Thank you for your reply Daniel. I did look up the term Cli Fi. I was not aware of it and I am sure like many new genre designations you can retrofit many stories.  Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves deals with a situation that “w hen the moon blows up, the earth’s atmosphere is predicted to go through changes that will eventually lead to a Hard Rain, a…[Read more]

I think the old fashioned ways of hacking the brain (changing habits) can be streamlined using tools and technology.  I read Neal Stephenson’s “Arsepestos” in his latest non fiction which spoke about the dangers of sitting all day and now I’m writing this on a standing desk (If I sound like “that guy” I’m sorry.)  I’ve gotten into the habit and i…[Read more]

Thanks for your reply. I think there is room for all sorts of SF. There was a movement to create Mundane SF (Geoff Ryman) https://sfgenics.wordpress.com/2013/07/04/geoff-ryman-et-al-the-mundane-manifesto/  No interstellar space travel and many of the rules seem Hieroglyph-y.

That is the . Spike Jonze’s “Her” I think is a great SF movie and I t…[Read more]

That is a good point about the tech industry and the sf frame of mind. I really enjoy literary novels like Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom but it has as just about as much cultural impact as niche hard science fiction novel. The idea of having a central Great American Novel that is a summation of a cultural moment has become passé but I feel a bit of…[Read more]

In Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age (Or, The Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer)  young Nell stumbles upon an interactive primer powered by nanotechnology and weak artificial intelligence that bonds with her. Her particular book also employs an anonymous human teacher, Miranda, who is a “ractor” who acts as a mother figure to Nell. Ractors, in the s…[Read more]