“The City Born Great” by N.K. Jemisin should win this year’s Hugo for short story. The conceit of the story is that great human cities have a life of their own. Maybe that life awakens quickly, maybe it takes centuries or millennia, but at some point the genius loci becomes a thing in itself. Birth …
Tag: Doug
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/05/07/the-city-born-great-by-n-k-jemisin/
May 01 2017
Tales of the Squee
The height of my to-be-read pile could be measured in years, if the books could somehow fit into a unified pile. And that doesn’t count a particular moving box in the basement, in which some really good books, or at least some really interesting-looking books are awaiting their turn to come upstairs. (Some of them …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/05/01/tales-of-the-squee/
Apr 26 2017
The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe by Kij Johnson
“And I must of course acknowledge Lovecraft’s The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. I first read it at ten, thrilled and terrified, and uncomfortable with the racism but not yet aware that the total absence of women was also problematic. This story is my adult self returning to a thing I loved as a child and …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/04/26/the-dream-quest-of-vellitt-boe-by-kij-johnson/
Apr 25 2017
Germany: Memories of a Nation by Neil MacGregor
Neil MacGregor was Director of the National Gallery in London from 1987 to 2002 and of the British Museum from 2002 to 2015. He is now Chair of the Steering Committee of the Humboldt Forum in Berlin. His best-known previous book is A History of the World in 100 Objects. That background goes a long …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/04/25/germany-memories-of-a-nation-by-neil-macgregor/
Apr 24 2017
Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters
Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters is a hell of a book. The premise is that amendments to the US Constitution in the 1860s preserved the Union and averted the Civil War, but at the cost of continuing to accept slavery in states that chose to keep their peculiar institution. In the 21st century, a …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/04/24/underground-airlines-by-ben-h-winters/
Apr 23 2017
The Foundation Pit by Andrey Platonov
Where to even begin with The Foundation Pit? The author, Andrey Platonov was born in Russia in 1899, the son of a railway worker, and later worked as a land reclamation expert. He was a fervent supporter of the Russian Revolution; during the 1920s he supervised the digging of wells, construction of ponds, and draining …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/04/23/the-foundation-pit-by-andrey-platonov/
Apr 22 2017
The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov
The Caves of Steel is really the first of Asimov’s robot novels, as I, Robot was short stories stitched together by a tiny framework narrative. In the introduction, Asimov relates that the conceit of the novel came out of a conversation with an editor: a science fiction mystery that didn’t use technology to cheat and …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/04/22/the-caves-of-steel-by-isaac-asimov/
Mar 20 2017
Soviet Bus Stops by Christopher Herwig
There are not a lot of words in this book of photography, and the subject is laid out right there in the title. Soviet Bus Stops sounds like it could be terribly dry, almost a parody of narrow history, but no, it’s a glimpse into an interesting and vanishing world. Photographer Christopher Herwig bicycled from …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/03/20/soviet-bus-stops-by-christopher-herwig/
Mar 14 2017
Jingo by Terry Pratchett
Apparently quite a number of people thought that Terry Pratchett was jolly. Perhaps that was because he wrote books that are laugh-out-loud funny, occasionally overflowing with terrible puns, full of affection for most of their characters, and bursting with absurdities, most particularly the absurdity of living people rubbing up against each other. Perhaps people thought …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/03/14/jingo-by-terry-pratchett/
Mar 12 2017
Istanbul by Thomas F. Madden
Of all the places that I have visited, Istanbul almost certainly heads the list of those I would like to return to. Arriving in April of 1993, at the beginning of what I thought was six months of travel before going broke in Ireland, I was struck by how European the city was. This despite …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/03/12/istanbul-by-thomas-f-madden/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire