10 Comments

Damn it my book anxiety is THROUGH THE ROOF = I just laid out 2025 TBR and now Lincoln hits me with these beauties ... ah well ... I guess the weekly call to the college-bound son must be cut ;)

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Sep 16Liked by Lincoln Michel

Haha same issue with the TBR list.

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Sep 13Liked by Lincoln Michel

"The Singularity is apparently one of, if not the, first serious works of Italian science fiction." People think of Primo Levi primarily as a Holocaust writer, which, sure, of course. But he's also got some science fiction from around this time, written under the pen name Damiano Malabaila, though I think Buzzati has him beat for the claim of first by a year or two. In particular there's a series of short stories about a salesman of the strange inventions of the fictional NATCA company.

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Ah interesting! (I will not pretend to be any kind of Italian SFF scholar. The claim that it was perhaps the first serious Italian SF novel was in the promotional material.)

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Thanks for the recs. They all seem quite up my alley, especially the Buzzati.

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I love kafkaesque books,, thanks for the interesting recs!!

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Nice. I'll give these a read. Another good step into the Kafkaesque is Mircea Cărtărescu's "Solenoid." A surrealist novel based in Romania again picking up on the soviet occupation themes. Not a short read by any means though.

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Sep 14Liked by Lincoln Michel

I have just got a copy of The Stronghold, thank you; I love a good hand sell… I’m wondering if you’ve read much Magnus Mills. When I came across The Restraint of Beasts and All Quiet on the Orient Express I thought of him immediately as the Scottish Kafka, but funnier, and I return to his books often.

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Hope you dig it. I really, really loved The Stronghold.

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These all sound fascinating! Can't wait to pick one of these up

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