Reading for fun, threads over the years of scifi, history, social movements and justice, farming, philosophy. I actively work to balance out the white male default in what I read, but have a long way to go.
He/they for the praxis.
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Ok, here I loved the use of noir's flat abrupt characters and action to hold up the pulp fiction nature of our political response to global terrorism. Perhaps too clever in referents, but enjoyable on many levels, despite being so very flat.
How implausible that I would read this, noir about 9/11? The power of a good review from someone you trust.
The Wind's Twelve Quarters is a collection of short stories by American writer Ursula K. …
A first retrospective collection at 10 years, her notes before each story are sharp and advancing even for otherwise tangent tales. And then it ends fiercely with the kicks of "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" and "The Day Before The Revolution".
A small group of intrepid explorers are in search of a remote and mysterious artefact. …
Such a promising disturbing start, At The Mountains of Madness vibes with new layers, and then goes on somewhere that's fine but not there.
It seems everyone read this when I lived in Chicago except me, but the true crime hook turned me off then. Turns out it's mostly about architecture and temporary facades of respectability, and engagingly told as popular history. Satisfyingly travel-back-in-time-to-Chicago.
Or, "Are we smart enough to change our behavior from a path of ecological destruction, recounting a small intellectual gathering on cybernetics in 1968”
What does it mean to be intelligent? Is it something unique to humans, or shared …
Where I am right now, after an overlapping decades-long journey through computability, animal and ecological intelligence, finding human humility after capitalism's techno-categorizing-hubris. Seeking an answer to how technology, how participation in understanding, should adapt to a collaborative-multiple-perspective de-centering of humanity and our binary truths. This sticks to a deep middle, the claims Bridle makes for "opening up to the more-than-human world" are broad, pointed in good directions, and avoid anger or hopelessness while staying critical. My recommendations for adjacent reading would be Frans de Waal's "Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are", Emma Marris' "Wild Souls", Richard Power's "The Overstory", and a lot of Ursula K LeGuin, but the bibliography has a whole stack of new reading lined up for me too.
Centuries after the last humans left Earth, the Exodus Fleet is a living relic, a …
Nice to be reminded that Chambers can weave her deeply attentive human and social reflections into compelling longer form, and live up to high expectations for unconventionally but quite comfortably answering what matters in a story or a culture.
Hugo, Locus, and Nebula-Award winner Mary Robinette Kowal blends her no-nonsense approach to life in …
Witty low stakes riff, not so noir - the vibe is more 5th Element romp given the cruise ship setting, and the mystery bends to suit - but true to the original in prominent stiff drinks, and comfortably egalitarian in gender roles.
What does it mean to be intelligent? Is it something unique to humans, or shared …
This is such a satisfying wondrous summation of my last decade of reading, I love how many diverse threads are in the bibliography and new encounters in the text suggest a good year's reading project could be just to read through the rest of the bibliography. Possible overlapping new highlights there: Monica Gagliano, Suzanne Simard, Donna J Haraway, Eva Meijer, Andrea Wulf, Alexis Pauline Gumbs.
Thoroughly grim and unredemptive, there are some beautifully evoked unpleasant truths in people's minds here, but I can't recommend reading them.
On a warm March night in 2083, Judy Wallach-Stevens wakes to a warning of unknown …
Does a lovely job portraying a decentralized, nerdy, queer, ecologically-attentive near future both recognizable and made deeply alien through first-contact... even as a semi-utopic didactic depiction, I wish it were a better story, the stakes and conflicts wobble erratically between gray and absolute to an overall weaker place.
A solid early start, tying Ahab's totalitarianism to American capitalism and the neurotic disassociation it produces in the intellectual class and middle management. As it spins out to broader Melville background and comparative lit, I cared less.
Heard this interview with Ressa today and very moved by her deep sense of the global moment's interconnections. "Inspiration spreads as fast as hate." the1a.org/segments/maria-ressa-on-social-media-authoritarian-regimes-and-preserving-democracy/
A low-stakes nonsensical romp in the hallways and discipline strictures of a Soviet research university... a wonderful blend of Pratchett and Vonnegut.