Virtual Jehovah by Zach Smith

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For Redeye the weekends were reserved for video games. His consul of choice was the obscure Nintendo Virtual Boy, an early red on black monochromatic experiment in 3D gaming, which looked like a red turn of the century peepshow box. Redeye was one of the few dedicated players. Today he planned on doing nothing but playing. It was a gray and dizzily day outside so he wouldn’t feel too bad for having “wasted” his time. For nourishment he had a large glass of tomato juice with everything you could imagine inside it: limes, beer, vodka, cheese, olives, tabasco, a dash of extra virgin olive oil, ice, etc. The straw was cut at a 30 degree angle leaving a sharp point Read More

TOMTECH, INC. by Alex Voakes

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  “Thanks for this interview. Our readers are very interested in all things organic.” Janet glanced down the gleaming-white corridor. She knew that the word ‘organic’ conjured up a very different picture in the minds of the subscribers to Renewable World. “Our methods are impeccable – we recycle the majority of our water, our solar panels actually feed excess energy into the national grid, and in the past we used natural biological controls on pests.” Dr Bryan smiled. “Ladybirds. Ideal for removing aphids. But since we really locked down on physical interfaces, very little has been getting in or out. We aim for only two organisms in this entire complex. Humans and tomatoes.” “Physical interfaces?” “Where the outside world meets Read More

Shadows on the Concrete by Veronica Lavia

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They walk into the darkness, shadows on the concrete. I see shapes melt into the pavement. They appear and disappear, gray figures cast on a grayer world. They have no bodies. Forgotten, they walk amidst deserted cities, and only those who still have eyes to look and observe assist to these invisible interactions of bodiless shapes. They don’t see me, when I see them. I linger at the edge of the road, terrified that the ground is going to melt and drag me in the word of lost shadows. It happens at time, there’s so few of us left at the edges of the crumbling reality. The borderland we call it, the borderland of those who haven’t disappeared yet. It’s Read More

Watching every episode of Star Trek The Next Generation for the first time Part Three by C T Thorbens

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Part Three of mocking a thirty-year-old scifi series for being hokey and rubbish. In this installment, we learn about Data’s backstory, Riker’s sexual fantasies (SPOILER ALERT: they involve trombones) and how to fix the ozone layer. 12. Datalore: Data, we learn, was found 26 years ago, the sole survivor of some catastrophic tragedy, like a waxen-skinned Harry Potter. The Enterprise returns to his planet and finds a SECOND Data – called Lore – who seems really nice and eager to be friends with everyone. OR IS HE? This episode is a tricky one — bits of it are good, and yet the whole is so irretrievably stupid. On the plus side, Data does a cracking performance as Evil Twin Lore, Read More

Watching every episode of Star Trek The Next Generation for the first time Part Two by C T Thorbens

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Part Two of what happens if you wait twenty years to finally watch a beloved scifi series and find yourself baffled by it. 8. The Battle: The Ferengi are back to offer a ship ‘as a gift’ and since none of the crew have ever heard the phrase ‘Trojan horse’, they accept. It contains a Picard-specific magic box, the effects of which are too silly to go into here. Despite their obvious shiftiness (including significant pauses and actually rubbing their hands together) no one, including Troi, picks up on their hidden agenda. Her empathic abilities are limited to saying quickly ‘ooh, I felt something too,’ when Picard lurches out of his chair, clutching his forehead in agony. I’m going to Read More

Watching Every Episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation for the First time, Part One by C T Thorbens

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With the launch of the latest Start Trek big-screen adventure, could there be a better time to finally get round to watching Star Trek: TNG? Well, pretty much any time in the past 20 years would have made more sense. During my preteens and adolescence, the show seemed to be on every week, requiring dogged persistence and ingenuity on my part to avoid watching even a single episode. And remember, this was 1990, a time when my house had access to only four TV channels and no internet. I didn’t avoid it out of a lack of interest in the genre (I was entering peak sci-fi interest years, and by the end of ST:TNG’s run on British TV, would have Read More