Big Space

Remember the covers of those science-fiction paperbacks of the 1970s and 1980s, replete with Big Ships and Big Explosions, lots of Culminating Moments, and the occasional Heavily Armed Cyberwaif? Rest assured that Concept Ships does as well, and also highlights those who continue to make cover-ready art their mission.

It's Fantasy Tuesday!

And fantasy Tuesday means thinking about the best of all possible worlds:

Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar and Ayman al-Zawahri signing a surrender document while sitting across a table from Admiral Mullen, General Petraeus and Secretary of Defense Gates. On the deck of the U.S.S. Missouri, of course. ...

Jerusalem in 2111

Thanks to Chris Hurwitz for referring me to Jerusalem in 2111, a contest to produce the best science-fiction short about what the world's most contested city will look like a century from now.

The winner.

The 2002 remake of Rollerball was pretty wretched, playing down the social commentary of the James Caan original while amping up the violence and spectacle. But the remake's future had one big plus: quick, clever glimpses of post-Soviet Central Asia as a new Wild West with Russian as the lingering lingua franca.

However, this morning's Times hints that tomorrow's sportif Great Gamers may speak Mandarin instead, as "China Quietly Extends Footprints into Central Asia". The pipelines, the highways, the consumer goods, the Confucius Institutes; here I was thinking Central Asia's future might look Turkish, but with Istanbul so far away I can just glimpse the hazy outlines of a Han Samarkand.