A JNCASR Students' Magazine

Science Fiction is something that has fascinated a lot of us. It allows us to dream beyond and imagine things of our own, like an alternate universe, mad scientists or aliens, etc. It is something a lot of us have grown up with, something we have encountered through different forms. The earliest one being science fiction comics among which I personally consider the two Tintin comics, Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon being my favorite, and of course the alternate universe of Calvin's captain Spiff. Though now space travel and landing on the moon is no more science fiction but these comics were written about a decade before the moon landing. Then came the short stories and novels in which I especially liked the stories by H.G.Wells, while many have liked the RAMA series by Arthur C. Clarke and the ROBOT series Issac Asimov. We always have the sci-fi movies and serials, one of my favorites being the star wars series; the opening sequence of star wars is enough to take you to a different universe. All the above is basically to convey what I found recently completely by an accident. There is a section in nature called futures, which is a collection of science fiction stories that are quite interesting and also amusing.... So if you want to publish non-science in nature.... Hey here is your chance ... I read that there is a stringent review process for this with a complete template ... So best of luck to all the future writers and happy reading to the future readers.

What does the next century have in store? Or even the next half-century? The record of the past 50 years shows that almost anything could happen. In 1955, roomfuls of vacuum-tube equipment were needed for computing power dwarfed by objects we now carry in our pockets. There were no mobile phones, no integrated circuits and almost no television.

In the same era, a generation inspired by the possibilities of science had taken an old 'westerns-in-space' formula and begun to forge a new kind of literature that asked serious questions about how technological change might affect the way we think about ourselves. This was the golden age of science fiction. The 1950s saw the publication of - to pick a few choice pebbles from the shore - Robert Heinlein's The Man Who Sold the Moon, Isaac Asimov's Foundation and Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End. In 1999 and 2000, and again in 2005 and 2006, Nature ran Futures, a popular series of science-fiction vignettes on what the coming millennium had to offer. A separate strand of Futures now hums along in Nature's sister journal Nature Physics.

Now, Nature is proud to present the return of Futures to the mother ship: a forum for the best new science fiction writing, exploring some of the themes that might challenge us as the future unfolds. Prepare to be amused, stimulated, even outraged, but know this: the future is soon.