Showing results by author "David Brin" in All Categories

What may we become? How will we endure? The future is a daunting realm, filled with real and imagined perils. So enter it prepared! Here are vivid tales about possible tomorrows, from the keen eye and colorful pen of David Brin, a modern master of speculative fiction.

Surveillance. It is used by every tyranny to lock in place an uneven arrangement of power. When the mighty know all about you but common folk know little in reverse, then without accountability you can only have despotism, as shown by 6,000 years of recorded history. But new technologies do not have to lock in perpetual Big Brother. The spread of tools like cheap cameras and instant sharing might lead to the antidote against Big Brother. That is, if we learn the lessons taught by both history and science.

Technology has given average humans far more health and wealth and freedom of action than ever. New gifts spill forth at an accelerating pace as the sheer amount that we know rockets beyond our ability to process. This acceleration has some pondering a looming singularity - an approaching time of transition, spurred in part by new kinds of artificial intelligence - that could make the year 2050 as strange to us as a cave dweller would find our modern cities. Are these extrapolations well based?

An unabridged audio collection of the best-of-the-best science fiction stories published in 2015 by current and emerging masters of the genre, edited by Allan Kaster, as narrated by top voice talents.

Historians have long studied how civilizations rise and fall. But today it isn't just social collapse that makes thoughtful people fret but a potential end to everything. From nuclear war to ecological disaster to rocks from the sky all the way to luring unfriendly interest from "others" out there, science has shed light on myriad ways to fail. To tumble back down into entropy. So, want to have some fun listing and weighing all the ways (that we know) the universe could have it in for us?

Nobody speaks much about the Talent, anymore—that aspect of our nature we were asked to give up, for the sake of pity. We gave it up, something precious and rare, for the Lentili. Or did we?

Back when he was still a student, Stan Goldman and his friends used to play a game of make-believe. “How long do you think it would take Isaac Newton to solve this homework set?” they would ask each other. Or, “If Einstein were alive today, do you think he’d bother with graduate school?”

You think you’re going to get me, don’t you? Well, you’ve got another thing coming, ‘cause I’m ready for you. That’s why there’s a forged card in my wallet saying my blood group is AB Negative, and a MedicAlert tag warning that I’m allergic to penicillin, aspirin, and phenylalanine. Another one states that I’m a practicing, devout Christian Scientist. All these tricks ought to slow you down when the time comes, as it’s sure to, sometime soon.

It annoyed Io’s best friend to give birth to a four-kilo cylinder of tightly wound, medium grade, placental solvent filters. For five long months Perseph had kept to a diet free of sugar, sniff, or tobac—well, almost free. The final ten weeks she’d spent waddling around in the Bedouin drapery fashion decreed for pieceworkers this year. And all that for maybe two thousand dollars’ worth of industrial sieves little better than a fabricow might produce!

Let's zoom in to the Internet, that magnificent new world for latter-day explorers, so much more vast than any realm discovered by Columbus or Magellan. Zealous enthusiasts point to how much more knowledge the average person can access, predicting better students, better workers, better minds and citizenship. Pessimists perceive a dumbing down that spread users too thin, resulting in shallowness that could be lethal to politics, to clear thinking. Is Google making us stupid? Let's weigh the evidence.

Perhaps it’s something basic to the nature of late night talk shows, or the topics I’m invited to discuss on radio (space and the future), but there are certain evenings, often when the moon is full, that bring the UFO zealots out in swarms. Collectively and individually, they mob the phone banks, converging to defend the faith, and repulse the big, bad doubter-scientist.

Elvis roams the interstates in a big white Cadillac. It has to be him. Flywheel-bus and commuter-zep riders see plumes of dust trailing like rocket exhaust behind something too fast and glittery for the naked eye. Squint though, and you might glimpse him behind the wheel, steering with one wrist, fiddling the radio dial, then reaching for that always frosty can of beer. “Thank you, honey,” he tells the blonde next to him as he steps on the accelerator.

Physicians swear a Hippocratic Oath whose central vow is “Do no harm.” I wonder—how many other professions might do well to set that goal above all others?

Hands, those strong hands holding her down upon the tabletop...in her pain and confusion, they reminded her of those tentacled sea creatures of fabled days which ola-chan had described when she was little, whose habit it was to drag unfortunate mariners down to a watery doom.

Since the days of Olaf Stapledon, science fiction has been attracted to cosmic themes. The three stories in this section are about the shape, nature and fate of the universe...or universes...reflecting recent concepts which would have been thought scientifically absurd only a decade ago.

It all began when my publisher sent me out on what used to be called a Chautauqua circuit—public seminars and panels and rubber-chicken dinners—to promote my books. That’s when I began noticing something very strange about the way people have started thinking these days.

We survived the transition to a new millennium…when the great digital clock of the common era squeaked, groaned and finally clicked a new digit upon the thousand-year slot. To all the planets and stars, rocks and trees, it was just another day. But none of them love celebrating milestones at the drop of a metaphor. We humans do.

Jason let the flimsy message slip from his fingers, fluttering in the gentle, centrifugal pseudo-gravity of the station apartment. Coriolis force—or perhaps the soft breeze from the wall vents—caused it to drift past the edge of the table and land on the floor of the small dining nook.

It is, fundamentally, a question of balance. Minoru reminded himself as he left the air-flyer and set foot on the island that would be his home for many months. Keeping his stance wide and footsteps close to the ground, he moved cautiously in the insistent, heavy pull of Genji. Balance is vital when exploring a new world.

This section, “Contact,” is devoted to that special, often maligned sub-genre of SF, the think piece. Once upon a time, such tales comprised nearly all of science fiction. An author would ask, “What if?” or “If this goes on?” and head off from there, working out what might result from a given premise.