I write speculative fiction, cultural criticism, humor, and journalism, with a particular interest in retrofuturism, video games, fandom, and forgotten corners of pop culture history. My work has been published by Wired, Rolling Stone, Slate, McSweeney’s, Alta Journal, Flash Fiction Online, Underland Press, and Shacklebound Books. I also publish the newsletter Pop Cultural Precursors.
FOUND: Nanodryl® Inhaler for Smart Dust Allergies
Found: Nanodryl® Inhaler for Smart Dust AllergiesDebug your sinuses with this cross-platform antihistamine One of my favorite projects when I was an editor at Wired magazine was the monthly back-page item Found: Artifacts From the Future. Each installment was a full-page image of some found object from a speculative near future. All explanation of what the object was and how it worked had to be diegetic—i.e., the page had to explain itself entirely through context and in situ text, with no annotation or caption. This was a great challenge for me as a writer/editor and for all of the designers, illustrators, and photographers I had the pleasure of working with. These pages never made much of an impact online because the fun was always in the fine print—which rarely came through at web resolution. I’m republishing them here to drill down on those cool details.
This piece ran in the April 2004 issue of Wired. It imagines a futuristic version of an asthma inhaler that’s specially designed for smart dust allergies. The concept of tiny microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) that were dubbed “smart dust” emerged from a RAND workshop and a series of DARPA studies in the early 1990s. Science-fiction luminaries like Neal Stephenson and Vernor Vinge explored the idea in their works during that period. I think I was inspired by The Diamond Age’s ‘toner’ when I was writing the packaging for this product. I remember my colleagues particularly enjoyed an ailment I dreamed up called “Data Miner’s Lung.” Full text from the product packaging below, followed by a higher-resolution scan of the page. The page scan crops out any info on the artist who designed the product and the packaging, and the photographer who took the picture. Sorry!
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Genre Exercises
I write speculative fiction, cultural criticism, humor, and journalism, with a particular interest in retrofuturism, video games, fandom, and forgotten corners of pop culture history. My work has been published by Wired, Rolling Stone, Slate, McSweeney’s, Alta Journal, Flash Fiction Online, Underland Press, and Shacklebound Books. I also publish the newsletter Pop Cultural Precursors.
Read my dystopian sci-fi horror about End Times Reply Guys. "I don’t enjoy playing the role of That Annoying Internet Guy who reflexively replies with hectoring know-it-all comments like 'Why are you surprised?' or 'How is this news?' But people force me..." Read it here
Sorry, Villeneuve and David Lynch. This version wins even though it never made it past pre-production... Read about it in my newsletter.
NEW NEWSLETTER: In 1985, an ambitious game simulated the ruinous long-term effects of a conservative political agenda on a Midwestern city. It now feels less like dystopian sci-fi and more like current events. Read it here.