Tag archives for Speculative fiction
Attack Surface by Cory Doctorow [Book Review]
Attack Surface by Cory Doctorow My rating: 4 of 5 stars Attack Surface is the third in a loose trilogy that started with Little Brother. I've only read the first, Homeland passed me by. Attack Surface was readable and it stood well on its own as a story. Like the others, Attack Surface is a cautionary tale on how technology is being misused. Attack Surface The protagonist is Masha, a tech savvy woman from the bay area. She sold out and joined the DHS in Little Brother. Since then she's worked for private contractors providing surveillance know-how for governments. When we first meet her she's working both ends in Slovstakia, a semi-fictional former Soviet satellite state with a repressive regime. Her employer is giving the government technology to spy on its protesting citizens. Masha has adopted some of the protestors…
At The Trough by Adam Knight [Book Review]
At the Trough by Adam Knight My rating: 4 of 5 stars I was offered an ARC of At The Trough. It took a bit of getting into, partly because At The Trough swaps between several point of view characters, one per chapter. So it took 2-3 chapters for each character to properly hook me into the story. Once I'd got there it kept me up until 2am on a work night! At the Trough At The Trough is a very dystopian near future, a warning of what could happen if the super-rich managed to take control of education. The scenario is close enough to reality that you can see a plausible join into the present. It's a plausible, if very dark, future. This is part of what made it compelling to me. At the Trough is like Fahrenheit 451…
First Mission ANDR12 [Short Story]
First Mission ANDR12 is a near future speculative fiction short story about the first mission of the Autonomous Networked Dynamic-learning Robots, or ANDRs for short. First Mission is set an unspecified time a decade or two into the future and in a generic counterinsurgency in an unspecified African country, somewhere in the greener belt between Sierra Leone and Kenya. I've written a bit more about the background to the ANDR featured in First Mission over on my military focused blog Hot Blood & Cold Steel. NB this is a first draft, there may be typos, inconsistencies and bits that don't really help the narrative. If you are feeling generous please call them out in a comment and I'll use that when I edit the story. Otherwise, please enjoy. First Mission ANDR12 A Royal Air Force Merlin HC3A helicopter during a…