Future Media
Rick Wilber
9781616960209
431 pages
Tachyon Publications Llc
Overview
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 revisioning 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 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 but 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.
Nonfiction contributors include Marshall McLuhan, who posited that the medium is the message; Cory Doctorow and his revisioning 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 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 but 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.
Author Bio
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). He has published more than fifty science-fiction short stories appearing in such anthologies and magazines as Analog, Asimov’s, and Fantasy & Science Fiction.
