Summary:
- Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II
- The story told here is just as appalling as the sub-title promises.
Blackmon focuses on Alabama, but makes it clear that stuff like this happened
all over the South. Since this is popular non-fiction rather than professional
history, there is a bit more of you-are-there detail than I like, and I wish
there had been more about things like the Great Migration and the impact of
agricultural mechanization.
-
Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country
- Mind candy: the mis-adventures of an African-American family of science
fiction fans in 1950s Chicago, in a world where it's not clear whether eldritch
abominations or ordinary life is more soul-destroying.
It's a bit episodic, but still well done.
(Previously for
Ruff.)
- Jo Walton, The Just City
- This is, obviously, exactly what would happen if Athena and Apollo
conspired to realize The
Republic with a population of time-traveling Platonists, 10,800
child slaves bought in antiquity, and robots. Exactly what would
happen, down to Socrates trolling everyone so hard that, well --- read it.
- Genre note: I thought the chapters from Simmea's viewpoint did a very good
job of both sounding plausible, and playing off the now-well-worn
conventions of young adult dystopias. Because, of course, from a certain angle
that's what the the Republic would be.
- (Shoved to the top of the pile by the
outstanding Crooked
Timber symposium on this book and its sequel [which is on its way to me].)
-
Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Blades
- Mind-candy fantasy, sequel
to City of
Stairs, continuing the story of how the first technological power in
a fantasy world deals with the consequences of having killed all the gods. It
is as awesome as its predecessor, though I should perhaps say that Bennett is
quite prepared to deal brutally with sympathetic characters. (There was a
moment near the end where I thought he was going to reprise the cyclical
metaphysics
of Mr. Shivers,
but fortunately I was wrong.)
-
J. H. Conway, Regular Algebra and Finite Machines
- I liked the first half or so. In particular, the notion of the derivative
of one regular event with respect to another is neat in itself, and the
corresponding Taylor series gives a very direct way of translating a regular
expression into a finite machine. But then Conway zoomed off into the
algebraic stratosphere, and if there was any tether connecting him back to
actual problems with formal languages or automata, I completely lost track of
it, and didn't see the point.
- (This is formally self-contained as far as automata and language theory
goes, but definitely presumes a strong grasp of abstract algebra. Its full
appreciation also evidently presumes more mathematical maturity than I
possess.)
Link:
http://bactra.org/weblog/algae-2016-02.html
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Three-Toed Sloth
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Date tagged:
04/01/2016, 18:03
Date published:
04/01/2016, 18:03