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Dreams Are Thieves: Thoughts on Startide Rising and The Uplift War

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Submitted by: Geoffrey Dow
on Fri, 01/05/2024 - 12:55

December 27, 2007 (copy-edited January 5, 2023) — There are times when dreams really do explain themselves, at least in part.

This night was one of those when, through at least two re-awakenings, the primary providence of my dreams was as clear as the narrative structure of them was solid and the imagery consistent.

books
book review
David Brin
Startide Rising
The Uplift War
science fiction
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Smokers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your jones(ing)!

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Submitted by: Geoffrey Dow
on Sat, 10/17/2009 - 10:17

Allen Carr's Way was easy for me

Photo of Young Geoffrey smoking, 1992.
For about a quarter century, photos of me without a cigarette in my hand were few and far between. This, from 1992.

Tᴜᴇsᴅᴀʏ, Aᴘʀɪʟ 14, 2020 — I was a smoker for many years, starting in my teens. It seems almost impossible to believe, now, that I was utterly addicted to cigarettes for decades, going so far as to walk around collecting butts during bad times.

I stopped smoking in the fall of 2009, now more than a full decade in my past. And I don't think I would have done it without help from Alan Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking. Read more ...

review
books
alan carr
easy way to stop smoking
smoking
cigarettes
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Review: Dark Reflections, by Samuel R. Delany

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Submitted by: Geoffrey Dow
on Tue, 06/16/2009 - 14:55

2012 Photo of Samuel R. Delany, taken from his Facebook page
Samuel R. Delany (2012?). Photo lifted from his Facebook page.

June 21, 2020 — Now 78 years old, Samuel R. Delany is a multiple award-winning writer and a retired professor of English literature. He is best known as a science fiction writer, but his work encompasses not only that genre, but fantasy, comics and pornography, as well as non-fiction.

His first novel was published in the early 1960s, when he was still a teenager, and his most recent (which I have on order) was published only last week. He is, to my mind, still the best living American writer, and his 2012 masterpiece, Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders, was a radical (and very successful — I hope to have a review of it up here soon!) fusion of gay erotica with science fiction.

Despite the genres mentioned above, Delany's books are anything but alike; he is a writer forever exploring and both de- and re-constructing genre tropes and conventions.

So, when I bought Dark Reflections back in 2009, I was not really surprised to be surprised by just how very different that novel was from those that had come before.

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samuel r. delany
dark reflections
science fiction
literature
books
book review
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Genocide is Painless

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Submitted by: Geoffrey Dow
on Sat, 01/24/2009 - 13:25
Photo of a partial cover of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, found on the internet.

Tᴜᴇsᴅᴀʏ, Aᴘʀɪʟ 14, 2020 — You wouldn't think it necessary to review a 75 year-old pulp novel in the 21st century, but Ayn Rand's stupid and vicious philosophy has had a profound impact on western societies for the past 40 years at least.

I am pretty proud of my review of Atlas Shrugged, which I wrote back in 2008, and I stand by everything I said then about that morally execrable novel. Read more by clicking the headline above above ...

ayn rand
atlas shrugged
book review
books
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