Book Review: Binge by Douglas Coupland
n Binge (2021), his first book of fiction in nearly a decade, Coupland resumes his engagement with technological and cultural currents of the now.
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n Binge (2021), his first book of fiction in nearly a decade, Coupland resumes his engagement with technological and cultural currents of the now.
Book Review: Binge by Douglas Coupland Read More »
In the late 2000s, a young author with the unconventional pen name Project Itoh (伊藤計劃) appeared in the Japanese science fiction world like a bolt from the blue.
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Humans in Literary Translation (HILT) Creative people of all stripes—from writers to sculptors—often benefit from comradery and community with others who practice their art. This is no less true of literary translators. Until the pandemic struck, I met regularly with a translator’s collective focused on Japanese fiction. It consisted of four members: Alison Watts, Louise Heal Kawai, Matt Treyvaud, and myself. We called ourselves Humans in Literary Translation—or HILT for short. I have always liked the double meaning of the word “in” here. The preposition suggests both that we are working in the field of translation and that we ourselves have been translated. This latter nuance resonates with my belief
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To help readers better visualize the world of the Jubilee Cycle trilogy, especially the 2nd book, I had two maps designed by artist Logan Fulcher: A map of central Tokyo, including the District of Dreams and Waku Waku City A close-up on the District of Dreams These will be included in all future editions of The Naked World, starting with the paperback. All editions of A Diamond Dream will also include the map of central Tokyo. For those who purchased the hardcover edition of The Naked World that does not include the maps or who only have them in monochrome, I have posted colour images below. Map of Central Tokyo
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by Eli K.P. William Discovering Cyberpunk William Gibson’s Neuromancer, the quintessential cyberpunk novel, was released in 1984, the year I was born, and Mirrorshades, the defining cyberpunk anthology, came out just two years later. Although I would later go on to write three cyberpunk novels of my own, I was literally in diapers when the genre took off and, naturally, had no direct awareness of it at the time. I was first introduced to the term “cyberpunk” as a young child in the early 90s, through the tabletop RPG Cyberpunk 2020. I was then exposed in early adolescence to a VHS of the soon-to-be classic anime Akira, though I hadn’t
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book review by Eli K.P. William Olaf Stapledon, a central figure in the early history of science fiction, was a philosopher by training but is best known for two novels, Last and First Men (1930) and Star Maker (1937). Both are renowned for their depictions of vast spans of future history. Storytelling Across Deep Time Last and First Men tells the saga of the human species, from early 21st century modernity, through posthuman settlement of the solar system, to our extinction. Skipping over aeons from one page to the next, the story covers some 2 billion years. But even the enormous scope of this narrative is little more than a
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In the heyday of the blogosphere, I never had the slightest interest in blogs. I would stumble upon them during web searches now and then like everyone else online. But few inspired me to return and none to read them regularly. I saw blogs as hasty and amateurish imitations of professional publications. Why read some nobody’s unedited, ungrammatical, and probably inaccurate account of an event when a more concise article was available in the Globe and Mail or The New York Times? Why peruse the poorly formatted photojournal of some random camera geek, when there were beautifully-designed, professional photobooks to be had? I’m sure there were tons of fascinating sites
Why Blog? Montaigne and Thought-to-Text Read More »