In light of the season three finale, Kathleen Geier speculates on the politics of the show using historical analogs.
John B. Judis on the administration’s constitutional-amnesia, and the difference between congressional checks and balances, and public scrutiny.
Nick Harkaway explores a uniquely Victorian aesthetic, “We are bodies which think, and we’re at home with Steampunk because it is an ethos of design and creativity which acknowledges the humanly physical, that which we can understand with our fingers.”
Something about urban time-lapse distills what I love about cities.
Have we hit peak Cronut yet? Does anybody care?
White House Down is one of those movies that could be subversive satire but will probably just end up being jingoisitic disaster porn.
Linda Holmes tries to put a price on privacy as personal information becomes increasingly comodified.
Another Batman origin story is coming soon with Scott Snyder’s Year Zero–an attempt to flesh out the Dark Knight’s backstory ever since the DCU rebooted it a year and a half ago.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane might be Neil Gaiman’s best book ever.
In addition though, you should pick up Consider Phlebas, or something else by the late and irreplaceable Iain M. Banks.
For anyone not a fan of science-fiction (what kind of monster are you?) here’s a summer reading list from Janice Lee.
Corey Robin asks that the 21st century be the century of many more like Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden.
Orwell’s 1984 has seen a more than 50% uptick in sales at Amazon.
More surprising though is the number of Democrats who no longer seem to have a problem with NSA surveillance.
Banks. So sad.
I recommend The Algebriast and The Crow Road. My favorite might well be Whit, but save that until there’s another cult scandal in the news; it will make the reading even sweeter.Report
I recommend Complicity. By far his most challenging work.Report
I’ve read only Consider Phelbas and the Wasp Factory, and I’d highly recommend both.Report
Everybody seems to either love Consider Phelbas or hate it.Report
Consider Phelbas is a weird one, for a Culture novel. Very clearly an early book, with a little more sci-fi pow-pow than some of the others. A good one, none-the-less, insofar as it asks (and sort of answers) “How does a utopia of pacifist hippies handle an inevitable war”.
Answered — much, much later in almost an aside — is the actual fate of those the Culture went to war with. It was heavily implied, given the stakes and idealogy of the Idrians (the foes) that “utter genocide” was the only workable option.
Use of Weapons is better, I believe — and Player of Games more accessible. The Culture novels may have been sci-fi, but technology (or wars, even) were rarely the point of the novel.
Excession was a particularly good one, I thought — it showed the fractures and flaws of the Culture quite nicely, and later books often explored the contradictions of the Culture proper.Report
Mike, you might really like The Bridge. And yes, the Wasp Factory is very good. Consider Phlebas just never grabbed me.Report