On November 11, the Edgeryders nonprofit assocation is bringing me to Brussels for a day-long event called The Science Fiction Economics Lab, where I’ll be jointly keynoting with Edgeryders economist Alberto Cottica, a lifelong science fiction fan, about radical futuristic economic ideas for a more cooperative, sustainable future.
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Last week, the Escape Pod podcast published part one of a reading of my YA novella “Martian Chronicles,” which I wrote for Jonathan Strahan’s Life on Mars anthology: it’s a story about libertarian spacesteaders who move to Mars to escape “whiners” and other undesirables, only to discover that the colonists that preceded them expect them to clean the toilets when they arrive.
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In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my Globe and Mail column, Why do people believe the Earth is flat?, which connects the rise of conspiratorial thinking to the rise in actual conspiracies, in which increasingly concentrated industries are able to come up with collective lobbying positions that result in everything from crashing 737s to toxic baby-bottle liners to the opioid epidemic.
From climate denial to anti-vax to a resurgent eugenics movement, we are in a golden age of terrible conspiratorial thinking, with real consequences for our species’ continued survival on our (decidedly round) planet.
Ideas spread because of some mix of ideology and material circumstances. Either ideas are convincingly argued and/or they are delivered to people whose circumstances make them susceptible to those ideas.
Conspiracies aren’t on the rise because the arguments for them got better. The arguments for “alternative medicine” or against accepted climate science are no better than those that have lurked in the fringes for generations. Look up the 19th-century skeptics who decried the smallpox vaccine and you’ll find that anti-vax arguments have progressed very little in more than a century.
Firstsecond (publishers of In Real Life, the bestselling middle-grades graphic novel Jen Wang and I made) have just revealed the cover for Poesy the Monster Slayer, my first-ever picture book, illustrated by Matt Rockefeller and scheduled for publication in July 2020.
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Being a Tor author is pretty swell. (Thanks, Patrick!)
I sat down for an interview for Reason’s short feature, The Decentralized Web Is Coming, which documents the surging Decentralized Web movement, whose goal is to restore the internet’s early, decentralized era, before it turned into five giant services filled with screenshots from the other four.
I’m coming to Maine to keynote the Maine Library Association conference in Newry next Monday; later that day, I’m appearing with James Patrick Kelly at the Portland, Maine Main Library, from 6:30PM-8PM (it’s free and open to the public) This is the first time I’ve been to Maine, and I can’t wait!
I was delighted to sit down with my old friend Michael Hainsworth for his new TV show Futurithmic, where we talked about science fiction, technological self-determination, internet freedom. They’ve just posted the episode and it’s fabulous!
I’m about to leave for a couple of weeks’ worth of lectures, public events and teaching, and you can catch me in many places: Santa Cruz (in conversation with XKCD’s Randall Munroe); San Francisco (for EFF’s Pioneer Awards); Toronto (for Word on the Street, Seeding Utopias and Resisting Dystopias and 6 Degrees); Newry, ME (Maine Library Association) and Portland, ME (in conversation with James Patrick Kelly).
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This is my last day at my desk until Labor Day: tomorrow, we’re driving to Burning Man to get our annual dirtrave fix! If you’re heading to the playa, here’s three places and times you can find me:
Seating is always limited at these things (our living room is big, but it’s not that big!) so come by early!
Palenque Norte at Camp Soft Landings, Fri, 1PM, 8:30 and E. I’ll be talking about “Surveillance Capitalism” and our “epistemological crisis,” and how we can choose to fix Big Tech, or the internet, but not both.
I hope you have an amazing burn — we always do! This year I’m taking a break from working in the cafe pulling shots in favor of my first-ever Greeter shift, which I’m really looking forward to.
While we’re on the subject, there’s still time to sign up for the Liminal Labs Assassination Game!
