Mark Blacklock on Muck Rack

Mark Blacklock

York
As seen in: The Guardian, The MIT Press, BBC Science Focus, FACT Magazine, UnHerd, Granta Magazine, GOOD TROUBLE
Covers:  Alternative culture, literature, science and culture, academic research, alternative music, visual art.
Most recent: www.theguardian.com/news/2024/dec/19/humphreys-world-how-the-samuel-smith-beer-baron-built-britains-strangest-pub-chain

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Mark Blacklock’s Biography

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I'm a novelist and cultural historian and have been a journalist since the late 1990s, writing features and reviews for magazines, websites and newspapers. Bylines at The Guardian, Granta, The London Review of Books, The Telegraph, BBC, Dazed, The Fortean Times, FACT Magazine.
I've written extensively on alternative culture, but am particularly interested in exchanges between science and culture and unusual hybrids of all stripes. I have expertise in literary and visual cultural history and the…

Mark Blacklock’s Journalist Portfolio

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Top 10 four-dimensional novels | Mark Blacklock

Top 10 four-dimensional novels | Mark Blacklock

What is the fourth dimension? This was the question English polymath Charles Howard Hinton attempted to answe…

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The Paternoster: A Requiem | Mark Blacklock | Granta

The Paternoster: A Requiem | Mark Blacklock | Granta

To step into a paternoster lift is to step into the circulatory system of a building, to become a part of its…

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The four-dimensional life of mathematician Charles Howard Hinton

The four-dimensional life of mathematician Charles Howard Hinton

The late-Victorian writer, inventor and theorist Charles Howard Hinton has largely been forgotten by intellec…

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Hail SPECTRE! Subvertising goes Deep-Fake - Good Trouble

Hail SPECTRE! Subvertising goes Deep-Fake - Good Trouble

A sinister interactive installation called Spectre sheds light on the power of AI and 'deep fake' technology …

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Elmet by Fiona Mozley review - the wild card on the Man Booker longlist

Elmet by Fiona Mozley review - the wild card on the Man Booker longlist

iona Mozley's Man Booker-longlisted debut is an elemental, contemporary rural noir steeped in the literature …

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The Knives by Richard T Kelly review - a pacy, prescient political thriller

The Knives by Richard T Kelly review - a pacy, prescient political thriller

The pace of change within the British political arena has wrought interesting effects on Richard T Kelly's th…

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Articles

The Met Gala is a Ballardian nightmare

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By Mark Blacklock
| UnHerd
CultureDystopian literatureFashionJ.G. BallardLiteratureMet Galanone For weeks now, a timer on the Vogue website has been ticking off the seconds, the anticipation within the fashion world bursting at the seams. But finally: the 2024 Met Gala is here. There is, however, something different about this evening’s show. The Costume Institute’s spring exhibition, “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion”, focuses on 50 historical pieces from its collection that are too fragile to be worn again.
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JG Ballard was not a prophet

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By Mark Blacklock
| UnHerd
J.G. Ballard’s posthumous status verges on the mythological: he’s a prophet, a visionary, who set on paper arcane and obscene predictions that have come unerringly true. Everywhere we look, we discover that we’re now living in Ballard’s world. As I wrote in my introduction to his selected nonfiction, referring to the plot of his final novel, Kingdom Come, “the next riot in a shopping mall seems perpetually five minutes into the future”. Ballard, we know, was prescient: the Seer of Shepperton.
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Why you want to be a millionaire

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By Mark Blacklock
| UnHerd
For better or worse, the TV quiz show is the perfect cultural expression of our age. Like the knowledge they require of contestants, they are too easily dismissed as trivial, but you only have to scratch the surface to discover desire, risk, and the mechanisms of power. Besides, we’ve surely moved well beyond the snobbish and moralistic dismissal of cultural objects deemed “low” because they’re popular. If you’re someone that cares about quiz shows, they matter because you care.
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See all 8 licensed articles (10 Total)

Interview

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What does it mean to be a journalist?

Shining light into the unlit places.

How do you prefer to be pitched on stories?

I don't have a commissioning role.

Did you work for your high school newspaper? If so, what did you do there?

No, but I interned at the Sunderland Echo and reported from Durham Crown Court.

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