Biohacked & Begging

Stephen Oram writes social science fiction and is lead curator for near-future fiction at Virtual Futures. He enjoys working collaboratively with scientists and future-tech people - they do the science he does the fiction. He's been a hippie-punk, religious-squatter and an anarchist-bureaucrat; he thrives on contradictions. | He is published in several anthologies and has two published novels, 'Quantum Confessions' and 'Fluence'. His collection of sci-fi shorts, 'Eating Robots and Other Stories', was described by the 'Morning Star' as one of the top radical works of fiction in 2017.

"The more we surround ourselves with technology, the more uncanny our lives become. Enter Stephen Oram: with Bradbury's clear-sightedness and Pangborn's wit, he pulls ways to live out from under modernity's 'cacophony of crap.'" Simon Ings, Arts Editor, 'New Scientist' | "Can humans remain 'more than digital, more than flesh' with detachable limbs, multiple ears, implants that can be hacked and nanobots that can be ingested? These thoroughly enjoyable and contestable futures explore the personal and political implications of fleshy and messy encounters with contentious technology and the epidemic of algorithms." Stelarc, Performance Artist | "There's a distinct flavour of literary Martianism to 'Biohacked & Begging'. With the eye of a visitor from an alien planet, Oram sees what few other SF writers see - the perversity of our everyday relationships with new technologies - and thrusts that vision five minutes into the future." Dan O'Hara, editor of 'Extreme Metaphors: Selected Interviews with J. G. Ballard, 1967-2008' | "Both Kubrick's exhibition and Oram's collection should set the rest of us thinking about science and its possible repercussions." Chris Nuttall, 'Financial Times'