Velcro City Tourist Board

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a blog by Paul Graham Raven

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

epistemic seismology

The always insightful Ryan Oakley wrestles with reality: Some stories may seem more true than others, some more pleasing, and others more dangerous, but no matter how true, beautiful or deadly, they are stories. Our reality is woven from stories –tales invented by readers just as much as authors– and our personalities are only stories
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Philosophy 🙜 Social Theory

15 Dec 2021
honeymoon objectivity

Serendipity, thy name is INTERNET. Currently in the midst of working up a big old grant application*, and what should appear but this piece from Sun-Ha Hong at Real Life, neatly filling a reference gap that’s been bugging me for a few weeks? Preach it, brother: Fredric Jameson once wrote that science fiction has become
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Science Fiction 🙜 Social Theory 🙜 Technology

29 Nov 2021
24NOV21 / accessions

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Accessions

24 Nov 2021
Smart cities: Policy without polity

Another publication is getting close to popping out of the pipeline! 23rd November 2021 sees the formal release of the Routledge Handbook of Social Futures, in which yours truly has a chapter entitled “Smart cities: Policy without polity”. Regular readers here will likely be able to guess—and guess correctly!—that this piece does not at all
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Academic Publications 🙜 Futures 🙜 Science Fiction

22 Oct 2021
het från pressen

Taking what feels like a well-earned and much-needed day off today, after yesterday’s launch of the above narrative prototype / experimental futures vehicle (via the second medium of a slightly kludgy pseudo-Brechtean performance of an online talk-show from 2041). If anyone had been wondering why things have been quiet here lately, getting this thing finished
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Academic Publications 🙜 Futures 🙜 General 🙜 Science Fiction

20 Oct 2021

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.