An Oral History of The End of “Reality”

Michael Garfield
21 min readFeb 17, 2020
Cover Image © Giacomo Carmagnola and reused with permission.
Check out his work and help him support his aging mother: Facebook | Instagram

“One of the most prophetic things I have ever read.”
Speaker John Ash, AI engineer

“I’ve just read your novelette with my hair blasting back in frightful (and utterly convincing) revelation the whole time. I’m not surprised that you’ve been not just thinking about but scouting deep down the wormhole of where we may be headed as reality and fiction duke it out (as they, too, fall down the wormhole without a parachute). I know I’ll be pondering your far-ranging conclusions for a while to come. Thanks so much for writing it.”
Alex Shakar, LA Times Book Prize-winning author of Luminarium

“[An] exceptional piece, which I heartily recommend. There are hints of Boris Vian, and touches of Virginia Woolf, kneaded into a world where Count Zero and Orwell might coexist…and it’s not even written in Newspeak.”
Jonathan Engel, Former Vice President, M&A at JP Morgan Chase

“We could not keep our hands off of ourselves the entire time (because we are both turned on by the future, and by language)! You should write more!”
The Teafaerie, famous psychonaut

“This should be required reading by everyone.”
Ramin Nazer, artist, standup comedian, and podcaster

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Michael Garfield

Here to help you navigate the accelerating weirdness! Biologist turned philosopher, host of #FutureFossils & #ComplexityPodcast, ex @sfiscience ex @longnow.