Foam World

Engineer / inventor / entrepreneur Benstan enters a ‘build-a-gizmo-from-junk’ contest and wins it with a super-light SUV made from a variety of high-spec plastic foams, foam composites and repurposed electronics and software. This sets him on a course of foam-powered creativity, building a variety of artefacts from floating towns to space relay stations. His ambition grows with his mastery of foam engineering and associated hardware and software wizardry, culminating in a planned expedition to Mars. Seemingly his reach exceeds his grasp, with prohibitive costs putting an end to his plans. That is, until circumstances conspire to make them necessary… This is the first in a sequence of novelettes exploring interactions between humans and their machine extensions and equivalents: robots, androids, cyborgs, SuperAIs, augments, and the tek they develop and use to survive in a warmed world and beyond.