These are just the things I’d like to have been blogging about since my last post of over a month ago. There was even more stuff I didn’t blog about during the four month inter-post gap before that (during which a couple of you even reached out to see if I was still alive, for which I thank you; I was). It’s\u2006 \u2006not that I didn’t want to blog: it’s that a decently-researched post generally devours a solid day, minimum, which is a lot of time to give up when you’ve got other commitments to meet. The moment something unexpected comes up (we live with five cats and a killer rabbit\u2014something always<\/em> comes up), the ‘crawl is the first thing to get pushed aside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think I may have said this before. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \n So for my first post in over a month (and only my second in five) you’d think I’d be writing about one of those things I wanted to, right?\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \n Nope. Because I’ve been asked to spread the word about some stuff, and\u2014because I shy away from social media for reasons that should be freshly obvious pretty much every time you open a browser\u2014this is pretty much the only place I can do that.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n So if you don’t get enough of me here on the ‘crawl, check out one of these other events. You might regard them as a combination greatest-hits package (my thoughts on Neuralink, in case you’ve forgotten!) and a trailer for posts yet to come (preliminary thoughts on Futurist KoolAid, raw and not necessarily coherent!). <\/p>\n\n\n\n So. Either move on or buckle up: <\/p>\n\n\n\n “<\/strong>Tales from the Bridge<\/strong><\/a>“<\/strong>\u2014\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \n \u2014a podcast run out of my old stomping ground in Guelph, hosted a cage match between Karl Schroeder and myself<\/a> a couple of weeks back. In addition to being a damn fine SF writer, Karl works as a futurist for various corporate and military concerns. (I’m not entirely certain whether his can-do techno-optimism came preloaded, or emerged in response to the job description. I’m somewhat more certain that he would object to being characterized as a “can-do techno-optimist”.) Karl and I disagree about a lot. You can hear us do that here, if you like.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you poke around in the TFTB archives, you’ll come across other Watts appearances that I didn’t announce at the time: one solo<\/a>, and one tag-teaming with Neill Blomkamp<\/a> (the “District 9” dude) with whom I seem to be, spoiler alert, maybe collaborating with. <\/p>\n\n\n\n You’ll also find The Bridge’s one-on-one with Karl<\/a> and a wide range of other folks who are far more famous than either of us. The musketeers behind Tales get around. (They even got me to Toronto Comicon a couple of years back, where I managed to so profoundly outrage a couple of parents with a small child that I was never invited back.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Media Death Cult<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Karl and I went back and forth for about eighty minutes. If anyone comes out of that thinking I’d like to hear Watts rant about things, but hogging the mic more and going on for twice as long<\/em>\u2014well, they’re in luck. <\/em> Just a couple of days ago, Moid Moidelhoff[1]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup> of Media Death Cult<\/a>, dropped another conversation<\/a> with me onto YouTube. That one goes on for over two hours; Moid and I bounce between everything from pandemics to neurotech to our favorite SF authors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Moid tells me it’s the best-received interview he’s ever done. I can’t speak to that. I’m pretty sure it’s the longest, though. (I was actually expecting him to edit it down somewhat. I was also expecting him to use an author photo that had been taken with the past ten years.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n LUMAnati<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you want something a bit more multisensory, you can have it, but you’ll probably have to go out of your way: check out the second annual Realities of Science Fiction<\/a>, a shindig being held next weekend at LUMA<\/a>‘s Arts Center<\/a> in Arles (France). This year’s Reality addresses issues related to “Afrofuturism and Indigenous futurisms”, subjects obviously in desperate need of the expertise of old white guys like myself. Fortunately I’ll be sharing the stage with Sunhaus<\/a>‘s celebrated artist and filmmaker Arthur Jafa<\/a>, who\u2014for reasons that continue to elude and frighten me\u2014requested my presence at this event. <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Locus of Dis-Content<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, most of you have probably riffled through the pages of Locus, or at least scrolled their website<\/a>, during your tenure as card-carrying SF fans. For the rest of you: it’s basically the trade journal of North American SF, as well as the entity behind the unsurprisingly-named “Locus Awards<\/a>” (which I have occasionally made the finals for but never won). It has also won a number of awards in its own right, although as far as I know it has never won a Locus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/tubthump-1024x683.jpg\")
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