{"id":3462,"date":"2010-11-27T08:24:23","date_gmt":"2010-11-27T13:24:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.starshipnivan.com\/blog\/?p=3462"},"modified":"2019-12-15T17:25:59","modified_gmt":"2019-12-15T22:25:59","slug":"rises-and-falls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/?p=3462","title":{"rendered":"Rises and Falls"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>As is common with me, things have once again come in groups.\u00a0 In addition to the acceptance of The Wind Harp<\/a>,<\/em> a book has just come out with a tiny contribution from me.\u00a0 It is The Rough Guide to the Future<\/em><\/a> by biochemist, science historian and science writer Jon Turney.\u00a0 The book surveys new technologies and their impact on humanity and the planet, and includes the hopes, fears and predictions of “fifty of the world’s leading futurologists and scientists” (blush!)\u00a0 Here’s<\/a> Jon’s introduction to it, and here’s my contribution:<\/p>\n

Highest hopes:<\/strong> In decreasing order of likelihood, that we will conquer \u2013 or at least tame \u2013 dementia, which will make the increase in average life expectancy individually worthwhile and collectively feasible; that we will pick up an unambiguous SETI signal (search for extraterrestrial intelligence); and that we will decipher the ancient script Linear A and find out that the Minoans were indeed enlightened, if not matriarchal.<\/p>\n

Worst fears:<\/strong> Most of our activities will devolve into inward navel-gazing (\u201csocial\u201d Internet, virtual reality) rather than outward exploration, and our politics (broadly defined) will force all research into applied\/profit mode, doomed to produce results and reagents that will make the long-term survival of the planet and all its species increasingly problematic.<\/p>\n

Best bet:<\/strong> Barring a natural or human-created catastrophe, we\u2019ll muddle along just as before and run out of resources and lebensraum before we\u2019re able to establish either a sustainable terrestrial footprint or expand beyond Earth.<\/p>\n

Additionally, I will be one of the reviewers of Rise Reviews<\/em>, the brainchild of Bart Leib, the co-founder of Crossed Genres<\/a> <\/em>and Science in My Fiction<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0 As Bart said<\/a> in his blog:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>“I\u2019m pleased to announce that I will soon be launching Rise Reviews<\/strong>, a site dedicated to reviewing quality speculative fiction that <\/em>did not receive professional pay.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is something that I\u2019ve been thinking about for a long time. See, most review sites either only review fiction from professional-paying markets, or take most of what they review from those markets. I don\u2019t hold that against them \u2013 every review site receives FAR more review requests than it could possibly accomplish, and each one has to decide for itself how to narrow down the pile.<\/em><\/p>\n

But the result is that, more often than not, smaller presses which don\u2019t pay pro rates are the ones that get passed over. And that\u2019s what Rise Reviews will cover. Many of these publishers produce excellent quality publications, and I hope that Rise will be able to help bring new writers and smaller presses to the attention of readers.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Rise Reviews<\/em> will be a partial corrective to those who think, \u00e0 la Tangent<\/em>, that only Leaden Era-style speculative fiction (aka boys and their toys<\/a>) deserves to be read and reviewed.\u00a0 And it may give an incentive to independents to start paying in more than copies, even if it’s the proverbial $5 — it will make the works eligible for reviewing in Rise<\/em>.\u00a0 The site will launch January 1, 2011 with a veritable avalanche of reviews across subgenres.<\/p>\n

Images:<\/strong> The covers of The Rough Guide to the Future<\/em> (by Tom Cabot\/ketchup) and the 1st year anthology of Crossed Genres<\/em> (by Nicc Balce<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As is common with me, things have once again come in groups.\u00a0 In addition to the acceptance of The Wind Harp, a book has just come out with a tiny contribution from me.\u00a0 It is The Rough Guide to the Future by biochemist, science historian and science writer Jon Turney.\u00a0 The book surveys new technologies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biology-and-culture","category-science","category-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3462\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}