There’s a little aside in the last few paragraphs of Joanne McNeil’s latest newsletter which manages to totally nail something otherwise rather nebulous about contemporary fiction, a thing that I’ve been struggling to articulate clearly. After a re-read of China Miéville’s The City & the City, Jo wonders:

Where are the writers with edges? I used to think this was a prerequisite for completing a novel; that you’d have to be the sort of person who follows their own rules, refuses to complete homework, rejecting reality for a world of your own. But the balance has tilted toward writers who really love doing homework—they see the novel as homework, something you get a gold star on.

Yes! That’s it, right there—that sense of genuine talent being directed toward the affirmation of prevailing conventions, rather than toward attempts to tear holes in them.

(It is, perhaps, the supply-side function of the hegemony of the nerds.)

Joanne has a new novel dropping in November. I must find out where best to pre-order a copy in Sweden; you should find out where best to pre-order a copy wherever it is that you live.

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It’s been a bit quiet here, hasn’t it, after the firehose of early August? Well, what can I say: I am now a Person Ov Bizniz, the owner and sole benefactor of a private limited company (or aktiebolag, as they’re called in Sweden), and with that new status comes not only the seeking of clients commensurate therewith—do get in touch if you think I might be able to help you or your organisation with foresight-related activities, particularly (though not exclusively) with a climate and/or infrastructural focus!—but also the learning of how it all works. (It turns out that researching the intricacies of legacy-social-democratic taxation systems via the medium of your still-very-basic grasp of a second language is a slow and painstaking process… who would have guessed?)

In the meantime, rediscovering a regular rhythm for blogging will have to be a side-quest; there’s no shortage of things to blog about, but there’s lots of other writing to be done as well. On which note, I’d better get back on the horse…