Magazines

Arc 1.3 released… sort of… and free for a limited time

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Thanks to Vortex for giving me the heads up that Arcfinity 1.3 has been released today. Most intriguingly, not for Kindle (yet) and equally intriguingly, free for a limited time (until October 3rd).

Click here for the link to download for free.

For those of you who have been following my reviews and have any of the listed devices, this is your chance to see what this magazine and futurism is all about. I’m going to try to download a free edition onto my Android phone over the weekend and I will let you know what I think. Hopefully, the Kindle edition should be available soon enough.

Enjoy!

Arc 1.3 competition announced

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So Arc 1.3 finally has a release date – Monday September 24th. By my reckoning that makes it a month overdue. Never mind, at least we can rest assured that the publication hasn’t died after the second edition. This would have been a shame because the first two editions have shown a lot of promise. If you haven’t bought either edition of this amazing digital magazine yet then get on over the Amazon to check them out.

They are already putting out a call for submissions for the next competition (scheduled to be published in Arc 1.4 due out December). The concept for this one is intriguing: Continue reading →

Where is Arc 1.3?

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By my reckoning it is late.

Arc 1.1 was released on 15th Feb 2012.
Arc 1.2 was released on 24th May 2012.

It is a quarterly magazine so surely Arc 1.3 should be out by now? I have received no communication on this, there is nothing on the Arcfinity tumblr and I’ve not received a single update about upcoming content. The competition link is still on the tumblr page and that closed sometime in July.

There is also nothing on The Tomorrow Project website.

Anybody know anything?

Arc 1.2 Review

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The theme of this, the second volume of the Arcfinity ezine, is about the future of humanity, subtitled Post human conditions. Intriguing concept to deal with how humans will change in relation to technological advances of the future. I mentioned in my “first impressions” post that I had not heard of most of the contributors so this was a whole new ball game for me.

This volume is just as slick and professionally made. The only difference from volume 1.1 is that it has more images. It also has far more links which, if like me you have the basic Kindle, you will not be able to follow. This is unfortunate and will give a better experience if you have a tablet such as an ipad. For a magazine dedicated to Futurism, it is a shame that these things were not taken into account.

Continue reading →

Arc 1.2 – First impressions

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For those of you who didn’t already know, the second volume of Arcfinity was released yesterday. Like volume 1.1, Arc 1.2 comes in at a price of £4.99 and is a digital download only (presumably as before with a handful of print edition copies available that come with a hefty price tag).

Volume 1.2 is on a theme of humanity and the human condition in futurism and subtitled Post Human Conditions. Looking through the contents I’m afraid to say that this list of contributors is far less familiar to me than in Arc 1.1. Where I knew most of the names in the first volume, here I recogmise only Frederik Pohl and Jeff VanderMeer. Anne Galloway, Nick Harkaway, Sonja Vesterholt (who contributes Prometheus art), Paul McAuley, Regina Peldszus, T.D. Edge, Gord Sellar, P.D. Smith, Holly Gramazio and Kyle Munkittrick are completely alien to me. Feel free to berate me if I’m clearly not geeky enough in that respect. Continue reading →

Arc 1.1 Review

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Here then, at last is my review of the first volume of the Arc ezine. I’ve had to read it this weekend as I promised “Percolated Prose” that I would have a concept ready for her to ponder over by the close of play tomorrow and that required some research in reading the first edition. I must say that it is a slick and professional production that you would expect to see from New Scientist. Continue reading →

Arc 1.2 needs you…

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I know I’ve yet to review Arc 1.1 as promised (I’ve barely skim-read it) but already I’m receiving promotional material about the next volume. Due out in May (so it is quarterly then), unsurprisingly it will be called Arc 1.2.

Today I received a call for submissions for a competition they are running:

Enter our writing competition & you could be published in Arc 1.2

Arc has teamed up with The Tomorrow Project, Intel’s futurism project, to run a competition soliciting near-future stories with a heavy technological emphasis. Not only will we publish the winning entry in issue 1.2 of Arc, and pay £500 for it, we will also pay £200 each to five runners-up, whose stories will then be published on the Tomorrow Project website and used to stimulate conversation about our shared future. Continue reading →

Arc 1.1 – first impressions

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On my way to work this morning, I was listening to Radio 4 (as you do) and Simon Ings, the editor of the new magazine Arc was on to discuss the publication. Despite that he did not say anything I hadn’t heard / read before I made a mental note to give it a serious think.

When I got home from work I noticed that my hit rate on this blog for the last few days has been higher than in recent weeks and the Google search terms that brought people here were overwhelmingly about arc 1.1. Encouraged by this I decided to bite the bullet and purchase it. Continue reading →