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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Words were your matter
Science fiction was always far too small a box to contain your writing. Hero is far too small a word to contain what you’ve been to me, and will always be to me. From all of us who are trying to walk away from Omelas: go easy, Starbear. We promise to continue the work.
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I am not sick. The world is sick.
After I learned all this, and what it means for us all, I started to long for the power to go back in time and speak to my teenage self on the day he was told a story about his depression that was going to send him off in the wrong direction for so many…
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“Engineers try to do politics by changing infrastructure.”
From an interview with Fred Turner: What are the “politics of infrastructure”? What does that phrase mean? It means several different things. First, it involves the recognition that the built environment, whether it’s built out of tarmac or concrete or code, has political effects. I was joking earlier about reshaping the Forum, but I shouldn’t…
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Gig alert: “Beneath the city streets: urban infrastructure and its invisibility”, Sheffield Hallam, 1 March 2018
Attention, urbanists and infrastructure-heads who are geographically proximate to Sheffield, UK (or who just really like travelling a long way for seminars): Luke “Bunkerology” Bennett is chairing a panel discussion on 1st March 2018 at Sheffield Hallam University under the title “Beneath the city streets: urban infrastructure and its invisibility”. It’s free to attend, but you’ll…
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That was the year that was
I still vaguely recall my mother’s 40th birthday back in 1987; that was the golden era of the catchphrase “life begins at 40!”, and I heard it repeated many times that year in many tonal variations, from sincere statement of aspiration to bitter statement of crushed hope. I turned forty this year. And I guess…
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].”