Ex dente leonem finished reading State of the Art by Iain M. Banks
State of the Art by Iain M. Banks
The first ever collection of Iain Banks’s short fiction, this volume includes the acclaimed novella, The State of the Art. …
Solarpunk in the streets, lunarpunk in the sheets.
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8% complete! Ex dente leonem has read 1 of 12 books.
The first ever collection of Iain Banks’s short fiction, this volume includes the acclaimed novella, The State of the Art. …
A masterpiece of postcolonial literary sf, rightfully belonging alongside those of Octavia Butler, Ursula le Guin, and the dystopias of fellow Canadian Margaret Atwood, and Hopkinson is as powerful a storyteller as her peers. Seeing through the eyes of Brown Girl's Jamaican and Caribbean characters might be challenging at first for certain readers more accustomed to the voices almost always given precedence in conventional literature, but its story is as fully immersive as a ceremonial drum rhythm. With its Afrofuturistic elements and its initially bleak but ultimately hopeful vision of a city after/beyond local collapse of the nation-state, I would even call Brown Girl in the Ring a foundational classic not just of the still-emerging solarpunk movement, but also of its younger sibling lunarpunk, a darker and more mystical imagining of how such futures may unfold.
An excellent and thorough analysis of what it will take for us to overcome the existential challenges of the climate crisis, including once and for all confronting the reality that we must move past the unsustainable and destructive system of capitalism itself.
A fun collection with a humour and a rollicking pulp style reminiscent of both classic mystery fare and Golden Age science fiction (for better or worse), but most interesting in the stories where Hughes explores the dreamlike Commons of his Jungian noösphere, an inspired concept with worlds of potential.
Very useful guide to non-hierarchical practices applicable beyond the workplace for democratic organizations of all kinds, especially the insights into consent-based decision-making. As late-stage capitalism continues to play out and we seek to progress past stale vertical paradigms, one could even say that this is a glimpse into what any viable future of work and social organization looks like.
A sobering assessment of the mass extinction event now underway in the Anthropocene, and the systems collapse that is sure to occur as a result of this devastating loss of biodiversity. Ironically, this assessment of the current rate of extinction is likely to already be outdated even though it was published only a few years ago. However, while presenting a solid overall summary, the author does not seem committed to pointing out exactly why this is occurring beyond the already-established mechanism of anthropogenic global warming, and several passages in the book, including 1) the author's raving about the delicacy of kangaroo meat and 2) casually mentioning a pig, an animal at least as intelligent as a dog, being brought to a research station and placed in a tiny cage for the sole purpose of being barbecued, shows that the author herself does not seem to have fully internalized the lessons …
A sobering assessment of the mass extinction event now underway in the Anthropocene, and the systems collapse that is sure to occur as a result of this devastating loss of biodiversity. Ironically, this assessment of the current rate of extinction is likely to already be outdated even though it was published only a few years ago. However, while presenting a solid overall summary, the author does not seem committed to pointing out exactly why this is occurring beyond the already-established mechanism of anthropogenic global warming, and several passages in the book, including 1) the author's raving about the delicacy of kangaroo meat and 2) casually mentioning a pig, an animal at least as intelligent as a dog, being brought to a research station and placed in a tiny cage for the sole purpose of being barbecued, shows that the author herself does not seem to have fully internalized the lessons she would have us learn from 1) the tragic exploitation of the great auk (an example she herself gives earlier in the book), or 2) why humans should cease viewing nonhuman animals as resources that exist simply for our use. One gets the impression that the author views our effect on the planet as simply a result of human nature and not of human systems that we have the ability to consciously change, though as she points out with the prehistoric extinctions of megafauna within generations of humans' arrival in a region, human nature may well be the cause.
Humanity's manifesto for tomorrow, a sober assessment of the threats we face in the coming century and what it will take for us to overcome them.
Words of wisdom about our universal yearning for love, as well as our drive to fulfil that yearning in the form of its physical manifestation.
Only once in a great while does a writer come along who defies comparison -- a writer so original he …
I would have liked to like this book more than I did, but the protagonist and his 'friends' are so toxic that the thought of them contaminating not just Fillory but actual Narnia (or any other of a thousand cherished portal-accessible worlds) with the consequences of their narcissism and emotional pollution puts me on edge. Nevertheless, it is competently written and the worldbuilding (especially that of the Neitherlands, which may or may not be C. S. Lewis's Wood between the Worlds paved over) seems better thought out than that of J. K. Rowling's Potterverse, which this is more or less the grownup version of. I do commend Grossman for exploring the question of what kind of people an elite magical academy would turn out in real life, in an adult setting. That said, adult does not have to mean unlikeable, but then again, given the kind of adults that elite …
I would have liked to like this book more than I did, but the protagonist and his 'friends' are so toxic that the thought of them contaminating not just Fillory but actual Narnia (or any other of a thousand cherished portal-accessible worlds) with the consequences of their narcissism and emotional pollution puts me on edge. Nevertheless, it is competently written and the worldbuilding (especially that of the Neitherlands, which may or may not be C. S. Lewis's Wood between the Worlds paved over) seems better thought out than that of J. K. Rowling's Potterverse, which this is more or less the grownup version of. I do commend Grossman for exploring the question of what kind of people an elite magical academy would turn out in real life, in an adult setting. That said, adult does not have to mean unlikeable, but then again, given the kind of adults that elite mundane academies turn out in real life, maybe this comes uncomfortably close to the truth.