Writing is hard enough without adding stupid limitations to the process. Or at least, that’s how it seems to me as a bystander. For that reason, I’m a little bit skeptical about Nature magazine’s series of short-shorts, ‘Futures’. Surely a writer has enough to cope with, without trying to squeeze his story into a few hundred words. That said, some have done it extraordinarily well. The magazine has offered up six stories so far. Of these, I think the McIntyre is particularly good and well worth checking out.

• Ian Stewart, “Play it again, Psam“
• Stephen Baxter, “Under martian ice“
• Ken Macleod, “Undead again“
• Penelope Kim Crowther, “The party’s over“
• Vonda N. McIntyre, “A modest proposal… for the perfection of nature“
• Norman Spinrad, “A Man of the Theatre“