About_Unused Tomorrows and Other Stories

www.twitter.com/mediascot
1st to 31st Aug 2008

"Military experiment creates intelligent snow. Icy fists smash the armies of the world. The carrot-nosed Emperor wears a coal crown."

New Media Scotland was proud to announce that its third Tweeter-in-Residence was science fiction writer Hannu Rajaniemi. He used his residency to post daily microfiction pieces which were only 140 characters long.

Perhaps the most famous example of microfiction is a six-word story by Hemingway: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." He allegedly called it his favorite, and it's easy to understand why. Most of the story happens outside the frame of the six short words, in the reader's head.

Hannu stated that “Microfiction is especially appropriate for science fiction. During my tenure as New Media Scotland's Tweeter-in-Residence, I want to find out how exactly how much futureshock and sense of wonder 140 characters can deliver. My tweets will feature both one-shot microfiction, short serials with cliffhangers and hopefully a few other surprises along the way. See you over on Twitter.

Hannu Rajaniemi is an enterpreneur and science fiction writer who spends too much time thinking about the future.

He was born in Finland but has lived in Edinburgh for the last seven years. He studied mathematics in University of Oulu, Cambridge and Edinburgh University. He holds a Ph.D. in string theory and is a co-founder of ThinkTank Maths Limited, a technology consultancy.

Hannu's short fiction has featured in several Finnish magazines, the anthology NOVA SCOTIA, two Best of the Year SF anthologies, the INTERZONE magazine and in the "Postcards from Hell" series of postcard flash fiction. Hannu is currently working on a novel. He is also an active member of Writers' Bloc, an Edinburgh-based spoken word performance group.

"the mediascot twitterer-in-residence is my favourite part of twitter. love it."