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Simon Parkin

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United Kingdom
As seen in: My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin, The New Yorker, Apple Podcasts, Bottom Line, Forbes, Medium, MSN, MSN Canada, MSN Ireland, MSN UK, The Athletic, The New York Times and
Covers:  culture, video games, profiles, technology, arts, gadgets & electronics, invetigative, computing
non-fiction writer // cw @newyorker // fellow @royalhistsoc // @myperfectcnsle // THE FORBIDDEN GARDEN OF LENINGRAD 2024/5 (@sceptrebooks/ @scribnerbooks).
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'We have a chance to show the truth': into the heart of Chernobyl

'We have a chance to show the truth': into the heart of Chernobyl

The Guardian — At first they thought it was just a fire, then the chickens started to turn black. When it comes to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, everyone has a vivid detail that is snagged in the memory; the absurdities or the obscenities. It might be the local village that, once evacuated, was claimed by a mob of pigs. Or the way milk would turn to white powder whenever the residents of Pripyat (the town built a few hundred metres from the doomed power plant) would attempt to churn butter.
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Who killed the 20th century's greatest spy? | Simon Parkin

Who killed the 20th century's greatest spy? | Simon Parkin

The Guardian — This much is certain: Ashraf Marwan, a man some describe as the 20th century's greatest spy, was alive when he tumbled from the fifth-floor balcony of his £4.4m London flat. The Egyptian businessman landed, shortly after 1.30pm on 27 June 2007, in the private rose garden at number 24 Carlton House Terrace, a street whose former occupants include three prime ministers (Palmerston, Earl Grey and Gladstone) and which lies a few hundred metres from Piccadilly Circus. Overhead, the lunchtime sky was obnoxious with helicopters, swarming above Tony Blair's Teflon-plated convoy as it carried the prime minister to Buckingham Palace, where he would hand in his resignation.
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Killer robots: The soldiers that never sleep

Killer robots: The soldiers that never sleep

bbc.com — On a green hill overlooking the tree-lined perimeter of Daejeon, a city in central South Korea, a machine gun turret idly scans the horizon. It's about the size of a large dog; plump, white and wipe-clean. A belt of bullets - .50 calibre, the sort that can stop a truck in its tracks - is draped over one shoulder. An ethernet cable leads from the gun's base and trails through the tidy grass into a small gazebo tent that, in the Korean afternoon heat, you'd be forgiven for hoping might contain plates of cucumber sandwiches and a pot of tea.
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Eve Online: how a virtual world went to the edge of apocalypse and back | Simon Parkin

Eve Online: how a virtual world went to the edge of apocalypse and back | Simon Parkin

The Guardian — Nataliia Dmytriievska was 15 years old and enveloped by flames when she first heard the call of outer space. A year earlier her boyfriend had taught her the basics of poi, a Maori dance in which performers swing flaming, tethered weights to describe bright geometric shapes in the dark. Despite the burns and bruises she earned, Dmytriievska was a determined pupil. She would practice for hours each day, drawing flowers and other outlines around her body using dummy weights, before attempting the same perilous tricks using fire.
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A Journey to the End of the World (of Minecraft)

A Journey to the End of the World (of Minecraft)

The New Yorker — On March 28, 2011, a man who calls himself Kurt J. Mac loaded a new game of Minecraft. As the landscape filled in around his character, Mac surveyed the blocky, pixellated trees, the cloud-draped, mountains, and the waddling sheep. Then he started walking. His goal for the day was simple: to reach the end of the universe. Nearly three years later, Mac, who is now thirty-one, is still walking. He has trekked more than seven hundred virtual kilometres in a hundred and eighty hours. At his current pace, Mac will not reach the edge of the world, which is now nearly twelve thousand kilometres away, for another twenty-two years.
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Desert Bus: The Worst Video Game Ever Created

Desert Bus: The Worst Video Game Ever Created

The New Yorker — Morgan van Humbeck completed his shift in front of the television and passed out. Ten minutes later, his cell phone woke him. "Morgan, this is Teller," said a small voice on the other end of the line. "Fuck off," replied Morgan in disbelief. He hung up the phone and went back to sleep. The drive from Tucson, Arizona, to Las Vegas, Nevada, takes approximately eight hours when travelling in a vehicle whose top speed is forty-five miles per hour. In Desert Bus, an unreleased video game from 1995 conceived by the American illusionists and entertainers Penn Jillette and Teller, players must complete that journey in real time.
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The Creator

The Creator

The New Yorker — When Markus Persson visited Las Vegas in 2011, for the first international convention held in honor of Minecraft, the video game he designed and built, a young mother strode up and asked him not to kiss her baby but to sign it. "I lean in with the pen and the child immediately starts crying," he recalled as we talked in the stratospheric hotel suite he was staying in for the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco last month. Persson, thirty-three, has fixed, handsome eyes and a deep-dimpled smile that offsets his baldpate and thickening torso.
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Shooters: How Video Games Fund Arms Manufacturers

Shooters: How Video Games Fund Arms Manufacturers

www.eurogamer.net — The American confectionery company Victoria Sweets claims to have invented the candy cigarette. A thin stick of chocolate, wrapped in edible paper and designed to impersonate a roll-up, it debuted in 1915 and soon became the accessory of choice for children keen to play grown-up. Hollywood star, GI Joe, team captain: the sweet gave kids the chance try out one of the vogue props of adulthood. Within 20 years it was so popular that cigarette companies began to take notice. Leading brands such as Marlboro, Winston and Salem authorised their packaging designs for use on millions of candy cigarette boxes.
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