Featured Image: Public domain picture of the California Aquaduct. I’ve been getting back into the swing of reading manga by reading a lot of sci-fi manga, including two of my favorites, Planetes by Makoto Yukimura and Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou by Hitoshi Ashinano. Both are, in my humble opinion, some of the best comics in the… Continue reading Prescience 6: Old Sci-Fi Manga and Climate Change
Author: DK
Prescience 5: Hologram Hate Fest
Image: the Dixon Naval Radio Transmitter Facility, a former U.S. Navy Radio Transmitter facility in Dixon, California. More info and source here; https://www.flickr.com/photos/135665552@N04/27290340351/in/photostream/ First off: Happy St. Patricks Day! At time of publishing, I’ll be counting down the hours until I’m let out of work and immediately beeline to the closest Irish pub. I don’t… Continue reading Prescience 5: Hologram Hate Fest
Prescience 4: Nope and Chinese Science Fiction
Featured image: The Southern California Logistics Airport, an airport and storage facility in Victorville, CA that is used for commercial cargo flights and long term storage of old aircraft. This is a dual issue! The holidays have been a busy time for me, and because of that I wasn’t able to finish the December issue… Continue reading Prescience 4: Nope and Chinese Science Fiction
Prescience 3: Against All Lore
Featured Image; Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove, California, cathedral of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange. It looks like a video game map. Basically the only science fiction I’ve even engaged with in the last month has been Disney’s latest Star Wars series, Andor. This time of year always gets busy for me, and I’ve… Continue reading Prescience 3: Against All Lore
Short Post: Can We Bring Tech Utopianism Back?
Or is it a bad time? Today's post is going to be a bit unusual. It's short. Imagine that the year is 2007 and this is your favorite gaming blog. That's the vibe right now. You know, it feels weird eulogizing tech utopianism now, since it’s well and truly dead. Already on unsteady ground as… Continue reading Short Post: Can We Bring Tech Utopianism Back?
Presence 2: Cyberpunk In The Shell
Featured Image; Navy personnel pushing helicopters off the deck of an aircraft carrier to make more room on the deck for refugees fleeing the fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War. One of my favorite pictures of all time. Poetic in how simply it shows the defeat of advanced technology. Man, you… Continue reading Presence 2: Cyberpunk In The Shell
Prescience 1: In Which I Talk About A Specific Aesthetic That I’m Likely Misnaming
Cover Image: The Topanga Microwave Relay Tower, part of AT&T's Long Lines program, via this reddit post. In our popular imagination Science Fiction is grandiose and scales vast changes. Those could be social, technological, temporal, or even distances, but the point is that we generally think of Science Fiction as spanning some giant visible change.… Continue reading Prescience 1: In Which I Talk About A Specific Aesthetic That I’m Likely Misnaming
Prescience 0: Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex/Destiny: Lightbringer
Welcome, readers, to a new article series on The Story arc, from yours truly, DK! Here at Prescience, we ask the fundamental question: Why does the Sci-Fi future look the same?You see it everywhere. The same sleek iPhone brutalism, the same “80s” neon, that blocky gradient font that looks like an arcade game logo, the… Continue reading Prescience 0: Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex/Destiny: Lightbringer
Propaganda and Top Gun: Maverick
Yes, this is a piece about the Pentagon and Top Gun. I know that’s old hat and everyone talks about it, but I think it’s important to interrogate the relationships here and be aware of them. Especially because this shit isn’t a recruitment commercial necessarily. We are all aware, in some sense, that it's propaganda.… Continue reading Propaganda and Top Gun: Maverick
RAMBLING ABOUT SPREE FOR A BIT
Spree is one of those movies that has weirdly flown under the radar. Part of it, I’m sure, is the pandemic, which has killed a lot of interest in movies in general (ironically, what’s at the core of the movie is only more relevant in our current endless pandemic). But it’s probably one of the… Continue reading RAMBLING ABOUT SPREE FOR A BIT
I’m bad at elden ring
OKAY! This is out of my wheelhouse a bit. This is a quick, kinda sloppy, post I made out of excitement when I was first playing this game. Think of it like reading a blog post in 2007. Short, sweet, and earnest.Like everyone else, I got Elden Ring recently, so I feel the need to… Continue reading I’m bad at elden ring
The Oscars
I’ve watched the Oscars for as long as I can remember. When my family didn’t have TV, we’d end up going to family friends to watch it. It’s just what we did. Later, we started to watch the short film nominees at this single screen theater kinda close to my neighborhood, so we’d end up… Continue reading The Oscars
Seventh Gen Part 4: Finale
First, I’m going to have to apologize; In the last overview of the seventh gen, I forgot to mention that in 2008, Iphone OS 2 came out. How could I??? It’s one of the biggest things to happen to gaming in the past 15 years!!!!Iphone OS 2 introduced the App Store, and I’d argue it… Continue reading Seventh Gen Part 4: Finale
A Very Story Arc Christmas Post
It’s Christmas Eve! That Magical time of year where we all see that one Ace Attorney case on every social media site, everyone is driving or flying or doing “last minute” shopping for some insane reason, and we all collectively celebrate (for those who do celebrate christmas) with some hyperspecific, deeply held, sacred tradition that… Continue reading A Very Story Arc Christmas Post
The Seventh Gen Part 3: 2004 – 2008
In the last article, I went over the mood before the seventh generation started, the desperation and fear as the dreaded Shift To HD came. 2003 and 2004 were part of a weird transitory era, where a lot of trends - social, technological, and economic - came to a head. The feel of the era… Continue reading The Seventh Gen Part 3: 2004 – 2008