velcro city tourist board
a blog by Paul Graham Raven
science fiction / social theory / climate futures / infrastructure / utopian narratology / sometimes cats
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Now Then’s Ten
Surfacing briefly to note with pride that Now Then is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year. I stumbled across Now Then during my first weeks in Sheffield, way back in the autumn of 2012, when I was desperate to make some connections to the local cultural scene, and to find a new venue to write…
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To interest, amuse, or instruct
Many definitions of story emphasize the fictional part. However, there’s one major definition that gives a wider, and in my view more accurate, interpretation: “A narrative, either true or fictitious, in prose or verse, designed to interest, amuse, or instruct the hearer or reader.” […] But back to hypotheses — and vocations. People become scientists…
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Contest and re-engineer the universal
“For Laboria Cuboniks, the universal is synthetic – it’s a political category. It’s not something that is discovered, or progressively unearthed, but represents a ‘we’ that is collectively built, and which can be rebuilt in more emancipatory forms. Again, this can be understood as an effort to construct vectors of unanticipated and constructed solidarities. I…
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Starship Titanic now boarding; destination, Mars.
In her overview of the political and economic dimensions of Iain M Banks’ fictional output for Lawyers, Guns & Money, Abigail Nussbaum makes this typically insightful aside: This also brings us to our second reason for talking about the Culture in 2018, the fact that Amazon has recently announced the acquisition of the rights to…
Who is Paul Graham Raven?
“… who, with raving lips uttering things mirthless, unbedizened, and unperfumed, reaches over a thousand years with [his] voice, thanks to the god in [him].”