Signifiers Pointing at Nothing - Trigun Stargaze
Hello hello! It has been a while (yes, Buttondown, I am aware, you need not remind me every time I open the dashboard that it has been nearly two months...
On Going Home Again, a Kind of Web-weaving - The Dispossessed
I cried at the end of The Dispossessed, reader. These were not the tears of The Left Hand of Darkness nor of Gideon the Ninth; I was not weeping for a...
Read Weird! - The Last Days of New Paris
Yeah so, gonna be honest, fighting Nazis in Paris with the power of ::checks notes:: the physical manifestations of Surrealist art after the failed student...
Tapestries, Quilts and Mosaics - North Continent Ribbon
Here, I’ve handed you a basket full of fragments and shards of bright glass. They will never piece back together the way that they were. What will you create...
The City and the City and the City and - The West Passage
We’ve already talked about consumption in the most literal of senses, but what about the great consumption so many of us find ourselves caught within? Our...
Contact and Consumption - Into The Drowning Deep
So, I have joined a book club (for the first time in my life) and our very first book was Into The Drowning Deep, by Mira Grant (aka Seanan McGuire, you...
You Will Always Be Your Mother's Daughter - Silksong
Before I even begin, I want to say: this essay will include spoilers for all of Silksong, including the True Ending. If you want to play or experience the...
The True End of a Year
Uhhh…hi. It’s Thursday, again. We’re here, again. This is the end of my weekly newsletters, the end of summer, end of those few empty days we’re able to...
Compassion, Parallel Narratives, and the Ocean - Meet Us by the Roaring Sea
We're back today with another...writing-craft-ish newsletter, which is really just me musing on something I've been noticing a lot recently. How many...
Non-linear narratives, Opioids, and Dead Authors - The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
I realized that these newsletters have started falling into loose divisions approximating something like 'scifi as a genre', 'media analysis' and 'writing...
The End of the World, the Start of a New One - Monk and Robot
Maybe the world isn't doomed. Maybe we don't have to lie down in the dirt and go to sleep. Maybe there's still time to change things. You’re still here,...
Mecha-Narratives, Meta-Narratives, and the difference between description and analysis - Neon Genesis Evangelion
All lizards know is materials science, complain about media literacy, eat hot chip and lie. I am eternally drawn in by the siren song of mecha stories and...
Walking the Line, Databases, and Genre Bending (maybe even some gender bending!) - Solaris
Hello hello. I’ve been swallowed by a vast organism beyond my comprehension. Really, who needs Dr*co when you can watch a soviet film from 1972 where a...
Robots, Guys with Other Guys in Their Brains, and Unreliable Narrators - The Archive Undying
Hello hello. Today I hope to lie to your face and pull the wool over your eyes. I’m not Lizard but rather a fragmented memory pretending to be a person. What...
On Palatability, Surgeons, and Deserving Nice Things - The Spirit Bares Its Teeth
Here we are again. Who gets to decide how I write myself? Who gets to deserve nice things? Another point I’ve been going round and round in circles about for...
Cephalopods, A Critique of Hard Sci-fi, and Airport Books - The Martian
Hello hello. It's summer, officially, summer of the baked ground and the cold lab air, though I missed the date to invite my friends over due to sickness and...