Fugue for a Darkening Island by Christopher Priest

See that image above? That’s a map of heavily populated places where, by 2050, it’s estimated mass flooding is very likely to occur on a yearly basis by 2050. (It’s taken from here.) The relevance to this book review will be clear, if you read on.  I will start by saying that I wrote this long reflection on what is ultimately an obscure novel about a refugee crisis in Britain back in November, when illness forced me to rest for a couple of days and I finally read it after having it around for literally decades and never having gotten …

Continue Reading

Links You Should Check Out

Today, I was reminded of why I stopped doing these link roundups: they’re time-consuming to produce. I’ll probably switch to just tweeting or linking on Facebook, like almost everyone else I know, and this is probably the last post like this I’ll do. But anyway: Typhoon Haiyan: We were lucky: it was much-diminished when it hit Vietnam, and on top of that, it landed nowhere near us. Folks in the Philippines were nowhere near so lucky, and pretty desperately need our help. Climate change is apparently making storms (and other extreme weather events) worse, so events like Haiyan are likely …

Continue Reading