UPDATE (7 August 2011): Well, that serves me right for complaining so long after the annoyances. They sorted it out sometime in July, according to someone at the Korean office, who offered an “apology for the inconvenience.” I just wish they’d sort out the inconveniences faster next time: it doesn’t take six months to...
Read more →mfreq Sometimes I think that we’re forgetting a certain kind of creativity in the hothouse world of genre fiction — a sense of freedom, actually, is what I mean. Yes, among us number the people who write the really weird stuff — audacious time travel narratives that turn all the tropes on their ear inteligently;...
Read more →finding-george-in-burma Of late, I’ve been on a sort of kick where I want to read short books — books of fewer than 300 pages, in general, often even shorter. As I’ve been on this kick, I’ve run into pairs of writings that explore the same basic terrain at different lengths. I mentioned this when I...
Read more →Well, a few days ago I finished tearing through Patricia Anthony’s Happy Policeman. I wanted to post a review then, but the Internet was pretty much ruined on campus and didn’t start up again till yesterday. Reflecting on my feelings about the book, I am left once again wondering why she is one of...
Read more →I don’t know if this is the first case of attempted first contact, but it might well be: In 1913, David Todd made a flamboyant and well-publicized attempt to establish radio contact with Martians. “Assuming that there is life on Mars,” he told the New York Times, echoing the views of his old friend...
Read more →This book should be required reading for all who want to talk about Korea’s constant, deep-seated anxiety regarding the lack of a place in the Western imagination held by South Korea, and many Koreans’ jealousy of the place that Japan and China have in the Western mind, the foolish attempts to “brand” Korea and...
Read more →Another day, another brewday. This one has a backstory, though. A while back, I tried to make a RyePA, which if you don’t know the substyle is simply an IPA — often an American IPA, as far as I can tell — that has a significant amount of rye malt in the grist. I...
Read more →I don’t know how much of this is going on in Seoul, but I was pleased to run across a channel on Youtube featuring a bunch of it. Now, when I say “contemporary music” I don’t mean people playing Beatles songs on traditional instruments. I especially don’t mean “fusion” music where people on traditional...
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