This is the Reading feed from The Oikofuge---reviews of books about spaceflight, aviation, exploration and words (among other things), as well as science fiction, both new and classic. And some other stuff, occasionally.
A review of Philip Ball's "Alchemy: An Illustrated History of Elixirs, Experiments, and the Birth of Modern Science"
Of rather uneven stylistic quality, but vast occasional power in its suggestion of lurking worlds and beings behind the ordinary surface of life, is the work of William Hope Hodgson, known today far less than it deserves to be. Despite a tendency toward conventionally sentimental conceptions of the universe, and of man’s relation to it …
“It was a most extraordinary thing, Graham, to see how the different men reacted to the gold. It took them all different ways, just like too much liquor. One would be cold and calculating, and as wicked as Hell; another would be delirious with pleasure; some showed themselves up as the lowest type of killer; …
Human eyes have round pupils, but there is considerable variation in the animal kingdom, from the vertical slit pupil of a cat, to the horizontal slot of a goat, as pictured above. So Martin S. Banks and his colleagues asked the question “Why?” in an article published in Science Advances in August 2015. They started …
We were northward bound for Alaska and her blue midnights! Her golden blossoms! Her trackless forests! Her naked tundras! I’ve written about the redoubtable Isobel Wylie Hutchison before—a Scottish lady of independent means who spent her life travelling and botanizing, often while walking prodigious distances alone. She recorded her travels in articles for National Geographic … ...
