Month: September 2020

Readers Are Turning, In Droves, To Octavia Butler’s Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

There’s nothing like it – and it feels eerily prescient, too. “The Earthseed books are instructional in a way that other apocalypse fictions are not. They are not prepper fiction, though reading them will teach you a thing or two about go bags and the importance of posting a night watch. According to people who love the books, myself included, they offer something beyond practical preparations: a blueprint for adjusting to uncertainty.” – Slate

Finally: What The New LACMA’s Galleries Will Look Like

Other than necessary mechanical systems and bathrooms, the building’s entire second story will be devoted to galleries, a total of 110,000 square feet of exhibition space. The galleries are composed of two dozen rectilinear spaces — basically, boxes — arranged in clusters and surrounded by interstitial spaces that will also display art. – Los Angeles Times

Time To Rethink How We Classify Science Fiction

Realism is not a binary. It is at a minimum a spectrum. If you charted fictional realities on a football field, you’d find that work on the 45-yard “Realism” side is closer to the 45-yard “SFF” marker than it is to, say, Sally Rooney over the 8-yard line. But even a spectrum doesn’t accurately capture the vast ocean of fiction that takes our reality and heightens, stylizes, distorts, or warps it in different ways. – LitHub

Do The Arts Oversell Their Benefits?

“If we read, for example, that the arts are ‘crucial to reducing poor health and inequality’ as claimed in a press release from University College London on the release of the WHO report, our critical antennae should begin to vibrate. We all know that the major social determinant of poor health is poverty, and that decent food, housing, education and employment are the crucially important determinants of health. Can we really regard the arts as being ‘crucial’?” – ArtsProfessional

Is Morality A Gut Decision Or The Product Of Reasoning?

To ask whether people reason about moral issues, we need to answer two kinds of questions. Firstly, what kinds of moral principles and beliefs do people hold at the outset? And secondly, do people form moral judgments based on those prior principles and beliefs – that is, do humans form moral judgments that align with their moral principles and beliefs? It turns out that they do, from a surprisingly young age. – Psyche

Streaming Has Turned Recorded Music From A Product To An ‘Entertainment Service’. Here’s Why That’s A Problem.

Back when we bought vinyl albums or CDs, writes Lukas Krohn-Grimberghe, we gave particular music and musicians both money and shelf space in our homes, incorporating them (at least a bit) into our identities. (“Remember browsing through someone’s record collection? That’s what I am talking about.”) Online streaming may give us almost unimaginable choice for little money, but, argues Krohn-Grimberghe, it changes both the listening experience and how we relate to the pieces we hear (as well as severely reducing the amount of money going to the musicians), and music becomes something like a utility. But there are ways that problem can be addressed. – WQXR (New York City)