Robot in the Woods is proud to debut its first short fiction piece by Science Fiction author Michael Ugulini. Mr. Ugulini is a freelance writer located in Toronto, Canada. Three of his short scripts have recently won awards, including First Place in the American Gem Short Screenplay Competition (2006) for his screenplay PARCHED. For more information about Mr. Ugulini, please visit his website.

DAYS ON THE WIND FARM, by Michael Ugulini

She watched me from the crest of the hill, which overlooked the water. I had beached my canoe to rest from a long morning’s paddling along the coast, and I was ready to eat some lunch. She was maybe forty-five, with shoulder length blond hair, and wore a blue summer dress, which caught the breeze like the giant wind turbines that towered over her fifteen yards behind.

These, in fact, had caught my eye as I traversed the coast. There were at least a dozen of them spread along a wide expanse of farmland, impressive to see as their white blades cut the air. Others had told me about them, how they had changed the landscape, and were providing electricity to a town down in the valley. Farms in other parts of the country were leasing out space for these as well, as sources of income. People said it was common now to see fields of robot-workers moving their metal arms along rows of crops in synchronicity with the spinning blades above them. Read more

Ever read “The 9 Billion Names of God” by Arthur C. Clarke? In this story, Clarke imagines a number-crunching supercomputer generating all possible combinations of letters/symbols in which God can be named. The story can be found here.

Artists and authors of any age, level of expertise, medium, and style are encouraged to participate in a similar project. Its a fun new portfolio development and art commissioning project called Robot in the Woods.

I am developing a website where all images are renderings of the phrase “Robot in the Woods” by different artists/styles. I have been conducting little experiments and when I mention to friends, everybody conjures up something different in their mind (what did you think of?) I envision this as a tool for the self-representing artist to display and promote thier portfolio.

• Welcome to the Robot Revolution
• An Animator’s Chronicle
• Bennet RobotWorks - Amazing Robot Sculpture
• Craig Berry’s Science Fiction Art
• Low Tech Times
• Proudly Destroying All Non-Robots Since 1974
• Radrobot
• Raygun Revival - Thrilling Tales from Beyond the Ether
  RRobots - R. Nick Kuszyk - Wow, great art it is very reminiscent of an R. Crumb piece
• Suicide Bots Hot Bot on Bot Action
• Elfwood - The World’s Largest Site for Science Fiction & Fantasy Art
• A Builder of Real Life Robots
• Mr. Future

The good folks over at “Fans of Philip K. Dick” has provided something really special. That is a piece titled: The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick as Illustrated by R. Crumb.
What could be better than a teaming of two visionaries?

The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick

As a former Geography professor, I still think of interesting projects to work on. I have one here that I think you could Wow a Geography professor with. That is, what is Science Fiction like in developing countries. Does it exist? And the same for Robotics. How do the following nations (the United Nation’s Group of 77 developing nation) participate in Robotics and/or science fiction. What are the economic and social factors that lead to this participation (or lack thereof).  What themes emerge in their writing.  If you take on this project, please send me your results. Also, please send me a note if you find any science fiction authors from these developing nations online to robotinthewoodsatgmail.com.

The list of Nation’, from Wikipedia, are below:

Read more

While researching possible styles for Robots, I came across a very interesting e-book titled A History of Visual Communications. I chose the modernists because I have always loved the art deco look and of course, this is the time frame when robots came to life.

In many ways, this website is neither about Robots, nor the woods. Robot in the Woods is a vehicle for developing a community of artists and promoting their work. However, robots are a bit of an obsession for me. And as Mark Cuban once said, “If you have an exit strategy, its not an obsession.” Truth be told, Robot in the Woods is my entrance into the concept-o-sphere. I want to operationalize all those techy buzzwords and apply them to the arts to grow not only my business, but yours. We’re talking trendy slogans such as web 2.0, the hive-mind, the long tail, virtual communities, intellectual property, connectivism, crowdsourcing, etc. But I am also hoping to use this as a venue to advance some of my own buzzwords: MicroGrants, MicroCommissions, open-source microfranchising and communal capitalism. Read more

Over at Old Dominion Wildlife, there are reports of a possible robot sighting in the woods behind a Virginia home.

Did anyone see in Wired about the Army’s $200 Billion Robot Army? It seems that Rep. Murtha (D-Pa) wants another $20 billion for a clone army. Well, at least that’s how I misread the title of the article. It actually said “Reboot” rather than “Robot.” I guess I got overexcited about a $200 Billion robot project. Anyway, isn’t a mistake like this how Terry Gilliam’s Brazil got started?

Wow! What I am always amazed at is finding people like myself. Of course, I am merely an appreciator of Robot art. In my searches for Robot art, however, I came across something equally as cool: Robot Builders. Please check out some of these sites…. really amazing stuff.