“My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. ‘Something cannot emerge from nothing,’ he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable ‘the truth’ can be.” ––Dune, by Frank Herbert, loc. 4259 “The intense view of these manifold contradictions and imperfections in […]
I don’t know what state the revenge narrative was in before The Count of Monte Cristo hit the scene, but this book remains a paragon of the genre nearly two centuries after publication. Alexandre Dumas’s classic is deeply concerned with the character of human happiness and suffering, and challenges readers to cherish what good fortune […]
A whole class of first-years could have graduated from Hogwarts since 2007, when J.K. Rowling shocked the world by concluding the Harry Potter series with a book that delighted the vast majority of her rabid fans. It’s still a wonder she pulled it off, given the pressure she must have felt to avoid being tarred […]
“What’s with all the sentimentality about nature anyway, and the kowtowing to it, as though adhering to the ‘natural’ had some sort of ethical force? It’s not like nature is such a friend to womankind, not like nature doesn’t just blithely kill women off on a random basis during childbirth or anything. No one who faces […]
“I think the future of something we may no longer call feminism must include a deeper inquiry into men,” writes Rebecca Solnit in the closing pages of Men Explain Things to Me. “Feminism sought and seeks to change the whole human world; many men are on board with the project, but how it benefits men, […]
“I argued that you don’t know if your actions are futile; that you don’t have the memory of the future; that the future is indeed dark, which is the best thing it could be; and that, in the end, we always act in the dark. The effects of your actions may unfold in ways you […]
Three years ago, my father pointed me toward a frightfully thick book called Cryptonomicon that permanently rearranged my relationship with modern fiction. Since that first taste, Neal Stephenson has challenged me in every way an author can (including nearly boring me to death). Stephenson looms larger in my literary pantheon––and weighs more heavily on my […]
“‘We need brains, is the bottom line,’ Ivy said. ‘We’re not hunter-gatherers anymore. We’re all living like patients in the intensive care unit of a hospital. What keeps us alive isn’t bravery, or athleticism, or any of those other skills that were valuable in a caveman society. It’s our ability to master complex technological skills. […]
“The White Sky took form and fury. The cloud bloomed and evoluted like cream in coffee, spreading and paling, though from place to place one could see fresh bursts as rocks hurled out in earlier collisions found distant targets and touched off smaller chain reactions of their own. In places it took on a cellular […]
“This was how the mind worked. The mind couldn’t think about the End of the World all the time. It needed the occasional break, a romp through the trivial. Because it was through trivia that the mind was anchored in reality, as the largest oak tree was rooted, ultimately, in a system of rootlets.” ––Seveneves, […]