There are gestures of science fiction here, but this story definitively takes place in the real world. The externalities finds stable footing in the world of science, and as a robust skeleton for more delicate interior considerations, that stability adds mass and relevance. The natural world, and those people dedicated to understanding its intricacies, serves as a narrative backdrop. Through the eyes of the book’s short cast of characters we are reminded that there are dramatic and profound alternatives to the exceedingly complex lives most of us live in the industrialized world.
Read MoreDELUGE
The number one thing we collectively did with our Promethean information powers was unhinge our jaws and try to swallow as much newly emerging social media as possible—voraciously, absent-mindedly, relentlessly. We became boa constrictors incapacitated by trying to swallow not simply a goat, but an elephant.
Read MoreINFLUENCERS
A culture capable of even casually reading anything — car magazines, gossip magazines, music magazines, newspapers— meant its citizens were capable of simply focusing on something—anything—for more than a fleeting moment, by which I mean minutes not seconds.
Read MoreTHE CURATED LIBRARY PROBLEM
Even as I try to selectively calibrate my attention and interests to suit time and energy, the compelling pull of interesting materials tempts me like a rodent that stumbles upon a bag of shelled walnuts. Unable to resist, the hapless creature cannot help but gobble up one more, often resulting in a bellyache.
Read MoreINESCAPABLE: Thoughts on the novel AGE OF VICE
Book readers—and we must presume that there are at least a few of us left!— cannot help but be aware that screen-worthiness is part of the appeal. But the fact that it reads so well as a book means that it is also proudly declares itself as a novel first and last, which ironically solidifies one of its great pleasures. It lives through words on its pages, and this book comes alive in ways familiar to the sensations you get when your exercised heart pounds in your chest.
Read MoreTHE NOVEL
You can’t be doing something else when you’re reading a novel. You must do your own imagining. You also can’t check out periodically while you’re in the process of reading a novel. The moment you do, you’re not reading!
Read MoreFICTIONS REGARDED AS TRUTHS
Fiction offers more than just food for thought. It offers possibilities. Social media, conversely, offers us shallow moments of vicarious sensation. As something usually less than reportage, and certainly something substantially less than earnest invention, social media generally traffics in distraction where fiction, even in its most banal expressions, asks something more.
Read MoreWHAT HAPPENS IF WE CLICK THINGS EVEN FASTER?
When an idea is only as good as its ability to hold space until the next idea flickers onto our screen, a more fundamental devaluing of life has begun to take hold.
Read MoreNEW LATITUDES, NEW LONGITUDES
By knowing the latitude and longitude of every centimeter on our planet, we must imagine new ways those places intersect.
Read MoreLONG PLAYING RECORD
But when everything is available all the time, each item in particular matters less and less. It’s the law of supply and demand, the dilemma of tasty food served at an already heavily laden table, the cool drink of water offered in the middle of 40 days of rain.
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