Category Archives: Projects

Projects

Mythmakers & Lawbreakers – Anarchist Writers On Fiction

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I’m finishing up the final proofs for Mythmakers & Lawbreakers, my book coming out this September from AK Press. I’ll be posting a lot about it, and about other anarchist-fiction related projects I’ve got up my sleeve, a lot over the coming little bit.

To say that I’m excited about this book is to criminally understate things. I set out two years ago on a bit of a quest to discover the meaning of anarchist fiction. Like any proper quest, it involved camping illegally in the pissing rain at least once. Mostly though, it just involved endless hours of research.

This book is two parts. The first, the body of the book, is interviews with a wide variety of anarchist fiction writers–some of whom who are tangentially involved in anarchism, or fiction, or both, but all of whom have really fascinating takes on the subject.

The authors included in the final version are:

The front and back cover art is by that wonderful Colin Foran, the artist behind A SteamPunk’s Guide To The Apocalypse.

And the introduction is by one of the most talented SciFi authors in the field, Kim Stanley Robinson. Robinson doesn’t identify as an anarchist, but has portrayed them sympathetically–most famously in his Mars trilogy–and serves the vital role of an outsider looking on to what we’ve done.

The other part of the book consists of my research into the history of anarchist fiction writing. Specifically, it chronicles, briefly, each anarchist fiction author I could track down, living and dead. It also presents lists of books that represent anarchism in various ways within their pages, and touches on the thoughts about anarchism of many sympathetic authors such as George Orwell and JRR Tolkien.

And yes, the entire book is licensed Creative Commons. We will make it as available to all people of all income brackets as possible.

Projects

SteamPunk Magazine #5!

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So about six months ago, I stepped down as editor of SteamPunk Magazine, and my friend Allegra Hawksmoor stepped up. I’d left her with a big jumbled mess of contributions and such, but she got everything organized and has put out a fabulous issue of SteamPunk Magazine, Issue #5. It’s got all kinds of fun stuff, include DIY casting and DIY welding, a fiction story that explores the use of “they” as a singular pronoun (sure to cause some controversy), and wonderful essays, etc. Plus, you can continue to read John Reppion‘s Doppler and the Madness Engine. I’m happy to say that I’ve stayed on as layout editor, which was probably my favorite part of the whole thing. So yeah, you can download it for free, or of course you can buy it.

Projects

MAKE Magazine Steampunk Issue Reviews

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The latest issue of MAKE Magazine is out, and it’s steampunk themed. (As I mentioned earlier.) Anyhow, just got a chance to peek through it. Aside from having my friend Jake Von Slatt on the cover, and featuring my co-conspirator Libby Bulloff posing in the interior, they have great reviews of two of my projects, SteamPunk Magazine and A SteamPunk’s Guide to the Apocalypse:

If there is truly a punk arm of steampunk, it resides in the collective of writers, artists, musicians, and makers that create SteamPunk Magazine … These guys have fashioned themselves up as the chaoticians of the steampunk world.

and

With the real meltdown of the global economy and a climate crisis, this book might be more practical than even its authors intended … Tongue-in-cheek sci-fi silliness? Anarchist wish fulfillment? Real-world survival guide? I don’t know, but I’m stashing a copy in the emergency preparedness kit just in case.

And that, dear reviewer, is exactly why I made the thing.

Projects

Mythmakers & Lawbreakers – Alan Moore on Anarchism

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Okay, so some of you know that I have a book coming out from AK Press this fall. It’s titled Mythmakers & Lawbreakers, and it’s a series of interviews with anarchist fiction writers about the intersection of their politics and their fiction. Trying to explore how fiction writing can be useful, but also why we do it on other levels as well. In fact, I’m looking for help for some of the research that will be included in the appendices.

Anyhow, one of the interviews I did was with comic book author Alan Moore. And it might just be my favorite interview I’ve ever conducted. It’s been posted on infoshop for a long time now (yes, putting together a book takes a long time, it turns out), but for some reason that page seems to be defunct, only showing the first paragraph or two of the interview. So I’m reposting it here, after the break. (It has also been translated into what appears to be Ukrainian or Belorussian.)
Continue reading Mythmakers & Lawbreakers – Alan Moore on Anarchism →

Projects

New Zine at Strangers

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The anarchist publishers I work with, Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness, just finished work on their latest theory zine. Written by a certain ms/mr Usul of the Blackfoot, this zine is wonderful. Post-Civ!, a deeper exploration. It’s a nearly 40 page exploration of why civilization is terrible and why primitive societies weren’t usually that much better (despite the claims of primitivists) and it lays out a great framework for building towards a post-civilized society. Really, I can’t recommend it enough.
Projects

Like Birds Before The Storm,

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so dark before the dawn.

The title of this blog is inspired by a bit of poetry out of the long-extinct gothic-rock band The Thaw. Two members of The Thaw make up Ego Likeness, an excellent gothic-rock-dance band.

I started this site because I lacked a free-form blog. I post about steampunk at SteamPunk Magazine and some of my zines are posted at Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness, but I wanted a place to ramble and post neat links about airships. Expect pieces from upcoming zines, strange links, intermittent service, and other things of that nature.