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.
science fiction
week 2 / 2026: ... and the circus leaves town
Reading round-up: Rodney Brooks reassesses his own AI predictions; Dan Wang holds forth on China (and everything else); Bruce Sterling reports from the depths of the multitool rabbit-hole; an anthology of stories in homage to J G Ballard.
week 49 / 2025: against the supposedly inevitable
Reading round-up: the end of The Line; socially constructed technological inevitability; the crusade against empathy; the Noughties as the Before Times... and the attentional friction of poetry.
week 45 / 2025: ten theses on “the future”
The moment to change a mental model is the moment at which it becomes an obstacle to understanding rather than a scaffold for it.
week 36 / 2025: at the intersection of three things
I've been going on about this "narrative prototyping" thing for ages now, but how does it differ from science fiction and/or design fiction? Well, since you asked...
week 35 / 2025: radio daze
Client work is keeping me busy this weekend, so perhaps you'd like to go listen to a recent podcast appearance?
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?