Tag Archives: dystopian

Robots: fact or fiction?

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What do you get when you mix science fiction writers, social scientists and roboticists with an inquisitive audience?

A great event!

I really enjoyed being a part of the whole thing from the initial planning with the Human Brain Project through to visiting the scientists at the Bristol Robotics Lab.

Suitably inspired by all the wonderful robot things at the lab, we writers went away to our respective ‘desks’ and wrote a five-minute story each.

Mine was Eating Robots, which is also the title of my forthcoming collection.

Then, as part of the Bristol Lit Fest, SilverWood Books and Sarah LeFanu hosted Science and Science Fiction: Versions of the Future where we, the writers, read our stories, formed a panel with the roboticists and were quizzed by the audience.

If that’s the sort of thing that interests you take a look at this 5 minute trailer or the full video.

An evening of prosthetic reality

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Prosthetic envy. That was the theme of the Virtual Futures Salon at the end of last month.

Three out of four panellists had prosthetic limbs and were keen to talk openly about what that meant for them. One of them was James A.H. Young who you may have seen on the BBC recently.

They told their stories, pondered and discussed what had led to them having prosthetics, how good their limbs actually are and what the general public’s reaction is like.

Surprisingly, they had stories of people exlaiming how ‘cool’ the prosthetics are and asking how they could get one. To which, of course, there’s a reply which includes, ‘you’ll have to cut a limb off first.’

Luke Robert Mason introduced the evening, referring to Limbo ’90, which is a book I read as part of my research for the evening’s story, Loans for Limbs. It’s a 1950 book by Bernard Wolfe, billed as being the first book to “project the present-day concept known as ‘cybernetics’ to its logical and terrifying conclusion.” It’s well worth a read.

Here’s me reading Loans for Limbs for the first time in public.

Afterwards, some of the audience asked me how to get a written copy; if you join my mailing list before 17 June you’ll get it in the June email a few days later.

If you liked this you might also like the free near-future collection: S{t}imulation, Foodflix and Joined At The Chip.

photo credit: Roboarm via photopin (license)