Humanities

The Ministry of the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

July 12, 2022
Humanities

Author # Originally I’d found Kim Stanley Robinson (KSR) from an interesting talk at The Long Now Foundation. His talk was engaging and it turns out that he’d fictionalized these concepts into a novel titled The Ministry of the Future. The Mars trilogy has been on my list for a while. The talk at Long Now highlighted a near future focus on impending/realistic problems that humanity faces, which drew me in to selecting a more recent text. ...

The Cosmere by Brandon Sanderson

April 24, 2022
Humanities

Author # Brandon Sanderson is a prolific writer and creator of worlds. His main works are the creation of the Cosmere universe. His other works include finishing the Wheel of Time series after the passing of Robert Jordan (The series is now an epic fantasy on Amazon Prime Video). His works are considered to be a part of Hard Fantasy largely because of Sanderson’s Laws of Magic. He, his wife, and a small team operate Dragonsteel Entertainment which seems to be highly engaging with the community. ...

The Two Cultures by C.P. Snow

July 30, 2018
Humanities

A lecture called The Two Cultures had been referenced several times in discussions that I’ve found interesting, so I snagged a modern print of the essay to spend some time with. I’ve read the print from 1959 instead of the follow up print from 1963. This text is based on a talk, so its delivery is conversational. I feel that it can be summarized, maybe in too much of a reductionist sense, with this quote from the text: ...

Blindsight & Echopraxia by Peter Watts

July 22, 2018
Humanities

Frequenting /r/printsf sometimes you’ll see someone talking about a text you enjoyed with references to sampling other authors. Peter Watts kept showing up so eventually I wanted to sample the work he is most lauded for (currently Blindsight). Blindsight and its sidequel Exchopraxia were released in omnibus form as Firefall. These were impressive texts, but when looking more into him I became enamored with the nuggets of lore spread around his website. ...