Ironic points of light

Trespassers!

A par­tic­ular Cal­i­fornia microseason: the almond bloom, in which vast tracts of trees all shimmer with white petals. It looks almost wintry — Narnian. Last weekend, we took a long drive out east of Fresno, fol­lowing a semi-classic route that cruises through blossom country. It was a beau­tiful day, sparklingly clear (the moun­tains to the east as sharp and snowy as the Alps) and it was a delight to drive slow, oohing at a spec­tacle both nat­ural and industrial.

To under­stand the San Joaquin Valley, or any pro­duc­tive ag region, as “rural” misses the point. This is a vast, open-air fac­tory floor, totally wired up, care­fully monitored. I say that with appre­ci­a­tion bor­dering on awe.

Better than the vast monocrop almond tracts, though, I like the patch­work zones, where plums and apri­cots bloom pink and white, and the inky dark orange trees wait their turn.

I’m Robin Sloan, a fiction writer with wide-ranging interests, which I capture here in my newsletter. This is an archived edition, originally transmitted in March 2025. You can sign up to receive future editions using the form at the bottom of the page.

As usual, this newsletter has a few dis­tinct parts. Here’s what’s ahead:

• Writing update: M2 and the blog

• Books: new and old favorites

• Links and recommendations: The Pacific Cir­cuit lights up

Writing update

Ear­lier this year — it might have been late January — the wind was blowing hard in Cal­i­fornia and the tum­ble­weeds were bounding mer­rily across farms roads and interstates. Years ago, when I didn’t roam much beyond the Bay Area, tum­ble­weeds were abstract; cartoonish. Now, I have come to learn exactly how they tumble, and why, and that knowl­edge has, in turn, pro­duced some­thing ter­rific for Moon­bound 2. Between now and the time the book comes out, you’ll forget about this opaque newsletter mention … but then, you’ll be reading, and you’ll meet some new characters … and maybe you’ll remember … 

THE TUM­BLE­WEEDS OF 2025!

I love this work. M2 is on the move.

I’ve been enjoying the plat­form of my refor­mu­lated lab notebook, which is called Dragoncatcher.

The meatiest post so far has been this one, addressing the foun­da­tional ques­tion of AI lan­guage models, which, for me, is simply: is it okay? I think my framing here is novel, and I hope it offers some­thing useful to the AI skep­tics and enthu­si­asts alike.

I’ve also written about some new Shopify email templates, five years of home-cooked apps, and more. If you are someone engaged by the gen­eral ques­tion space of “computer: how? and why?”, please do add the blog to your RSS reader, or book­mark the page and peek in from time to time.

Behind all my mutterings about AI, the dragons of Moon­bound loom … 

New and old favorites

Brother Brontë is here, the new novel from Fer­nando A. Flores, pub­lished by MCD, vivid vol­canic cover painted by Na Kim — yes, the very same!

I read an advance copy and felt moved to blurb. Some parts of what I wanted to say seemed clear, but another part eluded me … some resonance … and then I real­ized I was searching for Steinbeck, with his mix of earthy reality and rol­licking humor.

So, here’s what I wrote:

The trick with dystopia is to leave room for light, and lightness; in our real world, tragedy and comedy are braided together. Fer­nando A. Flores gets this: his imag­i­na­tion ranges from the grimmest realities, of blood and fire and life made small, all the way through to breath­taking hope, and surprise, and solidarity. Brother Brontë evokes Octavia Butler, William Gibson, and John Steinbeck; these are all my favorites, and with this book, Fer­nando A. Flores joins the list.

Butler, Gibson, Steinbeck: that’s some stew. I loved Brother Brontë’s rowdy world, and I think you will, too.

I’m new to Patricia A. McKillip, and now totally devoted. I began with The For­gotten Beasts of Eld, a basi­cally random pick from the library. Then, I con­tinued with The Book of Atrix Wolfe, this great used copy, a gift from my mother:

(This cover belongs to the most reli­able fan­tasy genre: in which the event depicted, although evocative, is basi­cally unre­lated to the con­tent of the book … )

McKillip, who died in 2022, wrote in a classic mode: elegant, playful, and for sure literary. In these pages, every­thing is NOT spelled out. They are rid­dled with appealing gaps, chan­nels for imag­i­na­tion. In places, her prose veers psychedelic; it made me think of Jeff VanderMeer.

McKillip makes me think, also, of Rose­mary Sutcliff, Ursula K. Le Guin in the Earthsea books, Nicola Grif­fith in Hild: the con­fi­dence they all inspire, unde­ni­able goodhandedness. I’ll confess, my appre­ci­a­tion is sharp­ened by the fact that I’ve lately felt unmoved and/or actively ejected by a lot of fan­tasy. My cap­ti­va­tion by The For­gotten Beasts of Eld broke a long streak of books aban­doned around page ten.

I could go on. I’m a new fan, and I wish I’d found my way to these pages sooner.

My links above (and here: Eld, Wolfe) point to the fab new edi­tions from Tachyon!

Oh, look … catnip:

Books of this kind are dan­gerous for book people, for paper and pen people, BUT, AND, I’m pleased to report that Roland Allen really delivers here. The Note­book is a careful, curious survey of one of the great human instruments. It sur­prises at every turn.

My Libby widget rats me out: I am only halfway through, barely past 1500s Florence, fully enthralled.

I just fin­ished a killer chapter on the note­books of Leonardo da Vinci, which of course one “knows about”, but their real story — their real texture — is better than you realize. This is such a great thing for a book to do: melt down a bland cliché and recast it, full of strange detail.

Cliché or not, I’ll accept the reminder that Leonardo is the great patron saint of lefties:

[ … ] for Leonardo wrote com­pul­sively too: most of his draw­ings are accom­pa­nied by some kind of text, written left-handed and right-to-left in the unmis­tak­able script which he used to avoid smudges.

In Roland Allen’s book, we encounter people living in all sorts of circumstances, under all sorts of regimes. And the note­books go on.

We encounter people living in networks—of com­merce and correspondence, edu­ca­tion and affinity. Net­works everywhere, ineradicable. And the note­books go on.

It’s a bank-shot sort of balm, is what I’m saying.

Links and recommendations

Alexis Madrigal’s forth­coming The Pacific Cir­cuit has a mini-site! Notably, there is a cal­endar of upcoming book­store events. Alexis is a super dynamic speaker and thinker-in-public — remember, he hosts the Bay Area’s great call-in show—so if any of these events is in your neighborhood, I guar­antee it is worth the trek.

Behold Alexis’s dream team of blurbists—one of the rare assem­blages of this kind that almost per­fectly tri­an­gu­lates the book in ques­tion.

Blend the full-spectrum eru­di­tion of Rebecca Solnit, the irre­sistible voice of Hua Hsu, the plan­e­tary depth of Jenny Odell, and the sparkling curiosity of Steven Johnson, and you might get an Alexis Madrigal. (If you’re thinking, “Hmm, sounds like Robin is recalling the muta­genic origin of the G.I. Joe vil­lain Serpentor”: yes, that is exactly what Robin is recalling.)

Here’s my pre­vious discussion of this daz­zling book, in case you missed it.

I’ve been enjoying Diana Kim­ball Berlin’s weekly newsletter, which presents five snip­pets from her reading, each with a con­cise commentary. It has a tech lean — Diana is a product super­star turned VC — but/and the view that emerges is philo­soph­ical and playful. Highly recommended.

Here is the annual print object from Antistatic, in which I am interviewed. Rare print-only Sloan ephemera!

Another of Antistatic’s sub­jects is the great Elis­a­beth Nicula, editor of the new San Fran­cisco Review of Whatever, which I can’t wait to read.

Here is Elis­a­beth’s beau­tiful and odd-shaped love poem.

Here is Eliz­a­beth Good­speed on treating the public domain like a clip-art library, with the useful analogy to the comedy rule of “punching up vs. punching down”. Overall, I agree with Eliz­a­beth’s argument, although I think it’s impor­tant to say, the very soul of the public domain is, you can use this stuff how­ever you want: even in ways that are dull, or dumb, or rude, or thoughtless.

Of course, such uses can and should be critiqued, even ridiculed — but they are permissible. If we don’t insist on that, we lose some­thing impor­tant.

Here, Alan Jacobs shares the pure delight that is the Mus­tard Club.

Here comes Quanta Books, a new imprint of FSG! We love every­thing about this!!

I am SO READY for the giant manga show coming to the deY­oung Museum in September. The British Museum did a show like this a few years back, and the accompanying book is legit­i­mately great.

Here is a beau­tiful tote bag. I think I’m full up on totes for … the rest of my life … but I love the way this one dis­sects the strokes of Devana­gari and Latin.

Auden had it right, in his great poem September 1, 1939, pub­lished in October of that year. (Apparently, Auden grew to hate the poem. Too bad for him.)

Moon­bound readers will find a colossal Easter egg waiting in the poem’s text: the greatest of the coop­er­a­tivos of the Anth, my vision of mus­cular and demo­c­ratic human industry, of what waits beyond this, beyond here and now … all moored to the tip of Auden’s pencil.

The poem concludes:

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

From Fresno,

Robin

P.S. Yes, this newsletter was a bit late! I have some­thing new to share, but it’s not quite ready, so I kept delaying, and delaying, while the links above moldered. You’ll receive my next newsletter rel­a­tively soon, in mid-March, which will get us back to a lunar cycle.

March 2025