Tachyon Publications: Future Media, Rick Wilber, ed.


	>

			Rick Wilber, ed.

			Visit the Rick Wilber, ed. website.

	Rick Wilber is a college journalism professor who heads the magazine major at the University of South Florida. He is the author of several college textbooks, including Magazine Feature Writing (St. Martin's Press), The Writer's Handbook for Editing and Revision (McGraw Hill), and Modern Media Writing (Cengage). Dr. Wilber is currently at work on an innovative introductory media text in an e-book format, Media Matters, for Allyn & Bacon/Pearson Publishing. He has published over fifty science-fiction short stories appearing in anthologies and magazines such as Analog, Asimov's SF, and Fantasy & Science Fiction. Dr. Wilber lives in Tampa, Florida.

Future Media

by Rick Wilber, ed.

Trade Paperback / 978-1-61696-020-9 / July 2011 / $16.95

Fiction
Aldous Huxley, Ray Bradbury, Joe Haldeman, Pat Cadigan, James Patrick Kelly, Gregory Benford, James Tiptree, Jr., Kate Wilhelm, Norman Spinrad, Kit Reed, and Robert Sheckley.

Nonfiction
Marshall McLuhan, Cory Doctorow, Paul Levinson, Timothy Berners-Lee, Henry Jenkins, Judy Wajcman, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Timothy Carr, Vannevar Bush, Andrew Postman, Nicholas Carr, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, James Patrick Kelly, and Allucquere Roseanne Stone.

This startling exploration of the mass-media age uniquely combines complex nonfiction and prescient fiction from the best and brightest visionaries of the future.

Nonfiction contributors include Marshall McLuhan, who posited that the medium is the message, Cory Doctorow and his re-visioning of intellectual property in the digital age, and Nicolas Carr, whose cautionary warning is that Google is (and will continue to be) making us stupid.

Fiction comes from science-fiction standouts including James Tiptree, Jr., whose pseudonymous cyberpunk preceded all of her peers, Joe Haldeman, whose wars require humans to battle via cloning and time travel, and Norman Spinrad, who has pitted the media against an immortality conspiracy.

In offering startling predictions of what the mass media will be like in years to come, Future Media not only entertains while it informs, it also challenges its readers, from teachers to students to science-fiction fans, to consider the implications for society of a mass media that is at once personal, public, pervasive, and powerful.

Contents:

Preface: Thoughts of a Mediated Future, by Rick Wilber
Introduction by Paul Levinson

Excerpt from Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan: "The Medium is the Message"
"Is Google Making Us Stupid?" by Nicholas Carr
"New Brains for Old" by James Patrick Kelly
Excerpt from Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
"Centigrade 233" by Gregory Benford
Excerpt from Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
"Fantasy for Six Electrodes and One Adrenaline Drip (A Play in the Form of a Feelie Script)" by Joe Haldeman.
Introduction to Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death by Andrew Postman
"At Central" by Kit Reed
Excerpt from Bug Jack Barron by Norman Spinrad
"The Prize of Peril" by Robert Sheckley
"Sex, Death and Machinery" by Allucquére Rosanne Stone
"Baby, You Were Great" by Kate Wilhelm
"Rock On" by Pat Cadigan
"Feel the Zaz" by James Patrick Kelly
"Dude, We’re Gonna Be Jedi" by Henry Jenkins
"From Women and Technology to Gendered Technoscience" by Judy Wacjman
"The Girl Who Was Plugged In" by James Tiptree, Jr.
"Tech-Illa Sunrise" by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Guillermo Gómez-Peña
"As We May Think" by Vannevar Bush
"Download for Free" by Cory Doctorow
Excerpt from Makers by Cory Doctorow
"The Future of the Web" by Timothy Berners-Lee
Excerpt from Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan: "Automation"

"Often deep, occasionally dense, and always thought-provoking, these works will appeal to both academics and lay readers."
-Publishers Weekly

"Recommended for anyone who has a smartphone, watches TV, or uses the Internet."
-Pop Matters

"Future Media is a thought-provoking, worthwhile read that may cause similar feelings to reading Plato's Allegory of the Cave...there was a beautiful glimmer in the near distance that grew brighter, more important and insistent, with every page I turned.
-Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"A great book upon which to base a university lecture."
-Interzone

"Rick Wilber has produced one of the most impressive anthologies of recent times. Indeed along with the wonderful Kafkaesque, it has been quite a year for superb anthologies from Tachyon Publications."
-SF Site