Oliver Arditi

Blog archive

  • Solitary movement through a hauntological palimpsest

    Solitary movement through a hauntological palimpsest

    Aloy moves alone through her world. Geralt in the Witcher series is constantly bounded and motivated by his social relations and obligations, despite his fundamentally ronin status; in contrast, although the protagonist of Horizon Zero Dawn is provided by her back-story with a social context that explains who she is and why, the earliest stages… Read more

  • A positive view from the doldrums

    A positive view from the doldrums

    I came across this book on the website of Lib Ed, formerly the Libertarian Teachers Association. It is one of their own publications, written by an author who had also written on topics more obviously relevant to their core mission. Given my interest in all things comics, and 2000AD in particular, it was fairly obvious… Read more

  • Thoughtful speculation

    Thoughtful speculation

    This is a small-format, short, perfectly-formed science-fiction story. Its basic premise would probably be quite implausible technically, if it was elucidated in sufficient detail to get a handle on it, but the way in which its implications are explored is absolutely exemplary as speculative fiction. A spacecraft propulsion technology uses memories, supplied by a willing… Read more

  • A life lived among relics

    A life lived among relics

    Apparently I’ve been to Anglesey Abbey before, according to everyone else in my family who I am claimed to have gone with (and who I went there with this time). This purported visit isn’t supposed to have involved going inside the house, however, so I think I might be forgiven for having forgotten wandering around… Read more

  • Flawed immersion

    Flawed immersion

    Having bought a Playstation 4, the first games console I have ever owned, so that I can play CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 when it comes out, I’ve taken the opportunity to catch up with the same studio’s The Witcher III: Wild Hunt.  I enjoyed the second instalment of this series a great deal on… Read more

  • A cautionary elegy

    A cautionary elegy

    William Boyd thinks that The Radetzky March is ‘one of the enduring monuments of twentieth-century European literature’; I’d never heard of it before a friend recommended it to me. It’s quite likely that Boyd hasn’t heard of the books I think are ‘enduring monuments’ either (although I actually think that sounds like a terrible, dead… Read more