Hello. I am Francis. I write some stuff. 🙂
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~~ This page last updated: December 3, 2025 ~~
Writing
I have just published a new zine of my short story “Map of the Lost City of Uatdan Wuchke”! It’s an interactive fantasy story in which you, the reader, must draw the map. The zine includes a fold-out drawing surface for readers to use while they read. You can order it online on etsy.
Reading
After a brief spooktober detour, I am back to my utopia/dystopia reading list! This is a list I’ve put together of books which fit a very specific, but surprisingly populous, niche: science fiction books in which the main character travels between two or more realms governed by contrasting economic and political regimes. These are not books where the two realms are at war (not necessarily, at least), or where one regime must supplant the other. The protagonists are not leaders or warriors, they are travelers, diplomats, emissaries. Some of the books feature anarchism, some communism. All but one are by women. These are the books:
- Daughter of Earth by Agnes Smedley (1929) 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑
- Battle Hymn of China by Agnes Smedley (1943) 🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑
- The Dispossessed by Ursula K Le Guin (1974) 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌗
- Floating Worlds by Cecelia Holland (1976) 🚀
- Trouble on Triton by Samuel R. Delany (1976)
- China Mountain Zhang by Maureen McHugh (1992)
- Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang, trans. Ken Liu (2016)
I really loved The Dispossessed and I’m currently writing a review of it, so look forward to that! The gist of my thoughts is that it’s masterfully executed, with rich, absorbing worldbuilding. I had lots of little quibbles with the details of the anarcho-communist society, but in a fun, thought-provoking way. And it’s the rigor of Le Guin’s thinking that challenged me to think through why I felt certain things were unrealistic, where my vision diverged from hers—she’s taking it seriously, so I as a reader wanted to, as well.
I’m currently reading Cecelia Holland’s Floating Worlds, which is set in a future solar system where anarchists live on Earth, capitalists control the rest of the inner solar system, and at the outer reaches lives an isolationist civlization of mutants. The main character, an anarchist from Earth, is sent to broker a peace deal between the mutants and the capitalists.
I’m about forty pages in and while it’s entertaining enough, Holland’s grasp of anarchism seems pretty tenuous!! The capital of Mars is Barsoom, which may be an indicator of the level of political sophistication I can expect from this book. We’ll see!
Etcetera
I have a new zine out! Lonely Friends is a collection of comics about being lonely and having friends, sometimes at the same time. About half of these comics I’ve shared on this site in the past, the other half are brand new! You can get a digital copy on itch.io, or order a physical copy on my Etsy.
Read some of it online here.
Good Websites
- Public Domain Review – Insightful essays, marvelous collections
- Rice-Boy.com – Home to Evan Dahm’s webcomics. The best webcomic website
- Porpentine – Your queen and mine
- Let’s Go Back to a Website!
- The Cable Car Home Page – 25-year-old website still going strong. Yes!
- The Anarchist Library – Simple interface. Downloads in any format you could desire. Bookbuilder. Wow
- Center for the Study of the Public Domain – Website looks old enough to be in the public domain itself. That’s how you know its good
- LOW←TECH MAGAZINE – Solar-powered website. Link might not work if it’s too cloudy in Barcelona
Francis Bass 