"All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered."

Isaac Asimov’s Living Space and Other Stories

By the life of me, I will never understand how these are collected.
The book contains some delightful short stories plus a slightly longer one (Profession), mostly all of them revolving around the rise of Multivac, the first supercomputer built by humanity which in turn takes charge of humanity for humanity’s own sake. And there are glorious pieces of fiction connected to that: “Franchise” is the story of the single man called to vote in the Presidential Election, from whose vote Multivac will calculate the probable vote of everybody else without them needing to bother voting; “All the troubles of the World” takes place in a scenario where Multivac predics the probability of crime and the government acts to try and prevent criminal activities; “Jokester” features a man who’s trying to use Multivac to figure out where jokes come from.
And then you have… poetry? Two satirical pieces on what it means to be an author. Fantasy? A story on a fantasy writer being visited by an elf (“Kid Stuff”) and a story about angels and the devil and the end of the world (“The Last Trump”). Then you have stories with robots, one of which already features in another collection (“Satisfaction Guaranteed”).
The titular tale “Living Space” is a marvel, and I liked the attempt at a mystery in “The Dying Night,” though we’re far from the splendid stories of Daneel and Baley.

books and literature

The Bicentennial Man (and other stories)

If not for the single story where they cure depression by blasting jazz against brainwaves (not how depression works, I’m afraid), one of the best collections I’ve read so far. It has the sequel of “Marooned off Vesta”, one of Asimov’s the best stories of

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books and literature

Rebecca Ferrier’s The Salt Bind

Rebecca Ferrier’s The Salt Bind is a historical fantasy novel, set on the storm-lashed Cornish coast and steeped in folklore, sea magic, and women’s lives on the edge of the sea. It follows Kensa — daughter of a smuggler and with a regularly-complicated relationship with

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art and fashion

Andrea Pazienza — They Don’t Always Die

At the beginning of this month, I was in Rome with some friends: we had heard that Danny Elfman himself was going to be on stage at the Auditorium, performing some pieces from his soundtracks, and we’re hardcore fans (I have mixed feelings about the

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