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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In print
I’m still not sufficiently jaded a writer that I don’t feel a thrill at seeing my name in a byline, and that goes doubly so for fiction work, and for work that appears in actual physical dead-tree media. (I know, it’s just so archaic of me.) So fiction work that appears in dead-tree media is…
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Sinister literature
Book-porn posts: totally acceptable when you paid for ’em yourself. The below represents the results of a spending spree at Verso Books; they were doing a 50%-off-everything sale, and I had a sale of my own to celebrate, so… Lovely; all I need now’s the time to read ’em. Particularly looking forward to Jameson’s Archaeologies…
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Intrusion
Being burgled for the first time is probably a great prompt for developing a hacker-esque mindset. Which isn’t to say i’d recommend it; as of last night, I’ve been burgled four times in my life, and while it’s markedly less horrible a mental experience each time out, it’s still pretty nasty — even when you’re…
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Poppytar noir
So, I sold a story a while ago. Not quite as long ago as I wrote the story in question, mind — that was during the second semester of my Masters, which feels like a lifetime ago. Anyway, the sale went to Ian Whates at NewCon Press. Here’s as much as anyone other than Ian…
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Surveillance and legibility: systems of seeing
“Networks weird people.” Quinn Norton and Ella Saitta explain the yin-yang nature of network effects — and the complicity of hackers and “geek culture” in such — to the Chaos Communications Conference. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWg2qEEa9CE This is of considerable interest to me, for two reasons. First of all, because legibility is a big part of what my…
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].”