Category: Literature

BOOKHUNT: Obvious Titles and Awkward Authors

You know when you’re in a proper bookstore – one of those shops where the shelves are full, and overflow piles everywhere?  And you notice someone else in that bookstore, and you wonder:  “What is that person looking for?”  And you kind of keep on eye on them, and possibly even follow them around, to…

anastasia's flying saucer

BOOKS: Anastasia, by Vladimir Megré

In search of a method of how to extract a valuable nut oil found in the Russian taiga, the author comes upon a young beautiful forest recluse named Anastasia. She has been living there alone since she was a child, because her parents’ brains exploded when they got too close to a tree.

BOOKS: Red Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson

“To be 21st Century scientists on Mars, in fact, but at the same time living within 19th-century social systems, based on 17th-century ideologies. It’s absurd, it’s crazy, it’s – it’s- … it’s unscientific! And so I say that among al the many things we transform on Mars, ourselves and our social reality should be among them. We must terraform not only Mars, but ourselves.” -Arkady Bogdanov, in ‘Red Mars,’ by Kim Stanley Robinson (pg 89)

Red-Mars-with-$20

Gentle Ways to be Encouraged to Pay your Library Fine

I was back in Vancouver, and making my rounds through the libraries to snatch up books I’d put on hold while I was away. It was going pretty well — #1 on the list was The Vital Question in preparation for a book club meeting I had in a few days — but it was…

[Astro Boy - "Here you go with some more energy!"]

Robot Design Considerations in 1957, Japan

This gem of a panel is from the story Ghost Manufacturing Machine in Astro Boy Omnibus 2 by Osamu Tezuka; pg 91, panel 2 (first published in a 1957 supplement edition of Shonen magazine).  This was one of only two English books in my hostel’s library.  The other was War and Peace.  It did not…