Science Fiction Doesn’t Have to Be Dystopian | The New Yorker

Opinion | It’s 2059, and the Rich Kids Are Still Winning - The New York Times

The New York Times is publishing science-fictional op-eds. The first one is from Ted Chiang on the Gene Equality Project forty years in our future:

White supremacist groups have claimed that its failure shows that certain races are incapable of being improved, given that many — although by no means all — of the beneficiaries of the project were people of color. Conspiracy theorists have accused the participating geneticists of malfeasance, claiming that they pursued a secret agenda to withhold genetic enhancements from the lower classes. But these explanations are unnecessary when one realizes the fundamental mistake underlying the Gene Equality Project: Cognitive enhancements are useful only when you live in a society that rewards ability, and the United States isn’t one.

What Blade Runner is about, and the Narcissist Creator Razor ( 1 Sep., 2017, at Interconnected)

George Lucas, Ted Chiang, Greg Egan, Stanley Kubrick, Tom Stoppard, William Shakespeare, and Ridley Scott are all part of Matt’s magnificent theory that the play is the thing.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are replicants.

Characters look like people, except they exist for only the duration of a movie — only while they are necessary. They come with backstory and memories fully established but never experienced, partly fabricated for the job and partly drawn from real people known by the screenwriter. At the end, they vanish, like tears in rain.

Transreal Cyberpunk Readings

When you’re done listening to my reading of a J.G. Ballard short story, here’s a motherlode of huffduffable sci-fi shorts by Rudy Rucker and Bruce Sterling.

CURRENT FUTURES: A Sci-Fi Ocean Anthology—XPRIZE

A collection of sci-fi short stories about oceans, featuring contributions from Madeline Ashby, Lauren Beukes, Elizabeth Bear, and more.

Arc 1.x/The first year of the future (PDF)

The first hit of Arc is free—a PDF with the a selection of the best sci-fi short stories from the publications first year, featuring China Miéville, Bruce Sterling, and many more.