Author: PGR
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07JUL23 / accessions
The institution has been much occupied with implementing The Magrathea Protocol over the last week, but the accessions department has been beavering away nonetheless. Uncharacteristically, their work has focussed on withdrawals from the catalogue—shelf meterage is a real constraint for a small institution, after all—but there are a few fresh accessions also: The Overstory has…
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The Magrathea Protocol, part D: on the merits of openness over closedness
D—on the merits of openness over closedness It is my hope that you may now see why I abandoned my attempts to explain away the differences between various forms of futuring, and opted instead for this little wander through the narratological landscape. But to make it plain, my point is that yes, all these methods…
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The Magrathea Protocol, parts B5 and C: back to the futures
B5—from page to screen (and beyond) OK, that was a bit heavy—but the worst is done, and I promise I’ve done the best I could to compromise between making it simple and making it relevant. Now, to reiterate: Bal’s model was developed for prose fiction, and I’ve used prose fiction to illustrate its elements. Things…
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The Magrathea Protocol, parts B3 and B4: further outward through the model
B3—out of the model: one story, many texts Moving outward through the model one step further, we can note that the story is not exhausted by the text: think of the way in which a text zooms in or out on the spatial or temporal detail of a story at various points along its plot-line.…
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The Magrathea Protocol, parts B1 and B2: the narratological labyrinth
B—the narratological labyrinth My starting point is, I think, fairly uncontroversial: all futures are narratives, of one sort of another. So, how do narratives work? For those who like to know where ideas originate, everything I’m discussing in this section is based on the narratological theory of Mieke Bal. I am using it as lightly…