week 31 / 2026: art and artifice
In this episode: a long hard look at the distinction between art and artifice, and what it means to make things for their own sake. Plus: technical aspects of the new Ann Leckie novel!
art
week 16 / 2026: language and longing
It’s language all the way up and down, if you ask Alan Moore—which throws an interesting light on the rolling “post-literacy” debate, and on the tech elite’s increasingly open grasp for magic as something more (and less) than mere metaphor. Plus Bruce Sterling speculates on cybernetics...
chocolate-covered mushrooms: an interview with Joost Vervoort
Games are the leading edge of worldbuilding practice, where we find the most interesting applications—bringing challenging futures to life with a sense of agency. I spoke to Joost Vervoort about climate-activism sim All Will Rise, and the overlooked importance of gaming in contemporary culture.
week 6 / 2026: plots and characters
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.
week 4 / 2026: baleen and blubber
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.
week 37 / 2025: a room of one’s own
It’s been wall-to-wall logistics around here this week, as I’ve been moving in to a new studio/office space...
week 33 / 2025: how much is too much?
Or, phrased differently: what do the IPCC's climate change scenarios have in common with the Star Wars franchise?