Prophus

The World According to Tao (and Wesley Chu)

In traditional Chinese philosophy, the Tao is the intuitive knowing of “life” that cannot be grasped full-heartedly as just a concept but is known nonetheless through actual living experience of one’s everyday being.* That’s not the Tao I’m talking about. Not really. The Tao I’m referring to is […]

LitStack’s ‘In Case You Missed It’ Review: The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu

The Lives of Tao Wesley Chu Angry Robot Release Date: April 30, 2013 ISBN 978-0-85766-329-0 Ok, raise your hand if you’ve ever wondered, or ever suspected, or even mused that perhaps throughout our history, humanity has been influenced by beings outside our gene pool. Admit it, you have, right? Maybe […]

Birthdays

On this day, March 5, in 1952, Margaret Astrid Lindholm (better known under the pen names of Robin Hobb and Megan Lindholm) was born in Berkeley, California. As Robin Hobb, she is the author many works of epic traditional fantasy, including The Farseer Trilogy (which began with Assassin’s Apprentice), The Liveship Traders Trilogy, and the Tawny Man Trilogy. She also writes as Megan Lindholm, and her works under that name have been finalists for the Hugo award, the Nebula Award and the Endeavor award. She has won an Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Readers’ Award twice, and in 2014 she was a Guest of Honor at the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention in London. Today, she turns 69.

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.