Phantom Limbs, Withheld Worlds, and the Quatermass Experience (Part One)
Amputation gets described as removal, which is technically accurate in the way a spreadsheet can be accurate. Yes, the limb is not there. Well done, everyone. The problem is that … Continue reading
The Ghosts of Ash and the Nuclear Spectre (Part Two)
If Hiroshima haunts through absence, the Titanic haunts through overexposure. The Titanic has been replayed, retold, reconstructed, and reanimated so many times that it barely qualifies as an event anymore. It … Continue reading
Namaste, or: What Keeps Coming Back (in a Slightly Worse Mood) (Part Three)
On the way down, the sound followed for a while, then thinned, then vanished. It didn’t echo. That was the strangest part. For all its droning insistence, it left … Continue reading
Namaste, or: What Keeps Coming Back (in a Slightly Worse Mood) (Part 1)
We were almost at the top when we heard it. Not music exactly, more a pressure system. A low drone with delusions of grandeur, stretching itself between notes like a … Continue reading
A Dance in the Labyrinth (II): Heroes, Games, and the Supermarket as Mythic Space
We are fond of saying that we live in a mythless age. What we usually mean is that we no longer believe in gods. But belief was never the engine. … Continue reading
A Dance in the Labyrinth (I): Pattern, Orientation, and Myth Without Belief
We like to think myth begins with belief. Gods, monsters, cosmologies. Something asserted as true and then defended against doubt. This is convenient, because it allows us to imagine ourselves … Continue reading
Haunted When the Minutes Drag.
I’m not usually one for blowing my own trumpet. If there’s one thing that is going to ever scupper my chances as being a well known author, its that I … Continue reading
The Gentle Violence of Obsolescence Vs the Thingness of Stuff (Part Three)
What built in obsolescence ultimately produces is not progress, but permanent provisionality. Nothing is allowed to settle. Systems are designed to be replaced before they become fully known. Objects arrive … Continue reading
The Gentle Violence of Obsolescence Vs the Thingness of Stuff (Part Two)
Digital obsolescence exposes the lie at the heart of planned decay. The problem is not entropy. It is compatibility. The object has not failed. The system has moved. This produces … Continue reading
The Gentle Violence of Obsolescence Vs the Thingness of Stuff (Part One)
Nostalgia is often described as a feeling, which flatters it enormously. Feelings are flighty. They arrive late, leave early, and can usually be distracted with a cup of tea. … Continue reading
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