Simon > Recent Status Updates

fascinating to not just see those trippy photos of star nebulae, but also being pointed out that we only see them from Earth from one particular angle, and the "cat's eye" nebula is in fact more cylindrical in shape

er nogenlunde kommet til der hvor hun lige er blevet gangbanged af nok politibetjente til at være i en hel mandskabsvogn, pga et væddemål hun lavede med sin karate-instruktør

Things I did not remember from first read: The one black/Polynesian lover of Sabina, Mambo, criticising her for fetishising him as a representative of a foreign culture more than an individual; the Irish police officer Donald belittling women as a result of unexamined issues with his mother specifically singling out Marie Curie, Joan of Arc and Amelia Earheart; the wounded RAF officer John's survivor's guilt.

Giving this a re-read for the first time in 2 years after reading the author's first 2 books "Winter of Artifice" and "House of Incest" which both contain several themes and characters that I can recognise as later appearing here.

"The Voice" not only deals with lesbian relationships in a very explicit way for a mainstream novel from the 1930's, but is also one of the single trippiest and most mystical pieces I have read by Anaïs Nin so far. Might even qualify as non-standard occult fiction?

I also got a guy at the park interested in reading Anaïs Nin just by describing this to him.

Even as early in her career as this, it's just uncanny how much more beautifully and evocatively Anaïs Nin wrote than 95% of other authors I have read. The title short story in "Winter of Artifice" is also clearly inspired by her own strained relationship with her father.

absolutely amazing almost psychedelic photographs of all the nebulae, galaxies, planets and so on photographed by the Hubble telescope; also goes into detail about the history of the telescope and the technical issues it ran into when first launched

for the first half this plays like basically a very eccentric take on the whole cyberpunk noir detective subgenre, before then flying off into the trippiest possible interpretations of quantum mechanics - curious to see how this pans out

I also like "The Basque and Bijou" about a prostitute who becomes an artist's model and girlfriend, and the resulting complications between them. This is very interesting from a feministic perspective because it goes into detail about the roles that women from very different walks of like felt constrained by in the 1920's/1930's.

This is the type of intersection between pornography and character-driven drama with complex plotlines, combined in a genuinely stylish and artistic manner, that was popular in the 1970's and to some extent the 1980's but has fallen out of favour since then. (a sign of people in the past being more openminded than now, at least in some ways?)

At any rate, this collection is a 5/5 just for the story "Elena" alone.

absolutely loving this, fascinating to read about all the realistic ways a stranded astronaut might possibly survive in a Mars colony using technology that space agencies are currently considering using for such a purpose

just over 50 pages in but I can already feel I need to read everything twice in order to grasp Marc Chagall's convoluted and chaotic family history, I can however recognise many of the formative events in his life from several of his paintings already

Mest interessante digt her indtil videre er "Det samme hvide lys" på s. 129, der indbygger en masse naturvidenskabelig jargon og psykedeliske mentale billeder i den kosmiske mysticisme og udforskning af indre følelsesliv, der kører som rød tråd igennem de fleste af digtene. Her kan man virkelig mærke flere ubeslægtede universer kollidere med hinanden og skabe noget unikt

I like that the author constantly notices that most of the food in Afghanistan isn't full of ingredients pretty much every single scientist considers unhealthy, like back home in the UK

der er nogle noveller jeg forstår bedre denne gang fx Simon Christiansens vælg-dit-eget-eventyr "Fanget i tiden" (der inkluderer nogle meget indviklede tidsrejseparadokser), Helle Jakobsens uforudsigelige dystopi "PXx21894" og Flemming Raschs meget komplekse space opera "Omvej ved de ydre planeter", der også er betydeligt "hårdere" rent videnskabeligt end gennemsnittet for genren

Virkelig flotte beskrivelser af natur, kosmos og inderlige følelser; det er også tydeligt hvordan Holcks skrivestil bliver mere ambitiøs og kompleks efterhånden som han bliver ældre.

så den her på biblioteket og jeg husker at have fundet et par af novellerne meget underholdende, bliver interessant at genlæse den og se om der er nuancer jeg lægger mærke til denne gang som jeg ikke forstod før

Way more action packed than the first Foundation book, story structure and overall tone here clearly inspired George Lucas quite a bit for "The Empire Strikes Back". The starship captain Han Pritchard also predicts Harrison Ford's Han Solo in the "Star Wars" movies.

remember this being my favourite among the series because I found The Mule by far the most interesting among all the characters, not yet at the point where he makes an appearance so I am curious how this will go

Amazing seeing so many classic paintings by Charles Knight and Zdenek Burian reproduced in THIS level of detail, as well as learning about less well known paleoartists like Neave Parker and Maurice Wilson who lived at the same time but had polar opposite styles.

I also like seeing an early illustration of Elasmosaurus from when people thought it had a short neck and long tail instead of vice versa!

I am familiar with much of the paleoart here but not the surrounding historical context until now - like how many of the earliest paleoartists were creationists as Darwin's theory of evolution took a while to be commonly accepted in scientific circles, and how that influenced their depictions of dinosaurs. (and those who accepted evolution understood it in significantly different ways than people do 200 years later)

rereading this there are so many places where I can tell "Frank Herbert stole this for Dune", "George Lucas stole this for Star Wars", "Gene Wolfe stole this for Book of the New Sun" or "Games Workshop stole this for Warhammer 40K" (the whole "priesthood preserving advanced technology that would otherwise been lost" thing is more or less where the Adeptus Mechanicus came from)

I'm going to say that even if Asimov's writing style is pretty dry, I still end up enjoying all the slow burning political drama as well as detailed exploration of cultural differences between all the various in-universe faction more interesting than when I read this as a teenager. Back then I preferred "Dune" for that kind of thing, but thing is? Herbert probably wouldn't have been able to write it without this.

I remember reading the Foundation trilogy in high school and not finding it terribly exciting, going to give it another try to see if I "get it" this time since I quite like the recent TV series based on the novels. And if there's nuances and meanings I missed first time around.

I like that this constantly goes in new and crazy directions showing off almost every single audacious idea the author could think of while being fairly concise and easy to read, tied together by political satire directed towards self-important opaque public sector bureaucracy

This is one of the weirdest SF novels I have read in a long while. Simultaneously feels like a parody of "Dune" and the Australian soap opera "McLeod's Daughters", written in a similar style and tone as "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" but predates all 3 works.

pure tripped out 1970's fantasy bliss!

Most of the action scenes in this novel play like something from a particularly whacked out Hong Kong wuxia film from the same era the novel was written (mid/late 1960's), which I find absolutely awesome.

This has a similar vibe as Gene Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun" in that it appears at first to take place in a fantasy setting but is slowly revealed to take place in a science-fiction universe, that only looks fantastic to most of its inhabitants because they only have a pre-modern frame of reference for understanding the world. Really enjoying it so far, for most of the same reasons I liked "Book of the New Sun".

I will say this much that finding out about J. Allen Hynek's role in the disinformation campaign against Bennewitz has made me significantly more critical of him, even if he's done useful work within ufology.

Also interesting how many of the disinformation tactics that AFOSI used against the UFO community in the 1980's are those used today by CIA, MI6 and FSB against various activist milieux and alternative media.