Sep 28 2019

Golden Hill by Francis Spufford

Entirely too much time has passed since I read Francis Spufford’s wonderful first novel (after five mostly non-fictional books, of which it has so far only been my pleasure to read Red Plenty) Golden Hill for me to be able to do it anything approaching justice. Nevertheless, a few words.

Golden Hill

The story is set in late 1746 in New-York, as it was styled then; a place, as Spufford notes in an afterword, that “had a population of about 7,000, while London, then the largest city in Europe, had one of 700,000: genuinely a hundred-fold difference.” (p. 343) To this place that is small by British standards but looms large in the American colonies comes Mr Smith, a man in such a hurry that he will not allow a late afternoon arrival in a November drizzle to persuade him to spend an extra night on board the ship on which he had crossed the Atlantic. Spurning the captain’s invitation to remain, he desired to be rowed ashore and, once there, dashed off as fast as his newly landed legs could carry him to “the counting-house of the firm of Lovell & Company on Golden Hill Street” just before closing time, whereupon, just as “the clock on the wall showed one minute to five, [he] demanded, very civilly, speech that moment with Mr Lovell himself.” (p. 2)

That speech with Mr Lovell sets everything in motion:

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/09/28/golden-hill-by-francis-spufford/

Sep 27 2019

Slay by Brittney Morris

Before this devolves into a rant on stupid Adobe products, let me first admit that I couldn’t read the entire book, as the first page of each chapter was entirely invisible to me. That said, I did very much enjoy what I did read, and Slay was exactly as good as expected where expected.

Very cool story about a fictional indie MMO? Check. Smart black girl protagonist with a messy love life? Check. Moral dilemmas involving but not limited to racism and the realistic ways these are resolved? Check. Slay is both the name of this novel and of the underground video game created by our heroine, Keira Johnson a.k.a. Emerald, and the development partner she’s never met, ign Cicada. Keira is a 17 year-old honors student who attends Jefferson Academy as one of the few black students there, along with her younger, popular (and arguably more sensible) sister, Steph. Her boyfriend is Malcolm, who Steph calls a hotep because that’s exactly what he is, Keira, Jesus. Keira’s best friend is Harper, a white girl with an annoying younger brother, Wyatt, Steph’s age.

A little over three years earlier, Keira got the idea for a cool card game/MMO that trades on the idea of Black Excellence. She taught herself how to program and went into partnership with someone she met on a message board, Cicada, to host, run and develop the game. Since then, Slay has become an underground phenomenon, a safe online place for black players the world over to game in peace without having to worry about the discrimination and hate speech rampant in so many other MMOs. But then a teenager is shot and killed in a dispute over Slay, bringing the game to mainstream attention. Accused of being racist (meh) and exclusionary (yeah but so?), Slay sparks off a firestorm that only worsens Keira’s guilt over the death to begin with.

As if that weren’t enough to stress over, Keira is waiting for an acceptance letter from Spelman College. Malcolm has already been accepted to Morehouse, and is waxing poetic about the life they’ll lead together in Atlanta. Keira finds herself conflicted and unsure as to why (insert Steph’s voice yelling “YOU KNOW WHY”) but the controversy over Slay pushes all thought of her love life to the back burner, especially when a troll shows up in the game and threatens to tear down everything she’s worked so hard to build.

The Black Panther parallels are obvious: Brittney Morris has stated that that was a direct inspiration and it shows, lovingly without being derivative. Ms Morris has also stated that she didn’t know a thing about coding when she started writing Slay. To this former IT person, that very much shows as well. The idea of only two people running a game as complex and popular and allegedly beautiful and detailed as Slay is probably the most fantastic part of this otherwise quite grounded story. I was also a little eh at the idea that the VR gear necessary to play didn’t automatically make this game the purview of the relatively well-off, which leads to another issue I had: how very American it all is. Ms Morris tries her best to include elements of African heritage from all over the world, and while some parts succeed, others feel more worthy of a “well, you tried.” One of the coolest things about the Black Panther movie is that America is neither the default nor the gold standard: I understand how hard that would be to translate to an American-based YA novel tho. That said, the most affecting parts of the book were when we got to look at the home life of Q.Diamond, and when Keira fiiiiinally saw through Malcolm’s bullshit. This is an excellent book that addresses a lot of real issues, and I’m super glad I got to read it.

What I’m not super glad about was the publisher’s decision to distribute advance copies using Adobe Digital Editions. I get it, Amazon is evil, but at least their mobis are easily readable and portable across platforms. ADE’s acsm standards are hot garbage. First off, ADE is incredibly user-hostile, to the point that I had to download a separate eReader on my phone in order to open the acsm link at all. Then I discovered that the first page of every chapter is missing, due to ADE being unable to handle drop cap illustrations. Unbe-fucking-lievably, I was told to open the acsm on my PC to be read with Acrobat, to which I should not need two different programs on two different devices in order to access the same fucking text, Adobe! Please, publishers, for the love of God, stop handing these people money until they come up with a product that actually enhances the reading experience. Mobis expire too, if you’re that concerned about timing out reading permissions. Adobe sucks. Please stop torturing your readers by forcing us to use their terrible products.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/09/27/slay-by-brittney-morris/

Sep 26 2019

The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes, pt. 1

“Give it what it’s worth, Doug,” said my Cockney editor one afternoon before deadline when I asked how long a newspaper article should be. Richard Rhodes takes one of the most important stories in human history — the story of the discovery of atomic structure and how that structure could be opened up, releasing vast amounts of energy — and gives it what it’s worth. The Making of the Atomic Bomb is a great work, a magnum opus, 750 pages from Rutherford’s discovery of the atomic nucleus to the horrors of the military use of atomic energy in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Though he writes about the discovery of the fundamental forces of the universe, Rhodes never forgets or overlooks that people are doing the discovering. He captures their personalities — their backgrounds, their strengths, their sorrows, their philosophies, their styles, their foibles, and their rivalries — and sets them down on the page so that throughout the great work a reader has a clear sense of the humanity of science.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb

Rhodes opens the book with a chapter on Leo Szilard — “Hungarian theoretical physicist, born of Jewish heritage in Budapest” (p. 13) — one morning in London in September 1933. Within seven pages of introducing Szilard, Rhodes has sketched the milieu he grew up in, with a father who was a civil engineer and prosperous enough for the family to hire governesses who helped the children learn French and German. Upon graduating from school, Szilard won the Eötvös Prize, the Hungarian national prize in mathematics. Rhodes sets the stage for introducing later the amazing generation of Hungarian mathematicians and physicists who were Szilard’s contemporaries by noting that despite the prize, Szilard “felt that his skill in mathematical operations could not compete with that of his colleagues.” (p. 15) A brush with Spanish influenza got him sent home from his unit in the Austro-Hungarian army; he heard later that his regiment had come under severe attack in the waning days of World War I and practically wiped out. Szilard first chose engineering for his course of studies, but after moving to Berlin in the early 1920s and dabbling in chemistry, he found physics more suitable. “As soon as it became clear to Szilard that physics was his real interest, he introduced himself, with characteristic directness, to Albert Einstein.” (p. 16) Working under Max von Laue, Szilard received an obscure problem in relativity as his main task. Making no headway, he gave himself free rein to think over Christmas break. About what?

What he thought, in those three weeks, was how to solve a baffling inconsistency in thermodynamics … There are two thermodynamic theories, both highly successful at predicting heat phenomena. One, the phenomenological, is more abstract and generalized (and therefore more useful); the other, the statistical, is based on an atomic model and corresponds more closely to physical reality. In particular, the statistical theory depicts thermal equilibrium as a state of random motion of atoms. … But the more useful phenomenological theory treated thermal equilibrium as if it were static, a state of no change. That was the inconsistency.
Szilard went for long walks—Berlin would have been cold and gray, the grayness sometimes relieved by days of brilliant sunshine—’and I saw something in the middle of the walk; when I came home I wrote it down; next morning I woke up with a new idea and I went for another walk; this crystallized in my mind and in the evening I wrote it down. … Within three weeks I had produced a manuscript of something which was really quite original. But I didn’t dare to take it to von Laue, because it was not what he had asked me to do.’ (pp. 19–20)

What did Szilard do?

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/09/26/the-making-of-the-atomic-bomb-by-richard-rhodes-pt-1/

Sep 24 2019

Firefly – The Big Damn Cookbook by Chelsea Monroe-Cassel

God, this book is just so freaking gorgeous.

So I have a weekly cooking column over at CriminalElement.com called Cooking The Books, where I find mysteries with recipes and cook from them. Aside from your expected culinary cozies, I’ve also worked from the Red Sparrow series (yes, the basis of of the movie starring Jennifer Lawrence) as well as a promotional cookbook tie-in to Louise Penny’s celebrated Inspector Gamache novels, The Nature Of The Feast. This is the first time I’ve been able to cook for work from an honest-to-God hardcover cookbook, however, and what a gorgeous way to start!

The author of this volume, Chelsea Monroe-Cassel, is also the creative force behind The Inn At The Crossroads, a site I’ve admired for years (tho I have yet to try out the recipe for lemon cakes that first brought me there.) When Titan Books offered me a chance to review this cookbook, I leapt at it because also, as you might already know, I’ve long been a fan of the ‘Verse.

And oh, what an utterly rewarding book this is! Aside from being a surprisingly solid cookbook, it’s a love letter to the Firefly fan, digging up recipes even obliquely mentioned in the series and film for our delectation. Bonus: each of the ones I’ve tried so far has been incredibly fuss-free. Ms Monroe-Cassel is not only talented at coming up with recipes based on dialog and the occasional scene alone, but also knows how to write each recipe in a way that is informative and concise, a boon to any cook.

One such is the recipe for Five-Spice Mix, included in the section covering the Basics of cooking in the ‘Verse. In a future as heavily influenced by Earth-That-Was’ Chinese culture as by its Old West, this is an important seasoning used in a bunch of different dishes, including one we’ll try later on in this series of reviews. Oh yes, I’ll be reviewing this book over the course of four weeks, as we explore the different facets of cooking in this setting. So here, a (lightly edited for format) version of Ms Monroe-Cassel’s basic spice recipe:

“““`

Five-Spice Mix

2 tsp Sichuan or black peppercorns
5 star anise seeds
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp cinnamon
1 Tbsp fennel seeds

Toast the peppercorns in a hot skillet for 1-2 minutes, until aromatic. Put all ingredients in a spice grinder or coffee grinder and process to a fine powder. Keep fresh in an airtight container stored in a cool, dark place.

“““`

So I decided to use black pepper to spare the tastebuds of my lovely assistant Karin, who does not do well with spiciness and related mouthfeels, tho she’s generally okay with a bit of regular pepper. This worked out fine; less successful was my decision to use a plastic spice grinder that had previously housed sea salt. I wound up having to rectify that mistake with mortar and pestle, tho even then I don’t think I ground the star anise finely enough. The roughness of the end result does however add a dash of the provincial to an otherwise quite sophisticated blend. Karin pointed out that I could probably just have used store-bought but honestly, this tasted so much fresher. I’d highly recommend using a metal bladed grinder tho, for the rest of you trying this at home.

Next week, we’ll talk about the organization of the book, by which I mean I’ll continue to wax poetic over Ms Monroe-Cassel’s talents as a cookbook author, while considering a delicious beverage recipe. Do join me!

“““`

11/13/2019 Click on these links for Parts Two, Three and Four of the series!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/09/24/firefly-the-big-damn-cookbook-by-chelsea-monroe-cassel/

Sep 21 2019

Schellingstrasse 48 by Walter Kolbenhoff

For all that it is a Millionenstadt, Munich can also be quite a small town. Literary and artistic Munich even more so. Thus it’s not very surprising that in Schellingstrasse 48 (48 Schelling St.), Walter Kolbenhoff’s memoir of the Nazi era, POW internment in America, and early post-war Munich, other authors from the Süddeutsche Zeitung‘s series of 20 books about Munich make appearances. Oskar Maria Graf, whose Der ewige Spiesser followed two books after Wir sind Gefangene came two books before Kolbenhoff’s in the series, was an occasional visitor to Schellingstrasse. Kolbenhoff uses a well-known phrase from Thomas Mann that the Süddeutsche later used as the title for the Mann volume in the series. Alfred Andersch, author of Der Vater eines Mörders was in the same POW camps as Kolbenhoff in Louisiana and Pennsylvania; they were both involved in a POW publication called Der Ruf as well as a successor of the same name published in Munich after the war; later they were both involved in early post-war West Germany’s most important literary movement, Gruppe 47. In short: Munich connected.

Schellingstrasse 48

Kolbenhoff himself was surprised to wind up in Munich. He was a Berliner born and bred. As a young apprentice, he wandered far and wide in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. He felt drawn to southern lands. He returned to Berlin, but the advent of Nazi power forced him into exile, and he landed in Copenhagen. That city welcomed him, and he felt at home there, learning Danish and plying various trades until the war took an interest in him. After his release from American internment, he fully intended to return there. Chance, in the form of a letter from a fellow prisoner to his family in rural Bavaria, took Kolbenhoff to southern Germany. The family turned out to be local gentry, and at a time when meager rations made malnutrition a common experience in German cities, Kolbenhoff found himself living well as a practical adoptee of well-off farmers. In the bitter months of 1946, he was warm and well fed. The war seemed hardly to have touched Bad Aibling.

Nevertheless, errands take him into the big city. Munich is in ruins, former soldiers are everywhere scrounging food and cigarettes, “women in worn-out dresses and coats. The faces were without expression, the eyes cast down and without the slightest emotion. I saw no children. I was seized by an uncanny loneliness and despair. Get out of this city, just get out!” (p. 16, my translations throughout) A few steps later, though, he sees a notice — “All book printers, typesetters, letter-makers, book binders, etc. report to Alfred Andersch, Schellingstrasse 39.” (p. 16) — and resolves to check whether it is his old friend with the unusual name. It is indeed, and Andersch has landed at a newspaper approved and supplied by the US occupation authorities. By the end of the afternoon, Kolbenhoff has a job at the paper, has met the renowned author Erich Kästner, and has a line on one of the rarest goods in Munich: an intact dwelling. “‘What a day,’ [in English in the original] I thought when I stood outside [of the newspaper offices] on Schellingstrasse again.” (p. 22)

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/09/21/schellingstrasse-48-by-walter-kolbenhoff/

Sep 20 2019

Lines Composed a Few Yards from Schlachtensee, With Apologies to W.W.

Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I read
These pages, rolled from their printing-press
With a rotary hum.—Once again
Do I behold those last and polished drafts
That many a wild scene describe,
Acts the more connected to themes
And th’ arguments of the plays.
The day is come when I again review
Here, under Frumious name, and mark
These plots of novels bound, these biographies
Which in these bindings, with their full-told lives
Are kept on two small shelves, and lose themselves
‘Mid tales and mysteries. Once again I see
These fantasies, this science fiction, splendid works
Of planets near and far, fantastic fables,
Beasts in their secret lairs; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from the wizard’s pipe!
Their affairs unmeddled, in chapters new,
Or of some Reader’s room, where in plush comfort
The Reader sits alone.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/09/20/lines-composed-a-few-yards-from-schlachtensee-with-apologies-to-w-w/

Sep 17 2019

Wonderland: An Anthology edited by Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane

First of all, Titan Books just has the best speculative fiction short story anthologies. Between this and the recent Wastelands 3: The New Apocalypse alone, I feel entirely spoiled with exposure to some of the best minds working in fantastic fiction today. Wonderland collects 20 brand new short works (18 stories, plus two poems from Jane Yolen) inspired by Lewis Carroll’s classics, that run the gamut from luminous to terrifying, with every shade of wonder in between. Whether looking at Wonderland from a historical perspective or diving into its text as presented by Mr Carroll himself or re-setting the proceedings in different times and places, these 20 inventive gems carve out new space in our collective psyches for Wonderland to inhabit.

Personal disclosure time: my first starring role as an actress was in my primary school’s adaptation of Alice In Wonderland. I was cast as the White Rabbit but wound up having that supporting role enlarged — given more lines, given more time on-stage, given more motivations and things to do — to reflect my talent, which happened a lot during my too-brief stage career. It was a bit like how Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter became so much more important in the Tim Burton film than in any other adaptation, tho I likely got better reviews for my performance than he did (seriously, a national paper said I stole every scene I was in. I’m still not sure what they were doing at my school play, but I imagine it was a slow week in the human interest pages.) Anyway, this formative experience goes a long way towards explaining why I’m so fond of this setting and of any adaptations thereof.

That said, it’s perhaps surprising that my favorites of the collection were probably the least traditional, going all out with a sci-fi bent, as M. R. Carey’s There Were No Birds To Fly and Cavan Scott’s Dream Girl did. The period pieces definitely gave them a run for their money, tho. I loved Genevieve Cogman’s The White Queen’s Pawn, as well as Juliet Marillier’s Good Dog, Alice!, both set in a post-Victorian Britain somewhat askew from the one we inhabited. I also adored the more far-flung adaptations, particularly Angela Slatter’s Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em and L. L. McKinney’s What Makes A Monster, the latter so much so that I’ve requested her full-length novel, A Blade So Black (set in the same universe as the short story,) from my local library. The hallmark of a good short story collection, after all, isn’t just to satisfy, but also to whet the readers’ appetite for more of the writers’ works.

Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane have done an amazing job curating this anthology. We at the Frumious have been given the chance to interview them about it, so look out for that in the coming weeks! In the meantime, feel free to hop over to any of the other sites featured on the Wonderland book tour, beautifully illustrated in the graphic at right.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/09/17/wonderland-an-anthology-edited-by-marie-oregan-and-paul-kane/

Sep 14 2019

Benjamin Franklin by Walter Isaacson

On the second page of his biography of Benjamin Franklin, Walter Isaacson offers a thumbnail sketch of his subject: “He was, during his eighty-four-year-long life, America’s best scientist, inventor, dimplomat, writer, and business strategist, and he was also one of its most practical, though not most profound, political thinkers. He proved by flying a kite that lightning was electricity, and he invented a rod to tame it. He devised bifocal glasses and clear-burning stoves, charts of the Gulf Stream and theories about the contagious nature of the common cold. He launched various civic improvement schemes, such as a lending library, college, volunteer fire corps, insurance association, and matching grant fund-raiser. He helped invent America’s unique style of homespun humor and philosophical pragmatism. In foreign policy, he created an approach that wove together idealism with balance-of-power realism. And in politics, he proposed seminal plans for uniting the colonies and creating a federal model for a national government.” The rest of the book, just shy of 500 pages, fills in the details of this set of characterizations. Some of Isaacson’s assertions are debatable — that homespun humor or philosophical pragmatism are unique to America, for example — but his characterization of Franklin is accurate, and carries through the narrative of his life.

Benjamin Franklin

But wait, there’s more! as Franklin himself might say. “But the most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself. America’s first great publicist, he was, in his life and writings, consciously trying to create a new American archetype. In this process, he carefully crafted his own persona, portrayed it in public, and polished it for posterity.” (p. 2) Throughout the book, Isaacson gives examples of how shrewdly Franklin cultivated other people’s perceptions of himself and his work and ideas. “As a young printer in Philadelphia, he carted rolls of paper through the streets to give the appearance of being industrious. As an old diplomat in France, he wore a fur cap to portray the role of backwoods sage. In between, he created an image of himself as a simple yet aspiring tradesman, assiduously honing the virtues—diligence, frugality, honesty—of a good shopkeeper and beneficent member of his community.” (pp. 2–3)

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/09/14/benjamin-franklin-by-walter-isaacson/

Sep 12 2019

How To by Randall Munroe

Randall Munroe, creator of xkcd, asks how to do various things — jump really high, throw things, build a lava moat, and a couple dozen more — and considers approaches that are both sound and absurd. Hilarity ensues. The book begins with an earnest disclaimer, a plea not to take the title as a guide. “Do not try any of this at home. The author of this book is an internet cartoonist, not a health or safety expert. He likes it when things catch fire or explode, which means he does not have your best interests in mind.”

How To

If that did not drive the point home, the first sentence of the introduction reads, “This is a book of bad ideas.” He then undercuts himself by saying that although “smearing mold on an infected wound sounds like a terrible idea,” that is basically what penicillin is. The underlying matter of the book, then, is not just how to tell good ideas from bad, but how exploring even cockamamie ideas can lead to interesting insights and, occasionally, solutions to apparently intractable problems. You might not think that lowering a heavy rover on a tether from a hovering spacecraft is the best way to get the rover to the surface of Mars. In fact, at first glance it would appear either impossible or overly complicated, but that is in fact how Curiosity touched down, for reasons that Munroe explains.

He adds, “This book explores unusual approaches to common tasks, and looks at what would happen to you if you tried them. Figuring out why they would or wouldn’t work can be fun and informative and sometimes leads you to surprising places. Maybe an idea is bad, but figuring out exactly why it’s a bad idea can teach you a lot—and might help you think of a better approach.”

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/09/12/how-to-by-randall-munroe/

Sep 10 2019

Planet of Exile by Ursula K. Le Guin

Winter is coming. The orbit of the planet Werel gives it winters that last five thousand nights, give or take. Sound familiar? Well, Planet of Exile was published in 1966, four years before George R.R. Martin sold his first professional story.

Planet of Exile

As in Le Guin’s other Hainish stories, humans have been on Werel a very long time and have adapted to local conditions. The indigenous people, the Tevarans, have a low level of technology but have devised various strategies for coping with the winter. Nomadic, or semi-nomadic during the temperate seasons, they build up stores for the coming winter and construct mostly-underground dwellings where they can stay warmer and wait out the long cold season. Another group of indigenous people, the Gaal, relocate from the latitudes depicted in Planet of Exile to warmer climes where, presumably, they can survive without the elaborate preparations undertaken by the Tevarans. The Gaal are known as raiders. They pass through the Tevaran territory, taking what they can, but mostly they are in a hurry to move south, so it is not too difficult to fend them off.

A third group of people on Werel are the farborn, as the Tevarans call them, descendants of colonists who arrived on slower-than-light interstellar ships many generations ago. Operating under something like the Prime Directive, the settlers made minimal use of technology so as not to disturb the local societies any more than necessary. The colonists expected to assist the indigenous people as they acquired increasing levels of technology. The colonists also expected to be in periodic contact with the starfaring civilization that sent them forth. Unfortunately, neither of these happened, and they have gradually lost the technology that they came with; knowledge of the stars has largely retreated into legend by the time Planet of Exile begins. Nor can they interbreed with the local populace, and their numbers are dwindling slowly but steadily.

Planet of Exile tells of the season when all of those verities failed to hold. The Gaal have changed their tactics. Instead of raiding a bit as they pass through, they are moving more slowly but systematically razing or taking everything in their path. Traditional Tevaran methods will never hold them off. Rolery of Wold’s Kin, a young Tevaran woman out of place in her society, is rescued from certain death by Jakob Agat Alterra, a young farborn man, and a leader among them. Their first contact breaks taboos on both sides; the bond they forge will break more but prove crucial if their two peoples are to survive the conflict that is coming.

The book is only 100 pages, it might even count as a novella in today’s market, and yet it puts forward a coherent world, two and a half richly imagined human societies, and complex relationships among the people it introduces. Like many science fiction stories of its time, Planet of Exile posits telepathy as something that exists and could be developed in various forms, given the proper combination of talent and practice.

Le Guin’s background with anthropology is clearly visible: the Gaal and the impending winter provide the danger, but the real conflicts in the story arise from the clash of the worldviews of the farborn and the Tevarans. Their worldviews have allowed them to survive, but not they may very precisely stand in the way of survival. Like people everywhere, both groups are loathe to change fundamental ways of dealing with the world, even in the face of shattering evidence and opportunity to do things differently. Because Planet of Exile is not a tragedy or a dystopia, they do find partial means of reaching beyond what they have known, but not without substantial cost. In just her second novel, Le Guin is already reaching deeply into societies and people, without losing and of the narrative verve that lets her finish her tale in the time that a twenty-first century author might still just be warming up.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/09/10/planet-of-exile-by-ursula-k-le-guin/