Beyond the Labyrinth Archives - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Misc. Poems by Shawn P. Wilbur

January 24, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur

Links: Future Synthesis: Energy and Fear (1995) “Little Infidelities” (1995) Dog Chain Girl White man Jamaican dreadlocks band, rock reggae roots less black than the coffee I’m drinking. Coffee shop crowd all pretzeled in under dim lights under fans over cheesecake and notebooks. It’s Saturday night in the kingdom of caffeine cool. Check out the berets and the trembling hands. Tonight I’m civilian–longhair bluejeans scribbling poetry eating Toblerone. I buy cappuccino from a quiet girl pretty, funny I never can remember her name. And she smiles smiles shyly smiles pleased to see me I think but who knows? And I […]

Futurism/post-Futurism: Art & Industry at the End of History & Beyond

January 23, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur

This is yet another of the grad-school documents that have had some circulation online over the past twenty-five years. I’m collecting them here now largely as a matter of artistic documentation but it has certainly been interesting to dip back into the preoccupations, both political and aesthetic, of the early 90s. This is a considerably less polished production than some of the others I have archive, but it certainly has its moments. And, for those who have read my “Futurist Synthesis” poem, I suppose it may provide some glimpses into the mechanisms of that work. “Futurist Synthesis (Energy and Fear)” […]

What Means this “Art Strike”? (1994)

January 23, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur

This is another grad-school artifact, from the days when Lipstick Traces and The Assault on Culture were two of the fixed points in my otherwise rapidly shifting universe of interests. It now seems a very long time ago… I have appended a set of thirteen theses “On the Use of the Situationist International,” which was a product of the same period. It is, as a rather unabashedly pro-situ production, both better and worse than I remember. It seems at least worthy of preservation as a document of the time. What Means this “Art Strike”? (Social Movement and/or “Bad Idea”?) Shawn […]

AKA bookish: Cyberstudies

December 22, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur

The essays collected here are from an earlier phase of my scholarly career, when I was an active participant and observer in various online “virtual communities.” In those days, I was something of a big fish, in various small virtual ponds, and generally know by the username “bookish.” Related links: Voices from the Net [e-zine] Dromologies: Paul Virilio: Speed, Cinema, and the End of the Political State Futurist Synthesis (Energy and Fear) Running Down the Meme: Cyberpunk, alt.cyberpunk, and the Panic of ‘93 Shawn P. Wilbur ———- Dodging Cultural Traffic It’s a cliché of traditional history that a certain amount […]

Voices from the Net (1993)

March 13, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur

Collected here is the full run of Voices from the Net, an electronic zine that Ric Bohannon and I published, starting in 1993. WELCOME TO THE INAUGURAL ISSUE OF VOICES FROM THE NET [Keep in mind, Wired #1 is now going for $50.00 American ;)] xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xx xx xx V O I C E S xx xx xx xx f r o m xx xx xx xx t h e xx xx xx xx N E T . . . xx xx xx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx C a n Y o u H e a r O u r V […]

Haunted by Dragons: Flying Monsters in 19th Century California

September 18, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

Haunted by Dragons FLYING MONSTERS IN 19th CENTURY CALIFORNIA * * * A MONSTER OF THE AIR Thomas Campbell and Joseph Howard, two wood-choppers working in the timber five miles northeast of Hurleton, Cal., inform us by letter of a singular creature they saw flying thought the air last Friday afternoon. They write: “About four o’clock Friday afternoon last, while at work, we were startled by the sound of many wings flapping in the air. Looking up, we perceived passing over our heads, not more than forty feet above the tree-tops, a creature that looked something like a crocodile. […]

Crime and Subtitles — I

June 26, 2017

Not even this man lives by anarchist history and theory alone, however close a thing it may sometimes be. There are the necessary distractions, useful for resting certain parts of the apparatus and exercising others, like good beer, a bit of cooking and foreign television shows. The growing importance of the last of those to my routine has been something of a surprise, since I went a couple of decades without a television. But I’ve always had an interest in popular genre entertainment, making it the focus of my graduate work for a while in the 90s, and much of […]

A Voyage from Pole to Pole by way of the Center of the Earth (1721)

July 16, 2012

An Account of a Voyage from the Arctic to the Antarctic Pole by way of the Center of the Earth. With the description of that perilous Passage, & of the marvelous & astonishing things that were discovered beneath the Antarctic Pole. WITH FIGURES. Amsterdam M. DCC. XXI TABLE OF CHAPTERS. I. Departure of the Author from Amsterdam for Greenland; how the Author & his Companions began to realize that they were nearing the dreadful maelstrom which is under the Arctic Pole; description of the maelstrom. II. How the Vessel was swallowed up at the center of the maelstrom; […]

W. M. Stannard, “Mr. Corndropper’s Hired Man” (1900)

July 8, 2012

Mr. Corndropper’s Hired Man. (A Companion to “Ely’s Automatic Housemaid.”) BY W. M. STANNARD. _____ THERE was a mild sensation at the East Slowcombe railway station when a stranger, bearing a two-gallon can, carefully crated, stepped off the 3.30 accommodation, and there were many speculations hazarded as to his identity, business and destination, but, without stopping to question or exchange words with any of the waiting crowd, he stepped across the platform to where Farmer Corndropper was waiting with his gray mare and buggy. He handed the fanner a letter, stepped into the buggy and was driven slowly away. Without […]

Elizabeth W. Bellamy, “Ely’s Automatic Housemaid” (1899)

July 8, 2012

Ely’s Automatic Housemaid. BY ELIZABETH W. BELLAMY. _____ IN order for a man to have faith in such an invention, he would have to know Harrison Ely. For Harrison Ely was a genius. I had known him in college, a man amazingly dull in Latin and Greek and even in English, but with ideas of his own that could not be expressed in language. His bent was purely mechanical, and found expression in innumerable ingenious contrivances to facilitate the study to which he had no inclination. His self-acting lexicon-holder was a matter of admiring wonder to his classmates, but it […]