Velcro City Tourist Board

velcro city tourist board

a blog by Paul Graham Raven

science fiction / social theory / climate futures / infrastructure / utopian narratology / sometimes cats

  • intellectual fracking / notes toward the declaration of the Butlerian jihad

    Friend-of-the-show Jay Springett talks a lot about “cultural fracking”, and is back on that beat this weekend. I’m feeling it; the big cultural events I’ve seen discussed this morning in the various feeds I follow have included another Star Wars prequel, another Indiana Jones movie, a “dark” Pinocchio remake. (Lest you think I’m pretending not…

    [… read the whole post.]

    🙜 🙜 🙜 🙜 🙜

  • bashing the wordbashers

    Another one of those moments when I find myself very much in the same camp as Alan Jacobs, who is here responding to a THORT LORD bit on the future of writing in a world where AI is a thing. Part of my reaction might well be due to the THORT LORD in question, because…

    [… read the whole post.]

    🙜 🙜

  • a true metaphysics of our time

    Everything that was ever sold and created in human history is now interpreted in terms of physical wellbeing. That is fascinating because it is a true metaphysics of our time. It is a metaphysic in a sense that our own body is a meta-object to us. I am not talking about this metaverse. The metaverse…

    [… read the whole post.]

  • collage dropout

    I done an art. Actually, I done two arts. L____ and I, at the invitation of good friend Eileen Laurie, went to the open workshop thing at Malmö Konsthall yesterday; no agenda, just hang out and make things. I’ve been planning to get busy with a collaging practice for ages—and by “planning” I obviously mean…

    [… read the whole post.]

  • 26NOV22 / accessions

    New Fractured Europe from the Hutch shouldn’t need any justification. The Hossain is almost extortionate for a mere novella thanks to Swedish pricing—close to 15GBP, at a rough estimate!—but I’m very fond of Hossain’s kinetic writing; his books are fun and irreverent and poppy, but leavened with sufficient cynicism that they stand outside the squeecore…

    [… read the whole post.]

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].”

Paul is consulting writer, researcher, theorist and foresight practitioner, as well as an author and critic of science fiction literature. More details can be found on the About page of this blog.