Book cover of The Compass Rose

Book description

From dream worlds to nightmare planets, through mazes of madness to tiny time holes in space, down Pathways of Desire to a New Atlantis, The Compass Rose points the way to the wonder-filled mind-country of a remarkable writer.

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Compass Rose as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

The Compass Rose is certainly less well-known than many other Ursula K. Le Guin books, but I think it’s a fantastic example of a book that takes you to unexpected places. It’s a fascinating and varied collection, but my favorite piece by far is “The Author of the Acacia Seeds and Other Extracts from the Journal of the Association of Therolinguistics.” It starts out wonderfully nerdy and weird, with a scholar’s detailed reporting of the “writings” of an ant as written, using touch-gland exudation, on seeds in an anthill. From there it gets weirder, and more esoteric, until it lands…

If you love The Compass Rose...

Book cover of Cyborg Fever

Cyborg Fever by Laurie Sheck,

From Pulitzer Finalist Laurie Sheck (A Monster's Notes), a new speculative literary fiction in the spirit of Italo Calvino, Umberto Ecco and Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto that enacts an incisive and moving exploration into what it means to be human in the age of AI and increasing inhumanism.

…

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