reading notes

by Armand Marie Leroi
ISBN: 0670031100
Leroi is fascinated with the development of bodies. The sort of body-sculpting that happens in the gym or with the plastic surgeon’s knife isn’t his thing, the growing of five fingers or six on a hand still in the womb is.
His fascination is rendered in clinical terms. He doesn’t talk about [...]

by George Saunders
illustrated by Lane Smith
ISBN: 0375503838
In case I wasn’t entirely clear on this point earlier, I love George Saunders. He may be a genius.
Frip is a small (three-house) goat-keeping village. Gappers are spiky orange critters with “multiple eyes like the eyes on a potato.” Gappers shriek with joy when they get near a goat. [...]

by Walton Ford
ISBN: 0810932865
Walton Ford’s images almost look like they could be be plates from a nineteenth century naturalist’s publication — almost, that is, except for the starling doling out chocolates from a bad of Hershey’s kisses. And except for the sex, the violence, and the simians holding the skull of homo sapiens.
Which is [...]

by Steven Johnson
ISBN: 0684868768
Ants — and slime mold — are more interesting, and more intelligent, than I ever would have guessed. Their intelligence isn’t the same as human intelligence, as I wouldn’t exactly say slime mold or ants are sentient. What they do possess is a kind of “swarm intelligence” or emergence.
Emergence is a term [...]

by George Saunders
ISBN: 1573225797
Saunders writes sick, funny stories.
In the six stories and one novella in this collection, culture has collapsed. Capitalism has run amok, slavery is legal, and the environment is so toxic mutations are commonplace. The system, such as it is, is so big the working cogs in the machine are in near-constant [...]