“‘In a war one is either living like a prince or a vagabond. I have seen Lord Wellington––his Grace, I should say––sleeping under a tree with only a rock for a pillow. At other times I have seen thieves and beggars snoring upon feather-beds in palace bed-chambers. War is a very topsy-turvy business.’” ––Jonathan Strange […]
“Lovers are rarely the most rational beings in creation and so it will come as no surprize to my readers to discover that Strange’s musing concerning Miss Woodhope had produced a most inexact portrait of her. Though his imaginary conversations might be said to describe her opinions, they were no guide at all to her […]
James Barrat’s Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era is a disturbing, plangent response to the rosy-minded, “rapture of the nerds” mentality that has recently swept across the futurist landscape. Toeing the line between rational prudence and alarmist hand-wringing, Barrat makes the case not only that advanced artificial intelligence is […]
“‘I really have no desire to write reviews of other people’s books. Modern publications upon magic are the most pernicious things in the world, full of misinformation and wrong opinions.’ ‘Then sir, you may say so. The ruder you are, the more the editors will be delighted.’ ‘But it is my own opinions I wish […]
“‘I had no master. I taught myself.’ ‘How?’ ‘From books.’ ‘Books!’ (This in a tone of the utmost contempt.) ‘Yes, indeed. There is a great deal of magic in books nowadays. Of course, most of it is nonsense. No one knows as well as I how much nonsense is printed in books. But there is […]
Hieroglyph: Stories & Visions for a Better Future is an outgrowth of Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination. Since the project was inspired by a Neal Stephenson essay (one of my favorite authors), I figured it would be an enlightening and worthwhile collection of speculative fiction. And while that turned out to […]
“How to describe a London party? Candles in lustres of cutglass are placed everywhere about the house in dazzling profusion; elegant mirrors triple and quadruple the light until night outshines day; many-coloured hot-house fruits are piled up in stately pyramids upon white-clothed tables; divine creatures, resplendent with jewels, go about the room in pairs, arm […]
“A gentleman could not do magic. Magic was what street sorcerers pretended to do in order to rob children of their pennies. Magic (in the practical sense) was much fallen off. It had low connexions. It was the bosom companion of unshaven faces, gypsies, house-breakers, the frequenter of dingy rooms with dirty yellow curtains. Oh […]
“Mankind can build a Great Thing. Sometimes we do it. But then we have to live with the consequences of greatness. What does a Great Thing tell us about ourselves? Not that we are great, but that our Great Things are so rare, and so much abused. So many in our dreams, so few to […]
Before I had any experience of building, I did not grasp the degree to which modern homes are a carefully orchestrated merging of many different materials. Everyone knows at some basic level that houses are complex organizations of wood, concrete, metal, wiring, and all the rest, but those with little or no knowledge about how […]