Recent Quotes 📖

• Do not turn a stranger away from your oil jar
  That it may be made double for your family.
  God loves him who cares for the poor,
  More than him who respects the wealthy.

  an excerpt from Instruction of Amenemope, written by Amenemope in -1500

• Man is clay and straw,
  And God is his potter;
  He overthrows and he builds daily,
  He impoverishes a thousand if He wishes.
  He makes a thousand into examiners,
  When He is in His hour of life.
  How fortunate is he who reaches the West,
  When he is safe in the hand of God.

  an excerpt from Instruction of Amenemope, written by Amenemope in -1500

• Do not be avaricious for copper,
  And abjure fine clothes;
  What good is one cloaked in fine linen woven as mek,
  When he cheats before God.
  When gold is heaped upon gold,
  At daybreak it turns to lead.

  an excerpt from Instruction of Amenemope, written by Amenemope in -1500

Recent Notes 📓

• In short: shortly before the collapse of human space society, we engineered an 'uplift' virus that can take a barrel of monkeys and speed up their evolution. Thus we don't just terraform a planet, but we seed it with human-like critters and hope to terraform a whole civilization from scratch. It goes wrong, of course - but it goes wrong in surprising ways. And THEN a generation ship from the post-collapse rebuilt human society (which is ALSO collapsing) shows up to investigate.

  an note about Children of Time, written by Adrian Tchaikovsky in 2015

• The thing I'm looking for in a scifi book is an interesting IDEA. I don't really expect them to be well-written; they don't need to stand alone on their literary merits. I mean, it's great if they do - LeGuin can do it! And this one was fine.
  
  But this is a good one where the sheer invention of the concept powered through. 500-600 pages in and I was still being delighted and surprised by how Tchaikovsky spins out his central concept.

  an note about Children of Time, written by Adrian Tchaikovsky in 2015

• Griffith does do an incredible job of making this historical novel feel like fantasy: if you like the endless series of foreign sounding names and places, kings and retainers, geography and squabbling over petty kingdoms from medieval fantasies, you'll dig these. I didn't check but presumably all the places and kinds were real.
  
  Honestly, I was annoyed to be thinking of Game of Thrones too much during this. Did GRRM ruin this time period altogether?

  an note about Menewood, written by Nicola Griffith in 2023

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