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Event Horizon by Balsam Karam

July 09, 2026

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S.N.U.F.F. by Victor Pelevin

Nourishing Manitou with blood is a cosmic necessity. Quite how I swung away from the banks of Sorrowland and into the rushing, tumescent waters of Russian dystopian satire is, sadly, lost to the fog of history, but swing away I did, and it gives me the chance to shamelessly court clicks from those pugnacious Homo-Sovieticus -ians, thusly: И снова здравствуйте, мои русские друзья! І привіт усім моїм українським читачам - ти чудово виглядаєш, це взуття нове? One must marvel at Google’s translation function, and all technological advancements of this age (even if Microsoft Word just tried to change the word Google to the contextually appropriate Gogol , naughty Satya Nadella) and worship before the altar of progress like good little consumers, and like the sorry inhabitants of the lower world in this classic dystopian satire: the Orks. For context, the Earth is ruined, we’re led to believe, America and China are no more, and with the remaining inhabitants of the landmass formerly ...

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It's easy to repeat; it's hard to speak. I’m struck by how easily my intertextual flow is diverted by the industrial run-off of the Amazonian algorithmic behemoth. If my memory, that fickle and unreliable narrator living rent-free in my sclerosed cerebrum, serves truth, then I was shopping for another China Miéville novel when I was waylaid by suggestions to consider purchasing Babel-17 . I may not have been, but I’ve trodden this neural pathway so it’s now the path of least resistance through the amyloid growth. It turns out that Miéville’s superb novel Embassytown owes a great debt to Delany and his exploration of linguistic determinism. Delany, I have subsequently learned*, is a fascinating man. Above and beyond his unusual formative years and remarkable life, he was, unbeknownst to him at the time of writing, championing a kind of linguistic relativity, an example of which the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis comes closest to being (although this particular type of linguistic rel...

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Our Ancestors by Italo Calvino

The dog signifies nothing... Now is as good a time as any I suppose to admit that I regularly confuse Italo Calvino with Umberto Eco and when struggling for the name of one of them, invariably come up with the name of the other. What value does this add to a review of either’s work? None whatsoever. I just thought it would pay to be honest up front, so that if I start talking about semiotics, the discourse of literary criticism, or beards, then you’ll know my train of thoughts has switched tracks and is heading for a bridge under construction. Of course, reading the Wiki pages on the two of them (to make sure I was talking about the right fellow) I noticed with some dread that Our Ancestors is one of the best known works of the most translated contemporary Italian writer (at the time of his death) and here I am, trying to make sense of it in my own personal context. Well, I’m always going to be treading down some fool’s heels so why should I care if it’s actually most peopl...

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Event Horizon by Balsam Karam

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