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author interviews: sci-fi technology

TL Rese

Dreamer
well, i think it's time for another set of author interviews! i periodically conduct interviews on my blog and share on here as well. here's the latest:

Q: What science fiction technology would you like to own?

Alexander London says:

As much as anyone can ‘own’ one, I’d love to have a TARDIS. Right now I can only go anywhere in time and space with my imagination. While it too is bigger on the inside, I’d love to actually go the places it takes me. I also assume TARDIS comes with a collection of jaunty bow-ties.

Darrell Pitt says:

The Choclatizer — Or Learning to Love Cabbage

Chocolate, as I’m sure you’re well aware, has long been recognised as one of the six essential food groups. It has always surprised me that it’s not mentioned on that food pyramid diagram. You know the one. It has all the pictures of fruit, vegetables, meat and dairy. I believe chocolate should sit at the top or possibly even smother the whole pyramid.

Who needs all that other stuff anyway?

And what doesn’t taste good with chocolate? We eat chocolate and strawberries. We savour chocolate with hazelnuts. We adore chocolate with peppermint.

So why stop there? Lettuce is boring. Why not lettuce and chocolate? Or chocolate and steak? You can’t tell me that wouldn’t sizzle your tastebuds. Or cabbage and chocolate? Is that an improvement or what?

This is where the choclatizer comes in. How many times have you been invited to dinner only to find your host is serving sauerkraut. Or some odd meat that they tell you is chicken, but smells like road kill?

The answer?

The choclatizer! It turns anything into chocolate. Put a cabbage in at one end and out comes a spray of chocolate. Shove a steak in and what do you get? Chocolate. A lasagne? Chocolate.

WARNING: Inserting chocolate into the choclatizer will not produce chocolate. This will reverse the polarity of the device and cause the creation of a black hole. Anything the device is aimed at will be sucked in. Something terrible could happen to your husband or wife if you’re not careful!

Hmm…

Lauren Oliver says:

I would love a hovercraft! I really hate sitting in traffic. :)

Nick Gifford says:

At the moment I’m fascinated by the possibilities of augmented reality. Imagine being out and about and getting a visual overlay of everything around you: you don’t just see a restaurant across the road, but in the corner of your vision it’s flagged with ratings, comments from friends who’ve eaten there and so on. Glance up at a building and your AR overlay tells you what it is and what they do there. Undecided about which coffee shop or pub to go to, you can see which friends are there before you even get there and your choice can be informed by who you’d like to bump into. That’s all possible now, of course: you can get that kind of information on a smartphone, you can use augmented-reality apps that recognise buildings and logos and give you all that extra social information. But it won’t be long before we have it all fed to us via contact lenses so that social media merges seamlessly with the real world and iPhone will be a museum-piece like a Sony Walkman (portable music? revolutionary in its time) or the crystal set.

Nick Gifford, author of Piggies and The Ragged People

http://www.nickgifford.co.uk

S. J. West says:

I think I was eight years old when I watched my first episode of Dr. Who. The episodes were reruns of the series played on PBS. At the time, we didn’t have cable and could only get four stations to play on our TV with pole antennae. If I could have any science fiction technology, I would want a TARDIS. I mean, come on, who wouldn’t want to travel through time and space? Plus, the TARDIS had infinite space inside. She was a cantankerous, sentient machine who always seemed to have a mind of her own. And, as writer, I can appreciate the complete brilliance of the show itself. Not only do you have the past, present, and future to play with but various galaxies and dimensions. And giving the Dr. the ability to regenerate every so often? Again, brilliant. It not only allows you the flexibility to keep the series going generation after generation but also gives you the freedom to totally change the tone of the show with different actors playing the Dr. I never thought anyone could compare to Tom Baker for me (he was my first Dr. after all), but David Tennant totally won me over when he took over the role. I enjoy the complexity of the character and find it amazing that we are still learning new things about him after all these years. The addition of River Song in the new reboot of the series was genius. She gives the Dr. an almost human quality that he’s never had before. She’s someone he actually committed to instead of changed out like his various companions throughout the years. So, yes, definitely a TARDIS for me and if you could add in a Dr. too, that would make it even sweeter.

Susan Beth Pfeffer says:

I’d really like to have a transporter, so I could get from one place to another without traffic jams or being stuck at the airport.

But it can’t upset my stomach. And I need to have it in my home, so I won’t have to deal with traffic jams getting to it or being stuck at the transporterport. And I Iive alone, so I’ve got to be able to preset it. And it can’t scare my cat, who gets nervous when I’m not around anyway.

Oh heck. I’ll just stay home!

_

as for me, i’d like my own batmobile or bat bike, christopher nolan-style. if they prove to be too expensive, i would settle for a ride in one.

what about you? what sci-fi technology do you wish was yours? share below!

. rese

- previous author interviews:
first novels
 
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