Cat’s Cradle‘s Felix Hoenikker would be so proud: Stanford scientists have found a way to make a dense, extraterrestrial ice called Ice VII (via The Rumpus). See also: “2 B R 0 2 B”, a “lost” Vonnegut story that first appeared in the sci-fi journal Worlds of If in January 1962.
Up Next, Ice-Nine
Looking Back
The Morning News “gathered writers and thinkers around the world and asked them to sift through the past year of revolutions, deaths, discoveries, and breakthroughs to answer: What was the most important event of 2011?”
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In Transit
Over at Guernica, Liza St. James interviews Adam Z. Levy and Ashley Nelson Levy, the founders of the independent press Transit Books. As they put it, “We were noticing this kind of partition between two types of readerships: those who read domestic literature and those who read translation. […] We were interested in the separation of those literary spheres, and began to wonder how to bridge the gap between them.”
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Hugo’s Art
From the Paris Review, a small selection of Victor Hugo‘s four thousand drawings.
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Booksellers React to Borders’ Bankruptcy
Half of all restaurants that open close,” WORD owner Christine Onorati says. On the other hand, Red Lemonade publisher Richard Nash hopes former Borders employees can find ways to continue “operating as the matchmakers of the book ecosystem.”