Asimov's Bicentennial Timeline

Isaac Asimov thought logically in writing fiction, but could he have guessed that nearly 40 years later, the global population would have surpassed seven billion people.

　　It took time, but Andrew had time. In the first place, he did not wish to do anything till Paul had died in peace. With the death of the great-grandson of Sir, Andrew felt more nearly exposed to a hostile world and for that reason was all the more determined along the path he had chosen.

Asimov also took note of the corporate personhood movement that blurred the lines between individuals and collectives, and between man and machine. How can an immortal collective also be an individual, appreciating the same rights?

　　Yet he was not really alone. If a man had died, the firm of Feingold and Martin lived, for a corporation does not die any more than a robot does.

　　The firm had its directions and it followed them soullessly. By way of the trust and through the law firm, Andrew continued to be wealthy. In return for their own large annual retainer, Feingold and Martin involved themselves in the legal aspects of the new combustion chamber. But when the time came for Andrew to visit U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation, he did it alone. Once he had gone with Sir and once with Paul. This time, the third time, he was alone and manlike.

Toward the end of The Bicentennial Man, Asimov imagined that the Earth's population would have reached one billion, one hundred years or more from the story's beginning at the end of the 20th century.

　　U.S. Robots had changed. The actual production plant had been shifted to a large space station, as had grown to be the case with more and more industries. With them had gone many robots. The Earth itself was becoming park like, with its one-billion-person population stabilized and perhaps not more than thirty percent of its at-least-equally-large robot population independently brained.

Aloha From Hell

Richard Kadrey gives insight into an alternate creation story, one far more raw and grity, in his Aloha from Hell, the third installment in the Sandman Slim series:

"You can’t be subtle when you’re dealing with a Kissi, even their leader. And he’s the least psychotic one of the bunch.

　　The Kissi and I have one major thing in common. We shouldn’t exist. We’re both part of God’s Misfits of Nature traveling show. When the Big Bopper created angels at the beginning of time, he fucked it all up. The blowback from conjuring all those angels created both angels and their opposite. The Kissi. They don’t live in heaven with Daddy, but way out in the boiling chaos at the edge of the universe.

　　In their true form Kissi are fish-belly white and have a faint bottom-of-the-ocean-fish glow. They look like a cross between a regular angel and a six-foot-tall grasshopper dipped in wax and left in the sun to melt. If you’ve ever seen one, that’s enough to last a lifetime, and I’ve seen a whole world of them. That was back when I destroyed their Honeycomb Hideout way out in the ass end of Chaosville. Yeah, it’s hard to justify trying to kill off a whole species, but they were collaborating with Mason in his plan to take over Hell and then the rest of the universe. So basically, fuck ’em."

Richard Kadrey ¤ Aloha From Hell

There is so much modern fiction trying to be an instant classic, Richard Kadrey nails supernatural horror right out of the gates (of Hell). He has an ability to maintain a high level of energy and momentum through the Sandman Slim series. Here, in his third in the series, Aloha from Hell, he shows the same energy and timing that makes the series so addicting:

"She gets up. I grab her arm. She twists and tries to sucker punch me. Puts her whole body into it. I don’t try to stop her. I’m faster than any civilian, so she’s moving in exquisite slo-mo. When she’s a few inches from making contact, I lean back slightly and let her fist sail past. Grab the wrist and twist so her arm bends out like a chicken wing and every muscle and tendon in her shoulder feels like it’s going to snap. Carolyn goes down face-first onto the sofa and rolls herself into a little ball, squeezing her aching shoulder. I wait. Eventually, she sits up. There’s a half-finished cigarette in an ashtray on the arm of the sofa. She takes it, puts it between her lips, and starts looking around for matches. I’m still holding the lighter. I hold the flame out to her. She leans forward. I pull the lighter back and she follows a few inches. When she realizes I’m fucking with her, she stops and gives me a dirty look."

The Persistent Optimism of Literary Science Fiction

From The Shoulders of Giamts, Robert J Sawyer posits the far-flung future of humanity, in which governments that use force to control give way to logic and reason in a voluntary society. In his story, colonists start a 1,200 year journey at 1% the speed of light toward a potentially habitable planet, only to be overtaken by subsequent colonists at near-lightspeed. Sort of reinstills the vision that Clarke offered in Childhood's End.

"When the quarantine was over, we did go down to the planet. The temperature was perhaps a little cooler than I’d have liked, and the air a bit moister—but humans adapt, of course. The architecture in Soror’s capital city of Pax was surprisingly ornate, with lots of domed roofs and intricate carvings. The term “capital city” was an anachronism, though; government was completely decentralized, with all major decisions done by plebiscite—including the decision about whether or not to give us another ship."

Published in Galaxy’s Edge Magazine: Issue 1, March 2013

Galaxy’s Edge Magazine

Welcome to the premier issue of Galaxy’s Edge. We’ll be coming around every two months with a mixture of new stories and reprints, reviews and columns. Almost all the reprints will be by very-well-known authors; most of the new stories will be by less-well-known (but not less talented) authors.

　　We’re very proud to be the latest addition to the pantheon of science fiction magazines, which have a pair of histories—one long and glorious, the other just as long but inglorious (and infinitely more interesting).

　　You think not?

　　Let me share some of it with you before the last of us Old Guys (and Gals) pass from the scene and there’s no one left to remember the Untold History of the Science Fiction Magazines anymore.

From Galaxy’s Edge Magazine: Issue 1, March 2013

Neuromancer annd Dead Idols

The voice at the other end of the phone was all charm, from the South by way of Vancouver, B.C.. I took a seat in the lobby of the posh Clift Hotel. I drank coffee, a tall Starbucks' Misto, from a cardboard cup. And I thought about the man I was about to meet...
Gibson. William Gibson. Celebrated novelist. The man who coined the term "cyberspace." Treated like a rock star by Wired. Sent to interview U2 some years back by Details. Recently asked to write about the Net by the New York Times.
At 48, Gibson has just published his fifth novel, Idoru (the Japanese word for idol). And so he is here, in San Francisco for a few days before heading on to the next city. Traveling the book promotion circuit, moving from one first class hotel to another, picked up by a limo and driven from interview to book store, book store to interview. Gibson is not the first to benefit from the '90s concept of author-as-celebrity, but he is, 12 years after the publication of Neuromancer, the novel that made him a star, certainly accustomed to the fine art of late '90s book promotion. "Writers are people who work away in the basement by themselves," he'll tell me shortly. But this, this book promotion thing, "is like being a rock star, only without the parties."

Probably one of the best introductions to an influential work I've read in agea. Gibson is more than a pioneer, he is a visionary, and the future before us is a testament.

The Zeppelin Conductors’ Society Annual Gentlemen’s Ball

So hook yourself up to an airshipStrap on your mask and your knifeFor the wide open skies are a-callingAnd oh, it’s a glorious life! 

—Conductors Recruitment Advertisement, 1890

I really enjoyed this short story about airship conductors in Lightspeed Magazine. The magazine is quickly taking my attention away from the likes of Omni and Analog.