The Village Teacher

April 3, 2026

As I was saying a few days ago, some of Cixin Liu’s short stories have been adapted into wonderful graphic novels.

This one is a heartfelt story that touches many topics that are dear to the author’s heart, mainly the importance of knowledge and the impact of teaching, but also involves some other topics that recur in classic science fiction, like silicate-based aliens and planet destruction as a form of cosmic hygiene. Of course, being the subject what it is, it was bound to move me.

The drawings of space sceneries and of the alien civilisations are absolutely beautiful. Sometimes I cringed at people’s expressions, particularly the children, but a very enjoyable issue nonetheless.
I haven’t read the original short story yet, it’s in the collection “Hold up the Sky” in my to-read bucket, so I can’t speak to the differences with the original.

books and literature

Ioanna Papadopoulou’s The Castaway and the Witch

I had a genuine “oh shit” moment when I read the author’s preface saying this was darker than “Winter Harvest” because – and I absolutely ADORED “Winter Harvest” – that was pitch-black dark. I thought “we’re all going to die”. This maybe has something to

August 8, 2026 9:00 am

Summertime

The Path You Have to Sing

Alexis Wright‘s Carpentaria, an epic work set in a fictional town called Desperance, opens before there are any people in it at all: an ancestral serpent, “a creature larger than storm clouds,” descends from the stars and drags itself across the wet clay of the

August 8, 2026 6:00 am

movies and tv

But for pursuit of virtue and of knowledge

I’m sure you’ve read enough analysis of Nolan’s Odyssey to last a lifetime, and you don’t need another European ranting that he changed stuff, so I’m not going to. Instead, I’d like to talk about the movie in itself, as an independent work, granting the

August 7, 2026 1:48 pm