To Read & To Write

I'm glad I finally read Hubert Selby Jr.'s "Requiem for a Dream" (1978) after years of having a copy of the book on my shelf and never getting to it. I've seen the movie, directed by Darren Aronofsky (2000), several times, but Selby's book has so much more resonance, though if one has seen the film even once those images don't disappear as you read the words of this story.  The words seem to flow from the author without much pre-conception: "Requiem for a Dream" is free from any sense of being contrived. The story and its style (which is a variant of stream-of-consciousness) is beautiful in its simplicity and for the authors clear talent for telling it like it is. A story like this doesn't need much more.  What a reader might be able to grasp from the book rather than from watching the film is the idea that the kids in this book really don't know how to care for anything but their own souls. It's as if they've never really le...

This fast-paced yet contemplative thriller by Japanese writer Tomohito Moriyama and translated into English by J.D. Wisgo brings up all the best topics and themes in excellent science fiction: artificial intelligence, duty vs. personal inclinations, euthanasia, paranoia, and all kinds of questions regarding human nature itself. Two Of Six: A Captain’s Dilemma tells the story of the captain of a spaceship carrying six passengers. When the spaceship malfunctions and starts losing its supply of oxygen, how does the captain decide which passengers should take the extra spacecraft back home, a spacecraft which can only save two people? The captain’s only close companion is the A.I. robot assigned to work with him. How does she influence his decisions? And, as A.I., is she capable of making purely objective decisions? Moriyama, influenced by Isaac Asimov, writes a compelling plot-driven story putting philosophy in action. Though Two Of Six does not provide rich visual landsc...