Home - Adrian Selby

link to information about my writing — Writing

link to posts containing my reflections on various topics — Thoughts

Reading

Against The Grain

April 2, 2023April 2, 2023

James C. Scott’s fascinating book argues that we have enslaved ourselves to grain production and the ‘civilisation’ that followed. The inevitable outcome of grain cultivation and sedentism’s propensity to increase birth rates has led to both a patriarchal system that reduces women to breeders and promotes warfare to enslave yet more people to sustain the…

Reading

The Narrator & Central Station

March 20, 2023March 25, 2023

These two wonderful books, by Michael Cisco and Lavie Tidhar respectively, set me thinking about the role of a protagonist.

artwork of a skull in a hat with an american flag

Reading

Dead Astronauts & Postcapitalist Desire

August 28, 2022September 16, 2022

Dead Astronauts by Jeff Vandermeer is hard sci-fi. There’s no space opera grandeur here, it’s far more profound. It offers a tender and bleak vision of how humanity changes and fails.

Brain Food

A long and fascinating essay about the unimaginability of the future, by Joe Carlsmith
It’s Philip K.Dick’s dystopia we’re in.
The unmissable Ted Chiang on ChatGPT.
‘The Strange Death of British Satire’ by Mark Fisher.
A lovely and thought-provoking article on ascribing value by Conrad Anker
‘How Facebook and Google fund global misinformation’.
Trident: the British question – a brilliant piece of journalism by the late Ian Jack.
“things were worse, therefore they were better.” ‘Binmenism’.
“Bad writing’s not about what I don’t like to read or find hard to read. It’s about a tone where I sense the person is trying to be something other than what they actually are, or trying to feel something they don’t.” From Sarah Miller’s blog.
Far right think tanks, opaquely funded, have close ties to many UK Conservative politicians.
Increasing the income share of the poor increases growth.
Fear of a Black Hobbit – Well argued, with a particularly interesting section on the folly of chasing the nostalgia of our formative childhood sff ‘franchises’.
I’m reading Against The Grain. It’s an eye opening thesis on traditional views of civilisation.
A great welsh dragon stands at Mametz Wood. Wyn Jones’s Up To Mametz is a searing account of the battle. It was the backdrop to a scene in my new book that recalls the beginning of a friendship between a welshman and the being many know as Satan.
If you’re visiting Brighton for a day or two, I recommend this tucked away beachfront tabletop and console gaming bar, Loading, if you’re looking to wile away a few hours one afternoon or evening.
If conflict is inevitable, how do we respond? Justin Welby offers an interesting, Christian, perspective.