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There is, I think, no arguing that contemporary genre art has a character distinct from previous decades. I also think that while there are big shifts in aesthetics somewhat aligning with each decade of the 20th century, here in the 21st things have definitely slowed down — I feel like the look of genre art has fossilized somewhat in the last 20 years. I don’t have a good explanation for why. Sometimes I wonder if I’m blinded by nostalgia, and that there really aren’t any obvious objective differences at all.

Worlds Beyond Time: Sci-Fi Art of the 1970s (2023) is a compelling argument, I think, that there ARE definite differences. The book, by Adam Rowe (and spinning out of his social media accounts dedicated to, well, ’70s science fiction art) looks at both artists and thematic categories of art from the period, mostly from paperback covers, and offers commentary and historical context in the text. The result is startling: a body of work by a variety of artists working in their own styles that nevertheless seems visually unified. With the exception of a couple outliers, this stuff all feels of the ’70s. The fact that there are some inclusions from both the ’60s and ’80s makes this even clearer.

I think the most interesting thing about this is how bizarre some of the ’70s art seems to be. A lot of these artists appear to be entirely off the leash, delivering work they WANTED to produce rather than what they were directed to produce (you can see a shift toward clearly pairing the cover art with the content of the book in the later part of the decade). There was also more money in the work, then, so speed wasn’t quite so big a part of the equation as it is now.

And, greater questions of genre art aside, Worlds Beyond Time is still a mesmerizing collection, worthy of your time even if you just want to feed pictures to your eyeballs.

#science fiction #fantasy #art #fantasy illustration #sci fi art #Adam Rowe

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I’ve seen the Ursula K LeGuin quote about capitalism going around, but to really appreciate it you have to know the context.

The year is 2014. She has been given a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Awards. Neil Gaiman puts it on her neck in front of a crowd of booksellers who bankrolled the event, and it’s time to make a standard “thank you for this award, insert story here, something about diversity, blah blah blah” speech. She starts off doing just that, thanking her friends and fellow authors. All is well.

Then this old lady from Oregon looks her audience of executives dead in the eye, and says “Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximize corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship.”

She rails against the reduction of her art to a commodity produced only for profit. She denounces publishers who overcharge libraries for their products and censor writers in favor of something “more profitable”. She specifically denounces Amazon and its business practices, knowing full well that her audience is filled with Amazon employees. And to cap it off, she warns them: “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.”

Ursula K LeGuin got up in front of an audience of some of the most powerful people in publishing, was expected to give a trite and politically safe argument about literature, and instead told them directly “Your empire will fall. And I will help it along.”

#ursula k leguin #reblog

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✨Travelling Light - Episode 19!✨

The Traveller and Duytren clear the air; and how technology can be both a boon and a burden…

Subscribe now Spotify, Apple Podcasts or your podcatcher of choice 🚀✨ Full transcript available here.

Travelling Light is a science fantasy podcast that follows the Traveller as they explore their galaxy, collecting stories from the people they meet and adding them to their community archives.

Every week our artist Matt McDyre (@diabeticspoon92) creates a unique illustration for the episode's archive entry. This week’s entry was based on an idea from The Menagerie! Send in your suggestions, prompts and entries via social media, by email, or through monstrousproductions.org 📨

If you're enjoying the show, please consider signing up for our Ko-Fi. For £1 a month, you'll get access to bonus art, blogs, annotated scripts and more, as well as being able to vote in audience decisions! Head over to ko-fi.com/monstrousproductions to learn more 🤩

Finally, remember - the best way you can support us is to tell others we exist! Review the show wherever you listen, and share the love wherever (and whenever!) you can. Every little helps! 💖

🚀✨ See you next Friday! ✨🚀

#travelling light podcast #travelling light #monstrous productions #podcast recommendations #fiction podcast #audio drama #science fiction #science fantasy

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I decided to write an extremely tasteful song parody as my lovely contribution for @murderhelionweek's "FREE SPACE".

#murderbot #the murderbot diaries #murderhelion #murderbot x art #murderhelion week

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WIP for part of #murderhelion week

#the murderbot diaries #murderbot #asshole research transport #murderhelion #murderhelion week #reblog

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theory: with the way crosslinked categories seem to be the theme of each episode description, and the way TMAGP case-files have been theorized to be hunger or desire-based rather than fear-based, AND the fact that purely fear-based monsters do appear to still exist (while being portrayed as inadequate and underwhelming...)

i wonder if this is another hint that the TMA fear entities arrived as an invasive species in a completely different magipsychological system, and the two different sets are combining almost like pokemon types, creating infinite variations of horror.

#tmagp #the magnus protocol #tma #the magnus archives

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Y'all, the world is sleeping on what NASA just pulled off with Voyager 1

The probe has been sending gibberish science data back to Earth, and scientists feared it was just the probe finally dying. You know, after working for 50 GODDAMN YEARS and LEAVING THE GODDAMN SOLAR SYSTEM and STILL CHURNING OUT GODDAMN DATA.

So they analyzed the gibberish and realized that in it was a total readout of EVERYTHING ON THE PROBE. Data, the programming, hardware specs and status, everything. They realized that one of the chips was malfunctioning.

So what do you do when your probe is 22 Billion km away and needs a fix? Why, you just REPROGRAM THAT ENTIRE GODDAMN THING. Told it to avoid the bad chip, store the data elsewhere.

Sent the new code on April 18th. Got a response on April 20th - yeah, it's so far away that it took that long just to transmit.

And the probe is working again.

From a programmer's perspective, that may be the most fucking impressive thing I have ever heard.

#nasa #voyager 1 #v'ger

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The only "benevolent" force is the one Lena happens to worship.

#my red string theory #tmagp #tmagp spoilers #tmagp vague

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Bond! ♥️

lol one time he saw Anya pretend to be sleep and Loid carried her home sooooo— 😴😴😴🫣

☑️ art requests open (maybe through the weekend too hehe) 🤗✨

#yes I've known that dog #bond forger #loid forger #spy x family #spy x family art #sxf #fanart #reblog

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Banger episode today. They really just went

on this one huh

#the magnus protocol #tmagp #tmagp vague #marxism #reblog

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Me finishing the first Murderbot Diaries book: Wow! What a relatable main character.

Me: ....

Me: Oh...

#same #murderbot diaries

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had the weirdest dream istg

#tlt #the locked tomb #gideon nav #harrowhark nonagesimus #harrow the ninth #gideon the ninth #fanart #sketch #reblog

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how to find literally any post on a blog in seconds (on desktop)

there are so many posts about ~tumblr is so broken, you can’t find any post on your own blog, it’s impossible, bluhrblub~

I am here to tell you otherwise! it is in fact INCREDIBLY easy to find a post on a blog if you’re on desktop/browser and you know what you’re doing:

url.tumblr.com/tagged/croissant will bring up EVERY post on the blog tagged with the specific and exact phrase #croissant. every single post, every single time. in chronological order starting with the most recent post. note: it will not find #croissants or that time you made the typo #croidnssants. for a tag with multiple words, it’s just /tagged/my-croissant and it will show you everything with the exact phrase #my croissant

url.tumblr.com/tagged/croissant/chrono will bring up EVERY post on the blog tagged with the exact phrase #croissant, but it will show them in reverse order with the oldest first 

url.tumblr.com/search/croissant isn’t as perfect at finding everything, but it’s generally loads better than the search on mobile. it will find a good array of posts that have the word croissant in them somewhere. could be in the body of the post (op captioned it “look at my croissant”) or in the tags (#man I want a croissant). it won’t necessarily find EVERYTHING like /tagged/ does, but I find it’s still more reliable than search on mobile. you can sometimes even find posts by a specific user by searching their url. also, unlike whatever random assortment tumblr mobile pulls up, it will still show them in a more logically chronological order

url.tumblr.com/day/2020/11/05 will show you every post on the blog from november 5th, 2020, in case you’re taking a break from croissants to look for destiel election memes 

url.tumblr.com/archive/ is search paradise. easily go to a particular month and see all posts as thumbnails! search by post type! search by tags but as thumbnails now

url.tumblr.com/archive/filter-by/audio will show you every audio post on your blog (you can also filter by other post types). sometimes a little imperfect if you’re looking for a video when the op embedded the video in a text post instead of posting as a video post, etc

url.tumblr.com/archive/tagged/croissant will show you EVERY post on the blog tagged with the specific and exact phrase #croissant, but it will show you them in the archive thumbnail view divided by months. very useful if you’re looking for a specific picture of a croissant that was reblogged 6 months ago and want to be able to scan for it quickly 

url.tumblr.com/archive/filter-by/audio/tagged/croissant will show you every audio post tagged with the specific phrase #croissant (you can also filter by photo or text instead, because I don’t know why you have audio posts tagged croissant) 

the tag system on desktop tumblr is GENUINELY amazing for searching within a specific blog! 

caveat: this assumes a person HAS a desktop theme (or “custom theme”) enabled. a “custom theme” is url.tumblr.com, as opposed to tumblr.com/url. I’ve heard you have to opt-into the former now, when it used to be the default, so not everyone HAS a custom theme where you can use all those neat url tricks. 

if the person doesn’t have a “custom theme” enabled, you’re beholden to the search bar. still, I’ve found the search bar on tumblr.com/url is WAY more reliable than search on mobile. for starters, it tends to bring posts up in a sensible order, instead of dredging up random posts from 2013 before anything else

if you’re on mobile, I’m sorry. godspeed and good luck finding anything. (my one tip is that if you’re able to click ON a tag rather than go through the search bar, you’ll have better luck. if your mutual has recently reblogged a post tagged #croissant, you can click #croissant and it’ll bring up everything tagged #croissant just like /tagged/croissant. but if there’s no readily available tag to click on, you have to rely on the mobile search bar and its weird bizarre whims) 

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#abortion is a human right #abortion #abortion rights #pro choice #vote blue #fuck republicans

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Source

"Isn't it exhausting being someone you're not?"

"No! Isn't it exhausting being the same?"

#transgender #the gravel boy #trans men #reblog

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Meet the Augurians - an avian species who can speak to birds, and even see flashes of the future in their songs...

Illustrated by @diabeticspoon92 for Episode 18 of Travelling Light, a science fantasy podcast available wherever you listen 🎧💕

#love this podcast #travelling light #travelling light podcast #audio fiction #fiction podcast #digital art #artists on tumblr #aliens #science fiction

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I was today years old when I discovered The God of Poop is my kind of fanservice. 🤣

#vagueposting #spy x family #code white spoiler #spoilers #spy x family spoilers #time to rethink my life choices