The Monitor is a weekly column devoted to everything happening in the WIRED world of culture, from movies to memes, TV to Twitter. Several years ago, in response to a…
Tag: Culture
Historical Novelists and Fantasy Writers Should Be Friends
Christopher M. Cevasco is an author of both fantasy fiction and historical fiction. As someone with a foot in both worlds, he’s constantly surprised by the lack of crossover. “I…
Meet the People Illustrating the Brutality of War in Ukraine
Paper Planes launched just days after Russia invaded Ukraine. An effort by filmmakers Alex Topaller and Dan Shapiro, it started as an attempt to connect artists displaced by the war…
Welcome to Janelle Monáe’s Dreamworld
There’s an old story about Octavia Butler that I often return to: A young man once asked the visionary science fiction novelist the answer to ending all the suffering in…
What Is the Metaverse, Exactly?
The flashiness of VR and AR also obscure the more mundane ways that our existing, interconnected digital world could be improved right now. It would be trivial for tech companies…
The Northman Deserves More Than Cult Classic Status
In a recent interview, the director Robert Eggers reflected on the experience of helming his first potential blockbuster. The Northman, out now, is, he said, “literally an epic” in that…
I Played Halo With My Spouse 17 Years After We Almost Broke Up Over It
If you’ve been with your partner for long enough, you don’t even need to hear them clear their throat before you know they’re about to speak. After I clicked on…
Why The Masked Singer’s Rudy Giuliani Reveal Failed
The Monitor is a weekly column devoted to everything happening in the WIRED world of culture, from movies to memes, TV to Twitter. On Wednesday night, the most unpredictably predictable…
Fantasy Heroes Rarely Go on Strike
Ben Burgis is the author of more than a dozen fantasy and science fiction stories. In “Smokestacks Like the Arms of Gods,” workers at a magical factory lay down their…
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent Celebrates Cinema Itself
Shot through with more nods and winks than most movies can sustain, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent threatens to push the concept of metanarrative to the breaking point. In…