Paul Levy, University of Brighton

The race is on to bring a jetpack to market. New Zealand-based Martin Aircraft has a jetpack which is due to go on sale this year and US-based JetPack Aviation is working on a more streamlined offering. So aviation junkies with the cash to spare will soon be able to get their hands on what has long been the preserve of science fiction.

Jetpacks follow a long line of sci-fi inspired innovation. E M Forster’s novel The Machine Stops is often credited as a source of inspiration for, or at least a predictor of, the internet. The idea of 3D printing was foreshadowed in numerous books and, most famously, in Star Trek in the guise of “replicators”. Then you have more frivolous ideas such as the self-lacing shoes worn by Mart McFly in Back to the Future, which shoemaker Nike plan to bring out this year.

Visionary and imaginative writing has always been an important source of inspiration for inventors and innovators. But success has been mixed. Continue reading “How sci fi-inspired innovation treads a fine line between dystopia and utopia” →

A roundup of some recent SF and SF-adjacent trailers.

Infinity Chamber, Marjorie Prime, It, Thor: Ragnarok, Justice League, Ready Player One, Blade Runner 2049, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Wonder, Goodbye Christopher Robin, Flatliners, Legend of the Naga Pearls.

Continue reading “Near Future: August/September Movie Trailers” →

New research shows that African wild dogs, bless them, use sneezing to vote.

At least, that’s kind of what it shows. As usual, a few details are finessed in the jump from scientific journal to popular science press …

Continue reading “Led by the Nose” →

Adam Roberts’s 2017 The Real-Town Murders, which features a near future SF take on Hitchcock’s The Birds, is feeling quite timely this evening …

You may have noticed a few changes to the Vector website. Changes may be ongoing for a while. The old Vector has woven its cocoon, but the new one has not quite emerged.

All the older content has been preserved, but some of it has been tucked away. Here is where you’ll find information about the 2010 special publication Twenty Years, Two Surveys. Here you can find still-mostly-live links list associated with a discussion, in the same year, about the under-representation of women in speculative fiction. Torque Control has become the ‘News’ tab you’re reading now. The old open thread is located here.

And speaking of threads: of course, even transitional arrangements can still require serious thought. Here, the long suspension thread is probably to dishearten ants, and the loosely-woven chrysalis is probably to prevent rainwater from pooling. Image credit: Smarter Every Day, still from ‘Nature’s 3D Printer.’ 

Two new editorial elements have been detected in Vector space. As Vector says goodbye to Anna McFarlane and Glyn Morgan, we are joined by Polina Levontin (who boasts both quantity and magnitude!) and Jo Lindsay Walton (who transmits pathogens!) as the journal’s new editors. Anna will remain editor for #285, with Polina and Jo taking over from #286 in early 2018.

Polina Levontin is also an environmental scientist, whose research often explores methods of modelling and analysing  risk, and of synthesising and presenting different forms of knowledge for purposes of supporting decision-making. She has a PhD in Fishing and Fisheries Sciences and Management from Imperial College London, as well as Master’s degrees in Environmental Science, in Algebra and Number Theory, and in Comparative Literature. Polina’s recent SF criticism has focused on the representation of scientists and science in Nigerian speculative fiction.

Jo Lindsay Walton has a Master’s in Social and Political Theory from Birkbeck and a PhD in Creative Writing from Northumbria University. His research within SF studies mostly focuses on economics, particularly the representation of money and alternatives to money in contemporary speculative fiction. He also runs the small poetry press Sad Press and is a director of the Sputnik Awards for SFF.

Applications are now open for the 2017 Science Fiction Foundation Masterclass in Science Fiction Criticism. The 2017 Masterclass, the Eleventh, will take place from Friday 30 June to Sunday 2 July. We are delighted to have once again secured at the Royal Observatory Greenwich as a venue.

Continue reading “2017 Science Fiction Foundation Masterclass in SF Criticism” →