BOOKS+READ+++++++++++++++

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ + + + + + + + The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2024 Ed. By Hugh Howey (Mariner Books). ~~~~ I’ve gotten in the habit of reading these once a year to get a sense of the state of mainstream science fiction and fantasy. And to trawl for stories to teach. That said, I’m open to alternative suggestions for yearly anthologies. For a long time I’ve struggled with this quote from Samuel Delany on the immanence of fascism in science-fiction: “most science fiction—indeed, much of the most narratively energetic science fiction—is governed by a political/ethical system one hesitates to call fascist only because any functioning fascist group would have to be a great deal more in touch with the complexities of the world even to exist, much less to oppress. Therefore, science fiction’s value must be present elsewhere than in the ideological systems reducible from it.” This was in 1979. And it sends me back to try to look for what value is salvageable from this year’s anthology. A little context: after a run of decent yearly anthologies, this one is under the editorship of Hugh Howey, an Amazon author, and it features what looks like an increasing number of stories that first appeared on Amazon platforms. Jeff Bezos, who is invested in science fiction as a genre of writing, and is actively creating technological narratives for our future that all kind of suck. Does this signal the Amazonification of the genre? I hope not. I hope it’s a blip. Because so many of the stories validate Delany’s analysis and reflect the wider U.S. turn against empathy or, you know, basic moral feelings about the value of human life. “Window Boy,” from its firmly middle-class suburban house as technologized para-apocalypse fortress, tells us to fear the stranger outside our door seeking help and maybe to beef up our own defenses in preparing for class war. (The house itself is a fascinating character and the story makes an intriguing companion to Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Be Soft Rains”). “Emotional Resonance” is a bittersweet post-human love story with a few fascinating highlights while also featuring its characters (huge mechs) casually committing genocide without really reckoning with it—a shoot and cry narrative at a cosmic scale that reflects a lot of U.S. narrative production which wildly abstracts violence from its consequences. “If Someone You Love Has Become a Vurdalak” concludes this thread of narratives of disposability with one twin killing the other who is coded as a monstrous addict. That said, it’s not all bad. “The Blade and the Bloodwright” dramatizes the construction and destruction of body politics with all the horror, gore, and fascination it deserves. Didn’t realize body-politic fantasy and horror was its own genre. “John Hollowback and the Witch” and “Bruised-Eye Dusk” are both charming, immersive, and close-to-the-ground fantasies, both of which recuperate the figure of the witch. “Disassembling Light” is a beautifully written account of a master craftsperson testing an apprentice. And through our shifting sympathies with the first-person narrator, invites readers to question what they had identified with in someone who does something quite wrong. I find that scrambling of identification quite productive. Anyway, I wish I had written more about the second part of Delany’s quote—where we should look for the value in Science-Fiction. It’s a genre I’ve unexpectedly found myself turning more and more. ++ + + ++ + + + ++++++++++++++ + ++ + + ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++ Ghassan Kanafani: Selected Political Writings, Ed. By Louis Brehony & Tahrir Hamdi ~~~ Brilliant, essential. There’s his stirring advocacy of resistance in the famous “Conversation Between the Sword and the Neck.” When a Western journalists remarks that being starved and in camps is better than being dead, Kanafani retorts: “Maybe to you, but to us, it is not. To us, to liberate our country to have dignity, to have respect, to have our mere human rights is something as essential as life itself” (198). And moments of analytic suppleness. For instance, when talking about a state Kanafani clarifies that “The demand for ‘land,’ in my view, should be accompanied by a demand to create new relationships among Palestinians, as well as between them and Arab states.” Then he goes on to speculate on the possible dangers of a Palestinian state: “[I]t will be an excuse for the international public opinion to liquidate the Palestinian cause, based on the erroneous understanding that the Palestinian cause is a refugee issue.” When we say things like ‘Free Palestine,’ he demands we think hard about what that must mean, that slogans not be empty or language blind. Anyway, read it. + + + + + + ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ + + + + + + + this abattoir is a college by Orchid Tierney (Calamari Archive 2025) ~~~ “the unit converses in hypothetical language. the classroom says hooks is a radical space of possibility. words without transgression rewards commodification. banal radicalism couched in the guffaw of capitalism. but for its innovation in predictable practice a unit is awarded an endowed chair. critical imagination is recalled in the passive. the unit is now a professor of inconsistency and evasion. time to celebrate. time to profit. unbox those books. it can now write modern poetry.” ~~~~~ Gallows funny, ghastly critique but not w/o throwing off sparks for an alternative to the current abattoir/university. That thaumatrope of dystopia-utopia. + + + + + + + + ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Crush by Richard Siken (Yale University Press 2005) ~~~ I still shock myself with how slow of a reader of poetry I am. Susan Tichy taught me to read with care; haven’t been able to speed read since – but also don’t turn to poetry when I feel rushed, which is all the time. // The poetry field is diffuse; it’s rare to find a book most people have read and which has also escaped into the mainstream. This is one of those books, which still has a cult following 20 years later. Here we finally are, all roads and bruise, addiction and death drive, the crush of the kiss, and America’s forlorn nowheres made somewhere by masc for masc desire—sex, contact, adhesion. It’s self-consciously cinematic—wrenches spinning in the air like stars!– and that too seems like part of the desperate thirst that animates the speaker. The world is a bit James Dean, a bit Marlon Brando and, like a Hollywood, the actualities of sex blur into figurative language. On the formal level, the variable line sustains motion in images, anaphora keeps parataxis from making the world seem too shattered (as does a somewhat limited economy of images). Cumulatively the poems perform hairpin turns that add up to a precise and jagged spiral around their object of desire. & there’s enough to psychoanalyze as to give a second reading chew, enough that a desultory search into the scholarly literature yields a few hits along these lines. I get it, now. + + + + + + + + + + + + ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ + + + + + + + Francesca Albanese, “From economy of occupation to economy of genocide” (UN Human Rights Council, 30 June 2025) ~~~~~There’s a lot of reporting on the genocide that I consume to no good end. It depresses me; it feels so large that there’s nothing I can do other than witness when this moment calls for sustained action. As a consumer of this stuff, you got to know when enough is enough, I get it, and then dwell with what you can do in your own situation. This is not one of those reads. Albanese’s account of the economy of genocide is forensic. She lays out both the legal frameworks under which these corporate actions are criminal (taking it as a given that they are immoral to a grotesque degree) within international law and can be and must be held to account. It also moves industry through industry, describing interlinks between corporate actors and Israel’s use of their services in genocide. It’s a succinct primer on how multi-faceted and comprehensive Israel’s attempt at the destruction of life and the conditions of life is, involving home destruction, ai surveillance and target generation, bombers and bombs, academic legitimation, and the financing, construction, and supply of illegal settlements. & these interlinks snake back to entities most people have contact with and make choices in regard to AirBnB, Israel bonds (yr pension, state might be invested), Microsoft, Amazon, Hyundai, Volvo. A substantial entry point into divesting ourselves of these ghoulish profiteers—and pushing the organizations we’re a part of to do the same. Not as the action to take but one of many. ~~~~~ +++ ++ + + + + + ++ + + + + + + + +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ + ++ ++++ Pinko #2, July 2020 ~~~~ Edited by a whole mess of ppl including ME O’Brien ~~~~ How do you say it in the crush of now—that this was pretty much everything. I guess you try to say it a lot. Published in the insurgent summer of 2020 this glimmers with queer revolutionary and utopian vision and analysis in relatively short, potent articles. It spoke to the current moment: an interview with a prison abolitionist over a phone interrupted by the prison’s reminder that the call may be recorded. It zooms way out to the Christopher Chitty’s historically informed theories of the relationships between queerness and capital. It dips into the archive of revolutionary queer thought and organizing. Here an excerpt from “Open Faggotry Works to Unify the Working Class” (1976): “First and foremost—faggots are a basic threat to the sexual division of labor.” Pithy. The issue speaks to our current fascist conflagrations not just by inviting readers to identify with a continuous history of queer struggle toward liberation and presenting visions of liberation from capital and violent regimes of heteronormativity worth fighting for but also looking to examine fascism. In one case, the power of dance under the fascist Pinochet regime in Chile; in another, a reprint of Gilles Dauve on reactionary masculinity, that examines the fascist-compatible forms of queerness in Weimar Germany. It ends with this line: “Incoherence is counterrevolutionary, eclecticism, + + + + + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ++++++++++ often, too.” The content is heady and necessary without being overly academic, the design, at times, exuberant. On the play of pleasure and politics, from Lou Cournum’s transcription of a performance piece in a section called “Renunciation Kissing Station”: “This is the Renunciation Kissing Scene. / The rules: [paragraph symbol] Set fire to a flag. / [paragraph symbol] Then if you’d like, a kiss from safe savage lips.” (039) ++ + ++ + + + & & & & & & & ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ & & & & & & && & & __++++ She, Self-Winding by Luu Dieu Van (ugly duckling, 2022) Three final stanzas from this chapbook. 1) From “Rorschach’s tease”: “he continues to fuss about metaphors, glittery trinkets / while I attempt automorphism / hysterically mapping the smell of half-peaked libido” 2) From “defrosting the calling”: “I hear a lexicon that can’t be unclogged with perpetual tenderness.” 3) from “twin flame separation”: “the last glance upon each other rolls our indifference into blatancy / exposing all the scales of splitting / who will turn themselves in / in exchange for absolute power of control over the other” – haunting, that last line, right now. + + + + + + + + + + + + + ~~~~~~++++++++ + + + + + + + + ~~~~~~ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Shoat Rumblin: His Sensations and Ideas by Samuel R. Delany (self-published p.o.d., 2020). Who knew the final novel we’d get from Samuel Delany (at least that’s what he says) would be…this, an early, failed version of Through The Valley of the Nest of Spiders. It’s both a disappointment and a relief and the end of an era for me. Disappointment: it’s not good! The novel takes the form of an interview of Shoat Rumblin (SR) by his lover Adrian Rome, tracing his childhood to teen years, anchored primarily by his sexual encounters, some of which SR reports as welcome, others as assaults. It’s a challenging read given that much of what is described is abuse (including incest) but not described as abuse by SR. The sexual abuse sucks to read and SR’s unexpected relationship to much of it forces the reader to pause. And there’s not much looking away. Perhaps fittingly, there’s no pockets of lyricism to the writing that marked Through the Valley. But, also, the prose is, generally, inert. And while Through the Valley adds the complications of its more challenging events happening within the context of a utopia and within the long span of its protagonist’s life, through which they can be revisited and reevaluated and fit within a larger pattern, allowing it to ask more questions about sex, society, and self, SR reads as determined to keep its scope tight to a small slice of life in a poor town in a single deteriorating house. Like I said, challenging. And a disappointing end to Delany’s career. Except. A note at the end lets us know that this was written before Through The Valley of the Nest of Spiders, between 1996 and 2002, partially in Buffalo. In a way, Delany redeems the work by transforming elements of it within TvotNoS, which I’ll consider Delany’s last novel, just to make myself happy. This begs the question: why bother self-publishing this? So end 6+ years of reading Delany. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Tides Don’t Perturb by Edric Mesmer / “what are metaphors / in an obliterative world?” inimitable sense of line, music, & association. Moments of epigrammatic perfection: “trying to enclose paren- / thetically / what exceeds all param- / eter–” or

“what are metaphors / in an obliterative world?” Thought about that one a lot. It read like a true, haunting question and still does. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + ++ + + + + + + ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ################## Abramowitz-Grossberg by Michelle Taransky (Factory Hollow Press, 2020) /// Another month, in empire, language beating against the glass.