Eliot Peper: Tenochtitlan, Stock and Flow, Metazoa, The Egg, Tail End
Our curator this week is Eliot Peper (@eliotpeper). Eliot is a speculative fiction author of twelve novels exploring the intersection of technology and culture—his books have been praised by The New York Times Book Review, Popular Science, and Ars Technica. His most recent, Foundry, is a thriller set inside the global semiconductor supply chain. His writing has also appeared in Harvard Business Review, TechCrunch, and The Verge.
Please enjoy these words that have mattered to Eliot.
Eliot's Picks
A Portrait of Tenochtitlan
Remarkable project that juxtaposes a 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan in 1518 with Mexico City in 2023.
Stock and flow
This little blog post from novelist and media experimenter Robin Sloan offers a surprisingly versatile lens for making sense of making things online.
Metazoa
A profound synthesis of philosophy and biology that explores what science has learned about the evolutionary basis for subjective experience.
The Egg
This thought-provoking short story by Andy Weir—of The Martian fame—is a gem.
Watermelons
This natural history of watermelons reveals so many fascinating aspects of one of my favorite fruits.
Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth
In this six-part PBS series originally broadcast in 1988, Bill Moyers interviews Joseph Campbell about the power of myth.
The Tail End
This is one of those blog posts that continues to loiter in a dark corner of my mind years after I read it.
Convenience Store Woman
Sayaka Murata's novella does that special thing that prose fiction, at its best, does so well: invite you inside someone else's head.
Chemical scum that dream of distant quasars
Physicist David Deutsch journeys from deep time to the far future.
He's Still Neutral
An Oakland resident installs a Buddha statue on his block in a quirky bid to stop illegal dumping.
Spotlight on Eliot's Work
Eliot has written multiple acclaimed novels, including Bandwidth, Veil, Cumulus, Reap3r, and most recently, Foundry.