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Podcast – Cory Doctorow's craphound.com · June 7

The age of vapor

This week on my podcast, I read my latest Locus Magazine column, “The Age of Vapor,” about the role science fiction imaginaires plays in fueling high-tech investment bubbles. It’s one thing to make everything about imaginary technology when you’re writing SF. The point of those imaginative exercises is to illumi­nate: To provoke reflection on our present moment, to inspire or warn about the future. But spinning narratives about imaginary technology as investment advice is a very different matter. The point here is to obscure: to con­vince investors that a company with a 90% market share will somehow continue to grow, to stave off the day when Stein’s Law (“If something cannot go on forever, it will stop”) asserts itself. MP3

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The cover of the Aug 1923 issue of 'Science and Invention' magazine, announcing a '$10,000 Spritism Challenge,' and 'The Man From the Atom.' The cover features an illustration of an astronaut floating in space amidst various planets and stars.

This week on my podcast, I read my latest Locus Magazine column, “The Age of Vapor,” about the role science fiction imaginaires plays in fueling high-tech investment bubbles.


It’s one thing to make everything about imaginary technology when you’re writing SF. The point of those imaginative exercises is to illumi­nate: To provoke reflection on our present moment, to inspire or warn about the future.

But spinning narratives about imaginary technology as investment advice is a very different matter. The point here is to obscure: to con­vince investors that a company with a 90% market share will somehow continue to grow, to stave off the day when Stein’s Law (“If something cannot go on forever, it will stop”) asserts itself.

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