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My latest at the Hooded Utilitarian compares the new Mad Max movie to the first Mad Max movie, and considers what post-apocalyptic futures tell us about the apocalyptic present.

The latest Which Side? podcast features Kevin van Meter discussing, among other things, the chapter he contributed to Life During Wartime.

It’s about a very early Green Scare case in which a Long Island radical was brought up on terrorism charges — and ultimately acquitted!  Kevin worked on the defense committee, and talks about what they did, why, and how.

Worth a listen!

My new essay on Hooded Utilitarian looks at time and responsibility in superhero stories, drawing Borges, Nietzsche, Camus, Orwell, Stanley Cavell, and the Zapatistas into the argument.

In Octavia’s Brood a couple dozen left-wing, anti-racist, and feminist organizers tell science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories as a way to reflect on the experience of oppression and exploitation, the challenges of resistance, and the possibility of a just world.  I interviewed one of the book’s editors, Walidah Imarisha, for the Bitch Magazine website.  She talked about the politics of sci-fi, media literacy, and the left’s tendency to be dismissive of popular culture.

Coincidentally, I’ve also written a bit lately about real-world technology — advances in computing, specifically.

First, I wrote an essay about superhero tropes in the Oscar-winning Alan Turing biopic, The Imitation Game.

Then, I wrote a review of Bruce Schneier’s latest, Data and Goliath, about the dangers of mass surveillance.