Chris Carlsson, author of When Shells Crumble, will present his novel at Medicine For
Nightmares on Tuesday, December 12 at 6:30 pm. He will talk about the genesis of the novel,
its relationship to his first novel After the Deluge published in 2004, read excerpts, and engage
in audience discussion.
Chris Carlsson, co-director of the “history from below” project Shaping San Francisco, is a
writer, publisher, editor, photographer, public speaker, and occasional professor. He was one of
the founders in 1981 of the seminal and infamous underground San Francisco
magazine Processed World. In 1992 Carlsson co-founded Critical Mass in San Francisco, which
both led to a local bicycling boom and helped to incubate transformative urban movements in
hundreds of cities, large and small, worldwide. In 1995 work began on “Shaping San Francisco;”
since then the project has morphed into an incomparable archive of San Francisco history
at Foundsf.org, award-winning bicycle and walking tours, and almost two decades of Public
Talks covering history, politics, ecology, art, and more (see shapingsf.org). Beginning in Spring
2020, Carlsson added Bay Cruises along the San Francisco shoreline to his repertoire.
Carlsson has written three previous books, the most recent being Hidden San Francisco: A
Guide to Lost Landscapes, Unsung Heroes, and Radical Histories (Pluto Press: 2020). His 2004
novel is set in a future “post-economic” San Francisco (After the Deluge, Full Enjoyment Books:
2004), and his groundbreaking look at class and work in Nowtopia (AK Press: 2008) which
uniquely examined how hard and pleasantly we work when we’re not at our official jobs. He has
also edited six books including three “Reclaiming San Francisco” collections with the venerable
City Lights Books. He redesigned and co-authored an expanded Vanished Waters: A History of
San Francisco’s Mission Bay after which he joined the board of the Mission Creek Conservancy.
He has given hundreds of public presentations based on Shaping San Francisco, Critical
Mass, Nowtopia, Vanished Waters, and his “Reclaiming San Francisco” history anthologies since
the late 1990s, and has appeared dozens of times in radio, television and on the internet.