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Literature

Red Moon, Red Earth: the radical science fiction of Kim Stanley Robinson

March 6, 2020January 5, 2019 by Justin Reynolds

An essay for New Socialist on the political science fiction of Kim Stanley Robinson, with a focus on his most recent novel Red Moon.

Categories Design, Economics, Featured, Literature, Philosophy, Politics, Science Fiction, Technology
Skyline from the 1927 film Metropolis

Designing the future: a review of Economic Science Fictions

May 27, 2018 by Justin Reynolds

A little over a century ago, there was an expectation that the future was ours to map and manage. An excerpt from a review for New Socialist of Economic Science Fictions, edited by Wiliam Davies.

Categories Economics, Film, Literature, Philosophy, Politics, Science Fiction, Technology

21st century monsters: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Artificial Intelligence

February 17, 2018January 29, 2018 by Justin Reynolds

Mary’s Shelley’s great novel, published 200 years ago this month, retains a peculiar relevance, resonating with today’s hopes and fears for the possibilities opened by artificial intelligence (AI) and synthetic biology.

Categories Featured, Literature, Philosophy, Science Fiction, Technology

Love and loss, then and now: reading Ovid’s poetry of exile

December 4, 2017 by Justin Reynolds

The 2000th anniversary of the Roman poet Ovid’s death, far from home on the shores of the Black Sea, prompted some thoughts on the condition of exile, as experienced then and now.

Categories Art, Literature, Philosophy, Politics
Crop of Aurora book cover

Seeking Aurora: on interstellar arks, deep space and desire

April 10, 2018September 6, 2017 by Justin Reynolds

For some the possibility of space exploration offers an escape from our sublunary cares. But as Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel Aurora warns, space may simply be too big to make a home beyond this world.

Categories Featured, Literature, Philosophy, Politics, Reviews, Science Fiction, Technology

Shipwrecked on modernity: Mark Lilla’s radical reactionaries

September 1, 2017May 16, 2017 by Justin Reynolds

Mark Lilla’s collection of essays The Shipwrecked Mind asserts a classic liberal scepticism against both Golden Age and Futurist utopias.

Categories Literature, Philosophy, Politics, Reviews, Theology

The Weird and the Eerie by Mark Fisher – a review

September 1, 2017March 9, 2017 by Justin Reynolds

Mark Fisher’s latest – and tragically – final book The Weird and the Eerie explores encounters with the outside and the unknown in 20th and 21st century film, music and literature.

Categories Film, Literature, Philosophy, Politics, Reviews, Science Fiction, Theology
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About

This blog archives work by essayist and business writer Justin Reynolds from 2014 to early 2020, when I wrote  about technology, politics, business, economics, design and culture. Words for CityMetric, openDemocracy, The Calvert Journal, The New European, Social Europe, The Norwich Radical and New Socialist. More »

Latest

  • Reconsidering climate change intervention: a review of Holly Jean Buck’s After Geoengineering February 20, 2020
  • Rewiring the machine June 4, 2019
  • Red Moon, Red Earth: the radical science fiction of Kim Stanley Robinson January 5, 2019
  • Designing the future: a review of Economic Science Fictions May 27, 2018
  • ‘A Party with Socialists in It’: a review of a new history of the Labour Party May 6, 2018

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Latest

  • Reconsidering climate change intervention: a review of Holly Jean Buck’s After Geoengineering
  • Rewiring the machine
  • Red Moon, Red Earth: the radical science fiction of Kim Stanley Robinson
  • Designing the future: a review of Economic Science Fictions
  • ‘A Party with Socialists in It’: a review of a new history of the Labour Party

Last six months

  • February 2020 (1)
  • June 2019 (1)
  • January 2019 (1)
  • May 2018 (2)
  • April 2018 (2)
  • March 2018 (3)

Currently reading

The Vanishing Futurist, Charlotte Hobson, Faber | 'A future free of bourgeois clutter'

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