Proximal Eye – Mark W Tiedemann

Pitfalls and Misreading the Future

October 22, 2026 No Comments

In Charles Dickens’ Hard Times a man dies by falling into an open mine shaft in the dark. The mining company had more than a few of these, scattered, and no one questioned them as to why. Why they dug them, why they abandoned them, why they did nothing to warn people they were there. No one questioned them. The mining company was its own justification and now a local died walking across the field at night and stepping into the void… Dickens rarely suggested anything could be done about corporate power. For him, it was the nature of the human heart that had to be challenged. He expected people to change, especially the rich and powerful, and that would likely be the only way justice or kindness might express itself in the world. Today, we know a bit more about how such things work. And yet, at times, we seem just as powerless as an Oliver Twist. What he

Odysseys

August 22, 2026 No Comments

Recently, I saw Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. Interesting how some films become entitled in the public perception with the name of the author and/or filmmaker. I remember when Bram Stoker’s Dracula came out, after decades upon decades of Dracula movies that had never found it necessary to distinguish themselves in that way. In that instance, Coppola was, I think, making a claim for the film’s fidelity to the original novel, and it did rate such acknowledgement, although at the end it was not Stoker’s vampire, but, oddly, it was Goethe’s. That is subject for a different post, though. In this instance the distinction is intended to underscore the interpretation put forward. Interpretation or liberties. Depends who you ask. The film has caused a stir. which is an achievement. Work pitched at that level should cause a stir, otherwise what would be the point? The controversy is an indication that he had done something worthy of debate. To begin with, everyone

Speculative Disconnect?

May 10, 2026 1 Comment

Many years ago, before the hyperslick interfaces that define the internet today, I was briefly on a chatboard where folks in attendance were in one way or another trying to learn how to write science fiction. I was already well into my short story career and I’d just gotten a contract for a work-for-hire novel. One member wanted to engage me with writing a collaborative piece, not to do a complete story, but with the idea of learning from me how the process of story construction was supposed to work. I was new enough at all this that I agreed, with the understanding that we were not going to produce anything “salable” and we proceeded to swap story chunks. It quickly became frustrating because all he (and for a variety of reasons I came to the conclusion that he was a male) was interested in writing were combat and technology scenes. Tech and tactics, with occasional bits about what the

Fidelity To The Future: William Gibson’s Neuromancer

February 5, 2026 No Comments

Of all genres, science fiction seems the most susceptible to anachronism. To “dating.” Stories written a decade or more ago can betray oddities to the contemporary reader that must, to greater of lesser degree, be compenstated for. Technology does not go whefe we think it will, even when we might get the broad outlines right. Details will trip us up. The most succesful authors avoided this by not being too specific, by suggesting things can be done and then leaving the methods and means up to the reader. FTL is a case in point, though that one seems to have been a difficult-to-ignore challenge for many writers. How that might work becomes a necessary element differentiating hard from soft SF. There’s perhaps a bit of showing off going on, but usually it’s an attempt to add verisimilitude to the story. But it’s chancy. For instance, payphones. It’s likely a certain audience will react with “What?” And either draw a blank

Reading Review, 2025, With Observations About the Future

January 9, 2026 No Comments

I read 55 books cover to cover in 2025. So many things got in the way, but also I read a handful of bricks, and my research reading was extensive. My count of cover to cover is exactly that, those books I started and finished. I read Isabel Wilkerson’s excellent and disturbing study of the roots of systemic discrimination, Caste. Why the West Rules…for Now by Ian Morris; Christopher Fowler’s Book of Forgotten Authors; David Graeber’s Debt: the First 5000 Years; American Colonies by Alan Taylor; Brian Greene’s Until the End of Time… I also read Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany—a reread, for my book group—and Robert Silverberg’s Lord Valentine’s Castle, for the first time. I have the rest of that series and I may continue, but in truth I was both pleased and disappointed in it. I expected…something else. I’ve been working through Margaret Maron’s Deborah Knott series, out loud, with Donna. A reread for me and I’m happy

Reading With Intent

September 7, 2025 No Comments

Stress acts capriciously on our inner landscapes. What seems easy, comfortable to do, in times we consider normal becomes fraught in times of tension. Daily burdens can take on new weight, contours, and the requirements of coping change accordingly. When it sometimes feels that civilization itself is under threat, what constitutes useful response takes on meanings and demands that have no stable context. What do we read in the face of chaos? Because reading is not one thing, but a practice that sprawls through our lives like water underground, our assessment can become fragmented. Giving ourselves permission to read what we normally would is an issue. Is it responsible, we might ask ourselves, to read for pleasure when the world is about to be set afire? Shouldn’t what we read be contributive to our choices of resistance? Does that brick-thick epic fantasy constitute a betrayal of civic responsibility when the reality of oppression presses up against us? All these questions,

Autumnal Summations: Dhalgren Part Six

July 23, 2025 2 Comments

The final section of Dhalgren is also the most difficult to parse. Not because the action is hard to follow, but because of its presentation. Delany has interleaved marginal notes alongside the main narrative, some of these notes quite lengthy, and at times presenting a parallel narrative that highlights or comments upon the main text. We are given to understand this as direct transcription from Kid’s notebook. By now we have come to accept, though not explicitly told, that the notebook had been his all along. Which offers the suggestion that this is not the first time Kid has been in Bellona. The Ourobouros ending/beginning underlines this idea, because we are here taken back to where we began. Which makes Bellona ultimately a labyrinth, perhaps the Labyrinth, populated by fabulous monsters who may take turns at center stage with each revolution of the narrative. We can play a game guessing which is what—minotaur, Grendel, the dragon?—but in the end it

Dahlgren’s Dasein, Part Five

July 22, 2025 2 Comments

“Dasein possesses a logos, not to be understood in the usual way as reason or language, but as an ability to collect and remeber the manifestations of Being, which constitute the World…Dasein is thus a collecting-point where beings come out of conealment and make themselves present. These two notions, of coming out of concealment and being present are key to Heidegger’s metaphyics.” The History of Philosophy, A.C. Grayling “We are looking for the answer to the question of the meaning of being in general, and above all the possibility of radically developing this basic question of all ontology. But freeing the horizon in which something like being in general becomes intelligible amounts to clarifying the possibility of the understanding of being in general, an understanding which itself belongs to the constitution of that being which we call Da-sein…One thing has become unmistakable. Our existential analytic of the Da-sein up to now cannot lay claim to primordiality. Its fore-having never included

500: Dhalgren Part Four

July 16, 2025 1 Comment

Having reached 500 pages, I would like to make the case for Delany’s main subject. In this middle section of the novel, we see Kid undergoing changes that, in some cases, are disturbing. Initially, he was depicted as a kind of basic good guy, a mensch, who was struggling with a significant question of identity. He responded to situations, reacted, attempted to find a way to fit into a thoroughly discordant environment. He intentionally came to Bellona, it was a goal (if not the goal) and since arriving he has bounced from one situation to another trying to locate himself within a context which, while appearing to constantly shift and mutate, is actually quite stable in its dishabille. Recognizing that stability gives a clue as to the nature of the narrative and the apparent transformations Kid undergoes. What is more likely is that aspects of Kid’s personality—his nature, if you will—emerge as he becomes familiar with this new landscape. He

How The West Was Shot: Dhalgren Part Three

July 12, 2025 1 Comment

Throughout Dhalgren Delany plays with resonances and echoes that sometimes slip past without conscious impact. One of the repeated devices is the insertion of an authorial voice from time to time, where in the midst of things there is a stopping to comment on—not the plot, at least not usually—the subtext. They can read like Kidd (and in the next hundred pages, he loses a d and becomes “the Kid” or just “Kid”) having an internal dialogue, but gradually we hear a different voice. And then, in the midst of one of the more energetically violent scenes, wherein Kid joins the pack of Scorpions in their raid of an abandoned department store, Kid glimpses someone in a mirror and gives a description that is clearly not Kid. Anyone who had met or knew Delany at that time would have recognized the description. The author comments on his work but here is actually seen by one of his characters. Twenty or

Mark W. Tiedemann

Author. Blogger. Photographer.

The Proximal Eye