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Technothrillers

You know that feeling with reading novels when your bookmark location is in the second half of the book and you find yourself turning pages faster and faster in order to find what happens next? If your reading interests coincide with mine, the most likely case is that you are reading either science fiction, spy or fast-paced action thrillers, or good and old adventure stories filled with espionage and politics in the background. Well, that was before. Nowadays, if I wanted all that combined in a single novel, there's a new sub-genre called technothrillers, and with some of them, especially with new authors in the self-publishing realm, and on almost all occasions, I found myself turning pages even faster. Three of those great technothrillers you could find presented in this blog post. The premises are extraordinary, and all of them borrowed from science fiction: smart robotic nanoparticles enhancing human bodies, evil artificial intelligence operating Darknet, and one extraor...

Ways of Apocalypse

There are numerous ways of how our civilization might end. I said plenty in the past about real threats, either from heavens or from within the Earth or ourselves. It was the main theme in the second half of 2012, around the Mayan's doomsday date and I contributed with several posts related to this, including Doomsday , Biodiversity and The Apocalypse Aftermath and in all those stories I was mainly focusing on the mother nature and catastrophes we can do little or nothing about. It was either some wrath from the distant universe in form of deadly gamma rays and supernovae implosions or some judgment day originated from our own Sun or asteroid impacts or even the ultimate rage from our planet by some super volcanic or tectonic disaster. But I only timidly mentioned all those man made events I referred as 'other human stupidities', including nuclear holocaust and biological hazards. So perhaps now is the time to continue the thread and glimpse into two great stories behind ...

Augmented Reality

If you start thinking of augmented reality, what will come to your mind first? Well I don't know about you, but if you ask me, there is no doubt, it's the car keys. Yes, car keys. Let me explain. This is one of those weird situation when you're approaching your car from the distance and vainly trying to unlock the door with your fancy wireless keys. You are simply too far away from the car. But if you put the keys next to your head and try again your brain will do the magic. It will augment the poor thing and considerably enhance the wireless range and the car will no longer be locked. Don't believe me? Try it for yourself. I don't remember exactly where I saw this, probably in those documentary shows like "Brainiac" or "Top Gear" but it works every time. Human body is a large conductor when it comes to radio waves and it easily alters the field when it's close to transmitter or receiver, but still this is very nice example of how your body ...