Lydia Schoch

Here is this week’s list of blog posts and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

From Life and Death in Assisted Living:

During a tour, a salesperson gave Myron and his two sons, Eric and Mark, a brochure. “Just because she’s confused at times,” the brochure reassured them, “doesn’t mean she has to lose her independence.”

Here are a few things the brochure didn’t mention:

Just months earlier, Emeritus supervisors had audited the facility’s process for handling medications. It had been found wanting in almost every important regard. And, in truth, those “specially trained” staffers hadn’t actually been trained to care for people with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, a violation of California law.

Steampunk – Hybridity and Fantasy. I’ve never quite figured out why the Steampunk subculture annoys me so much, but this article gives a good explanation of why it bothers other people.

How to Disagree. I couldn’t agree with this more. A lot can be learned about someone’s character by observing how they handle disagreements. We all have bad days and sensitive topics, though, so I look for behaviour patterns over months or years if it is at all possible.

The Kindness of Beasts. These kinds of stories make me wish animals could talk. I’d love to know what’s going through their minds when they risk their own safety to help others.

The World Religions Tree. A map of every religion known on earth that shows how how they are all connected to one another. I could spend all morning zooming in and out again to discover new similarities between denominations and religions that I never would have imagined. And just think – had any of us been born at a different time or place  we very likely would have ended up believing in an entirely different religion!

Letter to a Drive-By Antisemite via AutistLiam. What a humorous reaction to what must have been an incredibly frustrating interaction! I’ll admit to feeling quite curious about the outfits some people wear for (what I assume are) religious reasons, but I’ve never had the urge to ask such personal questions. It makes me wonder about how the antagonist in this blog post grew up. Was he bullied about things beyond his control? Did his grandmother/teacher/neighbour ask him incredibly inappropriate things? Did he grow up in a family that ridiculed empathy? I believe people are born good. Emotional callousness is something that develops later on for some folks.

The Trouble with the Poor. If the first sentence of this post doesn’t make you want to read it, nothing will:

The trouble with the poor is that they are messy.

Pets are weird. My Dog the Paradox explores all of the reasons why this is so.

What is even odder is how attached humans get to the cats, dogs, rabbits, reptiles, rodents, birds, and other creatures that burrow into our hearts. Our ancestors originally domesticated them for practical reasons in many cases, but we live with them because we love them.

For several years during our childhood my oldest brother, Jesse, had a constant companion named Cubby. Cubby was a small, mixed breed dog who wasn’t the sharpest crayon in the box.  He believed that bubbles were the biggest threat to our family and attacked every one that magically appeared in the house to keep us safe. You don’t have to be intelligent to love and protect your humans.

If you gave him a carrot he’d gnaw it all the way to the stub, find a quiet corner of the house and then vomit up everything he had eaten. In the summer he’d lick one side of a popsicle while my brother licked the other. He had the most terrible gas ever known to mankind (possibly because he lived with a houseful of children who fed him strange things because they didn’t know any better).

What have you been reading? What is the weirdest thing one of your pets has ever done?

Photo by The Mighty Tim Inconnu.

Just tuning in? Start here.

“Shhh!”

Isaac quietly latched the front door as Ephraim winced his way to the kitchen table. Lemon was the only member of the household awakened by their late entrance. So far. He whined and limply wagged his tail as his humans gathered up medical supplies and began cleaning their wounds.

“Are you sure we lost them?” Ephraim whispered. The jagged cut on his thigh was beginning to congeal, but he knew it would heal faster if he cleaned the dirt out and washed it with something alcoholic.

“No, it was too dark to tell. And Aunt Rachel told me we’d be safer here than anywhere else.” Isaac gingerly dabbed his forehead. There would be a nasty bruise to explain away tomorrow morning, but at least the skin wasn’t broken. The limited medical training he’d absorbed from his brother’s studies was beginning to kick in. He wasn’t dizzy or nauseous and so far his sight seemed normal. Isaac knew these were good signs after a head injury.

“Caca.”

“They don’t know this valley the way we do. I’m sure we lost them.”

Ephraim frowned at his brother as he finished wrapping his thigh in a clean bandage.

“Did you see where the kids ran?”

“No, we’ll have to search for them again tomorrow. Aunt Rachel can’t possibly take care of them herself in her condition, and you know how useless Bernard is in a crisis.” The husband of Rachel’s and MacArthur’s second daughter had bolted as soon as the soldiers attacked, leaving the remaining members of the family to gather up the children and make a dash for it. What had been truly bizarre, though, was how easily the soldiers were able to track him down. Bernard was an expert hunter and sheepherder, and he knew of small, hidden caverns in this valley that were a mystery to even to his most adventurous neighbours.

In the middle of the night he should have easily been able to slip through the fingers of men and women who had virtually no knowledge of the terrain. Long after Ephraim and Lemon fell asleep Isaac lay quietly next to them wondering what exactly had happened a few hours earlier.

The house was dull the next morning. Daphne struggled to extract even the most cursory information from her sons over breakfast once she’d noticed the wound on Isaac’s head.

Isaac had been secretly sharing food and water with the Eversons. When his brother found out what was happening Isaac had bribed Ephraim into keeping his secret.

The Eversons had abruptly moved camp since Isaac’s last visit, though, and it had taken longer than they expected to find them yesterday. Their near-relatives had recently been visited by the public health nurse, and Bernard’s suspicion of the humourless soldiers who accompanied her lead him to seeking out a new place to sleep as they slowly rebuilt a new home for the family.

No one had expected the soldiers to find their new camp so quickly or for what was supposed to be a simple debriefing to turn ugly. Bernard was charged with moving without a license, and when he gave a snarky reply to the officer who fined him all hell broke loose. Isaac didn’t mention how easily she found Bernard once he ran away or how close her soldiers came to following Isaac and Ephraim home. None of it made sense to him and he didn’t want his mother to worry.

“Moving to a new home or helping somebody else move is a crime now,” Ephraim said. “We’re supposed to stay put until the census is finished and everyone has been vaccinated.”

Daphne’s arm still twinged now and again, and she reflexively rubbed the spot where she had received her vaccination.

“Speaking of which, you two need your vaccinations. The public health nurse said she’d come by again to see you when she had time in her schedule.”

“We can’t, we have plans today.”

“It really is important, boys. Their medicine is so strong it can cure you before you’re sick.” Daphne still found it hard to believe, but she was grateful for any help the strangers could offer. Her grandfather was the community’s doctor until shortly before his death. She’d seen too many young, healthy people struck down in the prime of life even when Mingus Valley had a doctor. The death rate rose sharply each time the previous doctor died or moved away.

“And my ions have never felt better!” Paige said as she hobbled into the kitchen. True, her knees and hips were as stiff and painful as ever, but she could still feel the warmth of the vaccine coursing through her veins. It was only a matter of time before she regained the strength and agility she had been known for years ago. Maybe she’d even wake up with the thick, brown hair she had been so well known for as a young woman!

“We have to let the other elders know what happened at any rate,” Ephraim said. He normally found his brother’s stubborn streak annoying, but he didn’t want anyone else to get hurt and didn’t trust the soldiers to spread the word effectively. Neither he nor Isaac had known about the new rule after all! Their luckily minor injuries were proof that the soldiers weren’t going to be patient in the future.

“And the council should meet to discuss their own punishments for people who break it,” Isaac said. “Folks will listen to you faster than to strangers.”

Daphne wasn’t sure about that. Her short time as an ombudsman had been one of her most frustrating experiences in recent memory. It was difficult enough to get your children to listen to you, never mind other adults who were always looking out for their own best interests.

“I think they should do it,” Paige said. “We can mind the farm while they’re gone.” There was very little to do during this time of year anyways. A few tools needed to be sharpened or repaired and the tool shed had a leaky roof that should be fixed before winter, but most of their days would be spent watching the children and resting after a long, difficult spring.

This was how Ephraim and Isaac managed to yet once again to avoid the exasperated public health nurse when she showed up again that afternoon, this time with soldiers in tow.

“Look, I have a court order,” Esther said as she waved a faded piece of paper around.

Daphne stared at her with a blank expression.

“A judge decided that everyone in this valley must be vaccinated,” Esther explained as she set the paper down in front of Daphne. Did these people know nothing about how the legal system worked? Esther knew they were isolated down here, but her preparation for this assignment indicated that they at least had a rudimentary justice system. “You’ll go to jail if you don’t.” Daphne frowned. She’d never heard of a city by that name before. It must be far away.

What Esther’s research hadn’t indicated, though, was that Daphne was literate. And the paper in front of her said nothing about vaccinations, court orders, or jail.

The next instalment of After the Storm will be published tomorrow due to illness.

My apologies for the delay.

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, poems, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

What to Say Instead of “One Day, This Will All Make Sense to You.”  The only thing I would add to this post is the phrase “I’m sorry.”

With Friends Like These via Lesism. Would you be friends with yourself? An important reminder about what we say about ourselves…to ourselves.

What Do You Call Your Moms?  An essay written by a young woman who sometimes struggles to figure out what to call her moms. This is not at all the same thing, but it made me think of my relationship with my youngest aunt. We spent so much time together when I was young that she feels more like a sibling who grew up in another household than an aunt, and she’s actually the only one of my parents’ siblings that I think of on a first name basis (as opposed to being Aunt or Uncle so-and-so). Titles aren’t as important as the emotional bond two people share, whatever sort of bond that may be.

Wednesday’s Move via carolynlawrence. One of the most visceral descriptions of a break up I’ve ever read.

Grief Magic. A few months ago I recommend this author’s book about parenting a child with a terminal illness to my readers. Her son died at around the same time the book was published, and this essay is about how she has been coping over the past 5 months.

From How to Do What You Love via Silveragerus:

What you should not do, I think, is worry about the opinion of anyone beyond your friends. You shouldn’t worry about prestige. Prestige is the opinion of the rest of the world. When you can ask the opinions of people whose judgement you respect, what does it add to consider the opinions of people you don’t even know?

From She Has Glasses:

“She has glasses,” you’d have to say describing me to your friend so he could spot me in a crowd. “She’s short with glasses and dark hair…yep, that’s her.” You’d just have to mention the glasses first as they became unusual, identifyingly characteristic. That was the thing that set me apart from my other friends, not being the least-thin, not being Cute, which would soon grow to make me feel too young, too. But glasses? Glasses I could deal with. Glasses were my choice.

The Rapture of Canaan is the fictional story of a young girl, Ninah, growing up in a cult who believes she has been given a miraculous virgin pregnancy.

Belief is a powerful thing. It can be used to knit a community together or rip it to shreds. While I found it really hard to believe that supposedly intelligent adults would accept the idea of a 12 year old girl living in modern times becoming pregnant without having sex, I loved the lyrical descriptions of Ninah’s thoughts and surroundings.

I first read this when I was about the same age as Ninah while browsing through my youngest aunt’s home library one day. As an adult I doubt any cult would actually allow its teenage members to do the things that Ninah does, but this book does show a very realistic portrayal of the stage in life in which everyone must decide if they agree with their parents’ religious beliefs or have come to a different conclusion about who or what might be out there.

What have you been reading?

Just tuning in? Start here. 

Daphne should have know it was going to be a grey day. She woke up with a bone-crunching headache that radiated down her spine and into her shoulders. It was a blisteringly hot morning.  The sun oozed slowly over the yard, and by the time Daphne woke up every puff of air felt like it was on fire.

“No, it’s mine!” Wilhelmina said as she snatched the little wooden horse away from her brother. They’d been squabbling since dawn when Paige retreated to the corner of the house to silently work on her knitting. Daphne’s early morning dreams were punctuated by angry squeals and Lemon’s agitated barks.

She groaned as she dragged herself out of bed. Hadn’t the agreement been that she’d provide food and shelter for their neighbours and Paige was responsible for childcare and discipline?

When Felix accidentally tipped his breakfast onto the floor after his sister playfully tried to snatch it away from him Daphne felt something small and brittle in her diaphragm snap. Lemon slurped up the now dusty food as the girl giggled and threw a handful of her own meal onto the floor. In that moment a jagged fleck of the anger and fear Daphne had buried deep inside herself bubbled up her esophagus and rolled over her tongue before she knew what was happening.

“Both of you stop it!” The children froze. Paige grumbled at them without following through on her threats so often that they’d long since learned to ignore her warnings. They’d never seen their quiet, patient, timid neighbour raise her voice before, though.

“Sit down and be quiet,” she said as she begrudgingly scooped another serving of gruel onto the boy’s plate. “You will never waste food or feed the dog table scraps again. Have I made myself clear?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Wilma stared at the table and took a small, halfhearted bite of food while her brother attempted to eat his meal as quickly as possible. He knew Esther was coming back today to give them all special medicine. Maybe that was why Miss Daphne was so uncharacteristically authoritarian?

After breakfast Felix, Wilma, and Lemon  were swooshed out of the house while everything was tidied up. Ephraim and Isaac were busy repairing tools in the shed and the children had been given strict instructions not to bother them. Instead Felix challenged his sister to a game of tag until they were both too warm to continue. While they cooled down in the shade Wilma began rubbing dust into Lemon’s fur. Every time he shook it off she giggled and gathered up another handful of it to sprinkle on his head.

Lunch was a quiet affair. Daphne had been expecting her visitor to show up before they ate, and it was unnerving to know a virtual stranger might be entering her house while she was busy taking the bread out of the oven and making a simple stew. The afternoon scraped over her last nerves as the sun began its descent. Esther really should have arrived by now.

“Well, we should get some more water,” Isaac said a few hours after lunch. Normally he and his brother performed this chore first thing in the morning or right before sunset.

“It’s too hot outside for that long walk,” Daphne said as a flicker of irritation tickled her lungs. She wasn’t happy about being crammed into a hot, tense, too-small house with 5 other people all afternoon either, but Esther had reiterated over and over again how important it was for everyone to be scanned and vaccinated.

“Ill be back soon,” Isaac said. His mother’s sharp tones were rubbing him raw today. What he needed even more than a fresh glass of water was an hour of peace and quiet during his slow walk to a bigger stream. Sparrow Creek didn’t dry up every year, but the weather last winter had been particularly dry. They were now in the middle of an unusually hot summer.

“I should help you,” Ephraim said suddenly. It was true that Isaac couldn’t carry all of the empty water jugs by himself, but it wasn’t strictly necessary for all of them to be filled. He just preferred not to be left alone with the bickering children and the tension in Daphne’s voice as she fumbled through her herbs for a mild painkiller.

Ten minutes after they left Esther arrived at the homestead breathless and covered in perspiration, and so it was that she once again missed out on meeting MacArthur’s sons. Daphne accepted the scans and vaccination warily. It was doubtful they would work, but she’d seen much more painful cures being touted in previous epidemics.

If nothing else it gave her the opportunity to observe the stranger’s medical care up close. Swallowing bitter tea or rubbing pungent salve on a sore muscle made sense, but Daphne couldn’t imagine how the tiny pieces of metal the stranger injected into everyone’s arms were supposed to prevent or cure anything.

“It realigns your ions,” Esther said when Paige pressed for more information. Daphne was too embarrassed to ask what an ion was or how hers had become so unstable, but she hoped it would bring more mobility to her sore knee. Esther’s scanner had picked up on the injury, but when Daphne asked if there was anything they could do to fix it the woman was eerily quiet. Maybe even the capital didn’t know how to fix old injuries?

“Well, I could have told you mine were defective!” Paige said as she rubbed her sore forearm. “They’ve been hurting for years.”

“What time will your sons be back?” Esther asked as she carefully wiped down her equipment. Ordinarily she might have written off the teenagers as noncompliant, but her supervisors had insisted that everyone in this family participate in the program.

“Soon,” Daphne said. Only fools would take a long walk on such a hot day. When suppertime rolled around with still no sign of her sons, though, Esther was forced to move onto the next house with the promise that she’d come back again soon to ensure Isaac and Ephraim were healthy and vaccinated. Daphne felt the ball of fear in her diaphragm pulse as it grew a few inches bigger.

Supper was a quiet affair. The children were groggy from a long day of waiting, and Daphne felt a twinge of pain in her arm every time she moved it while slicing the bread and rehydrating some vegetables. She couldn’t say the rest of her felt any better or worse and wondered how long it would take for the vaccination to work. There were no stories tonight, just gentle hugs and an early bedtime.

It was nearly midnight before her sons arrived back home. Lemon was the only one still awake to greet the bleeding boys who limped into quiet little house.

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, quotes, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Confronting our feelings and giving them appropriate expression always takes strength, not weakness. It takes strength to acknowledge our anger, and sometimes more strength yet to curb the aggressive urges anger may bring and to channel them into nonviolent outlets. It takes strength to face our sadness and to grieve and to let our grief and our anger flow in tears when they need to. It takes strength to talk about our feelings and to reach out for help and comfort when we need it. – Fred Rogers

On the Significance of Digitally Documenting Zoo Visits. What children really learn when they visit the zoo. This is the kind of stuff I love doing with my nephew and his parents when we’re in the same city. Kids see things with fresh eyes that adults have long since learned to explain away.

Does This Path Have Heart? This is my life philosophy as well.

To the Guys Who Threw Eggs at Me Tonight via Scalzi. I love this blogger’s sense of humour and no-nonsense approach to people who think they can bully her about her weight.

Wrench. An exquisitely detailed article about what it’s like to work in a bike shop.

Flip The News – NSFW Survey Results. A few weeks ago I retweeted a link to a sex survey the owners of this blog had compiled. The results, while not at all scientific, are fascinating. What modern society says about the sex drives and preferences of men and women, straight and LGBT, young and old is often the exact opposite of what these groups self-report.

(Untitled). When I look at this painting I see a darker, grown up version of The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy is seeking the wizard not to find her way home but to piece her life together again…starting with her own body. (No, this isn’t a gory piece). What do you see?

Safe Sex: Choose Your Own Adventure Style! Now this is a creative approach to safer sex. Our parents (probably) don’t know this, but I may or may not have given one of my siblings condoms when he was in high school. I was quite irritated with fear-mongering, abstinence-only sex ed in our community and wanted him to be safe when he decided to become sexually active.

Just Another Monday – Almost via Brudberg. How would you react if you found graffiti on your property?

I first read Do Androids Dreams of Electric Sheep? in high school. Every few years I return to it and am amazed by something new in it.

Rick Deckard is a bounty hunter who slowly begins to question the morality of destroying the androids he is being paid to hunt down. This book is set in 2021, a time in which humanity has caused the extinction of a huge percentage of the animals that used to live beside us. There are android-ish versions of many of the creatures that used to really exist as well.

What I loved and love the most about this book is how blurry the lines become between “real” and “artificial” people. It would be difficult to name the philosophical questions this plot twist brings up without giving you spoilers, but sufficed to say this is one of those books that asks hard questions and doesn’t accept wishy-washy answers.

What have you been reading?

© Nevit Dilmen found at Wikimedia commons.

Just tuning in? Catch up with parts one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, and twenty of this story.

Lemon had been born in a small log cabin deep inside the Mingus mountain range. His thick coat was designed to keep him alive through long, cold winters and it was during July and August afternoons that he suffered the most. The valley rarely grew as warm as the desert, but the temperature could still get quite hot in the dog days of summer.

Watching miserable pets pant in the shade must have been what prompted the ones who came before to invent such a funny phrase Daphne decided. Her grandfather was the one who first used it with her when they’d taken in yet another dog at the end of August, and in her 9-year-old mind the dogs days of summer were meant to be a celebration of the unique bond between dogs and their humans. She quickly learned how to bake favourite treats for the dogs in her life and draw some of the water supply into a dog-sized bath for cooling off.

Which is how Daphne ended up meeting the new representative for the Arizona territories while standing in the middle of her front yard naked from the waist up as she attempted to dry off her wiggly companion. There was nothing Lemon liked better than soaking in a cool tub of water on a hot day, and Daphne had learned from experience that the only way to get him out of the tub was to climb in after him. Her knee still protested when she picked up dogs and small children, so Daphne was hoping to gently coax him out of the tub instead of tipping it over or struggling to lift him out. She was nude from the waist up because at least then one article of clothing would remain dry for the evening.

“Mrs. Loous?” the slim blond woman standing at the edge of Daphne’s property line blushed as she carefully enunciated Daphne’s legal last name. Five minutes ago Daphne had been wishing that Paige was awake or one of her sons was around to help her de-tub the dog. Now she was grateful that no one else was staring awkwardly at the ground while she hurriedly put on a shirt.

“Yes, I’m Daphne.” Overjoyed at the thought of meeting a new human friend, Lemon barked his greeting as Daphne struggled to hold onto his slippery body.

“My name is Esther Penn. I’m here on behalf of your government to take a census. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

As the stranger spoke Lemon wiggled out of his owner’s grasp and rushed forward to meet his new human. When the newcomer rewarded him with a quick scratch behind the ears Daphne could have almost sworn that she saw her dog grinning.

Esther flashed a small piece of metal she called a badge in front of Daphne and was shocked when it didn’t have the desired affect. Daphne had never seen such an object before and didn’t realize that it was intended to evoke obedience and a tinge of fear into everyone who saw it. To Daphne it looked like a child’s toy not a weapon. The petite woman who wanted to know everything about Daphne’s life was a curiosity, so for the sake of learning more about the world beyond Mingus valley Daphne agreed to sit in the front yard and answer her questions.

“Mrs. Lewis, I really must insist that we stick to the script,” Esther said after Daphne interrupted her yet again with another question.

“I just want to know where all of this information is going,” Daphne said. Even with Esther’s explanation of what a census was and why it was so important to know the names, ages, and occupations of everyone living in the valley Daphne still wasn’t sure why that was the only data that mattered. While waiting out the long, hot summer Daphne had begun to formulate strong ideas about what her valley needed, and government-issued ID numbers were nowhere on that list.

“Well, the algorithm tells us how to allocate resources after we input all of your information.” Esther might as well have told Daphne they were going to throw it to the moon with a slingshot when verboten terms accidentally slipped into the conversation. Daphne was still having trouble believing that anyone’s medicine could be strong enough prevent disease before it occurred. It was as preposterous as choosing when the gods sent you a child or Death carried you away.

Esther was frustrated as well. Half of the information she’d been prepped with on this family was either wrong or Daphne was a much better liar than her profile indicated she would be. Not only did she claim to have no knowledge of the Cohen brothers or where they might have moved on to after Mr. Everson allegedly broke them out of jail, she refused to say anything about her estranged husband at all.

Hopefully her sons would be more cooperative. Esther still needed to vaccinate everyone and visit three more households before dusk.

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, prints, quotes, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

The Ghost Rapes of Bolivia. At least 130 women in a Mennonite community were drugged and raped for years before their attackers were finally caught. This article describes how the men who violated them were caught and what the victims have done since the trial. Trigger warning: there are graphic descriptions of the assaults in this link.

What Happens When You Hire a Craiglist Poet to Mock You?  If I ever become wealthy I’ll hire artistic people to create personalized stuff for me. This is such a funny idea.

The Case for Quiet via Dan__Bennett. My mind can be a pretty noisy place. Cultivating quiet is so much more than how many words you speak.

Marriage Without Sex is Meaningless. On the one hand, I completely understand what the woman blogger spoke to is saying about emotional intimacy. It really is the glue that holds any romantic relationship together through the rough times. On the other hand, I can’t imagine ever growing so old that sex permanently becomes less enticing than a massage or other nonsexual forms of touch from your spouse. Even the idea of it makes me chuckle.

Something More Wrong. Life in a longterm, inpatient mental health hospital. Some of the stories of these women are disturbing, but the author did a wonderful job describing how they pass their days and nights.

My Name via dlboonstra. A modern-day parable about the things we say to and about ourselves.

From The One via Moonbeam McQueen:

They didn’t have the time
that younger lovers do,
so they blazed twice as bright
and their years together flew;

From Dear Daughter: I Hope You Have Some Fucking Awesome Sex:

Look, I love sex. It’s fun. And because I love my daughter, I want her to have all of the same delights in life that I do, and hopefully more. I don’t want to hear about the fine details because, heck, I don’t want those visuals any more than my daughter wants mine. But in the abstract, darling, go out and play.

Because consensual sex isn’t something that men take from you; it’s something you give. It doesn’t lessen you to give someone else pleasure. It doesn’t degrade you to have some of your own.

What will future generations misunderstand about us if they only have access to a handful of random artifacts? A Canticle for Leibowitz explores this question by introducing the reader to a cloistered monk who ekes out a living hundreds of years after humanity is nearly wiped out by an atomic war.

This is speculative science fiction at its finest. The characters’ understanding of how the world works is quite different from what you or I would say about it, but it was a joy to slowly piece together the truth about what really happened to our species as we meet the people who live in this distant future.

Everything else I want to say about this book veers into spoiler territory, but I highly recommend it to anyone interested in philosophy, post-apocalyptic fiction or science fiction.

What have you been reading?