Category: Science Fiction
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gonzo Borges
A quick stab at defining Sam Kriss as a literary genre unto himself.
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the cozy catastrophists of cosplay doomerism
Asterisk Magazine, which aspires to be The New Yorker of effective altruism, has a piece profiling “AI doomers” which, even after reviewing the author’s other sincere engagements with related topics, I’m struggling not to parse as a brilliant bit of parody and/or satire. … AI doom is a remarkably cozy catastrophe. If you suffered through…
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we (believe that we) have always lived in the castle
B D McClay asks “when exactly was science fiction [literature] about jacked bros in space“, and concludes that the answer is quite possibly “never”—or at least “not back in the Golden Age, despite claims persistent over decades that it was”. McClay thinks that this metanarrative has a lot to do with the long-standing resentment of…
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building up against the left wall
Some notes on an interview with hyperproductive sff author Adrian Tchaikovsky on his writing practice, with plenty of good stuff about worldbuilding.
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on the valence of designed things
The context of a work of design tells the viewer something about the world that the design implies, and signals how seriously it should be taken.