This book seems to focus on people with either acquired or inborn neurodivergences who have adapted to their situations and live, in a sense, in very different worlds from ours.
After reading: yes, this supposition is correct Most are leading successful, if different lives, except for ‘the last hippy’ of chapter 2.
Continue reading EP#22: An Anthropologist on Mars, Oliver SacksViews: 34
The Saint of Bright Doors, Vajra Chandrasekara, 2023
This is an acclaimed science fiction book that has gathered both critical and popular praise. I read it a couple of years ago — I try to read the ‘best of the year’ books in SF – and it didn’t engage me, although I did manage to finish it. I am now reading it a second time, as part of a Science Fiction and Fantasy course I’m taking at the U, and am going to try harder to appreciate it; or at least to understand what others appreciate in it. And perhaps also reflect on aspects of it that prevent me from appreciating it.
At this point I’ve just started the re-read it. I am noticing some very nice turns of phrase. I also notice that the protagonist begins as, in a sense, an abused child who is being trained to do terrible things by a mother who sees him only as a tool. I’m not really noticing much in the way of love or affection or humor among any of the characters.
Continue reading The Saint of Bright Doors, Vajra ChandrasekaraViews: 7
Taught by Prof. Sadia Khatri
This is an entirely-online asynchronous course. I am not quite sure what level of notes I’ll keep here yet. For starters, here is the course description.
By depicting invented worlds that differ in some way from the real world, fantastika pushes us to interrogate our present lives, politics, and social structures. […] Through diverse literary texts, and some films, we will explore imagined and extraordinary terrains, characters, cultures, ecologies, genders, languages, races, histories, and technologies. We will ask, what does the unreal reveal about our real lives?
Required Texts
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