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
The James Salter Diet
James Salter’s women are “described over and over again as meals for the male protagonists to enjoy and then leave behind in various western European countries,” Lidia Jean Kott argues. Read Sonya Chung’s take in our review of All That Is.
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The Pathways of an Essay
Recommended Reading: E.V. de Cleyre writes for Ploughshares about the essay form and its familiar shapes.
Next Up: Volcanic Vodka
What’s cooler: bourbon aged at sea, or beer made from barley launched into space?
A Necessary Push Forward
Muna Mire has written an incisive and timely essay for The New Inquiry on the Black Feminist classic Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman by Michele Wallace. Coinciding with last month’s reissue of Black Macho by Verso Books, Mire’s essay discusses justified anger rightly-directed and the potential utility of Wallace’s “Black Movement” in the context of today’s racially-charged political climate.
Edinburgh Fringe Festival Joke-Off
Nick Helm took home the Edinburgh Fringe Festival’s top humor prize for this groan-worthy joke.
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Angie Cruz’s Working Women
Angie Cruz started an Instagram account called Dominicanas NYC to collect photos of 1960s Dominican working-class women while researching her novel Dominicana.
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Children of the East
Following its interview with Yelena Akhtiorskaya, Bookforum published its review of the author’s debut novel, Panic in a Suitcase. As in many other books that take place in the post-Cold War age, the plot centers on a group of Ukrainian immigrants, fresh out of the former Soviet Union, who set up new lives in America. However, despite the subject matter, it’s a bit too reductive, Chloé Cooper-Jones writes, to classify the book as an immigrant novel. For more on the book, read Matthew Wolfson’s Millions review.
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The Surreal World
Recommended Reading: Dean Young’s poem “Why I Haven’t ‘Outgrown Surrealism,’ No Matter What That Moron Reviewer Wrote” for Plume.
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