Home  |  About the Author  |  Blog  |  Journalism  |  Travel Tales  |  Q & A  |  Dark Places / Trail of the Dead  |  Blood Price  |  Invisible Armies  |  Night of Knives

Journalism and Essays



Technology and Society

 
electro-fist   In Defense of the Taliban, Maisonneuve, Spring 2010. Some commentary on the cage match between technology and extremism.
 
  We're All Going To Be Rich, Reader's Digest Canada, March 2010. On Akoha, Austin Hill, and the world's forthcoming reputation economy.
 
electro-fist   Behind the Firewall, Maisonneuve, Winter 2010. The revolution will not be Twittered.
 
tree-eater   What's wrong with Africa, Maisonneuve, Autumn 2009. The pros and cons of fatalism, and the cons of most aid and NGOs. Selected for inclusion in the seventh edition of the textbook Canadian Content.
 
tree-eater   In praise of devastation, Maisonneuve, Summer 2009. In which I suggest that maybe clearcutting the Amazon isn't all bad. In a nuanced kind of way.
 
  Can A Video Game Make You Cry?, Maisonneuve, Winter 2009. Speculation about the future of the world's newest storytelling medium, and a paean to Grand Theft Auto IV.
 
  Apocalypse Soon: the future of reading, The Walrus, September 2007. An analysis of the earthquake that will overturn today's publishing industry. Selected for inclusion in the classic Canadian textbook The Act of Writing.


Dispatches from Far Far Away

 
poster-child   Free delivery: birth in the poorest country in the Americas, The Walrus. I travelled to Haiti to write about a Médecins Sans Frontières maternity hospital, and the complicated problems of doing good in a nation often wracked by violence.
 
Lake Kivu   In the Shadow of Doom, The Walrus. An article about a killer lake in Central Africa. Yes, I said "killer lake." Read it now or wait for the inevitable disaster movie.
 
Iraq   Wiring the War Zone, Wired. In May 2005, I spent a week in Iraq researching two cipherpunks who travelled there after the war to reconnect the country to the Internet, and wrote this article.
 
Iraq   Later, Blood, Bullets, Bombs and Bandwidth, a 4,000-word expansion of the Iraq piece, found a readership through Slashdot.
 
me-olkhon   Ten Tips for Travel to Exotic Countries, CBC.ca. A quick guide to how to enjoy travel in developing nations. Also appeared on Yahoo! Travel, MSN.ca, and various other sites.
 
Rwanda   Genocide in L.A. isn't really about genocide in L.A.


On Writing

 
    Inappropriate appropriations, The Guardian. Ruminations on how (and if) a white Canadian should write about Africa.
 
    The newly graphic novelist, The Guardian. In which I discuss my awkward but rewarding transition from novelist to graphic novelist.
 
  The great book giveaway, The Guardian. Why successful writers are giving away their work for free.
 
    But Enough About Me, Let's Talk About What You Can Do For Me. Explains how not to write, and why NaNoWriMo is for suckers.


Blogs

 
    Wired.co.uk:
  1. From dragons to smartphones. On the information tsunami about to hit the developing world.
  2. Death to the unknown. Google as the new Rosetta Stone.
 
    World Fast Forward at The Walrus, Canada's answer to The New Yorker:
  1. Inaugural introduction.
  2. Colombia's Mobile Revolution - Banking with your phone is a bigger deal than you might think.
  3. Better Dying Through Chemistry - How to ruin entire nations and destroy untold millions of lives.
  4. The Donkey And The Ninja - No donkeys were harmed in the making of this post. But I cannot say the same about ninjas.
  5. A Man, A Plan, A Canal - How to run and ruin megaprojects.
  6. There's Gold In Them There Trees - How do you patent indigenous knowledge?
  7. Big Brother Is Watching Them. OK? - In which I reflect on having been mugged at gunpoint.
  8. One Laptop Per Child: What Went Wrong - Its fundamental problems are twofold: 1. It was a bad idea to begin with. 2. The XO laptop is a piece of crap.
  9. All Hail the Great Satan - Shooting down mosquitoes - with frikkin' lasers!
  10. How Google Unconquered the World - and how Apple squandered it, again.
  11. From Page To, Um, Page - a guest post in the Four-Colour Words comic-books blog.
  12. The Complaints Department - Twitter, the cephalopod of corruption, and the unquenchable human urge to complain.
  13. E-Publish or Perish - Book publishing's brave new world.
  14. The Farce of War - Afghanistan, Restrepo, and Wikileaks.
 
    tor.com, the world's preeminent site for "science fiction, fantasy and related subjects":
  1. SF gems from the literary ghetto
  2. Magic realism: not fantasy. Sorry.
  3. Why Isn't Greg Egan A Superstar?
  4. Who Are These Fools, and Why Should You Care?
  5. Build A Better World, And The World Will Come To Your Door
  6. Neil Gaiman: I Don’t Get It
  7. Sitting Shiva For Sitka: Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union
  8. Time Travel Times Two: Jack Finney’s Time and Again
  9. The Buffet Effect
  10. Mediating the Immediate: William Gibson’s Spook Country
  11. Xenophobia for Dummies: A District 9 Primer
  12. Kerouac wgah’nagl fhtagn: Nick Mamatas’s Move Under Ground
  13. A Hallowe’en Gift: Sarah Langan’s The Keeper
  14. Fury, absurdity, sorcery: Wizard of the Crow by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
  15. My aversion to versions
  16. Fantasy vs. science fiction: James Cameron's Avatar
  17. On Evil, or, the Mores of the Future
Join Jon's mailing list:  
  
Home  |  About the Author  |  Blog  |  Journalism  |  Travel Tales  |  Q & A  |  Dark Places / Trail of the Dead  |  Blood Price  |  Invisible Armies  |  Night of Knives