Painting of living room has commenced. My break between coats has been to read passages from Isaac Asimov's FOUNDATION TRILOGY, a 1955 hardback edition I purchased for $8.50 back in Denver some six years ago and never got around to reading.

First of all; I really cannot believe it's been six whole years, and second of all; thus begins my mission to read all the unread books in my possession in the new year to come before buying anything new.

Right.

130 pages in and enjoying it a great deal.

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Comp copy of THE BIG BOOK OF CYBERPUNK arrived, and what a sight to behold it is. Obligatory glamor shots of the thing below, along with a look at the impressive table of contents and the opening page of my story, CRISPR Than You.

I quite like how they're categorized by theme, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading Jared's sub-intro for each section. A truly masterfully put-together collection that—at over 1100 pages—will take me quite a while to get through and most likely fuel years of inspiration in the process. Very humbling to be a part of.

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“There’s no question that cyberpunk had a shockingly brief existence as a cohesive entity. Born out of science fiction’s new wave, literary postmodernism, and a perfect storm of external factors (Reaganism, cheap transistors, networked computing, and MTV), the genre cohered as a tangible, fungible thing in the early 1980s, most famously exemplified by the aesthetic of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) and the themes of William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984). The term cyberpunk itself, as coined by Bruce Bethke, came into being in 1983. The neologism captured the zeitgeist: the potential of, and simultaneous disillusionment with, techno-capitalism on steroids.”

From Jared Shurin's excellent introduction to THE BIG BOOK OF CYBERPUNK in which I have a story called CRISPR Than You.

“Cyberpunk was born of the punk ethos. A genre that, in many ways, existed against a mainstream cultural and literary tradition, rather than for anything definable or substantive in its own right. This is, at least, an argument posited by those who believe the genre peaked—and died—with Bruce Sterling’s superb anthology Mirrorshades (1986). Accepted as the definitive presentation of cyberpunk, Sterling had pressed a Heisenbergian self-destruct button. Once it was a defined quality, cyberpunk could no longer continue in that form.

“Although this is a romantic theory (and cyberpunk is a romantic pursuit, despite—or perhaps because of—the leather and chrome), it is not one to which I personally subscribe. While collecting for this volume, I found that the engine of the genre was still spinning away, producing inventive and disruptive interpretations of the core cyberpunk themes through to the start of the next decade.”

I love Jared's intro a great deal. Read more at CrimeReads.

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A book I attempted to read in my early 20's but never quite got into has been on my mind lately: HOW TO BE GOOD by Nick Hornby. I turned to it on the strength of Hornby's other immensely popular novel, HIGH FIDELITY, but despite the enjoyable writing style, I found the subject matter of divorce to be way far removed from where I was at the time. Now that I'm going through a divorce of my own twenty years later—one that is getting evermore sour by the minute—I am considering taking another look at Hornby's book, because I remember its take as being fun and humorous, which is a miraculous feat if the developments of my own divorce are anything to go by.

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Finally got around to taking some glamor shots of Sim Kern's THE FREE PEOPLE'S VILLAGE. which I was very honored to design the cover(s) and endpapers for.

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THE BIG BOOK OF CYBERPUNK drops in just 13 days, and its impressive table of contents has been announced on File 770.

Like other Best-Of tomes, this thing is a doorstopper coming in at 1136 pages. It is very humbling to see one's name listed alongside giants you've read for years; like Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, and Bruce Sterling, but it's also great so see the book bringing together many awesome contemporaries like Omar Robert Hamilton, Ales Kot, and Corey J. White. Not to mention boundary pushing thinkers like Samuel R. Delaney, Charles Stross, Lauren Beukes, and many more.

Looking forward to seeing it in person and spending the next 10 years attempting to read it all.

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Peter Biskind's DOWN AND DIRTY PICTURES is worlds apart from his EASY RIDERS, RAGING BULLS. Whereas the latter is inspiring, the former is just icky. Not a fault of Biskind, but the Hollywood scene of the 90's he's writing about is very different from that of the 60's/70's. You feel like you've been thrown into a pit of sheer nasty backstabbing scum. Everyone is terrible. Every time I read a bit, I just feel like taking a shower and sitting on a park bench somewhere pleasant, where you might strike a delightful conversation with someone without want or ulterior motive.

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There has been a sudden influx of subscribers to my newsletter despite it being on hiatus right now and I'm not entirely sure what the source or reason is.

The last stroke on the final page in the latest TSG should be going down today (easily a month behind schedule) after which I scan in the entire chapter and begin the digital part of the job (screentones, letters, colors, and assembly).

19% into STARGAZER: THE LIFE, WORLD, AND FILMS OF ANDY WARHOL by Stephen Koch which I am thoroughly enjoying. Started it just to get an idea, but now I'm hooked and cannot put it down despite a handful of inaccuracies I've noticed. It's okay though, because it's not the historical play-by-play facts that are important. It's the theoretical insight gleamed from the observation of the general happenings explored in this excitingly written text.

Recording live on the Afikra podcast tomorrow, which anyone can “attend”.

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This beautiful tome had to arrive in the mail to remind me that I have work on show at the Letterform Archive in San Francisco. STRIKETHROUGH: TYPOGRAPHIC MESSAGES OF PROTEST, curated by Silas Munro and Stephen Coles, is exactly what it says on the tin; a look at visual works of activism across time and space with a particular focus on typographic usage.

The tome in question acts on one hand as the catalogue for the exhibition, but on the other hand as a standalone overview of over a century of typography in relation to activism.

Within its pages are powerful works from the black liberation movement, anti-war protests, OSPAAL, feminist uprisings, pro-vote campaigns, indigenous struggles and so much more.

Absolutely essential to anyone even remotely interested in activism or graphic design and even better for those interested in both. Available direct from the Letterform Archive shop.

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