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: RonCo Meat-O-Matic
Found: RonCo Meat-O-MaticThis QVC gizmo lets you culture your own vat-grown meat in the comfort of your home 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 March 2008 issue of Wired. I remember that everyone loved the QVC-home shopping-RonCo angle on future tech. We initially explored laser knives, but we ended up going with cultured meat. The onscreen artwork of the home vat-grown meat-growing appliance is by John MacNeil, and the surrounding context is a Corbis stock image. Detailed images and full text below.
Offer Expires 2/29/2016 RonCo™ Meat-O-Matic Vat-grown Kobe beef in the comfort of your home! RETAIL VALUE: FREE S&H Stare here for 10 seconds to initiate RetinaScan Purchasing® or Buy at QVC.com No Bones! Kosher! Halal! Plus, if you act now ... ITEM KL-805262.1-V17001 QVC Kitchen Ideas |
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.