M. Apple > Recent Status Updates

“Moth Race” was pretty good. A bit predictable, but well written.

The short story Soundless Evening by Lee Hoffman is by far the shortest, and the most horrifying, of the book so far…

“Sf writers don’t seem to be notably up in arms about the U.S.-stagemanaged bestialities in Vietnam. They don’t seem to get into politics much at all.”

Written in 1972. How much has changed?

This book is simply gigantic…

The short story “The Funeral,” by Kate Wilhelm, seems to anticipate The Handmaiden’s Tale about a decade later…

A faithful retelling of the age-old tale…

I had forgotten how well this was written…

Great story by Ursula Le Guin

The single page on computers and kanji is decades out of date…

Who quotes anonymous “American student of Japanese” in a text? Twice, even, on the same page? What makes these students experts on Japanese script? Unprofessional.

Hangul is not an alphabet. Appalling lack of knowledge.

“…it is quite possible that a script similar to the Proto-Sinaitic script was used by Moses….”

Moses did not exist. He is fiction. As is much of the pseudo-history in this 19th century British text. Non-scientific rubbish.

Incredibly disjointed. One page about Etruscans, the next about Rapanui. Who is this book intended for? There is no rhyme or reason about its structure.

The editors forgot to change the page number for answers to the hieroglyphics— page 226 and not 218, since this is a new edition. Also, it’s impossible to guess the meanings, since some are not actually given!

I actually began reading this a few days ago, when I realized that reading a book from the same series about WWII as a white American on a Japanese train was probably not a great idea…

Lots of names. LOTS and lots of names.

Good thing there’s a two-page chart at the start of the book…

“Where’s my mummy?” 😆

As is the case with most if not all UK writers, the Philippines is ignored…the map of where an Indo-European is official is missing the Republic of the Philippines.