Pace Layers Annual Journal subscription preorder

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Issue 3 ships Nov 17, 02026

Long Now’s annual print journal explores the ancient past and distant future of the present moment through essays, interviews, fiction, poetry, and visual art. The journal takes its name and shape from Long Now cofounder Stewart Brand’s pace layers framework — a tool for thinking about how civilizations work.

New annual subscribers will also receive a free copy of Issue 2, while supplies last.

About Issue 3

What does long-term thinking look like in practice? One answer is maintenance. Not in the narrow sense of “brush the damn teeth,” but what Stewart Brand calls “the whole grand process of keeping a thing going.” Things kept going in this issue range from the human body to Xerox copiers to centuries-old water infrastructure to century-long artworks. What does that require? Attention. Knowledge. Transmission. Adaptation. And the judgment to know when something shouldn’t be kept going at all.

Featuring an excerpt from the next installment of Maintenance: Of Everything by Stewart Brand; Long Now Talks by Bayo Akomolafe, Nadia Asparouhova, Kate Crawford, Melody Jue, Indy Johar, Nina Miolane & Claire Isabel Webb, Eric Ries, and Lynn Rothschild; essays by Josh Berson, Samuel Butler, deepfates, Amitav Ghosh, Taras Grescoe, Emily Hill, and Jonathon Keats; fiction by Andrew Dana Hudson; poetry by Denise Hearn and Gary Snyder; art by Casey Cripe, Isabella Kirkland, Katie Paterson, and Stefan Sagmeister; and photography by Christopher Michel.