March 15, 2024

Something Good #97: Inversions

A new era and a new home for our newsletter.

All I can really remember is an image of the departure lounge where I started reading the book. I couldn't even tell you which airport. I was on my way home from somewhere and I'd picked up a book to read on the plane. The book was Inverted World by an author I'd never heard of named Christopher Priest. The description on the back looked interesting. I started it in the departure lounge and didn't put it down until some point during the flight. I'd read it in one sitting.

The opening sentence that hooked me was as good-handed as can be found in all of science fiction—famously so, even. It begins:

I had reached the age of six hundred and fifty miles.

Instant captivation of interest. It only gets more beguiling from there, as we learn that Helward, the protagonist, lives on a moving city slowly inching its way along an alien landscape, an entire, self-contained, mobile civilization where the rules of physics and chronology seem inexplicably skewed.

Inverted World had been such a perfect reading experience that I never even bothered to seek out Priest's other books. A stupid mistake; I don't know why I do this sometimes. The author died on February 24, leaving behind a fascinating body of work that I am only now discovering after the fact.

After learning of his death, I picked up The Evidence, from 2020, which is set in a recurring setting he called the "Dream Archipelago," an alternate world that resembles ours in many mundane ways but is at the same time governed by completely different rules. This book, which I absolutely devoured, tells the story of a mystery writer invited to a conference on a distant, frigid island called Dearth (perfect name) that claims to be crime-free, but from which an ineffable mystery gradually emerges. The story and world-building plays out so methodically, the fantastical elements introduced so matter-of-factly, that it feels almost like a magic trick, and I was left wondering what exactly I had experienced. (In fact, a stage magician makes an appearance in the book, as well as many of Priest's others. He's probably most famous for writing The Prestige, the tale of duelling 19th-Century illusionists made into a film by Christopher Nolan.)

I've recently acquired but not yet started The Islanders, a work of fictional travel writing about islands of the Dream Archipelago that is very likely to appear in at some point in Barely a Book Club, my spinoff newsletter book club dedicated to travel writing about places real and imaginary. (His descriptions of Dearth reminded me a lot of Jan Morris's descriptions of Hav.)

And not only that—he wrote the novelization of David Cronenberg's eXistenZ, one of my favourite movies! I hadn't even known it existed. What a strange career, what an unusual bibliography to explore.

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Bad news from Venice. Last night I received word from SG reader Anna, who, visiting the lagoon city, tells me that L'Istituto Morosini per lo Studio delle 15:32, 10 apr 1954, chronicled in an early edition of this newsletter, appears to have closed for good. I'd always hoped to go back someday, and I can only wonder what's happened to the contents of their very particular collection. Maybe another institute, dedicated to another day in the past, will open someday. Maybe one already has.

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What is my face? This is a question that I and neuroscientist Sofía Mariana Landi asked when the Imagine Science Film Festival put us together to make a short film. Our little documentary about facial recognition is currently playing only at The Brain Is the Screen, the new edition of Labocine's online magazine, but if you're not a subscriber you can watch it above at my Vimeo channel.

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This week's #nojacketsrequired were found in a friend's old farmhouse in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. Behind the house is a grey-panelled barn that used to serve as the town's dance hall. As usual, please email me your denuded, dejacketed delights at [email protected].

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As promised, as of this issue, this newsletter has a new home. After a lot of research, some hemming and an equal amount of hawing, I decided to go with Buttondown as my host and provider. I like this company for a variety of reasons: a stated no-Nazi policy, a small and responsive team (I was on the phone with the founder the day I first emailed them with questions), this blog post about generative AI, its lack of VC funding, and the fact that it was more affordable than the alternatives.

Transitions like this are never easy, and it took a little longer than I'd expected, but I'm happy where I ended up. You'll notice some small changes to the styling of the emails and the archive; at first I tried to reproduce the Substack style I was used to but soon I started to see the new tool's potential. Substack makes great-looking newsletters but I think I can put more of my own stamp on Something Good now, and I like the more stripped-down look. (Who needs all those share buttons, anyway?)

It's also going to cost me more—about $400 a year—but I can live with that. With nominally free services like Substack, the bill always comes due eventually, and my old provider's focus on growth at all costs is already eroding the user and writer experience, and I expect it will continue to do so. This has always been a proudly money-losing newsletter, and now it's even more so. I will continue to not ask you for money, however, if you're interested in moving to Buttondown or starting something there, you could always use my affiliate link, which would help us both modestly defray the cost of hosting. No pressure!

What do you think of the new look? Any suggestions or thoughts? Bugs? Questions about your own migration? Please let me know below, and it would probably also help if you put the sender address above in your contacts as to avoid it being filed incorrectly by your email provider.

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Bonus track:

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Thus begins a new era of Something Good. If you like what you read here, please tell a friend or subscribe below.

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