Winter reading

I had a ter­rific holiday, the stretch from the sol­stice through to New Year’s Day. Nothing special, no travel — just some solid sit­ting ses­sions in the yard, plenty of good food, a bit of reflec­tion and repair.

At this time of year, I always turn to tin­kering with my web­site. Like a lot of people, I find the work totally soothing; I spec­u­late that it’s like gardening … though I wouldn’t really know. It would be nice if, like gardening, it involved sunlight, but, hey, we’re in the depths of winter anyway.

A bit of dig­ital pruning, then. My inter­mit­tent tech-focused newsletter is now discon­tinued, rolled over into (yes) (believe it) A BLOG. You’ll find that here. In the future, when appro­priate, I’ll include links to notable posts in this newsletter. For example: here’s my short paean to my iMac 5K, which just turned ten.

Really, I am just always angling for an excuse to use a DJR font. As you’ll see, the blog leans hard on his type­face with Bethany Heck called Job Clarendon.

What else?

Library e-books are an increas­ingly impor­tant part of the market, par­tic­u­larly in the U.S., and I have always been curious about how my novels are per­forming there. After I got a data feed working for myself (an email alert, nice and simple), I thought, why not make it public? Now, right there on my home page, you can see the cur­rent number of e-book holds for my three novels, tal­lied across many (not all) U.S. public libraries — a sort of real-time demand indicator. Cool!

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 January 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:

• New work: an intro­duc­tion

• Winter reading: the merry band sets forth

• Robin’s thought: waste and vitality

• Links and recommendations: “I really do think anyone could do any­thing”

But Robin, where's your white suit?

FSG is fresh­ening up the Tom Wolfe backlist, new edi­tions of all of his books, with new covers and, in some cases, new intro­duc­tions. The new intro­duc­tion to The Right Stuff is by … me! I was aston­ished to be asked, and I’m very proud of the result.

I’d read The Right Stuff many years ago, so this assign­ment prompted a couple of rereads, plus a viewing, at last, of the movie adaptation. I almost hate to say it, but my pri­mary takeway from this project is, if you haven’t seen the movie, see it! Every­thing wacky and hyper­real from Wolfe’s book is not only cap­tured but — in my estimation — distilled.

(It was my viewing and inves­ti­ga­tion of the movie that led me to the artist Jordan Belson, who I wrote about a while back. He pro­duced sev­eral of the movie’s cosmic flight sequences in secret: the director Philip Kaufman never learned how they were actu­ally made.)

There is, however, one sequence in which cinema simply cannot com­pete with prose, specif­i­cally Tom Wolfe’s prose, rolling/surging, a breath­less stream of ellipses. I explain this diver­gence in my intro­duc­tion, and it’s worth reading the book just to feel the thrill. Chuck Yeager!!

Here’s the new cover, part of a series by the leg­endary Seymour Chwast. Imagine being able to draw pic­tures this hip when you’re 93 years old:

Winter reading

I want to pre­view three big big BIG releases in the months ahead: three fellow trav­elers doing work at the highest level. You’ll hear more about these as they’re pub­lished; here’s a pre­view:

I sup­pose it’s clear by now that I love projects that grow in public; I love the oppor­tu­nity to watch the roots reach deeper, the branches stretch higher. Things Become Other Things is the fruition of Craig Mod’s work over the past six years, and what a lineage: from email newsletter to mem­ber­ship pro­gram to fine-art book to lit­erary memoir, now pol­ished to a shine. There has been, at every step, a sense of deep­ening and richening. Things do, in fact, become other things.

I’ve read Things Become Other Things in its pre­vious incarnations, and I’m eager to read this full, final (?) expres­sion of Craig’s sub­ject matter, which is: America and Japan, walking and friendship, oppor­tu­ni­ties lost and gained, the ways life and chance set you up, or don’t — and, when they don’t, the ways you can, or must, still wrest good­ness from the universe.

For sev­eral years, Alexis Madrigal was my stu­dio­mate in a small, bunker-like office; our com­bined ref­er­ence library rose to the ceiling. There and then, I watched him begin the project that would become The Pacific Circuit: a full-scale, full-spectrum chron­icle of the global economy and the places it has made.

The tit­ular cir­cuit runs across the ocean, car­rying cap­ital and containers; in the second half of the 20th century, it remade the world. But what does that look like, down on the ground? How did it feel then; how does it feel now? Alexis makes West Oak­land his lens, where the iconic Port of Oak­land rises behind a neigh­bor­hood that has been through every pos­sible ringer.

A big sub­ject, and the voice car­ries it. I’m spoiled, because I know that voice from life: casual and erudite, end­lessly curious, courageous. Listen, this book is DENSE with his­tory and detail, packed with events on every scale from the inti­mate to the inter­na­tional … yet it never flags for a moment, because it’s Alexis telling you the story, just as he would — just as he so often has, lucky me — over a couple of crispy beers on a warm Oak­land afternoon.

(I still reside in that bunker-like office, by the way. Alexis, meanwhile, has upgraded to Sutro Tower.)

Kiyash Monsef is a Deep Friend from the Dawn of Time, and he is proof that endurance wins the day. Bird of a Thou­sand Stories is the follow-up to his best-selling debut Once There Was, one of those books that plays all the good keys on the keyboard — myth and monster, secret and destiny — but/and sequences them in a way that’s totally new. (That’s often the kind of writing I am aiming for myself, and this is no coincidence: Kiyash and I have been talking about this stuff together for a long, long time.)

One of the very envi­able things about middle-grade novels is that the arti­facts them­selves tend to look like books out of stories: big, warm, inviting. A bit of a glow, somehow. I read Once There Was with delight, and I’m now halfway through Bird of a Thou­sand Stories, captivated.

I’m deeply biased here, but also, I know the market — I scout the shelves — and I believe Kiyash is devel­oping into a canon­ical new voice: shep­herd and reshaper of myth for a new generation.

Waste and vitality

Once again, “gov­ern­ment waste” is in the wind, and I’d like to take a moment to immu­nize you against this tired rhetor­ical loop. Not because it doesn’t matter at all; only because it mat­ters so little, it shouldn’t take up any space in public discourse, or in your wild and pre­cious mind.

I’ll talk U.S. fed­eral budget specifics in a moment, but I want to dwell mostly in a broader context, one that con­siders not only public finance but busi­ness and life.

I’d like to pro­pose a maxim, which is: you cannot cut your way to suc­cess.

Any time you see a com­pany penny-pinching, warning their employees not to waste money on the good printer paper: I assure you, that com­pany has already failed.

Flip it around and con­sider the tow­ering tri­umphs of 21st-century commerce: your Apples, your Googles. I don’t mean to sug­gest these com­pa­nies don’t have bud­getary dis­ci­pline (of course they do) but/and, at the same time, they can toss money around in huge sacks, waste it all, buy the good printer paper, and it doesn’t matter. (Apple spent many bil­lions on its car project, now totally aborted. Have you seen their profits?)

You cannot cut your way to suc­cess. The only way to suc­ceed is to suc­ceed.

I’ve been thinking about this because I’ve been learning about life, its real mechanisms. A while back, I wrote about Philip Ball’s How Life Works, and the book’s rev­e­la­tions have con­tinued to bounce around in my head. The truth of life is this: our bodies (all bodies) are not ele­gant machines. They are huge weird messes, full of redun­dancy and noise. Routes are cir­cuitous; work is wasted; ene­mies are present — processes fully rogue. The deepest state! BUT. AND. Our bodies (all bodies) are so vital and resilient that these inef­fi­cien­cies are basi­cally beneath notice.

Like a pin­prick star lost in the glare of the sun.

Like the printer paper at Apple HQ.

Long­time sub­scribers will rec­og­nize an echo of the parable of Cable in this.

I think the metaphor of life guides our intu­itions in the right direction. Imagine a lean and hungry Sloan, just skin and bone. Imagine him explaining his strategy to reduce his activity, so as to match the enve­lope of his caloric intake: “I’ve stopped walking,” he explains. “What a waste that was!”

Nothing about that pic­ture seems healthy or envi­able, and I hope, upon encoun­tering such a Sloan, you would exclaim: “Man! Go find some food!”

Viewed this way, a com­pany like Apple is more like a hardy bac­terium or a field of clover than it is like a pocket watch or a booster rocket, in which every­thing inessen­tial has been whit­tled away. Apple in all its suc­cess has plenty of fat, which is to say money, which is to say energy, to spare: great gouts of it. Solar prominences.

Plus, if you’re a pocket watch or a booster rocket and one little thing goes wrong, you’re dead. Stopped or exploded. If you’re a field of clover, things are going wrong constantly — of course they are, that’s what it means to live in a world — and it’s fine.

The watch­words for 21st-century gov­ern­ment ought to come from the vocab­u­lary of life: vitality, muscularity, resilience. Instead of skin-and-bone states, I imagine public orga­ni­za­tions so robust that “waste”, even graft, is basi­cally beneath notice, tol­er­ated with amusement: the way mas­sive sharks tol­erate the tiny fish that swim beside them, nib­bling on scraps.

The time to snoop around for “waste” is when every­thing else is going so great you’re get­ting sort of bored. It would be nice!

Your fist of fiscal fury

Any time you engage with opin­ions about the fed­eral budget of the United States (definitely including mine!) you ought to be sure the opinion-haver actu­ally under­stands the shape of that budget.

You ought to be sure you under­stand the shape of that budget.

Years ago, I learned a useful mnemonic: hold up your hand. Look at the meat of your palm, the mass of your thumb. Those rep­re­sent Social Secu­rity and health ben­e­fits (Medicare, Medicaid, and more): the bulk of fed­eral spending, more than half the total.

Each of your four upright fin­gers rep­re­sents a roughly equal por­tion of the remainder:

• Other mandatory spending: a diverse bucket that includes things like federal pensions, veterans’ benefits, etc.
• Interest on the national debt
• Defense spending
• Everything else

The joke is that “every­thing else”—education, for­eign aid, the FDA, FEMA, you name it — is encap­su­lated in your pinky finger. Four­teen per­cent of the fed­eral budget in 2024. Four­teen per­cent!

Here’s the break­down:

(My source for all of this is the Con­gres­sional Budget Office; you can find the same fig­ures repro­duced in many places.)

Nearly 100% of grousing about gov­ern­ment waste is aimed at items in that diminu­tive non­de­fense bucket, and in that way, it is totally unserious.

I have plenty of opin­ions about how and why the gov­ern­ment should spend money, but/and this break­down is the scaf­folding for any such opinion. Or maybe I want to say: under­standing this break­down is the cost of entry for having an opinion.

The next time some­body in public life is grousing about some absurd and/or ruinous gov­ern­ment pro­gram, hold up your hand and find the pro­gram there. I’m very con­fi­dent you’ll be wig­gling your pinky finger.

Links and recommendations

New Yorkers, go see the Na Kim show at Nicola Vas­sell Gallery!

I know Na first and fore­most as a book cover designer — she is the one who made Moonbound look so great—and have become a devoted fan and fol­lower on Instagram, where it’s been aston­ishing to see these fig­ures appear (“I didn’t know she painted … ?”) then mul­tiply (“wow!”) and deepen (“WOW!”) and now march out into the world.

This interview is sort of qui­etly radical:

KIM: Yeah. But honestly, I’m arguing with myself about this because I really do think anyone could do any­thing if they work hard at it. You get better at things if you actu­ally try them.

I wish I could see the show! New Yorkers, go in my place. Everyone else, follow Na on Instagram to watch this work grow and grow and grow.

Ingrid Burrington’s Perfect Sen­tences newsletter is lately not only a roundup of pithy lines, but a sort of prismatic, indi­rect view of the week’s news. It has become one of my favorites, opened as soon as it arrives.

“Happy 40th birthday to the com­puter that changed every­thing — the Apple LaserWriter” 😋

Apple should make a hot new printer. I sup­pose it must be a ter­rible busi­ness. Can you even IMAGINE, though?

I’m halfway through The Price of Peace, Zachary Carter’s ter­rific biog­raphy of John May­nard Keynes, absolutely captivated: the spec­tacle of the econ­o­mist among his poet pals in the Blooms­bury Group is just too much to handle. Some­body should make a movie.

(I wrote that and, after step­ping away to do the dishes, promptly wrote two pages of notes for a Keynes script … )

The other night I had a dream of a thought too big to hold in my head; I car­ried it around, printed out on huge stacks of paper.

A bit on the nose, I would say.

As ever, Reading the China Dream pro­vides a refreshing alter­na­tive to mis­cel­la­neous geostrategic muttering. I’m not sure I pre­viously noticed the point­ed­ness of the title: don’t just read about China … read China.

Here is Sun Liping on WeChat, a post titled The Two Things People Are Most Wor­ried About, Which Can Also Count as a Belated New Year’s Wish:

In recent years, I have returned over and over again to one topic, which is that we need normality. We need a normal society and a normal life. We all live the same short lives on this earth, in the course of which we encounter both hap­pi­ness and sadness. Why don’t we do our best to make sure people live like people? Maybe in fact this is the only society that will func­tion normally, from a more sec­ular or util­i­tarian perspective.

Now many people are wor­ried about one thing in par­tic­ular: young people are not having children, and the fer­tility rate in our society is declining. There are many rea­sons for this, but I think the most basic thing is to first let these poten­tial par­ents live like human beings. They may not be too sat­is­fied with what they achieve, but at least they will know they have lived and expe­ri­enced the world. And having done that, maybe they will think that maybe they’ll give it a try, having a kid.

Here’s how to recover a derelict satellite with the power of HACKING! I love this kind of presentation — like a nerdy heist movie.

If you do not already know the story of Potoooooooo the horse: you’re welcome.

What is the lan­guage using us for? (From Erin McKean’s latest, naturally.)

Some­body install matching plaques on the side­walks in front of the AI com­pa­nies.

“Brougham” is a good, old-fashioned word.

What a nice little dia­gram of the nine worlds:

Plate tec­tonics is a big deal on Earth; no other planet or plan­e­toid is known to have a com­pa­rable system. What started the migra­tion and recy­cling of these huge plates? Well, the col­li­sion that cre­ated the moon, maybe!

Even if you don’t buy the theory (and there’s no par­tic­ular reason you should) it pro­vides an occa­sion to remind you that (1) there are two huge “blobs” of rock, with sur­pris­ingly sharp boundaries, sort of floating around Earth’s core, and (2) they

“are a fairly recent discovery,” says geo­dy­nam­i­cist Lau­rent Montési of the Uni­ver­sity of Mary­land in Col­lege Park. “They’re very fas­ci­nating structures, with a very unknown origin.”

In Feb­ruary 2022, the USS Essex sailed from Hawaii to Cal­i­fornia using only celes­tial navigation, i.e., the old way.

I’m not sure why I find this so disturbing … but I do:

Unlike mammals, birds breathe through con­tin­uous one-directional flow of air through the res­pi­ra­tory system. We take air in and breathe it out, sort of like the tide moves in and out of a bay. As a result, our breathing system is said to be tidal. Avians have a non-tidal res­pi­ra­tory system, with air flowing more like a run­ning stream.

I’ve been cooking up some new thoughts on AI and copy­right, which I might pub­lish at some point. In the meantime, I have set­tled on an opinion.

What’s the cor­rect term for copy­right? Recall that the point of copy­right is to make the pro­duc­tion of new cre­ative and intel­lec­tual work attrac­tive and sustainable. Say it another way: the point is to har­ness the power of the market — a web of com­mer­cial alliances, shared incentives — to launch work into a stable cul­tural orbit.

The work of Edgar Allan Poe doesn’t need the fuel of copy­right anymore, because the work of Edgar Allan Poe made it to the firmament, or close enough.

Thinking about the ways work can dif­fuse over time, the dis­cov­eries and endorse­ments that prove pivotal, even long after after the work’s ini­tial pro­duc­tion, I think a twenty-year term is the minimum. (We find some res­o­nance here with the inter­na­tional patent term.)

On the other hand, we can take the cur­rent U.S. copy­right term, the life of the author plus sev­enty years, as the far end of the scale of possibility, as it is clearly ridicu­lous yet also, obviously, pos­sible.

Prac­ti­cally and emotionally, a term between thirty and fifty years seems appro­priate to me. That range draws the mind toward forty, which is, clearly, perfect. For my part, I’d start the clock at first publication, rather than, jeez, DEATH.

Forty years in the desert of the market: you either make it or you don’t.

Erin Kissane just says it plainly:

The evi­dence of the past decade and a half argues strongly that plat­form cor­po­ra­tions are struc­turally inca­pable of good governance, pri­marily because most of their cen­tral aims (con­tin­uous growth, market dominance, profit via extraction) con­flict with many basic human and soci­etal needs.

Here is a really beau­tiful story of a book half-remembered; I’m in awe of the curiosity and tenacity on dis­play here.

Books win in the end!

There was more art in this edi­tion than usual, you might have noticed — because it’s all so stunning.

These are pho­tographs by Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky, made using a very early color process: three sep­a­rate exposures, all with a dif­ferent color filter, which could be com­bined later — literally stacked — to pro­duce a color image.

Here and now, the chro­matic wonk­i­ness of their recon­struc­tion is, obviously, a huge part of the appeal. You couldn’t make images this cool on pur­pose if you tried.

I dis­cov­ered these pho­tographs via the Public Domain Image Archive, a new project of the fab­u­lous Public Domain Review. The new archive is soooo nice — capacious and easy to explore, an inviting labyrinth.

It joins a growing arsenal. There’s the tight, useful Museo from Chase McCoy, which aggre­gates sev­eral of my favorite online col­lections, along with the vast, strange Artvee, which has an aura of mild sketchiness — why don’t they link to their sources? — but often turns up mate­rial I can’t find any­where else.

Thanks, as always — no, not as always: instead, with a bit of extra oomph, all the grat­i­tude that comes spring-loaded into a new year: THANK YOU for being here, for your atten­tion and encouragement. Thank you for fol­lowing along.

From Berkeley,

Robin

P.S. You’ll receive my next newsletter in mid-Feb­ruary. Until then, see you IN THE BLOGOSPHERE and maybe also on Bluesky.

January 2025