Teaser Tuesday: A Bit from the Introduction of the Sequel

Mar 9th

Posted by Josh Smith in The Sequel

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For this week’s Teaser Tuesday, I bring you a small portion from the introduction to the sequel. Enjoy!

Ever since mankind has inhabited this planet, a great number of seemingly impossible events have taken place. The odds against these events were so mind-bogglingly high that the universe’s top historians wrote the planet off before it had a chance to make any history to begin with. Earth took no notice of this, however, and puttered on, unaware that it had caused the complete upheaval and replacement of those top historians. The universe’s current top historians have since called this “the greatest blunder in the history of historians,” and have since wrote many books on the subject, including The Little Planet That Could, See Earth Spin, and the all-time classic Where the Wild Earthlings Are.

Still, the same historians—and most of the rest of the inhabitants of the universe—were caught completely off-guard when humanity managed to pull out of their Third World War without completely obliterating themselves. They were caught even more off-guard when the humans managed to unite under one world government. They watched with keen interest as mankind rebuilt their civilization at a record setting pace. It all seemed, once again, impossible; More >

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News from a Strange Future: New VR Movie Takes Bollywood by Storm

Mar 7th

Posted by Josh Smith in News from a Strange Future

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This is one of the last new features that I’ll be adding to the site for the time being: News from a Strange Future is a look into Vera’s scrapbook containing “clippings” that she printed from the News Portal. Enjoy!

New VR Movie Takes Bollywood by Storm

Opening of the sci-fi action movie Portal Chase sees strong gains at the Box Office

Story by Adelina Macey

The opening of the Virtual Reality flick Portal Chase took movie goers on the ride of a lifetime this weekend, but those in the theaters weren’t the only ones taken on an incredible journey. Bollywood insiders who had predicted the movie was “too big, too expensive, and too campy” were stunned as the movie exceeded all expectations, taking in nearly half a billion viewers in the first weekend.

“It’s simply amazing to see the reception that the movie has received,” explained Carl Conrad, Manager of Intellectual Property for Virtual Adventures Ltd., the company that produced the film. “VR movies have been slammed in the media, but public interest is clearly there,” he added.

This isn’t the first virtual reality film to be released, but it is the first one to do so well. Previous VR releases were either over budget, underperformed More >

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Technology Time: Mobile Computing vs. Desktop Computing

Mar 5th

Posted by Josh Smith in Technology Time

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Today, whilst checking up on my favorite nerd news websites, I had a thought: it would be kind of cool to share some of these stories on my own site as well, but with a Strange Future twist… Thus, “Technology Time” was born! Occasionally, I’ll post a link to an interesting bit of technology and science news, share my viewpoints, and how it relates to the world of technology described in the book. This week, we have one of my favorite kinds of stories: X is dead, long live Y! This week, the role of X will be played by the desktop computer, and the role of Y will be played by mobile computing devices, such as smart phones. I happen to be very fond of these kinds of stories because more often than not, they’re utterly and completely wrong. Today’s article can be found at MediaPost. Here’s a quote from the article in question:

…Then consider this statement from Google Europe boss John Herlihy: “In three years time, desktops will be irrelevant.”

Google’s VP of Global Ad Operations says that cloud-computing will soon guarantee that every mobile device will be capable of handling the most advanced applications, thus demoting desktops to doorstop More >

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First Blog Post! Plus, Teaser Tuesday

Mar 2nd

Posted by Josh Smith in The Sequel

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Well this is officially the first blog post I’ve made on the new site! (Well, first post with NEW content that is.) I think I’ve finally settled on the design, so things should stay pretty static from this point on from that standpoint at least. Let me know what you think of the setup!

For my first post, I’ve decided to do a Teaser Tuesday post featuring an excerpt from the sequel that I’m currently working on. (Teaser Tuesday is when someone posts an unedited portion of something they’re currently working on to get feedback and, let’s face it, to show off. ) There’s only one bit in this portion resembling a spoiler, and it’s so excessively minor that you needn’t worry about it. Without further yapping from me, here it is:

The rather unfortunate thing about important, newsworthy happenings is that they have an uncanny ability of occurring when one isn’t at home. A person will blissfully go about the day’s business, completely unaware about the major event unfolding that’s making everyone’s head spin. Once they finally do get home to hear the news, they’re as shocked as everyone else was initially, and proceed to call everyone they know to find More >

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New Here? Read This…

Mar 1st

Posted by Josh Smith in Strange Future

According to some scientists, there are an infinite number of universes. Some of these universes are so bizarrely different from ours that we can’t possibly begin to describe what they must be like…

Others are nearly exactly the same as ours, with the exception of one tiny detail. For instance, there is a universe somewhere that is a carbon copy of this one, except in that universe, you put on blue socks this morning instead of white ones…

If this theory is true, then it means that somewhere there is a universe where the following story is NOT a story. Somewhere there is a universe where the events described herein have actually occurred…

Let’s hope that the theory is wrong…

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