Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • What would it be like?

    What would it be like?

    This beautiful and moving short comic by Xulia Vicente (published by Shortbox, natch) is allegorical and speculative in equal measure. Since childhood, its protagonist Olivia has been able to see a female knight named Sierra, with a detachable head. Nobody else can see Sierra, but she is far more real than a hallucination, and she Read more

  • A shotgun blast of flawed brilliance

    A shotgun blast of flawed brilliance

    Seveneves is Neal Stephenson in his pomp. This book combines all his most splendid qualities as a writer: his febrile inventiveness, his meticulous technical research, his appealing and idiosyncratic characters, his fabulously convoluted plotting, and his exemplary pacing of event and revelation. It’s a gripping a thriller, an intellectual riot, and a truly speculative work Read more

  • Simply present

    Simply present

    Having taken a total break from playing music at the onset of the pandemic, I’ve been gradually coming back to it, starting with the ukulele, and more recently picking up a bass again. I’ve found myself enjoying the total absence of any demands, in terms of gigs to play or people to play with, and Read more

  • Plausibly grim

    Plausibly grim

    I found my way to the Snowpiercer comics by way of Bong Joon-Ho’s excellent 2013 movie, but they are legendary in their own right. These pioneering adult bandes dessinées, despite their fanciful science-fiction setting, are distinguished by a gritty and low-key style that was rarely found in comics in 1982 when the first volume was Read more

  • Necessary questions

    Necessary questions

    Fifty Degrees Below takes over more or less exactly where Forty Signs Of Rain leaves off, but it shifts focus slightly, both in terms of which of its characters are given the most time, and in the way it examines the impacts of climate change. This time, we are still in Washington D.C., but we Read more

  • True history

    True history

    This small book, published in 404 Ink’s ‘Inklings’ series, covers a subject close to my heart—since starting to listen heavily to hip-hop I’ve always been drawn to women MCs, mainly because the mainstream of the music has been dominated by such egregiously toxic patriarchal constructions of gender and sexuality. There have always been alternatives and Read more