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codyrbrown.bsky.social
Cody R Brown
@codyrbrown.bsky.social
400 followers 400 following 190 posts
PhD @ UBC English, sf and ecocriticism, walking the laneways of the Lower Mainland of BC
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codyrbrown.bsky.social
Cody R Brown @codyrbrown.bsky.social · 15h
This essay by Cary Wolfe might be useful, and provides lots of directions to pursue:
"What Was 'The Animal'?: Ontology and its Discontents" by Cary Wolfe (Keywords: Language; Lifeworld; Derrida)
"How did human beings ever find it remotely plausible that the world is neatly riven by an ontological divide?"
www.thephilosopher1923.org
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codyrbrown.bsky.social
Cody R Brown @codyrbrown.bsky.social · 2d
this is a basically undeniable take when reading robots in terms of their origin in Karel Čapek's play R.U.R.
jamellebouie.net
jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 2d
really should get around to writing my take that "AI uprising/robot uprising" fiction is just barely sublimated fear of domestic slave revolt
josie.zone
🏳️‍⚧️ Josephine Riesman @josie.zone · 3d
It is morally wrong to want a computer to be sentient. If you owned a sentient thing, you would be a slaver. If you want sentient computers to exist, you just want to create a new kind of slavery. The ethics are as simple as that. Sorry if this offends
codyrbrown.bsky.social
Cody R Brown @codyrbrown.bsky.social · 3d
I need the mariners or the jays to make it
codyrbrown.bsky.social
Cody R Brown @codyrbrown.bsky.social · 6d
I'm a die-hard for the Ganji Kankiri carbonknifeco.com/en-ca/produc...
Japanese Can Opener Gangy Kankiri
Made in JAPAN. Please, hand wash and dry thoroughly when finished.
carbonknifeco.com
codyrbrown.bsky.social
Cody R Brown @codyrbrown.bsky.social · 6d
oh man I've been thinking about this a lot since seeing it last night - there's something there about a shift from PTA's early Altman relationship to what's happening now with the Pynchon streak in his work
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Reposted by Cody R Brown
atrupar.com
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 8d
Pritzker: "In any other country, if federal agents fired upon journalists & protesters when unprovoked what would we call it? If officials marched down streets harassing civilians & demanding their papers, what would we say? I don't think we'd have trouble calling it what it is: authoritarianism"
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codyrbrown.bsky.social
Cody R Brown @codyrbrown.bsky.social · 9d
time to root for the mariners and the jays for the postseason
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codyrbrown.bsky.social
Cody R Brown @codyrbrown.bsky.social · 9d
or possibly Slaughterhouse-Five. in my late teens/early twenties I had a compulsion where I bought every copy of either that I found in thrift stores, eventually I had probably ten copies of each
codyrbrown.bsky.social
Cody R Brown @codyrbrown.bsky.social · 9d
What book have you bought the most copies of in your life?
a distressed maroon copy of J. D. Salinger's *The Catcher in the Rye*
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codyrbrown.bsky.social
Cody R Brown @codyrbrown.bsky.social · 11d
a classic "Torment Nexus" scenario
mckenziewark.bsky.social
Chica Marx @mckenziewark.bsky.social · 11d
Is it ethical to write dystopian fiction when it just gives the ruling class ideas?
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Reposted by Cody R Brown
megapolisomancy.bsky.social
After leaving Vienna, and long before you come to Budapest, @megapolisomancy.bsky.social · 11d
Me: *through sobs* you can't just say everything is about climate change.... Please....

Weird theorists: *points at any weird fiction nearby* cli-fi hyperobject
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codyrbrown.bsky.social
Cody R Brown @codyrbrown.bsky.social · 11d
a huge pet peeve, and one I had to do significant work avoiding in my own dissertation haha
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codyrbrown.bsky.social
Cody R Brown @codyrbrown.bsky.social · 12d
sick list, would have loved to see these heavy hitters on a syllabus when I was in undergrad
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codyrbrown.bsky.social
Cody R Brown @codyrbrown.bsky.social · 14d
I've noticed what usually seems like a 50-50 split between students who use plural possessives correctly and students who just add apostrophe-s to all possessives—can't really say why, tho, although I imagine it's just a bit of usage that's falling by the wayside in K12 language instruction
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codyrbrown.bsky.social
Cody R Brown @codyrbrown.bsky.social · 15d
it's kind of a perfect book imo
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codyrbrown.bsky.social
Cody R Brown @codyrbrown.bsky.social · 17d
One of the best!
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codyrbrown.bsky.social
Cody R Brown @codyrbrown.bsky.social · 18d
God, Joel Lane is great, huh?
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codyrbrown.bsky.social
Cody R Brown @codyrbrown.bsky.social · 27d
I've got lots more of these, but I wanted to share a handful of my favorites since the discussion of how much more evocative sff and horror covers used to be is bubbling about. While there are definitely still good covers out there, I think these represent a good slice of what else is possible!
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codyrbrown.bsky.social
Cody R Brown @codyrbrown.bsky.social · 27d
This is the cover of Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia, which I love for the weird transposed profiles in the centre. I can't track down the artist, but isfdb suggests it might be Leo & Diane Dillon (which I kinda doubt).
Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia. The cover is bright yellow with stark black titling. The centre cover image is a multicolored painting of several overlapping human profiles within a transposed circle and square.
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codyrbrown.bsky.social
Cody R Brown @codyrbrown.bsky.social · 27d
These two are Ballantine Fantasy titles both with covers painted by Bob Pepper: A voyage to Arcturus and The Queen of Elfland's Daughter.
Bob Pepper's cover of Dunsany's The Queen of Elfland's Daughter, featuring a mulitcolored composition depicting wolves attacking a unicorn in a forest while a warrior watches, Bob Pepper's cover of David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus, depicting two figures riding a multicolored, scaled dragon.
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codyrbrown.bsky.social
Cody R Brown @codyrbrown.bsky.social · 27d
Next, two covers from M. John Harrison's Viriconium series. The Pastel City features a painted cover by Bruce Pennington, while A Storm of Wings is painted by Michael Whelan!
on the right is a copy of M. John Harrison's The Pastel City, the cover of which depits a lone horseman on a cliff surveying a burning city. on the left is the cover of the same author's A Storm of Wings, featuring a knight in thorned, red armor who is cast in shadows and holding a glowing sword. The sigil on the knight's armor is a locust.
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codyrbrown.bsky.social
Cody R Brown @codyrbrown.bsky.social · 27d
Another favorite: Octavia E. Butler out-of-print novel Survivor. I love the way the tree is composed out of the two central figures of the novel.
A gradient cover, red at the bottom moving to blue the the top. A large tree is in the center. A woman reaches out of the tree line towards a blue and green furred alien creature who rises from the top of the tree. These figures do not have definite boundaries.
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codyrbrown.bsky.social
Cody R Brown @codyrbrown.bsky.social · 27d
If we want to think about what a good minimalist version of this might look like, we should examine another Delany. This is the hardcover of Nova, featuring an impressionistic composition by the artist Russel Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald also illustrated Delany & Marilyn Hacker's brief journal "Quark."
A pink hardcover copy of Samuel R. Delany's Nova. The cover illustration is an impressionistic rendering of a supernova, white at the center and green around the edge. Closer inspection reveals the explosion to be human figures.
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codyrbrown.bsky.social
Cody R Brown @codyrbrown.bsky.social · 27d
The next is a Bantam Books copy of Samuel R. Delany's Tales of Neveryon. Clearly meant to evoke a kind of Orientalist, sword and sorcery fantasy setting, a ruse for what is actually a very dense exploration of slavery, liberation, and semiotics.
The cover of Samuel R. Delany's Tales of Neveryon. It features a large, muscled man fighting a dragon, whose head creeps into frame from the spine o the book. This action takes place on a veranda or terrace, and feature one woman fleeing from the scene while another appears to have fainted.
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codyrbrown.bsky.social
Cody R Brown @codyrbrown.bsky.social · 27d
First, these wraparound covers on Le Guin's first three Earthsea books. The cover art by Pauline Ellison effectively summarizes the series through travel!
Le Guin's first three Earthsea books, with wraparound covers of a seascape, complete with islands strewn with castles and minarets, dragons, and ships. Le Guin's first three Earthsea books, with wraparound covers of another seascape, moving from a falcon in flight, to Ged piloting his boat looking towards what appears to be a seaport.
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