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Reading round-up: the straightening of time by Victorian science and philosophy; the formation of the earliest international communications infrastructures; and the ironic-in-hindsight interventionism of Iain M Banks's Look to Windward.

Reading round-up: reports of literacy’s death may well be exaggerated; plot models are patterns, not blueprints; the “tapestry” novel, and the redistribution of character agency; extreme bird-watching, and the re-humanisation of the last hipster.

Reading round-up: exploring what might happen when Medicare meets de-fi and prediction markets; why “innovation” culture would benefit from a more sincere engagement with the darker end of science fiction; and narrative techniques for simultaneous explanation and estrangement.

This is a response to “The Right to be Wrong”, Zoe Scaman’s recent piece on technology criticism.

Reading round-up: seeing monsters in the (geo)political mirror; the paradoxical essence of “community”; the enantiodromia of a far-right Euro-federalism; Melville's Moby Dick considered as science fiction.

Reading round-up: the long game of fashion brand narratives; hints of a revivalist Romanticism; the magickal power of naming things; and the creation of history through the storying of the dead.