HYPOCRITE IDLER 2Q2026

By: Joshua Glenn
June 26, 2026

To idle is to work on meaningful and varied projects — and to take it easy. The title of the series refers to this self-proclaimed idler’s inability to take it easy.

HILOBROW is a noncommercial blog. None of the below should be construed as an advertisement for one of my various, more or less profitable projects. This series is merely intended to keep HILOBROW’s readers updated on the editor’s doings and undoings.

I am grateful to the talented and generous folks with whom I’ve collaborated during 2Q2026.

MORE HYPOCRISY: 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 1Q2026 | 2Q2026.

Also see: HILOBROW 2Q2026

TEACHING & SPEAKING

As HILOBROW readers know, since the beginning of the year Ramona Lyons and I have been developing and play-testing a semiotics-driven puzzle-game — currently titled SEMIO SQUAD: FRONTIER PLANET — for Semiofest Warsaw. On May 22, we debuted the game at Semiofest. We were thrilled with how well the game was received by our colleagues!

Ramona and I are grateful to Lucia Laurent-Neva (England), Marina Machauer (Germany), Jiakun Wang (China), Adelina Vaca (Mexico), Rob Drent (Netherlands), Charles Leech (Canada), Marta Hoffmann (Hungary), Vivianne Hiriart (France), Sundari Sheldon (USA), Paulina Goch-Kenawy (Poland), Aikaterini Zompanaki (France), Alice King (Australia), Oana Cândescu (Romania), Sam Roller (USA), Emily Hayes (England), Akvile Sataite (Mexico), Katalin Wundke (Germany), Giacomo Festi (Italy), Phil Wyckoff (USA), Alec Kozicki (Estonia), Tânia Furtado (Portugal), Enya Trenholm-Jensen (Germany), Krzysztof Muszyński (Poland), and others for participating in our “ludic” workshop. And for offering us helpful feedback….

More photos of our workshop — which was titled VISCOSITY TEST — here.

Tattoos can be considered “meaning-making” tools that assist us in managing our personal narratives. In April, I hosted a Semiofest Session on the topic. I invited Aarushi Chadha (India), Whitney Dunlap-Fowler (USA), Su Luo (Taiwan), Max Matus (Mexico), Alexandra Ncube (England), and Sundari Sheldon (USA) to discuss the meaning — personal, political, social, cultural — of the symbols that they’ve had inked into their own flesh.

During the Spring semester, I served as an external thesis advisor for a RISD Masters of Industrial Design (MID) student. This photo is from Ruso’s final critique, which I attended in person in early May.

(Possibly my last time on RISD’s campus? I don’t live nearby any more.)

RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF

I’m editor of the MIT Press’s RADIUM AGE proto-sf reissue series. During 2Q2026 we worked on prepping the following titles for publication:

Fall 2026: Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men (abridged edition; originally p. 1930), with a new Introduction by Matthew De Abaitua. “Last and First Men is a seminal work of cosmological SF — a philosophical examination of the future evolution of humanity, inspirational to Arthur C. Clarke and so many of Stapledon’s successors. Great to see it included in The MIT Press’s Radium Age series.” — Charles Stross.
Spring 2027: Mothership Rising: Afrofuturism in the Radium Age (anthology), edited and afterword by Lisa Yaszek, introduced by Nisi Shawl. (We’ll see page proofs in August.)

More exciting installments in this series, including anthologies and collections, some of them currently being translated into English, are in the works. For the latest updates, keep an eye on this page.

RADIUM AGE SERIES UPDATES: 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 1Q2026 | 2Q2026. FULL SERIES INFO.

Here at HILOBROW, I’ve continued to share my Radium Age-related research.

For example, in April I kicked off EMANATIONS, a series of posts featuring 10 of his favorite examples of Radium Age-era fine art that explore a particular proto-sf-adjacent theme. The series’ 2Q2026 installments include:

CATASTROPHE: DECLINE & FALL | DYING EARTH | ECO-CATASTROPHE. COSMIC AWE: DEEP TIME | STARS WHEEL IN PURPLE | IS THERE LIFE ON MARS. DEHUMANIZATION: CYBORG MANIFESTO.

Also, via the series RADIUM AGE POETRY, I’ve continued to reissue overlooked proto-sf-adjacent poems from the years 1900–1935. Here’s a selection from the 2Q2026 RADIUM AGE POETRY lineup:

To see the full RADIUM AGE POETRY lineup, organized thematically, visit this page.

During 2Q2026 I’ve continued to build out the RADIUM AGE POETRY index linked to above, as well as the RADIUM AGE ART index. Also I’ve continued to sort — into much the same categories as one will find in these other indices — the Radium Age proto-sf novels and stories that, in 2022, I listed and described in the RADIUM AGE TIMELINE series. Here are the RADIUM AGE TIMELINE installments that were retrofitted in 2Q2026:

1914 | 1915 | 1916 | 1917 | 1918 | 1919 | 1920 | 1921 | 1922 | 1923 | 1924 | 1925 | 1926

HILOBROW

HILOBROW is published by King Mixer LLC; I’m the editor. To see everything that we’ve published during the past three months, please check out the post HILOBROW 2Q2026. Here, I’ll just mention two series that I edited.

HILOBROW published OMAC YOUR ENTHUSIASM, a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on our favorite… Seventies (1974–1983) sf novels and comics! Here’s a sampling of the OMAC lineup:

As the series editor, I am very grateful to its contributors, many of whom donated their honoraria to Veterans Fighting Fascism.

The MEDIA DIET series explores the media “input” of a group of people — HILOBROW’s friends and contributors — whose “output” we admire. Here’s a sampling of the 2Q2026 lineup:

HOLLY INTERLANDI on: Monocle, metal, horror stories | NICHOLAS ROMBES on: 50 Watts Books, Vaclav Havel, the vibes of recent movies | ANNIE NOCENTI on: Burn Book, Deadwood, Bugonia | JONATHAN PINCHERA on: Instagram reels, the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit, Ren & Stimpy | MATTHEW BATTLES on: La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc, Judee Sill, Scavengers Reign.

Here’s an index page for the series.

To see my solo HILOBROW series and posts from recent months, please check out the WRITING (HILOBROW) section of this post; to see what’s coming up soon, please see the post 3Q2026 SNEAK PEEK.

SEMIOVOX.COM

SEMIOVOX, my branding consultancy’s eponymous website, is published by SEMIOVOX LLC; I’m the editor. For a full update on what we’ve published this year, please see the post SEMIOVOX 2Q2026. Here, I’ll just mention a few highlights.

MAKING SENSE is a long-running series of Q&As dedicated to revealing what makes semioticians tick. Here’s a selection of the 2Q2026 series lineup:

Semioticians analyze symbols, so for the new series TATTOO YOU, I’ve asked 25 of our semio colleagues from around the world to explicate the symbolism of… one of their own tattoos. Here’s a selection of the 2Q2026 series lineup:

Serdar Paktin (Turkey/UK) on RESISTANCE & SURRENDER | Tatiana Jaramillo (Colombia/Italy) on EMBERÁ BLACKOUT | Antje Weißenborn (Germany) on FADED STAR | Sundari Sheldon (USA) on SUN | Roberta Graham (England) on SUNFLOWER.GUNMETAL

The COLOR CODEX series — to which SEMIOVOX has invited 50 of our commercial / applied semiotician colleagues from around the world to contribute — explores the unexpected associations evoked for each of us by specific colors found in the material world. Vol. 1 ran from 2023–24. Vol. 2 kicked off on June 15th. The Vol. 2 lineup so far:

Brian Khumalo (South Africa / USA) on STATUE OF LIBERTY TEAL | Madoka Suganuma (Japan) on BLOSSOM PINK | Susan Bell (Australia) on THAILAND TURQUOISE.

SEMIOFEST SESSIONS

I’m founder and co-coordinator (with Ade Vaca, as of late 2025) for SEMIOFEST SESSIONS, a series of online get-togethers — intended not only to share best practices among, but to nurture collegiality and friendship within the global semio community.

For a full update on the 2Q2026 Semiofest Sessions, please see the post SEMIOVOX 2Q2026. In addition to the session mentioned above, here are a couple of examples:

MAY: A “Festschrift” is a collection of essays written not about, but in honor of a distinguished scholar, and presented to them in person by their colleagues and former students. Semiofest’s FESTSCHRIFT FOR MALCOLM session honored the pioneering contributions of Welsh semiotician Malcolm Evans via brief presentations on the current and future status of biosemiotics, semiotics for social good, semiotics around the world, and more — including life after semiotics!

JUNE: “Viscosity” was the theme of this year’s insightful and inspirational Semiofest gathering — convened in Warsaw from May 20–23. For those who were unable to attend, the Semiofest Warsaw team extended the conversation online, offering a chance to experience the spirit of the conference and its key ideas. They invited one and all to VISCOSITY REDUX, a session exploring price anchoring in the alcohol category as a function of viscous meaning codes, the notion of discursive viscosity as a condition for the emergence of truth, and more.

WRITING (HILOBROW)

During 2Q2026, in addition to the EMANATIONS series (see above), I wrote the following HILOBROW series and posts.

For the OMAC YOUR ENTHUSIASM series, I wrote a series introduction. Excerpt:

…an anthropological and/or sociological quest for models of good-enough community, pursued by intrepid activists who may have wised up about Sixties-style flower-child utopianism (who may indeed have nearly gone mad or succumbed to despair), but who remain stubbornly, sweatily determined not to continue repeating humankind’s foolishness.
For OMAC YOUR ENTHUSIASM, I contributed an installment on John Crowley’s Engine Summer. Excerpt:

Harold Bloom himself admitted that he wasn’t able to fully “solve” Engine Summer… and that’s OK. Crowley’s wonderful little book is not a puzzle so much as it is a kind of globe into which the reader inserts his or her head, thus inviting a rather inscrutable stored consciousness to take up residence for a while.

ALSO: I’ve continued to add installments in the solo series SCREENSHOTS, PHOTO DUMP, and NOT TODAY, EBAY.

WRITING (ELSEWHERE)

During 2Q2026, I wrote the following SEMIOVOX series and posts.

New installments in the SEMIOPUNK series (cross-posted, in altered form, from HILOBROW) included: CAT’S CRADLE | BABEL-17 | ENGINE SUMMER. Excerpt from the BABEL-17 installment:

Like subsequent sf authors, including Neal Stephenson and Ted Chiang, Delany depicts language as determining thought and experience. He is playing out the dramatic implications of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis — the idea of linguistic relativity. The structure of a language determines a native speaker’s perception and categorization of experience; the language you speak constrains what you can know, believe, and even perceive.

GOOD VIBRATIONS

Getting the word out, during 2Q2026…

RADIUM AGE SERIES

For a full update on recent Radium Age series publicity, please see the post RADIUM AGE 2Q2026.

In an April talk, “Sex-Change Science Fiction in the Radium Age, 1900-1935,” delivered at Stanford’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research, Susan Stryker presented insights from her forthcoming anthology of works on this topic, scheduled for publication in 2027 by the MIT Press’s Radium Age series. Here’s a write-up.

I’m grateful to the Hugo- and Eisner Award-winning graphic novelist John Jennings for helping Lisa Yaszek spread the word about Mothership Rising, an anthology (edited by Lisa Yaszek; intro by Nisi Shawl) of Radium Age proto-sf examples of Afrofuturist fiction, poetry, and illustrations. Recently announced; forthcoming in February.