ambassador

Gimbling in the Wabe – A Momentary Lapse in Reality

This is the third in a series of my reminisces of traveling to Soviet Russia in May – June 1989, piqued from watching the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Although time has brought many changes to both that iconic city and to my own life, before I share this final […]

LitStack Review: The Human Division by John Scalzi

The Human Division John Scalzi Tor Books Release Date: May 14, 2013 ISBN 978-0-7653-3351-3 John Scalzi may just single-handedly bring me back to the “science fiction” half of the “science fiction and fantasy” genre. I used to enjoy reading tales of space exploration and alien life; Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, […]

Birthdays

On this day, August 11, in 1921, Alex Haley was born in Ithaca, New York. He was author of the 1976 novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family, a fictionalized account of his own family’s history, for which he was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize. One year later, the book was made into the popular television miniseries, “Roots”, which was seen by a record breaking 130 million viewers. He also was the ghostwriter for The Autobiography of Malcolm X. He died of a heart attack in 1992; he was 80.

Birthdays

On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.