Sci-Fi Cyberpunk Today: Pop Video from an Orbital Platform Hanging in Space

20 minutes into the Future

Commander Chris Hadfield creates a revised version of  David Bowie’s Space Oddity on board the International Space Station.

Cyberpunks in Space

Picture it. The latest rendition of a zombagirl funk track by the Iron Maidens – with a fully animated “living” and decidedly non-breathing, female version of the mummified Eddie, grown from synthetic biology, cavorting with the all-female (some transsexual) members of the band.  Broadcast in ultra-definition, colour corrected (superrealistic) and enhanced with trend-mapping audience-response edits, split and channelled via separate geographic consumer territories, that allow the video to shift through the diverse moods and tolerances of a global market.  The band members rotate through a low-G manoeuvre, pseudo-fornication designed to a “young-adult” theme; everything in perfect sync despite the random chaos of limbs and instruments, and there, in the background, Mother Earth, a blue giant orb streaked with swirls of white, visible through a large hull plate of transparent carboplastic.

All very entertaining, but the first in the historical line of these now familiar media events was a Canadian astronaut with a rather dapper moustache and acoustic guitar.  Commander Chris Hadfield.  This video is fantastic for lots of reasons. The concordance between lyrics and visuals just beautiful. And profoundly thought-provoking. Could David Bowie have ever imagined, really, when first performing this song, that it would be adjusted and re-performed like this, in such a seemingly science-fiction context?  This in the same year that a corporation has stated its aim to send human colonists to Mars in 2023.  Space, at least for now, seems like a viable frontier again.

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Available in Paperback or Kindle

Paperback : from LULU & Kindle: US ($), UK (£), DE (Euro)

GOD SEED { novel } For acclaimed documentary film-maker, Adam Kyle, this was going to be another feather in his cap. Embedded within a team of highly trained corporate mercenaries, he was covering the start of an operation in England. But when the operation goes terribly wrong, Kyle finds himself battling for his life, his sanity, and maybe even his very soul as a new and dramatic story unfolds, dragging him across the globe…and beyond. It isn’t just his documentary that is at stake, but the fate of every living thing in the Universe. David J Rodger delivers a gut-wrenching and epic journey in a novel that plunges deep into the crawling chaos and takes you to the edge of the membrane of human existence.

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Razor Candi: Cyberpunk / Goth / Alternative adult model

Razor Candi

Image: Razor Candi – Cyberpunk / Goth / Alternative adult model – All Rights Reserved

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Part of a series of images from the liquid metal, carbo-plastic, hydrogel and permacrete core of visual creators on the Internet.  Images that stir my senses and evoke plots and concepts for what I’d like to see (or fear) in the future.

Somebody pinged me a link to this artist’s Facebook page, referencing my like for images by the model Terrorcat. Whereas Terrorcat conjures up pseudo-clubby characters that would stride around the fringes of the fetish scene with more glamour than grit, Razor Candi bristles with attitude.  And sex. Best example yet of the kind of urban character who could walk into a room with a 14mm Vortek Tactical A-Cannon clenched in one nail-polished hand, and not invoke a single pre-emptive strike from security until the first shot was fired. Well, in my mind at least.

Lacking only in visible cybernetic augmentation – or who knows, maybe those legs are fabricated from carbo-plastic with a super-realistic skin finish?  – as a character, she still carries forward an essence of the unlikely (but tough) street assassin. Skinny hungry.  There’s a predatory, smoldering disdain in those eyes that speak of a bruised childhood and an early fall from grace.  Killing you would be easy because her motivation stems from an anger that goes core deep.

Stepping away from the fictional waffle, the real human behind the fabric and the make-up has an interesting profile and state of mind.  An American now living in Romania.  Perhaps kissed by the old-Gods of Europe who once rode out on nocturnal wings across ancient barren mountains and fertile valleys soaked in the blood of wars.  You can read an interview with Razor Candi on Goth Times. And you should definitely check out Tumblr for more genre-defining icon-candy (note, those who don’t like adult-related content shouldn’t look). There is passion for self-expression as a form of art, and a playful tease with the concepts of adult imagery. Manipulation of the visible form as a weapon. You can find Razor Candi on Facebook.

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Available in paperback or kindle

Paperback : from LULU & kindle: US ($), UK (£), DE (Euro)

IRON MAN PROJECT { novel } Former special-forces operative, Vincent Brent, is tough, ruthless and highly trained; he’s now using his skills for whoever will pay him without cashing in the bounty on his head. In this world of the near future, the UN has failed. Wars are fought in boardrooms through attorneys and politics, and on our streets with private armies of military or criminal assets. In Sicily, Jean-Luc Korda, the Chief of Security for one such corporate alliance struggles to survive as hidden forces attempt to manipulate him for their own ends. Both these men find their fates intertwined. In the cross-hairs of powerful adversaries, they must both make decisions of life and death in a choice between command and conscience. David J Rodger delivers a palm-sweating ride in a complex novel that will keep you turning pages until the end.

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Cyberpunk tech today: Flying drone built on concept of dragonfly – BionicOpter by German tech company Festo

Dragonfly Drone

Dragonfly Drone – BionicOpter by German tech company Festo – Click Full Size

Over a foot long (think of jumbo subway sandwich with wings) this drone is still in technical development but the glossy corporate promo material from German company Festo looks great. Right now it just flies around; no mean feat, this critter is demonstrating complex flight techniques comparable to nature. Despite its size and numerous hardware it’s remarkably light.  But skip not-too-long into the future, it’s not a vast leap of the imagination to see this thing equipped with sensory equipment to provide remote surveillance option.  Maybe even a stinger or aerosol spray device, with a payload containing vomiting, nerve-jangling or other non-lethal methods of incapacitation.  Find the perp. Bring the perp down. Pick the perp up and throw them in the meat wagon for processing. Next.

On an interesting side-note: in the U.S., the FAA are aiming to allow the use of various aerial drones in U.S. airspace, including public agencies and commercial purposes, by September 2015.  Not long now. Dark future ahead. Might be time to invest in the anti-drone hoodie designed by Adam Harvey.

Video: BionicOpter in action

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Technical data

From Festo PDF (click to grab copy)
Beat frequency:
Between 15 and 20 Hz
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Wingspan:
63 cm
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Body length:
44 cm
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Weight:
175 g
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Degrees of freedom:
13
•
Processor:
AMR microcontroller
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Motor:
1 brushless VS external rotor
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Wing actuation:
8 servo motors
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Head and body actuators:
4 shape memory alloys (SMAs)
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Sensors:
Inertia, acceleration and
position sensors
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Battery:
2 LiPo cells, 7,6 volts
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Wireless modules:
2.4 GHz spectrum
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Wireless remote control:
Smartphone or digital
spectrum transmitter
Materials used:
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Wing structure:
Carbon-fibre rod
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Wing surface:
Polyester membrane
•
Housing and mechanical
system:
Aluminium, polyamide (sintered)
and terpolymer (deep-drawn ABS)

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Available in paperback or kindle

Paperback : LULU & Amazon Kindle: US ($), UK (£), DE (Euro)
BUY > iBook : from iTunes Store

EDGE { novel } In the near future, a prolific inventor is close to burn out. Desperate for a break he grabs an opportunity to go snowboarding in New Zealand, thinking it will refresh his mind and spirit. But a malign and alien force is oozing back into our reality, older than humankind and growing strong as it emerges after centuries of absence. Zen Dow snowboarding and ski resort, perched in the foothills of the volcanic mountain Ruapehu, is about to experience mind-shredding consequences as one of the Great Old Ones returns. On the other side of the world, an unscrupulous concept scout scrambles onto the trail of a new technology that has vanished from the corporate R&D labs. Quickly out of his depth, it becomes a race to track down the missing components before competing corporate agents kill him. David J Rodger’s trademark relentless narrative pace is here in palm-sweating abundance, delivered in a tense action-packed novel that blends corporate espionage, with a creeping, spine-chilling horror.

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Robots in Space: Dextrous Robotics Lab’s R2 aboard the ISS

Robonaut 2 (R2)

It’s almost science fiction today. A small machine step towards the autonomous helpers so adored by Freeman Lowell aboard the Valley Forge.  The R2 was developed by Dextrous Robotics Laboratory at NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC).  It’s the first of the series to be launched into space and its placement within the International Space Station is a part of the learning curve for engineers and managers looking to get robots deeper “out there”.  At the moment it’s a torso and sensory head,  and with arms developed for agility rather than strength.  Without legs and without adequate shielding for the harsh environment of hard space, the R2 is still in its infancy as useful crew member, but it’s already had upgrades to shielding and processors to reduce electromagnetic interference and improve tolerance to radiation and it’s only a matter of time before it’s moving around autonomously.

Click for full size – image: ISS / NASA – all rights reserved

For me it’s a very early glimpse of the creations that eventually lead to the formation of the Borgendrill Corporation (deep space mining and exploration), which sends autonomous machine colonies out beyond the furthest rim of human experience – and endurance.  A situation that eventually leads to the Borgendrill Enigma and the emergence, not yet fully understood, of true AI within the corporate computer system linked to these astronomically distant, ever-chattering, ever-probing, self-repairing labourers.

You can get more flavour about Borgendrill in the epic cyberpunk crime novel, Dante’s Fool. Or experience the consequences of the Borgendrill Enigma in the post-apocalyptic RPG of Yellow Dawn.

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YOU MAY ALSO ENJOY:

• Sci-fi Art: Robot wallpaper – Big Bot, by Benedict Campbell

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Video: Russian indie rock band Biting Elbows blend parkour with ultraviolence in this incredible music video

Bad Motherf_____

An insane office escape II

The music is great.  The video is freaking epic. Cyberpunk Sci-fi fused with the spirit of Tarantino. Warning: video contains scenes of extreme violence, blood, heart-stopping leaps, building plunges that leave you thinking “HTF did they do that?” and some seriously slick production values.

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Biting Elbows is a Russian indie rock band from Moscow.  You can grab their album on Amazon.

Click to preview / buy album on Amazon

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Like Cyberpunk, Dark Future with a twist of Cthulhu Mythos horror?

Available in paperback or kindle

Paperback : LULU & Amazon Kindle: US ($), UK (£), DE (Euro)
BUY > iBook : from iTunes Store

EDGE { novel } In the near future, a prolific inventor is close to burn out. Desperate for a break he grabs an opportunity to go snowboarding in New Zealand, thinking it will refresh his mind and spirit. But a malign and alien force is oozing back into our reality, older than humankind and growing strong as it emerges after centuries of absence. Zen Dow snowboarding and ski resort, perched in the foothills of the volcanic mountain Ruapehu, is about to experience mind-shredding consequences as one of the Great Old Ones returns. On the other side of the world, an unscrupulous concept scout scrambles onto the trail of a new technology that has vanished from the corporate R&D labs. Quickly out of his depth, it becomes a race to track down the missing components before competing corporate agents kill him. David J Rodger’s trademark relentless narrative pace is here in palm-sweating abundance, delivered in a tense action-packed novel that blends corporate espionage, with a creeping, spine-chilling horror.

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David J Rodger – DATA

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Dark Lens photos by Cédric Delsaux – where the urban landscape meets Star Wars

Boba Fett shootout

Boba Fett shoots it out with Stormtrooper – Dark Lens photos by Cédric Delsaux – All rights reserved

Part of a series of images from the liquid metal, carbo-plastic, hydrogel and permacrete core of visual creators on the Internet.  Images that stir my senses and evoke plots and concepts for what I’d like to see (or fear) in the future.

When French photographer Cédric Delsaux began snapping up what he calls “the peripheral zones” of urban landscapes, his creative instinct rebelled and demanded he infuse something else into the imagery.  Something was missing, he felt.  Passionate about Star Wars, Delsaux realised that a lot of the modern scenery suited itself well to the almost dystopian vision of the future that George Lucas created in his early movies.  So with a little trickery and Photoshop pokery, Delsaux has combined fact and fiction into a fusion of humour and hyper-realism.

Excellent work.

You should take a peek at the photographer’s official website  for more.

Or find yourself a copy of the book, Dark Lens, that celebrates these images in glorious glossy hardcopy format.

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Video: Quadrocopters demonstrate learning algorithms enabling them to master tossing and catching a pole

Robot Tech News

The Flying Machine Arena (FMA) A space where flying robots live and learn

An awe-inspiring (and some might say slightly chilling) glimpse into the future autonomy of machines to adapt and learn.  In this video Dario Brescianini, Markus Hehn, and Raffaello D’Andrea, from Zurich’s Institute for Dynamic Systems and Controls (Switzerland), demonstrate how one flying robot is able to balance a vertical pole whilst hovering into position to then pull off an acrobatic-like manoeuvre: tossing the pole into the air whilst a second flying robot swoops in, calculating the pole’s optimum intercept position 50 times a second, to catch it.  Perfectly.

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LINKS RELATED TO THIS VIDEO:

• Flying Machine Arena: where flying robots live and learn
• Robohub article: Throwing and catching an inverted pendulum – with quadrocopters

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DOG EAT DOG: a post-apocalyptic future where robots are migrating en-mass in the wake of the murder of thousands of humans. Some say they were only doing their job when the event known as Yellow Dawn devastated the planet.  But others claim it to be the start of organic extinction.

Available in paperback or Kindle

Paperback : from LULU & kindle: US ($), UK (£), DE (Euro)

DOG EAT DOG { novel } takes place in the near future, after the Earth has been devastated by a viral pathogen unleashed when a corporate cargo hauler crashed into the atmosphere; breaking up as a fireball across the sky, it showered Southern Europe and North Africa with a deadly rain of infected debris. Ten years later, over seventy percent of the human population is dead and only a handful of cities survive intact. So called ‘Living Cities’. The vast majority of human habitation is abandoned to the undying creatures left mutated through a brutal twist in the infection. Greed and corruption are left hovering over this bleak and brutalized domain and a cosmic horror is now free to infiltrate the remote abandoned corners of the Earth. Above this, the orbital colonies spin within artificial gravity wells, impartial observers, unaffected by the shocking events below. Within this mix the lives of two survivors collide: a renegade intelligence agent and a cold-blooded master of violence, shaping events with their virulent hunger for money and desire to carve their name onto this new world.

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Photo: #steampunk killer with a laser gun in the cold wastes of England

Steampunk Killer

steampunk killer ¦ image by HIAB-X – click full size

My good friend Matthias decides to take a stroll from his scarab beetle ship that has been parked in cloaking mode on the outskirts of Bristol (UK) for many years.  Finally, the steampunk killer gets his “man”. Hiab-X lives on to kill another day.

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Interview with Julian Darius, founder of Sequart and Martian Lit: an insight into success whilst operating from the fringes

Interview with a publisher

Julian Darius publisher and founder of Sequart and Martian Lit

Julian Darius. American. Logophile.  Founder of Sequart (advancing comics as art) and Martian Lit (offbeat and smart works in all genres and media).There’s something of the English author Will Self in his ways. And he is most certainly one of the web’s more interesting and enlightened characters.  Sometimes sardonic in humour, his personality packs a punch and may leave you reeling.  But in the movie-motif of Edward Norton as “narrator” in Fight Club, you may want to rub your jaw with a slick, spittle and blood smeared chin and say: hit me again.

It was Martian Lit that snagged my interest and a desire to talk to Julian about his personal philosophy and goals (for world domination?).

He has very kindly agreed to invest some of his time to place a few words here.

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Rumors we seek your planet’s humiliation are somewhat exaggerated

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DJR: Martian Lit was founded in 2011. Described as publishing odd and aggressive literature, non-fiction, art, poetry, and other material.  Was its creation an inevitable evolution from Sequart’s much more niche (high-brow) profile? Or something else?

This is going to be a way longer and more personal answer than you want, but I don’t know how to explain it any other way.

I’ve actually been a fiction writer much longer than a comics historian and critic. I read comics in childhood, and I thought about them, but I didn’t write about them. I did, however, write fiction, even as a little boy. I wrote my first novel, which was sci-fi, as a freshman in high school. It wasn’t a bad concept, but I still cringe remembering some of the bad sentences. By the time I left for college, I’d written most of another sci-fi novel, most of a vampire novel, a screenplay about a serial killer, and lots of odds and ends.

I actually wrote a Star Trek: The Next Generation script and submitted it. They rejected it because I hadn’t followed the rules — I’d created an alien species for the plot, and only staff writers were allowed to do that. I think I figured I’d break the rules intelligently and get away with it. Didn’t work out in that case, although they were very nice and praised the writing itself. By the time I got that rejection I’d plotted out several seasons of the show, which would have slowly shifted it into something of the kind of continuing storyline you now see, in the wake of the revived Battlestar Galactica or even post-Bablylon 5. It was great stuff.

August 1925 – popular science monthly magazine – how you may live and travel in the city of 1950

A vain hope against congestion

Interesting visualisation of a world only 25 years in the future from when the article was published. That’s an impressive faith in the ability of civil engineers.

Future city streets, says Mr Corbett, will be in four levels: The top level for pedestrians; the next lower level for slow motor traffic; the next for fast motor traffic, and the lowest for electric trains.  Great blocks of terraced skyscrapers half a mile high will house offices, schools, homes, and playgrounds in successive levels, while the roofs will be aircraft landing-fields….

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City of the Future – click full size

1925. The year this image came out was an interesting one.

The “International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts” opened in Paris. An exhibition that epitomized what came to be called “Art Deco” decades later – highlighting a  “modern” style characterized by  streamlined forms with a sleek, machine-age appearance; geometric and symmetric arrangements, and a prominence of motifs that celebrated athletic prowess, power and speed. Lightning flashes and “Aztec” styling infused surfaces that would ordinarily have been plain. Animal forms invited the viewer to feel a new energy and vibrance in their surroundings. A fusion of French Decorative Cubism, German Bauhaus, Italian Futurism, and Russian Constructivism.  All of which seems noticeably absent from the plain, conservative and almost utilitarian creation portrayed in this poster vision of the future.

1925 saw the first demonstration of radiovision! Pictures and sound transmitted five miles from Anacostia to Washington, DC.  In the same year Washington, DC saw 40,000 members of the Ku Klux Klan parade down Pennsylvania Avenue. And biology teacher John Scopes was arrested in Tennessee for teaching Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution; found guilty he was fined $100, nearly half the cost of a Thompson submachine gun.

And 1925 saw New York City apparently become the largest city in the world, taking the lead from London – a significant portent of the waning British Empire following the ravages of conflict in the First World War.

New Tokyo – another “city of the future”:

In the novel, Iron Man Project – the main protagonist Jean-Luc Korda travels from the idyllic mountain mansion of the corporate Carthew family in Taormina, Italy, to the massive urban sprawl of New Tokyo in the former US state of Florida – sold by UTOC to a conglomerate of businesses involved in building the world’s largest space port.  It’s a city of contradictions; vast wealth and giant structures fusing organic design with technology, surrounded by rapidly decaying tenement slums as the boom bubble bursts.
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Available in paperback or kindle

Paperback : from LULU & kindle: US ($), UK (£), DE (Euro)

IRON MAN PROJECT { novel } Ex-special forces man, Vincent Brent, is tough, ruthless and highly trained; he’s now using his skills for whoever will pay him without cashing in the bounty on his head. In this world of the near future, the UN has failed. Wars are fought in boardrooms through attorneys and politics, and on our streets with private armies of military or criminal assets. In Sicily, the Chief of Security for one such corporate alliance struggles to survive as hidden forces attempt to manipulate him for their own ends. Both these men find their fates intertwined. In the cross-hairs of powerful adversaries, they must both make decisions of life and death in a choice between command and conscience. David J Rodger’s trademark unforgiving rendering of brutal reality, and relentless narrative pace, are here in palm-sweating abundance, delivered in a complex novel that will keep you turning pages until the end.

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Science Fact: colder than absolute zero – scientists produce startling results with rigidly controlled atoms

Objects with negative temperature

Colder than absolute zero and infinitely hot

My science feed spat out a fascinating article that pries away a long-sealed lid on one of the most basic (seemingly) and fundamental aspects of universal physics: temperature, and it’s influence on the distribution and activity of atoms, and pressure.
Or in other words. Here’s a thought-provoking article that shows the first metres of a road that promises to plunge into the heart of the next “science-fiction precedes science fact” revolution.  Tapping into energy drives that are more than 100% efficient.  Hypothetical glimpses of dark matter.

A fragmented sliver of lens that gives a few degrees of vision into the holographic reality god-machine.

“The inverted Boltzmann distribution is the hallmark of negative absolute temperature, and this is what we have achieved. [...]   Yet the gas is not colder than zero kelvin, but hotter. It is even hotter than at any positive temperature — the temperature scale simply does not end at infinity, but jumps to negative values instead.”

- Ulrich Schneider, physicist at the University of Munich in Germany.

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To visualise the concept of negative temperature, then simply change your view of temperature being a scale that is linear (cold to hot) to one that is a loop. When temperatures go either below zero or above infinity on the positive (hot) region of this scale, they end up in negative territory.

Objects with negative temperatures behave in very odd ways

Energy will always flow from objects with negative temperature to ones with positive temperatures. In this sense, objects with negative temperatures are always hotter than ones with positive temperatures.

When objects with negative temperatures release energy, they can actually absorb entropy – unlike objects that are warm and radiate energy that creates more chaos in the surrounding system.

This surreal advance in how science understands temperature could lead to new engines that could be more than 100 percent efficient, and reveal clues about the mystery of dark energy and what is it that is apparently pulling this universe apart.

Read full article…(source: impactlab.net)
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Available in Paperback or Kindle

Paperback : from LULU & Kindle: US ($), UK (£), DE (Euro)

GOD SEED { novel } In the near future, a documentary film-maker is covering mercenaries engaged in corporate espionage. A nervous executive wants to smuggle stolen data to Cairo. Yet events rapidly and frighteningly escalate out of control. The film-maker finds himself battling for his life and his sanity as a new and dramatic story unfolds, dragging him across the globe…and beyond. Fascist extremists, Islamic terrorists, corrupt government officials and a religious sect that worships a nefarious avatar of a many-faced God of the Outer Void, become fused into a gruesome knot of lies, treachery and mass-murder. David J Rodger’s trademark gut-wrenching rendering of a dark and edgy reality, and relentless narrative pace, are here in palm-sweating abundance, delivered in a tense action-packed novel that plunges you uncomfortably deep into crawling chaos festering and feeding on the membrane of human existence.
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Cyberpunk culture today: GRIMES – plastic chics and male babes with medieval weapons and hair-extensions – freaking awesome

Grimes

Still from Genesis video by GRIMES – click for full size

Before I say anything else. Go to Amazon or  iTunes and buy this album – Visions, by Grimes. It’s phenomenal.  If you know me or are familiar with my blog you’ll know I don’t make recommendations lightly.  These guys like The Hacker’s album – Rêves Mécaniques – ingested through a sparkling haze of aerosol narcotics.

• Visions by Grimes on iTunes
• Visions by Grimes on Amazon UK

The video is from the single GENSIS (free download on soundcloud), taken from the Visions album.   Great visuals that are suitably edgy and memorable to do justice to the jaw-dropping native talent of the album and artists its representing.  This is great music but the video helps place it in the gritty gloss of tomorrow, embossing the sounds with the hallmark of Cyberpunk culture: 20 minutes into the future.

It’s David Lynch – Lost Highway – meets Olympic Airways by the Foals – just with more fake nails and lip gloss.  Sniff deep and suck hard on the gong-pipe.  This will make your face crease with a languid smile beneath half-lidded eyes.  

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On a personal level, the sight of people so absorbed by alternative fashion that they appear almost alien – who are also riding around in combustion engine vehicles whilst carrying modern medieval weaponry – just captures the quintessential dichotomy of the world of Yellow Dawn.  Yellow Dawn is the Earth of the near future after a cataclysmic event delivers apocalyptic changes to life on the planet.  Survivors either cluster around a few Living Cities or cope with the new wilderness – bushcraft and patched-up technology.  But a video like this shows the almost freakish collision of city survivors heading out into the new wilderness.  Naive and thinking they can head out for some quick thrills facing off against a hostile environment or capable fear-junkies who have the ability to back up the action?  How well they cope depends on what kind of guides they’ve invested in, and what kind of jacked up biological systems they’ve got inside of them – thanks to bioweave implants or the more grungy, hardcore tech of cybernetics.

It’s also another stellar signing by those devilishly clever folks at 4AD (think Dead Can Dance and Clan of Xymox) and more recently the ludicrously talented Purity Ring.  Cyberpunk today. Yup. It’s happening super quick now.  We’re sliding towards a singularity of burned chrome.

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Available in paperback or Amazon Kindle

Paperback: LULU & Amazon Kindle US ($), UK (£), DE (Euro), FR (Euro)

THE BLACK LAKE: The Earth has been ravaged by an event known as Yellow Dawn. Ten years later, survivors are putting lives back together and probing the frontiers of a new Wilderness; whilst overhead the orbital colonies slide across the sky, removed and unaffected. Five men leave the fortress island of Malta on an expedition to the sub-Arctic waters above Scotland. They intend to undertake scientific observations of an alien meteorological phenomenon that has followed the apocalyptic event. What they find is a cosmic horror that seethes amongst the shadows of a shattered Earth. It is a story of escape and wonder, of madness and terror. David J Rodger’s trademark unforgiving rendering of harsh reality, and relentless narrative pace, are here in palm-sweating abundance, delivered in a novel that tears open a rent in the boundary of reality, providing a nerve-jarring glimpse of the Outer Chaos and the horrors that lurk just beyond the threshold of our fragile, human existence.

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Steampunk Victoriana – authentic creations of electronic and mechanical wizardry by the DeMoulin brothers – Americana and Secret Societies

Steampunk Americana and Secret Societies

This is a real gem of a discovery for me, and hopefully you’ll feel the same way. It’s the “stuff of the Internet” made available as an enjoyable physical product to savour.  The only downside is that we’re over a hundred years beyond the point where any of these remarkable devices can be bought by mail-order.  Unless you’re one of those rare individuals with physical time-travelling capabilities. So whether your interest is in historical invention, or just seeking a glimpse of Americana, or if like me you’re into the idea of practical jokes developed into beautifully crafted mechanical and electronic devices – and marketing towards the raft of secret societies that sprung up in the late 19th early 20th centuries, this item should tickle your frontal lobe.

About twenty years ago, American cartoonist and illustrator Julia R. Suits stumbled across a curious catalogue at an auction in Ohio.  It turned out to be one of a series of catalogues sent out by the DeMoulin brothers, between the period of 1896 and 1930 from Illinois, to fraternal lodges around the country.   In Julia R. Suits own words:

It was as if Buster Keaton and Harry Houdini took over [the classic US retailer] Montgomery Ward and branched out into “weird.”

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Each page in the catalogue was wonderfully illustrated and each was stranger than the one before.  The contraptions listed were designed to perform some kind of devilish prank: a life-sized stuffed goat on wheels wired to shock the rider, a mechanical spitting skeleton, an exploding spanking machine.

Digging deeper, Julia discovered that the DeMoulin brothers belonged to and serviced other, secret societies.  Many of these devices were created and sold to be used within initiation ceremonies.  Boys playing at being men, really acting like boys.

The magician and illusionist David Copperfield holds them in high regard:

The DeMoulin brothers are what would have happened if the Three Stooges had gone into the furniture business. They were subversive, the brothers, in the way artists are subversive. They satirized sobriety and high seriousness; they tossed pomp on its ass and made dignity pee its pants. They were Lords of Misrule and their marvelous devices were tools available to anyone who wanted to have fun at someone else’s expense, one of the finest forms of fun there is.

- David Copperfield – 2011

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Julia has labored to get these Extraordinary Catalogs of Peculiar Inventions back in print (thanks to Perigee/Penguin) as an important piece of Americana.

Click here to preview a sample PDF of The Extraordinary Catalog

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Click on any of these three outlet links to buy the book:

• Amazon
  
• Barnes & Noble
• Indiebound

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Julia Ross Suits

Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Narrative Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, and The San Francisco Chronicle among many other places, and has been anthologized in several books.  Julia is the person behind the popular Twitter account @TweetsofOld, which satisfies her love for obscure Americana and forgotten history.

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Cyberpunk Tech Today ¦ Nigel Ackland fitted with cybernetic prosthetic hand – and feels human again

Cyberpunk Technology

Nigel Ackland suffered a debilitating injury at work and after 6 months of operations and infection, elected to have the damaged part of his limb surgically removed below the elbow. In its place he’s opted to have the £12,000 cybernetic forearm-hand by Be-Bionic, fitted and wired into his nervous system.  He’s able to undertake moderate dexterity tasks such as tie his shoelaces, shake hands and even pick up eggs and touch-type.  It’s not the dystopian view of the human psyche collapsing into violent cyberpsychosis.  Early days and the start of more visible machine-human augmentation in everyday life.

Watch the video

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Available in paperback or kindle

Paperback : from LULU & kindle: US ($), UK (£), DE (Euro)

IRON MAN PROJECT { novel } Ex-special forces man, Vincent Brent, is tough, ruthless and highly trained; he’s now using his skills for whoever will pay him without cashing in the bounty on his head. In this world of the near future, the UN has failed. Wars are fought in boardrooms through attorneys and politics, and on our streets with private armies of military or criminal assets. In Sicily, the Chief of Security for one such corporate alliance struggles to survive as hidden forces attempt to manipulate him for their own ends. Both these men find their fates intertwined. In the cross-hairs of powerful adversaries, they must both make decisions of life and death in a choice between command and conscience. David J Rodger’s trademark unforgiving rendering of brutal reality, and relentless narrative pace, are here in palm-sweating abundance, delivered in a complex novel that will keep you turning pages until the end.

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Graphic Art with a Sci-Fi Twist: iMorph by The Salad Man #wallpaper

iMorph

Simple but very very nice.

iMorph by The Salad Man – All rights reserved – Click full size

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You should check out The Salad Man’s profile on Deviant Art

YOU MAY ALSO ENJOY:

• Cyberpunk art ¦ future fashion or post-apocalyptic decadence – photography by Danil Golovkin
• Cyberpunk Photography and Fashion: Icon by Terrorcat
• Photography: cyberpunk icon of mindless rebellion – Thug, Happy to Kill You, by Danielle Tunstall
• Sci-fi Art: Cyborg #wallpaper – Under Construction, by Benedict Campbell

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Video: Sci-fi short movie True Skin is a dream interface between Cyberpunk and the Hollywood machine

 

Cyberpunk edging closer to the mainstream?

Maybe you like your niche sub-genres to stay that way but the decades-old concepts of Cyberpunk (and even Steampunk for that matter following journalistic narrative at the London Paralympic Games) are starting to attract the more mainstream attention. It’s not surprising, as everyday technology begins to bleed seamlessly into the crossover between Science Fiction and Science Fact. This, combined with social and economic paradigm shifts  as the excesses of corporate greed are exposed and then, deftly, acknowledged and more-or-less ignored as the status-quo; and the financial greenhouses that were first built-in the 1950s and given an extra layer of insulation in the 1980s  suffer from shattered window panes and a superstructure caving-in on itself.  More homeless on the street.   And a more organised and sinister set of groups ready to exploit the shadows on the street…

Here’s a short film by Stephan Zlotescu, that nails the cyberpunk theme like a Gloxx neural interface jack custom grown for a private client.

Scott Glassgold, co-chief of IAM Entertainment, is managing the risk-riddled campaign of consolidating the vast interest in the short film in order to expand the concept rapidly and “get it out there” to a wider audience in more formats. The key point here is that Hollywood might take more notice of the sub-genre and the flavours that are vital to this particular techno-criminal-fashion-candy soup. Selective surgery; cybernetic and bio-engineered implants; reality augmentation and infinite digital realms; the individual as zero and god-like hero; corporations as warring states with private armies of varying degrees of quality and legality.

Cyberpunk…

It’s a beautiful sub-genre. Sci-fi has never had so much burning chrome plating its lower flanks.

Enjoy the short movie.

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Available in Paperback or Kindle

Paperback : from LULU & Kindle: US ($), UK (£), DE (Euro)

GOD SEED {cyberpunk  novel } In the near future, a documentary film-maker is covering mercenaries engaged in corporate espionage. A nervous executive wants to smuggle stolen data to Cairo. Yet events rapidly and frighteningly escalate out of control. The film-maker finds himself battling for his life and his sanity as a new and dramatic story unfolds, dragging him across the globe…and beyond. Fascist extremists, Islamic terrorists, corrupt government officials and a religious sect that worships a nefarious avatar of a many-faced God of the Outer Void, become fused into a gruesome knot of lies, treachery and mass-murder. David J Rodger’s trademark gut-wrenching rendering of a dark and edgy reality, and relentless narrative pace, are here in palm-sweating abundance, delivered in a tense action-packed novel that plunges you uncomfortably deep into crawling chaos festering and feeding on the membrane of human existence.

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Under the World – Sci-Fi Apocalyptic #wallpaper – open to interpretation

Under the World

Under the World – Image by The Saladman – All Rights Reserved – Click Full Size

Part of a series of images from the liquid metal, carbo-plastic, hydrogel and permacrete core of visual creators on the Internet.  Images that stir my senses and evoke plots and concepts for what I’d like to see (or fear) in the future.

This is a great image composite by TheSaladMan. In one respect, pretty wallpaper good enough for a large format screen. In another respect, open to some interpretation. The vibe for me is that this is the view from a man-made habitat (or part of the Borgendrill Corporation machine colony) about to depart the orbit of a doomed planet Earth. The moon – in the background – has become stained red through the cosmic upheavals, of a biblical proportion, in the process of taking place.

Or is it the Sun in the final phase before swelling to consume all inner planets? If so then not sure how to interpret the lens flare – maybe a Zubrin mirror array or part of a now defunct orbital solar energy grid.  Or reflected flight coming off another habitat.

This is the last glimpse any Earth-born will have of the planet that formed them – from which dust and minerals they were created.

Like a futuristic Ark, perhaps? Everything organic or mechanoid or data-centric has been gathered together for preservation.

Or just a pretty wallpaper image…
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Available in paperback or Kindle

Paperback : from LULU & kindle: US ($), UK (£), DE (Euro)

DOG EAT DOG { novel } takes place in the near future, after the Earth has been devastated by a viral pathogen unleashed when a corporate cargo hauler crashed into the atmosphere; breaking up as a fireball across the sky, it showered Southern Europe and North Africa with a deadly rain of infected debris. Ten years later, over seventy percent of the human population is dead and only a handful of cities survive intact. So called ‘Living Cities’. The vast majority of human habitation is abandoned to the undying creatures left mutated through a brutal twist in the infection. Greed and corruption are left hovering over this bleak and brutalized domain and a cosmic horror is now free to infiltrate the remote abandoned corners of the Earth. Above this, the orbital colonies spin within artificial gravity wells, impartial observers, unaffected by the shocking events below. Within this mix the lives of two survivors collide: a renegade intelligence agent and a cold-blooded master of violence, shaping events with their virulent hunger for money and desire to carve their name onto this new world.
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Video Vault – The Max Headroom Show – 80s pop music vids: what is the video with the high heels and black fishnet stockings?

Max Headroom – what is that video?

Max Headroom the original 80s icon

EDIT @ 14:24 – ANSWER FOUND!

Thanks to Andy Mansh who nailed it as Caberet Voltaire – Just Fascination

 

I recently had an email come through from a former MTV creative asking if I could identify a music video artist from a brief clip spliced and repeated  through part of a Max Headroom episode.

I couldn’t, and when I started digging I’ve found a lot of other folks are asking the same question. It’s a great track – or at least the sample sounds great – and it’s becoming a bit of mystery.

And now I really want to know!

I thought “maaaybe” Caberet Voltaire? Or even something to do with the musical score of The Hunger (1983).  But *pulls a face* I just can’t nail it.

Any clues?

Post your thoughts in the comments box at the bottom. Any help greatly appreciated.

The embedded video is from an event organised by the ICA. Rocky Morton, George Stone and Annabel Jankel discuss the creation of the virtual character ‘Max Headroom’.

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Look at the video

Skip to time-code: 0:08:34 – 0:08:54 to see the brief segment of video in question. Black heels and fishnets – awesome electronica

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Here’s the original email:

From: xxxxx@jameshyman(d0t)c0m
Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2012 09:11:26 +0100
Subject: re: David J Rodger / your blog / Max Headroom
To: clovenfeet@xxxxxxx.com

Hi David,

Fantastic blog, which I stumbled across whilst digging deep on ‘Max Headroom’ which made my 80s

(I went on to work at MTV for 12 years, from 1988-2000). You seem to be one of the only sources of information for the videos played on ‘The Max Headroom’ show and I’m trying to find out the name of this video from this clip/link:

http://youtu.be/DS-Rv_K2-N0

Time-Code: 0:08:34 – 0:08:54

(it’s the black & white one with lady in stilettos)

If you know, respect due & I’ll name-check you in a Facebook post shortly.

Best wishes

James

JLH Creative  

James Hyman

Max Headroom?

The Max Headroom Show (1985) was a music video gig, with a liberal dosage of Max crashing in and interrupting things with his wacky wit and unique perspective on life in the “real world”.  It’s hard to believe there were only 6 episodes of the first series. Ten and a Christmas bonus for the second series.  The music and the vibe of that show really connected with my mind. So I’ve been digging through the track listings for the videos he played and have been posting them up where I’ve been able to find them on YouTube. There’s some absolute gems of the 80s.

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SEASON ONE

• The Max Headroom Show – episode 1
• Episode 2
• Episode 3
• Episode 4
• Episode 5
• Episode 6

SEASON TWO

• Episode 1
• Episode 2
• Episode 3

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Photography blurring the lines between reality and fiction – Infinity Seeker by Kanoa Zimmerman

Infinity Seeker

Infinity Seeker by Kanoa Zimmerman – All Rights Reserved

Part of a series of images from the liquid metal, carbo-plastic, hydrogel and permacrete core of visual creators on the Internet.  Images that stir my senses and evoke plots and concepts for what I’d like to see (or fear) in the future.

This is a great image. When I first spotted it I thought this was a piece of artwork, an illustration of a near future, sci-fi cyberpunk soldier of fortune in an endless horizon – some kind of virtual reality or deep space environment. But it’s actually a photograph of a free dive. Stunning bit of work by Kanoa Zimmerman. You should check out his website here: www.kanoazimmerman.com

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A novel

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Art and illustration: Catwoman safe-cracking by Adam Hughes

Catwoman

Catwoman by Adam Hughes – All Rights Reserved – Click full size

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If you’re a comic book fan then you’re likely to be familiar with Adam Hughes work. And if you’re not, then run a Google search and feast your eyes on the naked talent: in fact, just say AH!  The man creates incredible pin-up style female characters.  No surprises then he’s scored some controversy for being sexist. Nah, he just nails the definition of what most guys will go all bug-eyed over. This is fantasy artwork, after all.  Nice use of mirrored reflection and transparency here.

You should check out his official website here – www.justsayah.com

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A novel

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