About The Last Promontory

Hi y’all. Joey here. First off, if you want to read what I was going for with this anthology, I encourage you to read the introduction over here, which is what was actually printed in the book. This page just gives the backstory of why it exists at all.

In 2026 my company, Oddly Specific Objects, sponsored the Open Hardware Summit in Berlin. As a result, we were invited to put one item in the OSHWA swag bag, and I wanted to use the opportunity to promote Open Book Touch, the open hardware e-book reader I’m launching on Crowd Supply.

While brainstorming ideas of what to make, ranging from bookmarks to notebooks, I sought advice from friends. One colleague suggested: why not give everyone a book? Raid some used bookstores, find used books in the public domain, give everyone some open culture to read on the plane ride home. Then a few days later, on a subway ride to Manhattan, I told a different friend about this idea. His suggestion: “Why not make a book?” Pick some short stories in the public domain, and compile them into an anthology that’s relevant to the audience.

That’s the anthology you see here.

In a notecard distributed with these books, I noted that in building Open Book Touch I found myself spending a lot of time reading, and that the works I discovered and rediscovered moved me, in many directions. Some of these writings are works I’ve read before and loved enough to return to again and again. Some of them are from authors I had never even approached before researching, curating and assembling this anthology. Regardless of how they came to me, I hope that they connect for you.

Given that this was made for an open hardware summit, in addition to the print run of 300 given to attendees, I’m also publishing the entire book as printed here on this site. And all of the text I wrote for it — the introduction, the author notes and a new translation of F. T. Marinetti’s Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism, are released under Creative Commons licenses. (The original texts themselves are in the public domain.)