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Showing posts from February, 2022

Recent Reading: Appleseed by Matt Bell

[This is an experiment. My recent reading roundup reviews have steadily been expanding past the point where it makes sense to lump them together, and I often leave them sitting unpublished for weeks while I amass enough for a post. This new format, then, is not a full-length review, but still a book that deserves more discussion than just a few paragraphs.] Seamlessly marrying hard-headed climate fiction and magical realism, Bell's third novel is an unusual, thought-provoking entry in the growing subgenre, one whose powerful punch is unfortunately undercut by some of its core assumptions. The novel proceeds in three timelines. In the early days of the European settlement of North America, a faun named John Chapman (the name of the man better known in American folklore as Johnny Appleseed) travels the wilderness just beyond the fledgling New England towns with his human brother Nathaniel, planting apple nurseries which the brothers hope, in time, to sell to the farmers who will com

Wheel of Time Roundtable Discussion at Strange Horizons

It's been quiet here recently, I know. As you may have seen on twitter or some of my recent posts on Lawyers, Guns & Money, I spent most of December and January preparing for and executing a move, and that experience took over my brain to a degree that made it impossible not only to write, but to consume culture with any real critical insight. I've posted a few things at LGM ( some thoughts on Adam McKay's Don't Look Up , a list of books I'm looking forward to in 2022), and it's not impossible that I'll still find the time this month to write about some things that have deserved more attention, like The Matrix Resurrections or HBO Max's adaptation of Station Eleven . But for the most part I'm still easing myself back into the critical mindset, reading thoughtfully for the first time in weeks and watching things that demand more out of me than the latest episode of Legends of Tomorrow . Which is why this Wheel of Time roundtable at Strange Hor