Velcro City Tourist Board

Author: PGR

  • images which know that they are science fictional / Neom

    I would never attempt—nor even wish to attempt—to gainsay Gary Wolfe on the matter of science fiction as it appears in ink on pulp or text on screens; he is a model of critical generosity, and a very nice chap to boot. But there’s an aside in his review of the new Lavie Tidhar that…

  • but who has seen the work?

    The question ‘but who has seen the work?’ points to a broader problem of the public sphere: who is talking to whom, and through which media. If we conceive of the arts broadly enough – to include, say, video games and popular music – their reach is certainly broad, though it always splits along different…

  • they’ll not know the difference

    Work is going slow today, which is to say not really going at all; I had a medical procedure this morning—nothing serious: an elective procedure, shall we say, rather than an emergency—and, while I’m in less discomfort than I expected, I’m still fairly distracted. So I figure it’s as good a time as any to…

  • 19OCT22 / accessions

    The long awaited tenth volume of Saga finally washed up on Swedish shores yesterday (and proved very much worth the wait). And I couldn’t pass up a collection of stories by the Magus of Northampton, though I am somewhat trepiditious: I acquired Jerusalem ages ago, but never managed to get more than a quarter through…

  • were you a fisherman, before?

    No surprise, really, but in case you had any doubts: Kate Beaton’s Ducks is a masterwork. Funny and sad and profound and tragic, an exposure of the world and of the self, the weight of the story perfectly balanced by the lightness of the style. Stayed up to the early hours to finish it in…