S. McBRIDE
Author
My heart belongs to science fact and fiction. I believe in the power of writing to explore and enhance ethical and moralistic understanding.
My dyslexia isn't a hindrance, it's a creative aide.
PUBLISHED SHORT FICTION.
It begins on a Tuesday, if I recall, sixteen years ago. I was fourteen and in the last week of school before the summer holidays began. At the time I lived in a house with quite the reputation for otherworldly happenings
SCIENCE AND SCIFI PUBLICATIONS
Simon is from the UK and writes for a number of publications mostly themed on Sci-Fi and Futurism. Simon has an award for his work on a SciFi postapocalyptic game and nominated for three others.
Simon is currently working on several projects including a full-length novel set in a new and exciting sci-fi universe.
Right now, Mars is waiting for our bootprints, its dust drifting on the light Martian breeze in anticipation of its settling over our habitats, coating them in red.
It's the argument that never ends but in all fairness, it is a good one: Star Trek vs Star Wars, something almost guaranteed to divide your friendships, end marriages, force choices between the Dark Side and the Prime Directive.
Nikolai Kardashev is a little known Russian astrophysicist—certainly in regards to the current phenomena of science-related pop-culture icons, but despite this, some of his ideas have seeped in through the cracks.
Warfare is constantly progressing, constantly changing. During World War II we pitted troops against each other on great fields of war in ways in which we haven’t seen since. Modern battles are fought with drones, smaller skirmishes and strike teams, surgical and careful. The concept of a Relativistic Kill Vehicle (or RKV), in some ways, it’s just the natural progression of warfare.
One of the first sci-fi books I ever read was Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke. I was only about twelve years old, and it left a lasting impression. My imagination has been running overtime for the better part of twenty years because of it; after all, what would it be like to have an extraterrestrial object ploughing through our solar system? What would that mean for mankind?
Almost everything we have ever discovered has turned out to be not the only example. Be it dinosaurs or suns we have found multiple examples of it. There was a time, however, where the Sun was not only considered to be the centre of things (quite the advancement of previous beliefs) but the only example of such a thing; just like Earth was considered to be the only world. Later we knew stars were other suns and some of the obvious moving bodies in the solar system were other worlds.
Alien invasions of Earth have been a staple of science fiction storytelling since H.G. Wells. From then to today we have had stories of humanity versus an alien threat retold to us in many different ways. Many of us have almost always enjoyed these forays into human nature, but sometimes there is just something missing.
Imagine, no matter how unlikely, that we receive a message from space. One that we’re able to translate, or maybe one that is—possibly more concerning—already translated for us. The message simply reads;
“We will arrive in fifty years. Be ready.”
Yeah, it’s an unlikely scenario, but it’s a great thought experiment; what would we do?
