User:Barbs/PersonalReader: Difference between revisions
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'''Science-Fiction'''<br> | '''Science-Fiction'''<br> | ||
⟢ https://github.com/frnsys/speculating_futures<br> | ⟢ https://github.com/frnsys/speculating_futures<br> | ||
⟢ Always Coming Home - Ursula K. Le Guin<br> | ⟢ Always Coming Home - Ursula K. Le Guin<br> | ||
⟢ Parable of the Sower - Octavia Butler | ⟢ Parable of the Sower - Octavia Butler<br> | ||
⟢ A Few Rules for Predicting the Future: An Essay - Octavia Butler<br> | |||
⟢ Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements - adrienne maree brown & Walidah Imarisha | |||
'''Games'''<br> | '''Games'''<br> | ||
Revision as of 14:15, 8 July 2026
THE TERROIR
"Terroir's direct translation is 'a sense of place', and what it means is the sum of the effects of a localized environment, inasmuch as they impact the qualities of a particular product. Yes, that can mean wine, but what if you applied these criteria to thinking about Area X my personal reader?"
- Jeff Vandermeer, Authority (& me)
Want To Read/Annotate
Science-Fiction
⟢ https://github.com/frnsys/speculating_futures
⟢ Always Coming Home - Ursula K. Le Guin
⟢ Parable of the Sower - Octavia Butler
⟢ A Few Rules for Predicting the Future: An Essay - Octavia Butler
⟢ Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements - adrienne maree brown & Walidah Imarisha
Games
⟢ The Queer Games Avant-Garde - Bonnie Ruberg
⟢ Rise of the Videogame Zinesters - Anna Anthropy
⟢ Hamlet on the Holodeck (The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace) - Janet H. Murray
⟢ Game Poems - Jordan Magnuson
⟢ Everything to Play For (How Videogames Are Changing the World) - Marijam Did
Feminism
⟢ Zeros and Ones - Sadie Plant
⟢ Technofeminism - Judy Wajcman
⟢ Glitch-Feminism - Legacy Russell
Technology
⟢ Computer Lib / Dream Machines - Ted Nelson
Interactive
Patchwork Girl - Shelley Jackson (1995)
⟢ Played: Not yet because I haven't figured out how to emulate an older Windows aaaaaa but I watched a video walkthrough
⟢ Source: Internet Archive
To be linked to the chain of existence and events, yes, but bound by it? No. I forge my own links, I am building my own monstrous chain, and as time goes on, perhaps it will begin to resemble, rather, a web.
I love you Frankenstein's monster I love you cyberfeminism I love you nonlinear storytelling I love you body horror
Links:
- https://cyberartsweb.org/cpace/ht/pg/pgov.html (this entire site is super interesting)
Animal Well - Billy Basso (2024)
⟢ Played: 18/01/2026
⟢ Source: Dion's Nintendo Switch
Puzzle platformer without combat - The ecosystem can both be friendly or hostile to you, and I don't blame the hostile creatures as I am interfering with their living space. I like that I don't retaliate, I just have to evade their attacks to reach my goal of solving a puzzle.
The only enemies you ever kill are an ostrich and the final boss (which was horrifying). I felt soooo bad for the Ostrich stuck in a wheel that I had to drop into the water!!! It's such a sad fate.
The Making of Animal Well - Documentary
⟢ Source: YouTube
Mina the Hollower - Yacht Club Games (2026)
⟢ Played: 05/2026
⟢ Source: Steam
Fiction
Story of your Life - Ted Chiang (1998)
⟢ Read: 11/10/2025
⟢ Source: Physical copy
Summary
Story of your Life is a science-fiction novella.
The entire story takes place in one moment: When Gary asks protagonist Louise if she wants to have a baby together.
It then switches between her memories of the past, working as a linguist in first contact with the alien species Heptapods and her process in learning their language, and her memories of the future, their yet unconceived daughter growing up until her untimely death at 25 years old.
The use of tenses in the future memories is strange. Louise remembers her daughter in future tense: "I remember I will.."
The story's themes are language and communication, linguistic relativity, free will and determinism, teleology, child loss, first contact with alien beings.
I had read the story before a few years ago, along with watching the movie adaptation Arrival, but wanted to reread and annotate it for SI28, as the linguistic relativity and free will themes feel very relevant to the project.
The Author of the Acacia Seeds - Ursula K. Le Guin (1974)
⟢ Read: 28/10/2025
⟢ Source: PDF
The Dispossessed - Ursula K. Le Guin (1974)
⟢ Read: 04/04/2026 - 22/06/2026
⟢ Source: Physical copy
Summary
A utopian sci-fi novel which takes place on two planets, Urras and Anarres. Urras has a capitalist society similar to our own, while Anarres houses a colony that split off from that society 200 years prior to the events of the story. The colonists are anarchists called Odonians. The two societies have been completely cut off from each other, there is barely any communication between them. The protagonist is an anarchist physicist who becomes the first person in 200 years to visit the capitalists to progress his research on time. The novel switches between chapters set during Shevek's life growing up on Anarres, detailing how the anarchist utopia functions, and chapters set during Shevek's visit to Urras, which show an anarchist point of view of experiencing a capitalist society like our own.
Relevance to my practice
I'm really interested in writing utopian science-fiction and have dabbled often in genres like Solarpunk, but I've grown a bit sceptical of its tendencies to show a very specific aesthetic of what a utopia should look like, and not addressing where the resources for those beautiful landscapes and architecture come from or how the societies function, it has a tendency to lean towards greenwashing practices. I've been wondering how to sketch aspirational, utopian futures but also show that those will come with friction and discomfort to let go of the extractionism and colonialism that are foundational to our current system. I am curious how Le Guin tackles these subjects and also how she weaves anarchist and taoist theory into her fiction, which I heard is very present in this novel.
Reflection
So far I am very impressed by how well Le Guin weaves anarchist theory into fictional conversations between characters, full of nuanced opinions and perspectives.
Non-Fiction
The Mushroom at the End of the World - Anna Tsing (2015)
⟢ Read: 28/01/2026
⟢ Source: Physical copy
Link situated research of Tsing to unique immersion games offer as media ??
Beyond awareness: Climate games as invitations to care for the future - Carien Moossdorff, Joost M. Vervoort (2026)
⟢ Read: 08-02-2026
⟢ Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328726000029
TBC..
Permacomputing Aesthetics: Potential and Limits of Constraints in Computational Art, Design and Culture - Aymeric Mansoux, Brendan Howell, Dušan Barok, and Ville-Matias Heikkilä (2023)
⟢ Read: 05/2026
⟢ Source: PDF
TBC..
A Non-Euclidean View of California as a Cold Place to Be - Ursula K. Le Guin (1982)
⟢ Read: 06/2026
⟢ Source: EPUB
“One need not smash one’s typewriter and go bomb the laundromat, after all, because one has lost faith in the continuous advance of technology as the way towards utopia. Technology remains, in itself, an endless creative source. I only wish that I could follow Levi-Strauss in seeing it as leading from the civilization that turns men into machines to “the civilization that will turn machines into men.” But I cannot. I do not see how even the almost ethereal technologies promised by electronics and information theory can offer more than the promise of the simplest tool: to make life materially easier, to enrich us. That is a great promise and gain! But if this enrichment of one type of civilization occurs only at the cost of the destruction of all other species and their inorganic matrix of earth, water, and air, and at increasingly urgent risk to the existence of all life on the planet, then it seems fairly clear to me that to count upon technological advance for anything but technological advance is a mistake. I have not been convincingly shown, and seem to be totally incapable of imagining for myself, how any further technological advance of any kind will bring us any closer to being a society predominantly concerned with preserving its existence; a society with a modest standard of living, conservative of natural resources, with a low constant fertility rate and a political life based upon consent; a society that has made a successful adaptation to its environment and has learned to live without destroying itself or the people next door. But that is the society I want to be able to imagine–I must be able to imagine, for one does not get on without hope.”
Articles/Blogs
Alternative Games From The Fringes Of Cyberspace - Nathalie Lawhead (2025)
⟢ Read: 16/12/2025
⟢ Source: Link
TBC..