"If you fake the funk, your nose will grow." — Bootsy Collins
I’m only part way through William Gibson‘s new book Pattern Recognition, but I already think it is the best thing Gibson has ever written, better even than Neuromancer…
I’m only part way through William Gibson‘s new book Pattern Recognition, but I already think it is the best thing Gibson has ever written, better even than Neuromancer…
Continue reading “First Impressions”
I just finished Maurice G. Dantec’s first novel, published in 1993, La sirene rouge (The Red Siren): a superior thriller, but nothing more. (Though I’d like to see the film, if only because it stars Asia Argento). But Dantec is also the author of the mind-boggling SF novel Babylon Babies (1999), unfortunately not (yet) translated into English…
I just finished Maurice G. Dantec’s first novel, published in 1993, La sirene rouge (The Red Siren): a superior thriller, but nothing more. (Though I’d like to see the film, if only because it stars Asia Argento). But Dantec is also the author of the mind-boggling SF novel Babylon Babies (1999), unfortunately not (yet) translated into English…
Continue reading “Maurice Dantec”
Yesterday Bill Gates issued a global challenge on health. He put up $200 million to spur research on diseases that haven’t been studied sufficiently by scientists, because they occur mainly in poor parts of the world, rather than here in the West. This is a wholly admirable thing to do. But the rhetoric of his announcement was also interesting….
Continue reading “Bill Gates’ “Grand Challenges in Global Health””
Stewart Home is a brilliant literary provocateur, and his latest novel, 69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess, does not disappoint (even if it is not the best thing he has done)….
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John Barnes’ SF novel Kaleidoscope Century is a clever alternative history of the 21st century, hilariously dystopian….
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I am enchanted by the mini-genre of “Unauthorized Autobiographies.” Actually, I only know of two books that fit this genre: Chuck Barris’s wonderful Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, recently reissued because it has been made into a film, and the new one, of/by the pseudonymous Lemony Snicket….
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Adrian Tomine’s latest collection, Summer Blonde, contains four 32-page stories from his comic Optic Nerve. They are beautiful stories, naturalistic in setting, and all about depressed and socially awkward teens and twenty-somethings…
Continue reading “Adrian Tomine–Summer Blonde”
Jane Jacobs is best known for The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which revolutionized thought about urban planning in the 1960s. But in her 80s she is still very much alive, and intellectually vigorous. Her latest book, The Nature of Economies, is surprisingly fresh and provocative, if also deeply problematic….
Continue reading “Jane Jacobs–The Nature of Economies”