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Books & Literature

Big Tech, Nostalgia, and Control: Grafton Tanner’s ‘The Circle of the Snake’

By Michael Grasso

I’m sure many members of Generation X have taken a moment to look around the pop culture landscape over the past decade and a half and had a sudden moment of realization: there are certainly a whole lot of people trying to sell me things using the media of my youth…

December 15, 2020 in Books & Literature.

“A Peculiar State of Poise”: Ursula K. Le Guin’s ‘The Lathe of Heaven’

By Noah Berlatsky

Le Guin was always ambivalent about revolution, and especially about revolutionary violence… 

December 9, 2020 in Books & Literature.

Eaten Alive: James Herbert’s ‘Rats’ Trilogy

By M.L. Schepps

When 30-year-old ad-man James Herbert set out to write a novel, he had a simple goal in mind: “to show you what it was really like to have your leg chewed by a mutant creature.”

December 1, 2020 in Books & Literature.

Dead Shells and Black Plaques: ‘The English Heretic Collection’

By Michael Grasso

Using as its inspiration English Heritage, who preserve the very bones and sinews of English feudal hierarchy in the form of the nation’s stately homes and historical sites, Sharp’s English Heretic project seeks to détourne these edifices of authority…

October 26, 2020 in Books & Literature.

Millennials Are the Greatest Generation: Ira Levin’s ‘A Kiss Before Dying’

By Noah Berlatsky

Tom Brokaw popularized the term “The Greatest Generation” in 1998 to describe the Americans—and especially the American men—who survived the Depression and fought against Nazism in World War II. Brokaw saw this cohort in valedictory, heroic terms…

August 25, 2020 in Books & Literature.

“A New Self”: The Radical Imagination of Ernest Callenbach’s ‘Ecotopia’

By Michael Grasso

Visualizing a better world has never been more important, or more difficult. The promise of utopia—or at least a world that places its values on health, happiness, and lovingkindness—has been an object of pursuit for philosophers, theologians, and regular folks since the dawn of human civilization…

August 4, 2020 in Books & Literature.

All the Colors Above Them: Gloria Miklowitz’s ‘The War Between the Classes’

By Eve Tushnet

Assign teenagers to different socioeconomic classes and require the lower classes to perform humiliating rituals of obeisance to the upper. Give other students the power to enforce class boundaries and punish those who get ideas above their station…

July 14, 2020 in Books & Literature.

“Style Is Surely Our Own Thing”: Nate Patrin’s ‘Bring That Beat Back’

By Michael Grasso

It’s practically impossible to imagine popular music in the year 2020 without taking into account the central role digital sampling now plays in making beats and reshaping melodies…

July 8, 2020 in Books & Literature.

“No Bars Between Us”: Joanna Russ, Gwyneth Jones, and the Feminist Utopia

By Noah Berlatsky

Gwyneth Jones’s new critical biography of Joanna Russ for the Modern Masters of Science Fiction series (called simply Joanna Russ) seems less like an academic reconsideration than a continuation of its subject’s oeuvre…

June 18, 2020 in Books & Literature.

Debt of Honor: The Complex Reality of 1980s War Comics

By Mike Apichella

Marvel Comics’ The ‘Nam, DC’s G.I. Combat and Weird War Tales, and Charlton’s Battlefield Action eschewed “feel good” war stories in order to focus on the far-reaching consequences of physical violence, the shifty political motives of the Cold War, and the universal philosophies that define military service…

May 26, 2020 in Books & Literature.

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