for a rare chance to travel to space (Ben Greenaway).

Take a look, and have a think… what future do you want (to avoid)?