Image: European Astrobiology Institute
In the last decade, new satellites and observatories have drastically expanded our understanding of the universe. We now know that planets are a pretty common phenomena around the galaxy, bringing us to a question that science fiction has long imagined answers to: What will life around the galaxy look like?
The European Astrobiology Institute is adding its own spin on the question with a new anthology:
Life Beyond Us, which will feature twenty-two short stories that address this concept. The anthology has since funded via Kickstarter, and you’ve only got a day or so to back it if you’d like a copy.
Catherine Lacey s short story Congratulations on Your Loss slate.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from slate.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
11:48 am The Amazon series
Upload shows a comedic and probably more realistic version of what would happen if humans could live online after they die. Courtesy of Amazon Studios
In the Amazon original series
Upload, a young programmer named Nathan Brown uploads his mind to virtual reality after his body is critically injured in a car accident. Mind uploading is a familiar trope, but science fiction author Tobias S. Buckell says that
Upload presents an interesting new spin on the idea.
“We’ve all heard about people getting uploaded, and we all know how people can use the virtual world to live out their fantasies, but it was really interesting how the virtual world becomes a world with consequences and problems and issues that the character has to navigate,” Buckell says in Episode 457 of the
“Thoughts and Prayers” is about a mother and father who advocate for gun control following their daughter’s murder only to find themselves targeted by internet trolls who harass them with violent deepfakes of their daughter. John Joseph Adams, series editor of
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, says that “Thoughts and Prayers” is exactly the kind of story he’s always looking to publish.
“Sure, you could label it an ‘issue story’ and complain about it if you’re somebody who complains about those things, but it’s presenting it in such a way that I feel like it negates that argument,” he says. “This is art. This is 100 percent art, because of how deeply it makes you think about what’s happening in the story, and how closely you get into the heads of these characters.”
It’s always seemed to me that John Joseph Adams’s
Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy series, now in its sixth volume, has served a somewhat different if equally important purpose than the more traditional year’s best volumes which have been a staple of SF publishing for more than 70 years. While those volumes have historically been SF’s way of presenting itself
to itself (always with the hopes of drawing a broader readership among those who simply want to check in on SF from time to time), Adams’s annual volumes are part of the “Best American” series of focused anthologies which began with