Thursday, April 19, 2012

Brian David Johnson (ed)'s "The Tomorrow Project" (anthology, free): Annotated table of contents & review

Cover of short story anthology The Tomorrow Project, edited by Brian David Johnson
Entire anthology is online at Intel. Individual stories - both text & MP3 versions - are also online at Intel.
Caution: Intel page linked has been behaving erratically today; several links returned 404. Links with individual stories below also have been extracted from this page, & at least text links seem to be working at the time of this post. Say your prayers before clicking the links!

Editor is an Intel employee, cover says "Presented by Intel", & editor informs us that "All four stories in this collection are based on technologies Intel is currently developing in our labs." So presumably near future science fiction. All are also ... sort of ... geeky, with emphasis more on technology than plot.

Table of contents.

List below is in order of my preference, best first.
  1. [ss] Scarlett Thomas' "The Drop" (B); download text/MP3: Romance in an even more gadgety near future.
  2. [ff] Markus Heitz's "The Blink of an Eye" (B); download text/MP3: A description of the ultimate smart house...
  3. Ray Hammond's "The Mercy Dash" (B); download text/MP3: Future of wearable, mobile, & car computers. Story is about a couple's need to reach a hospital several hundred kilometers away as quickly as possible in a car.
  4. Douglas Rushkoff's "Last Day of Work" (B); download text/MP3: First we reach singularity - machines improve by themselves. Then plenty - machines are still servile. Then nirvana - transformed to some non-material state, with a consciousness blended with rest of mankind.

    Full of a lot of modern jargon.
First published: 2011?

1 comments:

kevin patterson said...

There is another, more recent Tomorrow Project (Seattle) anthology also posted to the site with contributions from Will.i.am, Douglas Rushkoff, and Corey Doctorow and talented amateurs. Same deal, it's free.