Saturday, January 12, 2019

Spinoza Lives!

“The Atheist in the Attic, plus …” Samuel R. Delaney, 2018

Delaney is a prolific science fiction writer who also writes prose.  This slim PM Press collection includes a fictional narrative about a visit to Baruch Spinoza by fellow-philosopher Gottfried Liebniz.  The year is 1676, the month November, the locations Amsterdam and south of that city.  Spinoza of course is the famous “Jew” who questioned God even before Nietzsche.  In Spinoza’s discussion with Liebniz, Spinoza describes his philosophically materialist theory about the separation between the concept of God or human thoughts and the actuality of physical reality.   
The Writer and the Coffee

The story is a mannered and florid description of Liebniz’s thoughts and actions, including a visit to an old friend and his encounter with a threatening or servile servant.  “Small clothes” play a role.  (Now known as underwear.)

The second part is a famous essay by Delaney about being segregated from other writers at various science fiction events.  He is gay and light brown, so didn’t fit the regular cream-colored drill. 

The third is an interview with Delaney by Terry Bisson, the writer of “Fire on the Mountain.” 

Other science fiction / dystopian fiction reviewed below:  “Hunger Games,” “The Road,” “The Dispossessed,” “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “World War Z,” “Cloud Atlas,” “The Heart Goes Last,” “Divergent-Insurgent,” “American War,” “Blade Runner,” “War for the Planet of the Apes,” “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,” “Handmaid’s Tale,” “Good News,” “Fire on the Mountain.”  Use blog search box, upper left, to find these.

And I bought it at May Day Books!
The Kommissar of Kulture
January 12, 2019

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