I have annotated an excerpt from Light of Other Days, a short story written by science-fiction writer Bob Shaw in 1966. Annotations are a process in the method of re-claiming the material as feminist and ethical.

Tuesday Smillie's artwork A Slow and Arduous Progression has inspired these annotations.

Annotations read:

A natural space suspended in time untouched - feels like fetishing that space or using it as a tool. Brings to mind Donna Haraway who says nature is not matrix, resource or tool for the reproduction of man (this can be found in Haraway's essay The Promises of Monsters)

In response to Shaw: 'If the glass was then removed and installed in a dismal city flat, the flat would - for that year - appear to overlook the woodland lake. During the year it wouldn't be merely a very realistic but still picture - the water would rippe in sunlight, silent animals would come to drink, birds would cross the sky, night would follow day, season would follow season.'

Man's desire to control land again. Slow glass misused for capital / echoes of colonisation and ownership in macho sci-fi.

In response to Shaw: 'Apart from the stupendous novelty value, the commercial success of slow glass was founded on the fact that having a scenedow was the exact emotional equivalent of owning land.'

Capturing slow glass' meaning - man attempting to force ownership on the glass. The glass has no agency - always under anthropocentric gaze!

In response to Shaw: 'On several occasions I have tried to write short stories about the enchanted crystal, but, to me the theme is so ineffably poetic as to be, paradoxically, beyond the reach of poetry...'

Does memory bring light of other days around us? Or is the light of other days (already) entangled within our present? Quantum understanding of time.

In response to Shaw's quotation of a poem by Moore: 'Fond memory brings the light / of other days around me.'

Again, slow glass used for capital gains.

In response to Shaw: 'There were good scenedows which cost a lot of money, and there were inferior scenedows which cost rather less. The thickness, measured in years, was an important factor in the cost but there was also the question of actual thickness or phase.'

Something interesting about the agency of the material vs. the will of man. At this point in the story, no matter how hard man tried the material retains agency.

In response to Shaw: 'A coarse discrepancy could mean that a pane intended to be five years thick might be five and a half so that light which entered in summer emerged in winter, a fine discrepancy could mean that noon sunshine emerged at midnight.'

Privileging of linear time. Even though this use of slow glass is about the past, there is a desire for it to be in-step with time. Shows a desire to control time, or at least that it is predictable.

In response to Shaw: 'It cost more to buy scenedows which kept closely in step with real time.