Beta-Life

Short Stories from an A-Life Future

Page Ra

Computers are changing. Soon the silicon chip will seem like a clunky antique amid the bounty of more exotic processes on offer. Robots are changing too; material evolution and swarm intelligence are creating a new generation of devices that will diverge and disperse into a balanced ecosystem of humans and "robjects" (robotic objects). Somewhere in between, we humans will have to change also... in the way we interact with technology, the roles we adopt in an increasingly "intelligent" environment, and how we interface with each other.

The driving motors behind many of these changes will be artificial life (A-Life) and unconventional computing. How exactly they will impact on our world is still an open question. But in the spirit of collective intelligence, this anthology brings together 38 scientists and authors, working in pairs, to imagine what life (and A-Life) will look like in the year 2070. Every kind of technology is imagined: from lie-detection glasses to military swarmbots, brain-interfacing implants to synthetically "grown" skyscrapers, revolution-inciting computer games to synthetically engineered haute cuisine. All artificial life is here.

About the Author

Ra Page is the founder and Editorial Manager of Comma Press. He's the editor of numerous anthologies, including "The City Life Book of Manchester Short Stories" (Penguin, 1999), co-editor of "The New Uncanny" (winner of the Shirley Jackson Award, 2008) and "Litmus", voted one of 2011's books of the year by The Observer. Between 2004 and 2013 he was also the coordinator of Literature Northwest, a support agency for independent publishers in the region (until it formally merged with Comma). He also coordinates Comma Film, an on-going film adaptation project which regularly commissions filmmakers and animators to adapt short literary texts (poems and short stories). He is a former journalist, having been Deputy Editor for City Life magazine, and a former Director of Manchester Poetry Festival. His critical work has been published in The Journal of the Short Story in English, and he's been a producer, co-writer and co-director on a number of short film projects. He read Physics and Philosophy at Balliol College, Oxford and has an MA in English from the University of Manchester.

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