The Re-Possessed
Ursula K. Le Guin storms the Library of America.
April 30, 2021
More by Jason P. Vest
The Ten Most Notable Science-Fiction Novels of the Past Ten Years
Given how busy we all are, particularly as the pandemic recedes, perhaps we should thank these lists (and their makers) for not wasting our time or abusing our goodwill, but instead helping us hack our way through that ever-growing thicket of anime, books, films, podcasts, manga, radio shows, stage plays, television series, video games, and the endless number of other cultural productions we feel honor-bound to track despite this impulse being a forever-frustrated wish that, to switch metaphors, cultural capital’s always-hungry maw ensures will never be satisfied.
Pharewell, Phil: Philip K. Dick (1928-1982)
On this day, the fortieth anniversary of his untimely death, I come to praise Philip K. Dick, not to bury him.
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In Small-Town Indiana, LAM Runs a Lost and Found for the Forgotten Among Us
If you have ever cared for an addict, you know the desperate feeling of no easy solutions. Science has no inoculation or cure, so treatment is a combination of lengthy and often expensive behavioral and pharmacologic therapies that still depend on “the individual’s desire to change,” as LAM puts it.
The Curious Second Act of Chuck Colson
The “hatchet man” for President Nixon, and a chief architect of both Nixon’s “dirty tricks” and the team of “Plumbers” who schemed to smear, libel, drug, and, in at least one case, even assassinate the president’s vast list of “enemies,” lived not just to endure the stain of a criminal conviction and seven months in federal prison, but seemingly transcend it. Watergate historians, however, are not so kind.
The Speed Machine and the Rebirth of a Champion
British Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton’s move to Scuderia Ferrari signals a second act, a new opportunity to emerge victorious not only on the track but also to continue pushing the limits of what is possible beyond it.