Plays Poker
In a former life I was a poker player. A fairly serious one, at that. For a decade I made a profit at the table, year in and year out. I could have turned pro, and for short stretches of …
Tag: T. R. Napper
Six Favourite Books of 2019
Read about 30 books this year, which is below par. I aim for around fifty. I think it was a combination of finishing my PhD, which was mentally exhausting (a good reason), and because I allowed my free will to …
The Altar of Imagination (my collection is coming out)
It was a kind of worship. Looking up at the shelves in my room, as a kid. Looking at my books. Thinking about all those universes. There was something approaching awe in me, sitting there on the floor, looking up …
Blade Runner, November 2019: Our Global Cyberpunk Present
Cyberpunk is now.
The iconic opening of Blade Runner (1982) is stamped with the date November 2019. This has inspired several mainstream publications to ask: what did Blade Runner get right about the future?
As we’ll see, these articles …
The Thanos Conundrum
This isn’t a ‘Thanos is right’ article. There were a proliferation of these hot takes in the aftermath of Endgame a few months back*, and I doubt I could add much. Rather, this article is about the consequences of halving …
In Defence of Tribalism
Tribalism goes to the core of who we are as human beings, and what we need to feel human. Yet modern society, by design, is anti-tribal. As Sebastian Junger argues in his excellent book, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging: …
Rutger Remembered
Electric, terrifying, charismatic, complex. Roy Batty was everything a cyberpunk antagonist should be: morally ambiguous, ultra-violent, flawed, philosophical. And if there’s a difference between cyberpunk protagonist and antagonist, well, those differences are too small to contemplate here. 
Roy Batty embodied …
The Midwich Cuckoos: How a 1950s science fiction novel predicted modern political culture
The premise of John Wyndham’s 1957 science fiction novel, The Midwich Cuckoos, is this: a species of parasitic aliens infect all the women of Midwich, Winshine. The women become pregnant, simultaneously, and give birth to children who seem normal in …
Star Wars Re-Watched: Attack of the Pedants
I recently watched Star Wars with my son. He’s seven; this was his first time. I’m a touch older, I’ve probably watched it 30 times, though the last was more than a decade ago.
Rather than talk about the experience …
Inequality and Literature – The Brahmin Left vs The Merchant Right
You will know the name Thomas Piketty via his seminal book on inequality, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Like Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, Piketty’s was a best-selling work read by almost no-one.
Here’s the gist. …