HILOBROW 2025
By:
December 31, 2025
Here’s what HILOBROW published in 2025.
We’re grateful to our many stalwart contributors, and also to first-time contributors Tana Sirois, Jake Zucker, Wendy Chin-Tanner, Matthew Hodge, Julian Richards, Maggie Inge, Karlie Flood, Drew Broussard, Emma Tourtelot, Halimah Marcus, Will Hermes, Samuel Shapiro, Adam Snyder, Adriana Wong, and Al Deakin.
PS: During 2025, the following HILOBROW index pages were created and/or substantially developed: RADIUM AGE POETRY | RADIUM AGE ART | FICTION & POETRY
BEST OF HILOBROW: 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025.
Also see: HYPOCRITE IDLER 2025.
During 2025, HILOBROW published the following “enthusiasm” series.
MacGYVER YOUR ENTHUSIASM: Our favorite… TV shows from the Eighties (1984–1993)! Here’s a selection of the lineup:
Michael Grasso on MAX HEADROOM | Mark Kingwell on CHINA BEACH | Judith Zissman on SANTA BARBARA | Nikhil Singh on CHOCKY | Sara Ryan on REMINGTON STEELE | Vanessa Berry on THE YOUNG ONES | Marc Weidenbaum on LIQUID TELEVISION | Annie Nocenti on THE SINGING DETECTIVE | Tom Nealon on MIAMI VICE
Josh Glenn was the MacGYVER series editor. He is very grateful to the series’ contributors, many of whom donated their honoraria to Covenant House, which provides housing and supportive services to youth facing homelessness.
DEFER YOUR ENTHUSIASM: Our favorite… late-breaking obsessions, avoided discoveries, and devotions delayed! Here’s a selection of the lineup:
Mandy Keifetz on FAITH | Carlo Rotella on SMOOTHER GROOVES | Jake Zucker on LIGHT SLEEPER | Adam McGovern on DOGS | Rani Som on LED ZEP | Juan Recondo on BEN GRIMM’S INNER LIFE | Wendy Chin-Tanner on MY PARENTS’ ART STORE.
Adam McGovern was the DEFER series editor. He is very grateful to the series’ contributors, many of whom donated their honoraria to Annunciation House, which provides sanctuary and support to new arrivals to America at the Texas border.
ENDORA YOUR ENTHUSIASM: Our favorite… sympathetic villain! Here’s a selection of the lineup:
Kathy Biehl on DR. FRANK-N-FURTER | Crockett Doob on M3GAN | Trav SD on PROFESSOR HINKLE | Alex Brook Lynn on TOM POWERS | Lynn Peril on ENDORA | Adam McGovern on EDDIE HASKELL | Mimi Lipson on SUE ANN NIVENS | Heather Quinlan on HAROLD SHAND | Tom Nealon on SKELETOR.
Heather Quinlan was the ENDORA series editor. She is very grateful to the series’ contributors, many of whom donated their honoraria to Hearts & Bones.
SKANK YOUR ENTHUSIASM: Our favorite… ska songs! Here’s a selection of the lineup:
Douglas Wolk on Millie’s MAYFAIR | Lynn Peril on Prince Buster’s TEN COMMANDMENTS | Mark Kingwell on The [English] Beat’s TEARS OF A CLOWN | Annie Nocenti on Jimmy Cliff’s MISS JAMAICA | Mariane Cara on The Selecter’s ON MY RADIO | Adam McGovern on The Specials’ GHOST TOWN | Josh Glenn on The Ethiopians’ TRAIN TO SKAVILLE
Josh Glenn was the SKANK series editor. He is very grateful to the series’ contributors, many of whom donated their honoraria to Veterans Fighting Fascism.
HILOBROW’s Josh Glenn is editor of the RADIUM AGE series of reissued proto-sf adventures from the MIT Press. During 2025, the following titles were published:
- J.D. Beresford’s The Hampdenshire Wonder (March 2025, with a new introduction by Ted Chiang). “Extravagance… but of so remarkable a character that it keeps you almost spell-bound. What follows is philosophy, psychology, poetry, allegory, what you will.” — The Bookman (1911) | See this title at the MIT Press website.
- John Taine’s The Greatest Adventure (March 2025, with a new introduction by S.L. Huang). “A mixture of H. Rider Haggard, Conan Doyle, Roy Chapman Andrews, and a bottle of excellent gin.” — California Tech (1929) | See this title at the MIT Press website.
- Marietta S. Shaginyan’s Yankees in Petrograd (August 2025, translated and introduced by Jill Roese). “A novel of our time, in which major events succeed each other with purely cinematographic speed….” — Nikolai Meshcheryakov, “Foreword to the First Edition” (1924) | See this title at the MIT Press website.
- Before Superman: Superhumans of the Radium Age (August 2025, edited and introduced by Joshua Glenn). An anthology of proto-sf stories and novel excerpts exploring the uncanny (and then brand-new) concept of the “superhuman.” | See this title at the MIT Press website.
Here at HILOBROW, we continued to serialize some of Josh’s favorite Radium Age proto-sf stories and novels. Here’s a selection of the 2025 lineup:
- Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford’s The Inheritors (1901)
- Naomi Mitchison’s “The Goat: Cardiff, A.D. 1935” (1929)
- Robert Gilbert Wells’ Anthropology Applied to the American White Man and Negro (1905, excerpt)
- W.E.B. Du Bois’ “Princess Steel” (1908–10, excerpt)
- Noëlle Roger’s The New Adam (1926, excerpt), trans. Josh Glenn
- Leopoldo Lugones’ “Yzur” (1906)
- Alfred Jarry’s The Supermale (1902), excerpt, trans. Josh Glenn
- Marita Bonner’s The Purple Flower (1928)
HILOBROW published further installments in the series RADIUM AGE POETRY. Here’s a sampling of the 2025 lineup:
Valery Bryusov’s THE VOICE OF OTHER WORLDS | Olaf Stapledon’s “IF MAN ENCOUNTER…” | Maurice N. Corbett’s BLACK KINGDOMS OF THE FUTURE | Zinaida Gippius’s ELECTRICITY | Álvaro de Campos (Fernando Pessoa)’s TIME’S PASSAGE | Vladimir Mayakovsky’s OUR MARCH | Archibald MacLeish’s THE END OF THE WORLD | Hirato Renkichi’s MACHINE | Conrad Aiken’s MORNING SONG OF SENLIN | Hart Crane’s TO BROOKLYN BRIDGE | Álvaro de Campos (Fernando Pessoa)’s THE TOBACCO SHOP | Farfa’s THE MECHANICAL TRIANGLE | Kochia Tseng’s FIRE IN THE SKY | Carrie W. Clifford’s WARNING | Angela Weld Grimké’s TENEBRIS.
RADIUM AGE SERIES UPDATES: 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025. FULL SERIES INFO.
During 2025, we published several installments in James Parker’s latest project, COCKY: THE OPERA. Here’s a selection:
- PRELUDE / ACT ONE, SCENE ONE. Excerpt:
CORVIN: Fuck the face in empty space!
Fuck the broken weather!
Fuck the rhyme, the sacred slime
that sticks the words together! - ACT ONE, SCENE THREE. Excerpt:
COCKY: For the recreational drugging
and the glug glug glugging
my vixen did expel me.
I was too loud, I was too twitchy —
plus other failings about which she
did not neglect to tell me. - ACT ONE, SCENE FOUR. Excerpt:
HOLIDAY HARRY: This old canal, this water unflowing,
turned inky black from too much knowing,
too many drowned bicycles, drowned bones,
death-mosses, soggy dogs, drowned phones,
coathangers and clumps of narcotic kelp
for when you’re beyond all help. - ACT TWO, SCENE ONE. Excerpt:
PATSY: The foxes used to follow me.
They’d fixate on my rear!
But now I’m in the creepy copse
and never a fox comes near.
Shall I whine? I shan’t.
I’m an agony aunt.
I’m an aunt in agony.
No pain upon this rainy earth
is alien to me.
Adam McGovern continued to deliver over-the-transom, on-tangent essays, dialogues and subjective scholarship via his monthly-ish series OFF-TOPIC. Here’s the 2025 lineup:
MAGNIFICENT COMPULSION: Dancing into the subject with TANA SIROIS. | SAMIZDAT NIGHT FEVER: Second drafts of tragedy. | LIGHTNING PEACE: SHAZAMizdat! | FUTURE INTENSE: Making up history with The Future Is ******’s FRED VAN LENTE. | ART OF THE POSSIBLE: FANTASTIC FOUR’s past perfect. | DEFLECT YOUR ENTHUSIASM: A one-part series. | PLATO’S PLAYSET: MARX’d for life!
Josh Glenn’s SEMIOPUNK is an irregular series dedicated to surfacing examples (and predecessors) of the sf subgenre that HILOBROW was the first to name “semiopunk.” Here’s the 2025 lineup:
Samuel R. Delany’s THE EINSTEIN INTERSECTION | Roger Zelazny’s LORD OF LIGHT | Philip K. Dick’s UBIK | Thomas Pynchon’s GRAVITY’S RAINBOW | Ken MacLeod’s COSMONAUT KEEP | Yoon Ha Lee’s NINEFOX GAMBIT | Don DeLillo’s WHITE NOISE | R.F. Kuang’s BABEL | China Miéville’s EMBASSYTOWN | Ray Nayler’s THE MOUNTAIN IN THE SEA | Charles Stross’s GLASSHOUSE | Gordon Dahlquist’s THE DIFFERENT GIRL
HILOBROW friend (and brother-in-law) Lawry Hutcheson returned with a fourth year’s worth of gorgeous linocut calendar art — via the series LINOCUT 2024.
This summer, Josh Glenn and Rob Walker’s story telling experiment GIVE IT UP mounted exhibitions of meaningful objects in venues around Kingston… and asked visitors to help persuade the experiment’s subjects to let these objects go. Here at HILOBROW, we helped out by publishing posts introducing GIVE IT UP’s test subjects, as well as cross-posting the subjects’ true object stories.
We also published photos from the project’s September 10th wrap-up party, along with excerpts from the most persuasive responses.
PS: Here’s the GIVE IT UP website / newsletter.
The 10-part series LOGOLOGY featured selected excerpts from Josh Glenn’s 2024 contribution — a top-of-mind, semiotics-adjacent analysis of fast food and cannabis brand logos and pack design — to issue no. 1 of the marketing-culture zine Cash & Carry.
University of Toronto philosopher Mark Kingwell and HILOBROW’s Josh Glenn are coauthors of The Idler’s Glossary (2008), The Wage Slave’s Glossary (2011), and The Adventurer’s Glossary (2021). In 2022, they engaged in an epistolary exchange about science fiction. Via the series BROKEN KNOWLEDGE, the title of which references Francis Bacon’s philosophy, HILOBROW shared a lightly edited version of their exchange with our readers. Here’s a selection from the series lineup:
FIRST CONTACT | WHAT IF? | A HYBRID GENRE | COUNTERFACTUALS | A HOT DILUTE SOUP | I’M A CYBORG | APOPHENIC-CURIOUS
We continued to publish new installments in HERMENAUTICA, a series featuring pages from Hermenaut, a DIY intellectual zine/journal published (1992–2001) by HILOBROW’s Josh Glenn.
NOT TODAY, EBAY continued to share recent examples of stuff that Josh was tempted to purchase from eBay… but, heroically, didn’t.
Josh’s other HILOBROW series include: SCREENSHOTS | PHOTO DUMP
Cross-posted to HILOBROW from elsewhere, during 1Q2025:
12 DAYS OF SIGNIFICANCE is an ongoing, seasonal series of stories originally written — by HILOBROW contributors and friends — for Josh Glenn and Rob Walker’s 2009–2010 anthropological-literary experiment SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS. Here are the series installments that appeared (as part of the tenth and final edition of this series) in January 2025:
Sari Wilson on PENGUIN CREAMER | Sloane Crosley on RAINBOW SAND ANIMAL | Teddy Blanks on PORCELAIN SCOOTER | Terese Svoboda on HEART-SHAPED CANDLE | Todd Levin on ZIGGY HEART
On to 2026…