A winter lurgy has landed and I am lumbering around the house like a weary, tubercular old bear. This mood seems to be the inevitable companion to a change in the weather so it’s not that much of a surprise. I do wonder, though, if my inner workings aren’t sending out a signal. In opposition to the build towards the most sociable time of the year, every fibre in my wizened old core is telling me to lay in stores of fat, dig a moat and prepare the cave for a few months of hibernation.
Humbug mode activated? Well, not quite, but the countdown is very definitely running.
Wherever you are, whenever you are, however you are, welcome to The Swipe.
Rob is reading…
Into The Unbeing by Zach Thompson, Hayden Sherman and Jim Campbell. A gloriously mad epic dose of weird eco SF horror which plays like a cross between Jeff Vandermeer’s Annihilation trilogy and Fantastic Voyage. In the near future, a group of climate scientists exploring the wastes of the Australian hinterlands are lured into a vast cave which is more, much more than they could have expected. It’s a good week for sad strange SF which explores the boundaries of human existence (see below) and this magnificent, terrifying dose of bio-grossness and existential exploration jammed my buttons hard. Recommended, if you have the stomach for it.
Rob is watching…
I have fond memories of Seamus O’Brian’s tale of meeting the president of Ireland while on ketamine. It has now been turned into an Oscar-nominated short film. Settle in and enjoy, this is flippin’ hilarious.
Rob is listening…
To new Everything But The Girl. Do I wish I was young and dumb again?
You know, I’m not sure I ever was.
Rob is eating…
Pour one out for my beloved Instant Pot, which succumbed to a failure of its pressure sensor last week. It is a mainstay in our kitchen, effortlessly cranking out beans, braises, stocks and stews in half the time of traditional techniques, with zero fuss. We replaced it with a multi-cooker from John Lewis which, delightfully, has the same form factor and footprint, can use the same steel pot as the old one and even plays the same sweet little ditty when you open and close the lid. It’s almost as if the old soldier never left.
Rob’s Low-Key Obsession Of The Week…
Artisanal book-binding. Yeah, wow, big surprise, right?
A long read on the role beer plays in the geopolitical scene in certain Africa. For all the chatter on AI and how tech is changing the world, it’s amazing how once you get down to the underlying mechanisms, so much depends on a bloke with a donkey and cart lugging goods through a jungle.
Paul Ford looks at today’s World Wide Web, and how we may be overthinking the tools we use to get the work done. In the light of this week’s massive Microsoft outage, perhaps simplification is worth looking at. I recommend you take a poke around Ford’s Tiny Little Office. You might realise it’s all you need.
One for all those of us who grumble about bloody autocorrect. Chances are, the refusal of your phone to provide the word you want are baked right into the software.
I am saddened—well, ok, mildly perturbed—by the proliferation of AI-sloppy flyers and posters on the high street. Once you tune into the aesthetics of cartoony hyperdetail, limited font choices and colour palette which seems both muddy and over-saturated, you’ll see them everywhere. It doesn’t have to be that way. Even the busiest of small businesses can easily whip up something distinctive and eye-catching.
I present to you my choice for the new presenter of Gardener’s World. It’s a left-field choice but I think it might just bring a new audience to the show.
As mentioned at the top of the chapter, it’s been a good week for weird SF. M. John Harrison’s The End Of Everything won the Booker Prize, unsurprising for fans like me that have been tracking his rising trajectory for years. His books are unsettling, atmospheric and uninterested in easy answers—or indeed any sort of neat resolution. A graduate of the New Worlds school founded by Michael Moorcock, his stories blend post-millennial tension with the terror of witnessing an existence sliding out of our control. Like I’ve always said, SF is not about the future but the present, and Harrison’s books are as relevant to these strange times as you can get.
A moment when stand-up turns charmingly into a quick primer on how TV news is edited. I’ll always be drawn to anything with a bodega cat in it. It seems I’m in good company.
There’s a lot going on in this piece by Austin Kleon. Some seemingly disparate sources undergo a kind of quantum entanglement to provide a conclusion that frankly depends on the reader. My interpretation will not be yours. Take a look.
In conclusion.
So long to Richard Lloyd, post-punk guitar wrangler of art and skill. Best known for his work with Television, my favourite moments with him are entwined with the music he wove with Matthew Sweet in the 90s. Here’s a fine example which shows off his muscular, witty and endlessly explorative mind. Rest in power.
See you in seven, fellow travellers.
