Readers
Rich Horton's Market Summaries:
Summary: Futurismic, 2004
Futurismic is, to quote the site, "a website for people interested in the future and the effects of science and technology on the present." There are three main sections: a blog, consisting of references (with comment) to articles elsewhere on the web; an essay section, consisting of, as you might guess, essays; and a fiction section, which has featured one story per month since May. The founder and webmaster is Jeremy Lyon. Christopher East is the fiction editor. Other contributors include Judith Berman, Tobias Buckell, Alan Lattimore, and Brian Wanamaker.
They featured 8 stories in 2004, consistently focussed on the near future technological and sociological changes. These stories included one short novelette. They totalled just under 40,000 words.
My favorite story was probably Michael Canfield's "Is You Is/Is You Ain't", about a child actor -- that is, someone who was altered to remain in a baby's body thus allowing an extended acting career playing parts like Ninja Baby. Other highlights: Ruth Nestvold's "The Tiresias Project", about a woman scientist who volunteers to be changed (mentally) to a man; and Charles Coleman Finlay's "The Factwhore Proposition", about an online researcher type, and the difficulties his way of life causes for his relationships.
I've quite enjoyed what Futurismic has published so far -- I think it an intriguing online source of fiction.
