Category Archives: fiction

who is fighting?

Posted on by March 17, 2019
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Zeph’s pop culture quiz #62 In the spectacles of a gentleman—who is sporting a quite ↵distinctive tie knot, by the way—two people fighting are reflected. Who are they?     Simply leave a comment with your educated guess—you can ask for additional hints, too. [Leaving a comment is easy; just click the ‘Leave a reply’ at the end of the post and fill in the form. If it’s the first time you post a comment, it will be held for moderation. But I am constantly checking, and once I’ve approved a comment, your next ones won’t be held, but published … Continue reading →

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who is inside?

Posted on by March 17, 2019
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zeph’s pop culture quiz #61 A warplane in camouflage flies over snowy mountains. But who is inside? What I am asking for are the names of the two leading actors … identifying from which movie the screencap stems helps, naturally ;)     Simply leave a comment with your educated guess—you can ask for additional hints, too. [Leaving a comment is easy; just click the ‘Leave a reply’ at the end of the post and fill in the form. If it’s the first time you post a comment, it will be held for moderation. But I am constantly checking, and … Continue reading →

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which movie?

Posted on by January 9, 2019
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zeph’s pop culture quiz #60 A man is sitting in the cinema. Which movie is he watching? Mind, I am not asking from which film the screenshot is taken, who the man is, what he has done, or not done … although you may have to find out all that before you can answer the question.     Simply leave a comment with your educated guess—you can ask for additional hints, too. [Leaving a comment is easy; just click the ‘Leave a reply’ at the end of the post and fill in the form. If it’s the first time you … Continue reading →

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beyond cyberpunk revisited

Posted on by September 15, 2014
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Back in August 2006 here at xirdalium I wrote ↵an entry [worthwhile, lots of associations] on Gareth Branwyn’s and Peter Sugarman’s 1991 HyperCard classic ‘↑Beyond cyberpunk‘ [← that’s a link to the complete web version]. Now Gareth has published his book ‘Borg like me’ (Branwyn 2014a) containing a treasure trove of his writing from the past three decades, including an essay (Branwyn 2014b) on the making-of of ‘Beyond cyberpunk’. Boingboing has ↑said essay online, and here are some excerpts [water on my mills]: Peter [Sugarman] and I [Gareth Branwyn] began having regular phone conversations about hypermedia and how it might … Continue reading →

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what’s the profession?

Posted on by December 18, 2013
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zeph’s pop culture quiz #59  A gentleman in striped pants, black jacket, white shirt, and black leather gloves investigates a sign laid out on a forest floor. The sign is composed of twigs and stones—but the question is: what is the profession of the person who laid out the sign?     Simply leave a comment with your educated guess—you can ask for additional hints, too. [Leaving a comment is easy; just click the ‘Leave a reply’ at the end of the post and fill in the form. If it’s the first time you post a comment, it will be … Continue reading →

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queen of cyberpunk

Posted on by October 2, 2013
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That juxtaposition of technology and humanity is a key theme of the cyberpunk movement […] (Brown 2011) When Synners [Cadigan 1991] was published, the World Wide Web didn’t exist; few people had access to computers for leisure use; virtual reality hadn’t made it out of the labs. Yet Cadigan wrote, with typical assurance, of a noisy, noirish, dystopian future, of characters overwhelmed by sheer noise (physical and mental), of a plethora of information conveyed in media old and new, of the breakdown of the body/technology boundary. The world of Synners feels (un)comfortably familiar from the vantage point of the present … Continue reading →

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cyberpunk and postcyberpunk

Posted on by April 25, 2013
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Something seems to be in the air. Just recently we had Jiré Emine Gözen’s doctoral thesis ‘↵Cyberpunk Science Fiction‘ (2012), now Krzysztof K. Kietzman has published his M.A. thesis ‘↓Constructs of innocence in selected works of cyberpunk and postcyberpunk fiction‘ under a creative commons licence (and the thesis is ‘In tribute to and memory of ↑Aaron Swartz—a cyberpunk (1986-2013)’). Krzysztof ↑told boingboing: I studied American literature in Poland and published my Masters Thesis on cyberpunk and postcyberpunk for free under a Creative Commons BY SA license. It is available online and covers the writers William Gibson (‘Neuromancer’) and Neal Stephenson … Continue reading →

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omni collection online

Posted on by April 24, 2013
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This is a detail of page 72 of the July 1982 issue of the magazine ↑Omni. Depicted is the beginning of ↑William Gibson‘s short story ‘↑Burning Chrome.’ It is a bit of linguistic history, because here the word ‘cyberspace’ saw print for the very first time.     Fittingly enough in the same issue, right after the first part of Gibson’s short story, there is an article (Manna 1982) on ‘↑Tron‘ (Lisberger 1982) featuring double-paged stills, illustrating the subheading ‘A science-fiction film leaps inside a bizarre computer world’:  This picture spreads over pages 82 and 83 of Omni July 1982, … Continue reading →

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xirdalium at wikipedia

Posted on by February 13, 2013
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No, not my humble blog here, rather the fictional element from which my humble blog here derives its name. It always bothered me, that Xirdalium—most likely an invention by Jules Verne’s son Michel—didn’t shine up in Wikipedia’s ↑list of fictional elements, materials, isotopes and atomic particles. Today I thought ‘enough is enough,’ or ‘there’s only so much a man can take,’ and created the following entry in said list: Xirdalium. An element ‘a hundred times more radio-active than radium.’ (Verne 1909 [1908]: 125) Most probably it was invented by ↑Jules Verne‘s son ↑Michel, who introduced it to the novel ‘↑The … Continue reading →

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