This week, Futures is delighted to welcome Andrew Johnston with his story Starless night. Currently based in Kansas, Andrew writes and occasionally photographs squirrels. You can catch up with him on Twitter. Here, he reveals the inspiration behind his latest tale — as ever, it pays to read the story first.

Writing Starless night

The worst job I’ve ever had was at a vineyard on the Kansas–Missouri border. It was back-breaking, dirty work in bad working conditions and often inhospitable weather, but the worst part was the sheer monotony. To pass the time, I made heavy use of the public library’s audiobook collection, going through two or three a week, almost all nonfiction. I’ve heard a lot of people say that they can’t listen to a science audiobook, but they suited me just fine.

That sinister laughter that you can hear is emanating from this week’s Futures story — a cautionary tale by John Cooper Hamilton about physics and a bid for world domination called This big. When he’s not plotting to take over the world, John writes, and you can find out more about his work at his website. Here, he reveals the inspiration behind his latest tale (and an important recipe) — as ever, it pays to read the story first.

Writing This big

This story, a series of jokes, began as an intense, heartfelt debate between myself and a close college friend, a physics student.

Using classic techniques of rhetoric such as analogy, talking quickly and not-properly-following-the-maths, I maintained that subatomic particles are relatively large. My contention that beach-ball-sized neutrinos cause spontaneous human combustion was the lynchpin of the argument.

Many, many years later, my friend is a physicist.

I have This big.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to share the story. I hope it made you laugh, and hope even more it made you groan. But I’d like to think anyone might enjoy contemplating our mad scientist’s ideas. To consider exactly what makes them mad, or what about his way of thinking is enticing.

Everyone should be glad to see a twentieth-century cultural fixture, the blender joke, carried forward to the twenty-first.

Thank you for your patience and attention. Now, as promised:

SHC flambe

Cover bottom of small pan with soy sauce. Add minced daikon and grated ginger, simmer for three minutes. Add split banana and cook until banana softens. Stir brown rice into sauce – should remain soupy – add sake. Warm, ignite and enjoy as savory-sweet accompaniment to any seafood dish.

This week, Futures is delighted to welcome back João Ramalho-Santos with his new story Data. A biologist based in Coimbra, Portugal, João has previously written stories for us called Emancipation, Variants, Manifesto and Invisible. Here, he reveals the inspiration behind his latest tale — as ever, it pays to read the story first.

Writing Data

There are two angles to discuss the writing of Data in my mind. One is very short, has nothing to do with the actual story itself, and doesn’t matter much. But here it is anyway: it was written a good while back, sent out, lost in the ether somewhere, and then accepted in a totally unexpected way. In checking the proofs I read it again as a prodigal story returned, and noted the similarities in thought process to the excellent Black Mirror episode Hang the DJ’, which I saw months after submitting.

At this point readers should dutifully roll their eyes and sarcastically intone “yeah, sure buddy”. Regardless, this could be the aftermath of that type of scenario, the sad demise of one of the very few non-successful matches — with, and that is the second aspect (more) worth discussing, the adding in of a lot of Big Data considerations mostly focusing on biochemical and molecular biology aspects related to health, metabolism and ageing. Projects I am involved in were, as always, part of the actual ‘scientific’ triggers for the story. That and my interest in baseball as the most relaxing thing before ASMR videos, and constant befuddlement at how advanced statistical analysis (sabermetrics) are used almost blindly to manage teams and games. Stay out of football, please.

As all buzzwords in science (some useful, most not and mere gimmicks created for funding or blatantly political purposes — I know, shocking) suddenly everyone I was collaborating with, in all fields, was working the concept of Big Data and analysis of large data sets into their research. Add that to wearable devices that monitor (and can broadcast) all sorts of things in real time, cameras everywhere (check out The Circle by Dave Eggers, don’t bother with the movie), endless clouds of data storage, clear hacking opportunities, and the unending metrics we still cannot shake… To be completely honest, I felt the need to write in some more obviously ridiculous aspects (BDSM, anyone…?), as it seemed that the immediate plausibility index was higher than I usually like… Of course, another way of looking at it is that ridiculous/dangerous aspects almost always result from well-intentioned (or less so) initiatives to ‘help’ people that involve numerical-based reasoning and (now paperless) paperwork.

However, if the European Union ever launches a Marie Sklodowska Curie Action for the Training of Indigent Researchers (on better fundraising/panhandling strategies, sign-writing workshops, finding cheap lodging alternatives, good dumpster-diving practices and NGO assessment), I will officially consider myself a futurologist. I might even apply.

This week, Futures welcomes back Karlo Yeager Rodríguez with his latest story, Writing for the end of the world. Previously, Karlo has led us through Choices, in sequential order and introduced us to an updated version of Iago. His latest story aims to prevent the impending Apocalypse. When not saving the world, you can find Karlo online at his website or on Twitter. Here, he reveals what inspired his latest tale — as ever, it pays to read the story first.

Writing Writing for the end of the world

Writing for the end of the world is the first story I’ve written explicitly with an author protagonist. Specifically, an author who writes post-apocalyptic stories to assuage his fears about the world ending. Does what he writes convince anyone of consequence not to destroy the world, or is he fooling himself? The absurdity of his situation let me use one of my favourite jokes to parallel the author’s view of himself.

In light of what’s been happening in the real world, I understand the drive to use art as a warning, but I can’t help but think of a Kurt Vonnegut quote: “During the Vietnam War, which lasted longer than any war we’ve ever been in — and which we lost — every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high.”

I know Vonnegut’s right, but all of us must do what we can, in the way we can, to effect change.