You’ll find the introduction to this series here. This post looks at Banking. Money, cash that is, will probably disappear in time. Currencies may also become a thing of the past when most transactions are completed online. What effect would such changes have on the banking industry and the customer’s need and experience of it? …
Continue reading Futuristic Fiction: #Research for #Writers, Part 9, Banking.
You’ll find the introduction to this series here. This post looks at Authority. Most dictionary definitions of authority include references to legitimacy, but modern usage incorporates, and indeed often prefers, the more pejorative definition including the abuse of power. Authority, originally an attribute of tribal leaders, later taken over by various religious organisations, and eventually …
Continue reading Futuristic Fiction: #Research for #Writers, Part 8, Authority.
Free photo 16872076 © SaÅ¡a Prudkov - Dreamstime.com You’ll find the introduction to this series here. This post looks at ‘Art’. What art is can’t be defined adequately in a post of this type, and that isn’t the purpose of this piece anyway. Let’s, for the sake of this small post, decide that art is …
Continue reading Futuristic Fiction: #Research for #Writers, Part 7, Art.
A neighbour's pet dog. You’ll find the introduction to this series here. This post looks at ‘Animals, as Pets’. Bet this’ll prove a contentious post: people often treat their pets with more love and care than they do their children and siblings. As someone who’s had pets as varied as goldfish, rabbits, and dogs, I’ve …
Continue reading Futuristic Fiction: #Research for #Writers, Part 6, Animals, as Pets.
https://www.piqsels.com/en/public-domain-photo-jcurz/download  You’ll find the introduction to this series here. This post looks at ‘Artificial Intelligence’. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an area still under development and, in common with almost all new technologies, it has an undefined future. This makes it both a dream and a nightmare when it comes to science fiction. Several big names …
Continue reading Futuristic Fiction: #Research for #Writers, Part 5, AI.
Photo Credit: https://www.needpix.com/photo/1877200/ You’ll find the introduction to this series here. This post looks at ‘Agriculture’. Why do we farm, and produce food the way we do? There’s a long history of human agricultural activity going back around 10,000 years. In the past, in many cultures, the majority of the population was involved in creating …
Continue reading Futuristic Fiction: #Research for #Writers, Part 4, Agriculture.
If you want to read the introduction to this series, you’ll find it here. This post looks at ‘Advertising’. Why advertising? Who does it benefit? How will future advertising be presented? How will it look, feel, sound? At present, advertising, marketing, promotion, call it what you will (they’re all methods of persuading people to buy), …
Continue reading Futuristic Fiction: #Research for #Writers, Part 3, Advertising.
Photo by Vanessa on Unsplash This is a series on writing futuristic fiction, research in pursuit of facts, and questions asked to make ‘predictions’ as accurate as possible. A novelist and short story writer, I always start tales with characters, since character-driven stories best present the narrative. Most stories also have one or more themes under exploration. It’s …
Continue reading Futuristic Fiction: #Research for #Writers, Part 2, Activism.
320 pagesGlobal Warming and Ecology/Ecological Pollution/Higher Education in Geography. Subtitled, The Next 100,000 Years of Life on the Planet, this book takes the view of that future as seen through the eyes of a paleoecologist, a term so new it doesn’t even appear in my edition of my usual go-to dictionary, the SOED. It describes …
Continue reading Our Future Earth, by Curt Stager: #BookReview.
194 pagesFiction An interesting and relatively unusual approach to the novel, this story uses the format of first-person narrative from the point of view of a young boy, alternating with the emotionally charged diary entries the same person makes as the father of a young girl suffering from leukaemia. The contrast between the carefree and …
Continue reading Childish Ways, by Fran Gabaldoni: #BookReview.
Sometimes a reader truly ‘gets’ our work. Even less rarely, that reader takes the trouble to express their admiration and understanding of the piece by posting a review. This common situation is even more true of authors, like me, who tackle controversial themes in their books. Since April of this year, I’ve been posting daily …
Continue reading The Beauty of the #Book Review
362 pagesSatire Fiction/General Humorous Fiction/Humour Humour is so personal. What makes one person laugh can make another frown or fail to respond at all. I’ve no wish to put readers off, but this book, included in the ‘humour’ genre, didn’t tickle my laughter muscles, I’m afraid. That doesn’t mean it will fail to stimulate yours. …
Continue reading National Cake Day in Ruritania, by Mark P. Henderson: #BookReview.
Poetry is such a varied medium that a reader approaches any work with cautious curiosity. What will this piece say, will it be formal, contemporary, or simply chopped prose? The very fact that Calibna prefers his Junk Talk Poet handle may well put off a number of potential readers due to the propensity to pre-judge. …
Continue reading Grenade Rain Dance, by Calibna J. Kerr (Junk Talk Poet): #BookReview.
This short story is from the collection in my anthology, Ten Tales for Tomorrow. I present it here for your enjoyment. (If it inspires you to read the rest of the collection, you’ll find links to that at the foot of this post. Enjoy!) Smoke A thin curl of greenish smoke rose from sand ahead, …
Continue reading A Short Story for You.
340 pagesBiological Evolution/Biology/Higher Education of Biological Sciences I came late to this seminal work, published 1986; a somewhat turbulent and formative period in my life. Wishing I’d read it at the time is pointless but nevertheless the case. It requires a special type of academic brilliance, combined with a good deal of experience, to tackle …
Continue reading The Blind Watchmaker, by Richard Dawkins: #BookReview.
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Antidote to the Novel
Stuart Aken 