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With articles and travelogues, short stories and speculations, Arc’s publications address the future, prepare for it, and even dare to predict it.
This is going to be quite a ride. We don’t know where we’re going, and we don’t know how we’ll get there. There are no maps, the brakes don’t work, the driver’s blind and the doors have no handles. No matter how detailed our plans, they will always be confounded. No matter what we expect, we will always be wrong. The future holds all the jokers. The future always wins.
On the other hand, we have plenty of fuel: our visions, ideas, dreams and speculations come from the very best in the business. Godfather of cyberpunk-turned-design guru Bruce Sterling turns the futurology business inside out, Paul Graham Raven performs ghost-dances with the collapsonomics crowd, Simon Ings chases the devil through the global shipping container system, and Sumit Paul-Choudhury embraces a world (almost) without consequences. Alastair Reynolds and Stephen Baxter set a high bar for Arc’s fiction - one ably cleared by Margaret Atwood and Hannu Rajaniemi; then the incorrigible M. John Harrison, steals the bar and makes some sort of nest with it.
Also in The future always wins: Adam Roberts finds the stillness at the centre of science fiction’s storm; Simon Pummell curates a new kind of dreamtime; and Leigh Alexander applauds as her favourite games take to the Cloud.
CONTENTS
EDITORIAL: Welcome to the future
Simon Ings and Sumit Paul-Choudhury
FORWARD: The object of posterity’s scorn (+)
Bruce Sterling
SHORT STORY: A Journey to Amasia (+)
Stephen Baxter
UNRELIABLE NARRATOR: Alien Evasion (+)
China Miéville
SHORT STORY: Bearlift (+)
Margaret Atwood
PRESENT TENSE: Breaking the fall (+)
Paul Graham Raven
SHORT STORY: In Autotelia (+)
M. John Harrison
UNEVENLY DISTRIBUTED: Sir John Schorne’s Devil (+)
Simon Ings
PRIOR ART: What hpapnes fi it atclluy wroks?
Sumit Paul-Choudhury
SHORT STORY: Topsight (+)
Hannu Rajaniemi
THE TOMORROW PROJECT: Making The Future
Justin Mullins
TEXTS: Three Surprising Theories About Science Fiction (+)
Adam Roberts
GAMES: Three Ways To Play The Future (+)
Leigh Alexander
SPACES: Three Sorties On Dreamland (+)
Simon Pummell
SHORT STORY: The Water Thief (+)
Alastair Reynolds
