This collection of stories is a small but significant contribution to Iain M. Banks’s inimitable Culture Series. I didn’t have much of a reaction one way or another to the smattering of Culture-based short stories, so this review will focus entirely on the book’s eponymous novella. “The State of the Art” is a brief but […]
“‘What is the Culture? What do we believe in, even if it hardly ever is expressed, even if we are embarrassed about talking about it? Surely in freedom, more than anything else. A relativistic, changing sort of freedom, unbounded by laws or laid-down moral codes, but––in the end––just because it is so hard to pin […]
“‘How long do you think this place is going to stay the way it is now? Ten years? Twenty? Can’t you see how much this place has to alter…in just the next century? We’re so used to things staying much the same, to society and technology––at least immediately available technology––hardly changing over our lifetimes that…I […]
“This is our birthplace though, this is what we deserted long ago. This is where we used to live, on balls of dust and rock like this. This is our home town from before we felt the itch of wanderlust, the sticks we inhabited before we ran away from home, the cradle where we were […]
“‘I want to go on being a student,’ I told him. ‘I want to be a teacher. I’m just a reader,’ I said. ‘DON’T SOUND SO ASHAMED,’ he said. ‘READING IS A GIFT.’ ‘I learned it from you,’ I told him. ‘IT DOESN’T MATTER WHERE YOU LEARNED IT––IT’S A GIFT. IF YOU CARE ABOUT SOMETHING, […]
As an amateur neuroscience enthusiast, I’m obligated not only to seek out the best and most recent neuroscientific findings, but also to be wary of how these findings might be abused. Any scientific discipline that can be easily monetized and/or misinterpreted by the popular media will spawn its share of hacks, prophets, and snake oil […]
“Newspapers are a bad habit, the reading equivalent of junk food. What happens to me is that I seize upon an issue in the news––the issue is the moral/philosophical, political/intellectual equivalent of a cheeseburger with everything on it; but for the duration of my interest in it, all my other interests are consumed by it, […]
When I decided to move back to Humboldt after returning from Japan in summer 2013, I was motivated by several different factors. One of the most influential was my growing trepidation about the problem of climate change, which birthed in me a desire to settle myself in a strong community and start learning about sustainable […]
“‘I can’t read Tess of the d’Urbervilles!’ I cried. ‘It’s too hard!’ ‘YOU MEAN IT’S HARD TO MAKE YOURSELF READ IT, YOU MEAN IT’S HARD HARD TO MAKE YOURSELF PAY ATTENTION,’ he said. ‘BUT IT’S NOT TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES THAT’S HARD. THOMAS HARDY MAY BORE YOU BUT HE’S VERY EASY TO UNDERSTAND––HE’S OBVIOUS, HE […]
“Grandmother was rigorous and unswerving. It was her belief in the value of effort itself that prevented her from buying a television set. She was a passionate reader, and she thought that reading was one of the noblest efforts of all; in contrast, she found writing to be a great waste of time––a childish self-indulgence, […]