Bruce Sterling has a short-short story in this month’s Discover, “In the Future, Doing Science Is Like Blogging.” It’s part of an Ellen Datlow-edited series on fictionalized future discoveries. I’ve written one for a forthcoming ish in which a neuro shortcut to creating empathy for fictional people is created and abused by advertisers, destroying all forms of narrative fiction (I originally pitched one about a world in which the cure for obesity turns out to be a turd-transplant from people with “skinny” intestinal flora, but nevertheless the formerly fat are still shunned by the naturally thin; but “eat shit and live” was too gross for the series).
• Can I really make major science discoveries just by reading “nonsense poems”?
You bet you can, and that’s why we’re so glad you’re at our Web site! If you can read a popular-science publication (and enjoy it), then you most likely have enough brainpower to help us make massive scientific breakthroughs.
• How do I know if I qualify for making these “mysterious discoveries”?
By displaying your linguistic comprehension of our stochastic scientometric ontological schemata!
In the Future, Doing Science Is Like Blogging