Arc 1.2: Post human conditions(2012)

Stephen BaxterGardner DozoisC.C. Finlay

Arc is a digital quarterly about the future. There are articles and travelogues, stories and speculations. Guesses, dreams, conjectures. Most of all, mistakes. Some are glorious, some are wild, some are inevitable, and a couple, no doubt, will turn out to be downright foolish. Because the future holds all the jokers. The future always wins.

In this issue:

THE FUTURE'S MINE, by Frederik Pohl
How we think about the future, shapes the future — and the last of Gernsback’s greats says we should be careful what we wish for.

NOBODY KNOWS YOU'RE A DOG, by Anne Galloway & Sumit Paul-Choudhury
The internet is sending feelers through the animal kingdom. Is this a new way of looking at life on earth - or just another vanity mirror for humans?

ATTENUATION, by Nick Harkaway
Sonny Hall lived fast, died young and left a beautiful corpse. And that’s when his troubles really began.

PETERSBURG'S PROMETHEUS, by Sonja Vesterholt & Simon Ings
For 20 years, unemployable Russian filmmaker Pavel Klushantsev led a life of loneliness and obscurity, unaware of a Hollywood campaign to track down “the Red Kubrick”.

THE MAN, by Paul McAuley
Why did he come to this hardscrabble human settlement, unannounced, unequipped, without purpose, without desire? Come to think of it - why did they?

THROUGH THE DEEP SPACE DESERT, by Regina Peldszus
Humanity is about to embark on the longest, most tedious round-trip ever. Fretful passenger Regina Peldszus asks, “Are we there yet?”

BIG DAVE'S IN LOVE, by T.D. Edge
Poor Dave: somewhere under all those vodka mallows beats a lover’s heart. And Jack had better find it, fast, before the sludge arrives.

THE MUDANG'S DANCE, by Gord Sellar
South Korea has gone from impoverished feudal backwater to liberal economic superpower in a generation — yet its people don’t talk about the future much. Do they know something we don’t?

BUILT FOR PLEASURE, by P.D. Smith
There are many serious and sober reasons why humanity has become a predominantly urban species - but it’s the silly ones that count.

ADULT PURSUITS, by Holly Gramazio
Treasure hunts and letterboxing, football and free-for-alls: these games engage entire communities. Can digital games compete?

BAD VIBRATIONS, by Kyle Munkittrick
A game is like a dream: you have to be in it to understand it. So why do the best games put you in the last place you would ever want to be?

KOMODO, by Jeff VanderMeer
Listen, child: there are no such things as angels, and the gods are taking us for a ride. But what a ride!