Z-Sky

08/20/2021

Submissions NOW OPEN for Z-Sky's first Winter Issue. https://zsky.org/

08/14/2021

We are thrilled to announce the release of Z-Sky's inaugural issue! Click the link to start reading online! Print copies are available for purchase (same link).

https://zsky.org/journal/

07/12/2021

Congratulations to all the winners and nominees of the Aurealis Awards!

Winners of the 2020 Aurealis Awards, for the best in Australian speculative fiction, were announced in an online ceremony. Best Science Fiction Novel (tie) WINNER: The Animals in That Country, Laur…

07/03/2021

A fascinating new article out from Tor.com that explores four SF works featuring a far-future U.S.A.

From the perspective of a foreigner, there’s a baffling lacuna in American science fiction. The U.S. has moats on three sides, an arctic desert to the north and a somewhat warmer desert to the Sout…

07/01/2021

Congratulations to all the authors short-listed for The Arthur C. Clarke Award!

Science Fiction book of the year

06/30/2021

06/25/2021

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's concept of "Omega Point," a fascinating though scientifically problematic concept, is a wonderful example of far-future thinking. Z-Sky likely would not exist without far-future forerunners and exemplars like Teilhard.

The Omega Point is a supposed future when everything in the universe spirals toward a final point of unification.[1] The term was invented by the French Jesuit Catholic priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955).[2] Teilhard argued that the Omega Point resembles the Christian Logos, namely Chri...

06/16/2021

The MAMMOTH BOOK OF EXTREME SCIENCE FICTION is one of the few collections of specifically Far-Future SF on the market, and includes the work of top writers such as Charles Stross, Stephen Baxter, Greg Egan, and Gregory Benford. This anthology is an inspiration and an aspiration for us at Z-Sky. We hope to someday produce anthologies in this category and of this caliber. If you're looking for a summer full of Omega Point visions and adventures, look to this book.

Here are 25 stories of science fiction that push the boundaries, by the biggest names in an emerging crop of high-tech futuristic writers...

06/13/2021

Today, June 13th, 190 years ago, the great physicist James Clerk Maxwell, known for his electromagnetic equations, his relating of light to electromagnetism, and other achievements, was born in Edinburgh, Scotland.

It is thanks to minds such as Maxwell's, that analyze, experiment, and expand our knowledge, that we're able to have a reliable model of the far future of the cosmos. Without such scientific work, the far future, along with the deep past, would be hidden to us. So, we at Z-Sky celebrate Maxwell's birthday, as a thank you to him for bringing new light to our mind's-eye.

James Clerk Maxwell FRSE FRS (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish scientist in the field of mathematical physics.[2] His most notable achievement was to formulate the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, bringing together for the first time electricity, magnetism, and light a...

06/10/2021

A new, concise, and insightful article from AI Theology on Netflix's "Oxygen."

This blog reviews Netflix French Sci-Fi Thriller, "Oxygen" by focusing on the ethical and theological questions it raises.

06/08/2021

"Infinite ways of being human, Solomon Gursky thought, outbound from the sun. He could feel the gentle stroke of the solar wind over the harsh dermal prickle of Urizen’s magnetosphere. Sun arising. Almost time.
Many ways of being Solomon Gursky, he thought, contemplating his new body. His analogy was with a conifer. He was a redwood cone fallen from the Heaven Tree, ripe with seeds. Each seed a Solomon Gursky, a world in embryo.
The touch of the sun, that was what had opened those seed cones on that other world, long ago. Timing was too important to be left to higher cognitions. Subsystems had all the launch vectors programmed; he merely registered the growing strength of the wind from Los on his skin and felt himself begin to open. Solomon Gursky unfolded into a thousand scales. As the seeds exploded onto their preset courses, he burned to the highest or**sm of his memory before his persona downloaded into the final spore and ejected from the empty, dead carrier body.
At five hundred kilometers, the seeds unfurled their solar sails. The breaking wave of particles, with multiple gravity assists from Luvah and Enitharmon, would surf the bright flotilla up to interstellar velocities, as, at the end of the centuries—millennia—long flights, the light-sails would brake the packages at their destinations.
He did not know what his many selves would find there. He had not picked targets for their resemblance to what he was leaving behind. That would be just another trap. He sensed his brothers shutting down their cognitive centers for the big sleep, like stars going out, one by one. A handful of seeds scattered, some to wither, some to grow. Who can say what he will find, except that it will be extraordinary. Surprise me! Solomon Gursky demanded of the universe, as he fell into the darkness between suns."

-- Ian MacDonald, "The Days of Solomon Gursky" (1998)

[This novella originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, June 1998]