His Dark Materials author Philip Pullman has reportedly completed another trilogy, The Book of Dust, that will publish in October of this year. The new works “will stand alongside his bestselling series,” sources say.
New Philip Pullman!
The Thirsty North
Newsflash: people in cold states drink a lot more than people in warm states.
Science Fiction’s Race Problem
How can science fiction writers invent aliens and entire planets but not include multifaceted characters of color in their fiction? At The Atlantic, Noah Berlatsky discusses the genre’s equality problem and analyzes how race is viewed in everything from The Left Hand of Darkness to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. “When that future unthinkingly reproduces current inequities, it seems like both a missed opportunity and a failure of imagination.”
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The New York Times Broadens Book Coverage
The New York Times is broadening its book coverage by adding more staffers and launching three new features: a literary advice column, a weekly Q&A about writing processes, and a column looking at “contemporary issues through the lens of recent and historical books.”
Visionary
At the Times Literary Supplement, Raymond Tallis reviews Hallucinations, a new book by Oliver Sacks that defines “sensational consciousness.”
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Recommended Reading: New Ashbery
Recommended Reading: The American Reader has some new John Ashbery poems. We love “Listening Tour.”
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LMC Revival
Anyone interested in up-and-coming literary magazines should check out HTMLGiant‘s Roxane Gay‘s Literary Magazine Club. The next magazine will be Beecher’s, which has just released its first issue.