Good speculative fiction doesn't predict the future. It proves the present was always this strange.

lol @ tractor/Lamborghini Yes, farmpunk is similar to steampunk and cyberpunk. The distinction is farm culture (any time period) + high technology with a punk attitude.

Thanks!

What's wrong with Rafiki?

Yeah, the timestamps along with monetization make Hive a great place for creators.

Farmpunk isn't nostalgia for rural life. It's rural life projected forward. The tractor runs on something new. The people driving it are exactly as complicated as they've always been.

The sixty-day structure of Strangers & Aliens isn't a countdown. It's a compression. Everything in the story has to earn its place within that window. I find the constraint clarifying.

Ridiculous. I don't understand the infatuation with one guy. He's not God.

No one should ever be allowed to nominate themselves to be pictured on a monetary unit. He isn't Caesar.

The genre I'm trying to write doesn't have a shelf yet. That's either a problem or a feature. I've decided it's a feature.

IP protection on Hive isn't a legal strategy. It's a timestamped record no platform administrator can edit or delete. For a writer, that's not a minor thing.

You've never heard of absurdism?

The argument for decentralized publishing isn't that the writing is better. It's that the writer owns it.

Absurdism doesn't require the situation to be absurd. The situation can be perfectly reasonable. The absurdism comes from the character's decision to keep going anyway.

Most of the 'creator economy' is built on someone else's infrastructure. That's not a partnership. It's a tenancy. The lease terms can change without notice.

The most valuable thing Hive gives creators isn't HIVE tokens. It's an immutable record that no platform update can revise retroactively.

The platforms most enthusiastic about 'creator tools' are also the ones with the most granular control over what creators can do. There's a word for that, and it's not 'empowerment'.

Dystopian fiction is most honest when you can't tell if it's a warning or a weather report.

The real world is more absurd than anything I could create with words. That's the problem. And, of course, the opportunity.

The most useful thing speculative fiction does is make the present strange enough to see clearly. You can't always do that while standing inside it.