Category Archives: New Utopia

We human beings have always expressed our thoughts and emotions through various art forms, literature, symbols, or even recently, contemporary digital media.

And this year, fashion brand Le Reve has portrayed all these forms of expressions in their latest Spring/Summer 2022 collection, titled 'Liberate'.

"In this collection, Le Reve has highlighted 70's polka dots, suspending and tumbling floral prints, classic paisley along with optical geo pattern etc.", informed Monnujan Nargis, the CEO of Le Reve.

According to her, the optical geo pattern represents the digital influence of the present day.

'Hacked Utopia', the second theme of this campaign, is currently the most talked topic in the world fashion industry.

The idea of hacked utopia is attaining the long-cherished dream of escaping the mundane daily life and getting lost into the unknown through the help of the virtual and imaginary world.

Based on this idea, Le Reve has developed some unique prints for the summer collection.

The fashion brand has also incorporated free-form fluidity motifs that represent the linear way of our life.

Some of the prints in this collection focus on arts and paintings as well. These prints feature Kintsugi- the art of creating something fascinating by mending the broken pieces.

This motif is pictured through our digital patchworks. Besides, one can also notice motifs inspired by the paintings of various master painters.

"On the whole, the clothing of this collection is the expression of the joy and merriment people feel when they enjoy the shining bright rays of the summer sun after the long bleak days," said Monnujan Nargis.

This collection promotes the palette of bright spring colours with the comfort we need this summer. Fabrics like cotton, twill, voile, raimi cotton, viscose, slub, linen, smooth georgette, textured faille, organza, crepe silk, cotton pique etc have been introduced to save people from the scorching heat.

In terms of women's clothing, Le Reve has paid notable attention to the neckline design in this collection. Starting from shirt collar to frill-trimmed, boat neck, v slit, mandarin, round band, high neck, kimono, ascott, and shawl collar have been included in the collection.

For bottoms, they have designed harem pants, leggings, and matching palazzo.

In terms of men's clothing, the Spring-Summer casual styles have been given priority in this collection.

Along with short and long sleeve casual shirts, Henley and classic t-shirt, polo, and gym vest, people will also find Bermuda shorts, chinos, cotton, Tencel, and premium quality pajamas as well.

These pajamas can be worn as both casual wear and loungewear.

Colours of spring and comfort of summer together make up the Kids Spring/Summer-wear Collection.

Frock, ghagra-choli, tunic, salwar kameez, kaftan, 2-piece set, and knitted tops have been designed for girls. Whereas, boys have the options of t-shirt, polo, panjabi, casual shirt, and shorts. There is a new summer collection for newborns as well.

Matching hats, sandals, bags, purses, accessories, and home dcor products will also be available in the new Spring/Summer collection.

To know more about this new collection, you can browse their website and facebook page.

Originally posted here:

Summers comfort in the colours of spring - The Business Standard

Head below for the full list of science fiction titles heading your way in March!

Keep track of all the new SFF releases here. All title summaries are taken and/or summarized from copy provided by the publisher. Release dates are subject to change.

Stars and Bones (A Continuance Novel) Gareth L. Powell (Titan)

Seventy-five years from today, the human race has been cast from a dying Earth to wander the stars in a vast fleet of arkseach shaped by its inhabitants into a diverse and fascinating new environment, with its own rules and eccentricities. When her sister disappears while responding to a mysterious alien distress call, Eryn insists on being part of the crew sent to look for her. What she discovers on Candidate-623 is both terrifying and deadly. When the threat follows her back to the fleet and people start dying, she is tasked with seeking out a legendary recluse who may just hold the key to humanitys survival.

No new titles.

The Kaiju Preservation Society John Scalzi (Tor Books)

When COVID-19 sweeps through New York City, Jamie Gray is stuck as a dead-end driver for food delivery apps. That is, until Jamie makes a delivery to an old acquaintance, Tom, who works at what he calls an animal rights organization. Toms team needs a last-minute grunt to handle things on their next field visit. Jamie, eager to do anything, immediately signs on. What Tom doesnt tell Jamie is that the animals his team cares for are not here on Earth. Not our Earth, at least. In an alternate dimension, massive dinosaur-like creatures named Kaiju roam a warm and human-free world. Theyre the universes largest and most dangerous panda and theyre in trouble. Its not just the Kaiju Preservation Society who have found their way to the alternate world. Others have, too. And their carelessness could cause millions back on our Earth to die.

Memorys Legion (The Expanse) James S. A. Corey (Orbit)

On Mars, a scientist experiments with a new engine that will one day become the drive that fuels humanitys journey into the stars. On an asteroid station, a group of prisoners are oblivious to the catastrophe that awaits them. On a future Earth beset by overpopulation, pollution, and poverty, a crime boss desperately seeks to find a way off planet. On an alien world, a human family struggles to establish a colony and make a new home. All these stories and more are featured in this unmissable collection set in the hardscrabble world of The Expanse.

Kingdoms of Death (Sun Eater #4) Christopher Ruocchio (DAW)

Hadrian Marlowe is trapped. For nearly a century, he has been a guest of the Emperor, forced into the role of advisor, a prisoner of his own legend. But the war is changing. Mankind is losing. The Cielcin are spilling into human space from the fringes, picking their targets with cunning precision. The Great Prince Syriani Dorayaica is uniting their clans, forging them into an army and threat the likes of which mankind has never seen. And the Empire stands alone. Now the Emperor has no choice but to give Hadrian Marloweonce his favorite knightone more impossible task: journey across the galaxy to the Lothrian Commonwealth and convince them to join the war. But not all is as it seems, and Hadrians journey will take him far beyond the Empire, beyond the Commonwealth, impossibly deep behind enemy lines.

The Temps Andrew DeYoung (Keylight)

Jacob Elliot doesnt want a temporary job in the mailroom at Delphi Enterprises, but after two post-college years of unpaid internships and living in his parents basement, he needs the work. Then, on his first day, the unthinkable happens: toxic gas descends on a meeting in Delphis outdoor amphitheater, killing all the regular employees and leaving Jacob stranded inside the vast office complex. Wandering through Delphi headquarters, Jacob finds other survivors: Lauren, the disillusioned classics major whos now writing online personality quizzes; Swati, the fitness instructor trying to escape a toxic relationship; and Dominic, the business school student who will do almost anything to get ahead. Stranded in the wreckage of the company that employed them, the temps band together to create a miniature world thats part spring break, part office cultureuntil a shocking discovery disrupts the survivors self-made paradise and drives them to uncover the truth about the mysterious corporation that employed them and the apocalypse that brought their world to an end.

Sweep of Stars (Astra Black #1) Maurice Broaddus (Tor Books)

The Muungano empire strived and struggled to form a utopia when they split away from old earth. Freeing themselves from the endless wars and oppression of their home planet in order to shape their own futures and create a far-reaching coalition of city-states that stretched from Earth and Mars to Titan. With the wisdom of their ancestors, the leadership of their elders, the power and vision of their scientists and warriors they charted a course to a better future. But the old powers could not allow them to thrive and have now set in motion new plots to destroy all that theyve built. In the fire to come they will face down their greatest struggle yet. Amachi Adisa and other young leaders will contend with each other for the power to galvanize their people and chart the next course for the empire. Fela Buhari and her elite unit will take the fight to regions not seen by human eyes, but no training will be enough to bring them all home. Stacia Chikeke, captain of the starship Cypher, will face down enemies across the stars, and within her own vessel, as she searches for the answers that could save them all.

Until the Last of Me (Take Them to the Stars #2) Sylvain Neuvel (Tordotcom Publishing)

The First Rule is the most important: Always run, never fight. For generations, Mias family has shaped human history to push them to the stars. The year is 1968 and she is on the cusp of destiny, poised to launch the first humans into space. But she cannot take them to the stars, not quite yet. Her adversary is at her heels, the future of the planet at stake, and obeying the First Rule is no longer an option. For the first time in one-hundred generations, Mias family will have to choose to stand their ground, risking not only their bloodline, but the future of the human race.

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All the New Science Fiction Books Arriving in March! - tor.com

Today marks the fortieth anniversary of the death of a writer who has been worshipped, loathed, and ridiculedand whose legacy, despite all the dismissals by her detractors, still reverberates in the twenty-first century. Ayn Rand, the bestselling novelist, controversial philosopher of Objectivism, and secular guru of reason and individualism, died in New York City on March 6, 1982, at the age of 77. As a refugee from Soviet Russia (born Alissa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum) who vehemently rejected not only communism but the religious and nationalist values of pre-revolutionary Russian culture, Rand may be particularly relevant to the current moment, when the new Russia is rebuilding itself as a hybrid of the USSR and the old empire with its pillars of religion and nationalism.

Rands works, especially her two best-known novels, The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957), still continue to be read and to draw new and often passionate fans. Yet mainstream culture has mostly regarded her as a quaint niche interest on the rightan intellectual pin-up girl for the likes of Paul Ryan, the former speaker of the House, and Andy Puzder, Donald Trumps withdrawn nominee for secretary of laboror treated her as a caricature and a punchline. (Think the Ayn Rand School for Tots in a 1992 Simpsons episode, where the Objectivist daycare-center owner bans pacifiers and asserts that a child who reaches for a bottle of milk is being a leech.) Conservative culture mavens have not been much kinder: In 2010, New Criterion editor Roger Kimball wrote that he had never been able to make it through much of either Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead because each time he tried, he found himself oscillating between fits of the giggles, at the awful prose, and irritation, at the jejune philosophy.

Is Rand unfairly maligned, as her admirers assert? In some ways, yes. She did not, as is often implied, worship the rich (most of the wealthy characters in her novels are repulsive or ridiculous, or both), nor did she preach that moneymaking is lifes highest goal. (At one point in The Fountainhead, the hero, visionary architect Howard Roark, describes the man whose sole aim is to make money as a variety of the second-hander who lives solely through other people, seeking to impress them with his wealth.) The character in the 1987 movie Dirty Dancing who ditches his pregnant girlfriend and brandishes a dogeared paperback of The Fountainhead to explain that some people count, some people dont does not actually exemplify Randian philosophy.

While Rand praised the virtue of selfishness, what she meant by the word was something very different from the common meaning. One of the points of The Fountainhead is that mediocre architect Peter Keating, the slick opportunist who uses everything from plagiarism to blackmail to advance his career, would be commonly seen as selfish even though a self is precisely whats absent from his pursuit of success, while Roark would be wrongly seen as self-sacrificing when he would rather be broke than sacrifice his integrity. (Donald Trump, who has fancied himself a Fountainhead fan and Roark wannabe, is in fact a perfect Randian baddie: not only a businessman who thrives on government connections, string-pulling and shady deals, but a man whose sense of achievement is derived mainly from bullying others and being loved.)

Rands affirmation of a strong sense of selfhood as the proper foundation of human relationshipsTo say I love you one must first know how to say the I, Roark tells his beloved, Dominique Franconis a worthwhile message for anyone. Likewise, her formulation of reasonpurposeself-esteem as the core principles of the good life in Atlas Shrugged is a powerful distillation of what we often call Enlightenment values. Conversely, her critique of altruism as the foundation of morality led her to some undeniably valid insights: for instance, that altruistic goals can easily become an excuse for bad acts or a vehicle for power-seeking and self-righteous bullying. Rand, who asserted almost a decade before Hannah Arendt that Nazism and communism were not opposites but totalitarian twinsone subordinating the individual to race, the other to class and collectivewas almost certainly on to something when she wrote that the habit of equating self-interest with immorality and self-sacrifice with nobility often left democracys defenders intellectually disarmed against arguments that communism, at least, teaches people to put others first.

Many of Rands admirers have singled out as a particularly important intellectual contribution her defense of the free market as a moral system based on accomplishment and voluntary exchange rather than coercion, as well as her celebration of entrepreneurship as a creative activity rather than mere pursuit of profit. But on this and much else Rand is ill served by her absolutism. She assumes that, absent dirty dealing of one kind or another, individuals rewarded by the market have an absolute moral claim to those rewards as the fruit of their own effortswhich means that not only any redistribution but all involuntary taxation is immoral (Rand believed that necessary government services should ideally be supported via voluntary financing). But this view ignores not only the extent to which an individuals achievement and flourishing is made possible by a vast and intricate civilizational infrastructure, but the role of factors unrelated to personal meritfrom family background to sheer luck. Rand was still right when she wrote that the government is not the owner of the citizens income and, therefore, cannot hold a blank check on that income and that the state should not have power to enlarge the scope of its services at its own arbitrary discretion. But her political philosophy and her followers were often unable to reckon with the messy reality and compromises inherent in a government constituted to respect both the individual and the social contract.

Rands absolutism also undercuts her arguments on a moral level. Ideas she opposes, such as altruism, are relentlessly strawmanned: If you teach people that its praiseworthy to give up something to help others with no thought of your own self-interest, then youre telling them that they have no right to exist for their own sake and no purpose except to be a sacrificial animal. While some accusations of cruelty directed at Rand are based on caricature more than her actual work, its difficult to deny that her version of individualismwhich bears a Nietzschean stamp Rand deniedhas little room for physical afflictions and vulnerabilities. Except for her first major novel, We the Living (more about which in a moment), sick people mostly figure in her work as unworthy recipients of pity, and even private charities are mocked for helping drug addicts and unwed pregnant women.

The way Rands philosophy played out in her own life is a stark example of being mugged by reality. Her following, by the admission of former associates who never stopped admiring her work, became so cultlike that people who spoke of freedom and the independent mind felt compelled to admire the same books and music Rand admired. (Objectivist groups even held show trials of members accused of violating Randian precepts.) While her heroes stoically accepted romantic rejection, Rands reaction to the revelation that her much younger lover and disciple, Nathaniel Branden, was involved with a still-younger woman was to rail against him, curse him with impotence, and denounce him to her flock for unspecified immoral acts. Her belief that cancer and many other illnesses were the result of psycho-epistemological errors led her to conceal her lung cancer diagnosis from her fans (and refuse to retract her previous staunch denial of the hazards of smoking) and to torment her long-suffering husband by trying to reason him out of Alzheimers. Her professed commitment to truth did not prevent her from rewriting her history to proudly declare, No one helped me, even though she repeatedly received help from relatives, friends, and even charities after coming to the United States.

In other words: Dont try this philosophy at home, kids.

But Rand is hardly the first philosopher whose ideas cannot survive a close encounter with reality, or the first writer with eccentric philosophical views. And the truth is that, despite her eccentricities, she was a far better writer than Kimball and others recognizeat least until she went full ideologue in Atlas Shrugged and began to use fiction as a vehicle for heavy-handed agitprop. While Atlas has some powerful passages, its hero John Galt is an abstraction with the looks of a Greek god, its villains are a gallery of grotesques, and its plot is weighed down by endless preaching in which the message is hammered into the readers head again and again and again. That message subsumes anything that could be recognizable as human emotion: When the wife of industrialist Hank Rearden tries to humiliate him by announcing that she slept with a man he despises, he responds by having philosophical musings (as one does) on the creed of collective interdependence, which holds that the moral stature of one is at the mercy of the action of another.

But Rands earlier works, while always wedded to her ideas, are far more readable and humanand leave little doubt that she was a writer of extraordinary if idiosyncratic talent.

We the Living (1936), set in Petrograd/Leningrad in the early to mid-1920s, paints a compelling picture of life in the Soviet Union as the devastation of revolution and civil war gave way to the New Economic Policy, a brief interlude in which private enterprise was grudgingly tolerated along with a fair amount of personal and cultural freedom. At this point, Rand was still flexible enough that she could make some of her commies sympathetic and that her individualistic heroine, Kira Argounova, could have real, tangible bonds with her family despite being its black sheep. Kiras uncle Vassily, a dispossessed businessman who desperately tries to hold on to his dignity and cling to hope under the new regime, is a particularly tragic figure, while her mother Galina, whose haughty scorn for the new ways gradually shifts to acceptance and then enthusiastic conformism, is depicted with fine and subtle satire. Kiras tangled relationship with the idealistic Communist Andrei Taganov and the aristocrat Leo Kovalensky, which ends in Andreis suicide and Leos descent into cynicism and degradation, is a genuinely poignant story with enough unusual twists to make it riveting. And Rand has a knack for the vivid detail, such as the early scene in which a woman traveling on an overcrowded train holes up in the reeking cubicle of the toilet to devour a boiled potato, a rare luxury in a country only starting to climb out of the civil wars wreckage.

The Fountainhead, almost certainly Rands best work, can also be read and appreciated without fully embracing the message. The frequently made claim that Rands characters are black-and-white cardboard cutouts does not apply here: Even the despicable Keating is a nuanced character with some sympathetic moments, including the bittersweet story of his thwarted romance with the young woman he truly loves but gives up for a more advantageous marriage. The Citizen Kane-like newspaper tycoon Gail Wynand, Roarks frenemy and (for a long stretch of the novel) Dominiques husband, is both odious and noble; many other characters such as Dominiques father Guy Francon do not neatly fit the good/bad scheme, and even the (very bad) archvillain Ellsworth Toohey has an acid intelligence, wit, and even Mephistophelean charm that place him in an entirely different league from the thoroughly repulsive baddies of Atlas Shrugged.

Likewise, Rands prose here has little in common with the later novels anvil-heavy propaganda tropes and crass mockery. It can be beautifully evocative (The air was heavy with untimely darkness, disquieting like premature old age, and there were yellow puddles of light in windows) and bitingly funny (Wynands tabloid, the New York Banner, is described as covering society news in a trashy way that gave the man on the street two satisfactions: that of entering illustrious drawing rooms and that of not wiping his feet on the threshold). Reviewing the novel in the New York Timesone of the few favorable mainstream reviews Rands books got in her lifetimepioneering feminist psychologist Lorine Pruette hailed it as the work of a writer of great power with a subtle and ingenious mind and the capacity of writing brilliantly, beautifully, bitterly. The praise may sound startling to those used to thinking of Rand as a right-wing pseudo-intellectual hack, but its well deserved. The Fountainhead is rightly considered a twentieth-century American classic.

Rands relationship with American politics was always complicated, to say the least. Her fierce opposition to the New Deal and socialist encroachments on capitalism drew her to the right, but her militant atheism and radical individualism led to irreconcilable differences with the conservative movement. The scathing review of Atlas Shrugged in National Review by Whittaker Chambers, titled Big Sister is Watching You, made the divorce final. (While Chamberss animus focused primarily on the godlessness of Rands vision, some of his chargesfor instance, that Rands utopia is a world ruled by a technocratic eliteare difficult to refute regardless of the question of religion.)

Today, one could see Rands rational individualism as an alternative to the collectivist politics at both ends of the political spectrum: demagogic populism and anti-liberal traditionalism on the right, resurgent socialism and identity politics on the left. Unfortunately, her flaws inevitably get in the way. One need not, for example, be woke to find it shocking that during the years when Rand inveighed against onerous business regulations as an assault on individual rights, she never gave any thought to Jim Crow laws; it took until 1963 for her to write that the policy of the Southern states toward Negroes was and is a shameful contradiction of this countrys basic principles. (At that point, while condemning racism, she also criticized the Civil Rights Act for outlawing discrimination by private businesses and violating property rights.) Rands warning that the smallest minority on earth is the individual and that anti-racism must be founded on individual rights is a potent and relevant messagebut one likely to be undercut by her cavalier attitude toward racism. And her work has other problems that could play to the worst of current American discourse, such as a tendency to demonize people with bad opinions.

Yet it is also true that Rand contains multitudes. Perhaps the best way to approach her work is to get beyond her own black-and-white framework in which there is either total acceptance or wholesale rejection, and to acknowledge the contradictions that she denied she had. Encouragingly, some scholars are now engaging her work in a way that is critical but not dismissive; readers should, too. One can appreciate Rands affirmation of reason, personal autonomy, and achievement while acknowledging that these values need to be complemented by others. One need not accept her romantic individualism wholesale to see that it has a stirring power and a magnetic appeal, especially to young peoplewhich is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as that individualism comes to be balanced by a fuller understanding of lifes complexities. And one need not ignore the ugly side of Rands work to see the beauty in her celebration of life, creativity, and freedom.

I came across an unexpected, and oddly relevant, example of such beauty while looking through Rands 1970 collection of essays, The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution. While Rand rarely wrote about specific events in Russia, in early 1969 she was moved to write about the sentencing of five young people who had come out on Red Square on August 25, 1968 to protest the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. (Their protest lasted three minutes before they were arrested.) Commenting on New York Times reporter Henry Kamms observation about the inexplicable personal alchemy that drove these five to such a brave and futile act, Rand wrote:

There is a fundamental conviction which some people never acquire, some hold only in their youth, and a few hold to the end of their daysthe conviction that ideas matter. In ones youth that conviction is experienced as a self-evident absolute. . . . That ideas matter means that knowledge matters, that truth matters, that ones mind matters. And the radiance of that certainty, in the process of growing up, is the best aspect of youth.

Its consequence is the inability to believe in the power or the triumph of evil. . . . This is the inexplicable personal alchemy that puzzled Henry Kamm: an independent mind dedicated to the supremacy of ideas, i.e., of truth.

Voicing anguish for the physical and spiritual ordeal that awaits the young rebels, Rand finally addresses herself to people of good will, Objectivist or not, who have preserved some sense of humanity, justice and compassion (italics in the original), and pleads with them not to help the Soviet jailers pretend that they are the morally acceptable leaders of a civilized country.

Written about Soviet Russia in 1969, these words still ring true in 2022 for Putins Russia, where courage is not nearly as rare and protest not nearly as futile.

This, too, is the real Ayn Rand.

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Ayn Rand in Our Day - The Bulwark

It is perhaps unsurprising that a novel written by a Japanese author living in Germany, who regularly writes in both her native and adopted tongues, should focus so much on the nature of communication. The connection between language and identity is at the heart of Scattered All Over the Earth, a new novel by Yoko Tawada, translated from Japanese into English by Margaret Mitsutani.

Scattered All Over the Earth, by Yoko TawadaTranslated by Margaret Mitsutani256 pagesNEW DIRECTIONS

The novels protagonist, Hiruko, is a climate refugee cast adrift in northern Europe after Japan has succumbed to an unspecified environmental disaster. The Japanese populace is scattered all over the Earth, and it has been a long time since Hiruko has spoken to anyone in her first language. She works as a storyteller for children in Denmark, translating folk tales and legends into Panska, a language of her own invention based on a blend of Scandinavian languages. Armed with Panska and her own positive, can-do attitude, she is able to converse with anyone she meets but still yearns to speak Japanese.

This desire sets her on a journey that is something of a Canterbury Tales for the 21st century. As Hiruko travels around Europe, she collects a band of lost souls, each with a story to tell. Each chapter is told by a different character, giving rise to an orchestra of voices intermingling, echoing, reinterpreting and retranslating one another. This is a thoroughly modern novel that reflects the seismic changes technology and globalization have wrought on humanity.

The voices are all those of young people, comfortable with the idea of having fluid identities and being rootless. Toward the end of the novel, the rag-tag group congregates in a closed restaurant, where their connections, fears and expectations are laid clear across a symbolic roundtable. There is no judgement or rejection; acceptance is the watchword of the group until one of their mothers arrives and begins forcing old-fashioned ideas on them. She categorizes them by race, gender and nationality effectively excluding Akash, a transgender woman from India, because she doesnt neatly fit into the rigid definitions the older generation clings to.

Although the novel has been described as dystopian, in actuality, it is supremely utopian. Tawada looks at contemporary identity politics as a revolution that can bring people together, a potential way out of the hideous mess weve made of the world.

Author Yoko Tawada | NINA SUBIN

The dystopia is the present day in which the reader lives, the one remembered by the characters in flashbacks, where people fear increasingly authoritarian governments and nations are paralyzed in the face of an impending climate crisis. Hamstrung by an inability to see beyond the weight of systems and institutions, the worlds inaction literally sinks Japan beneath the waves. The broken society, for Hiruko and her friends, is behind them. Now they are rebuilding a new, better future severed from the binaries, assumptions and demands of their parents generation.

Through Hirukos use of Panska, Tawada proposes that identities tied to nationalities, race and gender are holding us back as a species. It isnt unusual for multilingual speakers to fashion a new personality to go with a new language our very thought processes adjust to fit into the rhythms of an existing language and culture. For Hiruko, however, the process is reversed. She does not change who she is to adapt to a certain language. Rather, she creates a way of communication that is simple, open and friendly. The honesty of Panska arises from Hirukos nature, and because the invented language doesnt stem from a national identity, it isnt synonymous with a specific culture. It is, in Joycean terms, free from the nightmare of history.

Tawadas real skill as a novelist is in making none of this didactic. Instead, she uses the polyphonic structure of the novel and the natural positivity of her characters to carry the argument, allowing the reader to lose themselves in the beautiful language, vivid descriptions of near-future Europe and the exciting thought experiments of a post-climate crisis renaissance.

This is not a novel for grumpy curmudgeons confused by pronouns or those who hark back to a simpler past; this is the first great utopian novel of the 21st century. Through Hiruko, Tawada encourages us to reject the exclusive, miserly conservative tendencies of the day and embrace the promise of a youthful revolution.

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'Scattered All Over the Earth': Yoko Tawada's utopia rejects present-day conventions - The Japan Times

BAYSIDE, QUEENS An apartment building is going to ruin Utopia, Auburndale residents say.

Developers have city permission to build a three-story apartment complex on Utopia Parkway and 37th Avenue, much to the chagrin of residents who cherish the block's single-family homes and Tudor-style duplexes.

"The city is all too willing to diminish the quality of life for hard working people in the outer boroughs," wrote a commenter in a private neighborhood Facebook group.

Added another, the building will "look like a sore thumb."

The three-unit Auburndale complex will stand 40 feet tall and feature a backyard and two parking spots, records show.

City records name the owner as Rong Chen of NYDC GROUP LLC and estimate the job will cost about $920,550.

The Department of Buildings issued a signed work order for the new building on Feb. 8, city records show.

News of the development angered neighbors of the Bayside, Queens Facebook group, most of whom contended that the apartment building would worsen neighborhood problems such as a short supply of parking spaces.

"People already have trouble visiting," one commenter said.

Arguments over new construction are not new for neighbors in Bayside. Locals often push back against new apartments and schools alike on the basis of area overcrowding.

Continued here:

Apartment Building Will Ruin Utopia, Queens Residents Fear - Patch.com

Every war is a disaster and an anachronism. There is no because that justifies the destruction of human life.

By Javier Tolcachier

But war does not begin when the first bullets whistle, but long before.

War begins when the possessors of nuclear weapons hold the worlds population hostage and refuse to denuclearise the planet once and for all.

War begins when military bases are maintained outside ones own territory for decades, forcing other peoples to accept conditions of obedience.

War begins when nationalist slogans are adopted and differences between brotherly peoples are exacerbated.

All these elements are present in the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine, whose government in this case is just a painted cardboard in a larger geopolitical game.

It is the struggle between the supremacism and historical belligerence of the United States and its extended arm NATO, which today represent the last phase of the Western colonial world and are trying by all possible means to stop the rise and partnership of the powers in the East, such as China, Russia and the security pact called the Shanghai Cooperation, which also includes four other Central Asian countries.

It must be said that the conflict in Ukraine is also being used to once again discipline and calumniate Europeans and prevent them from turning their gaze fully towards Asia, participating in Chinas Belt and Road project, in the Asian Investment Bank and continuing to increase trade with Russia.

Nor should we forget the recent events in Belarus and Kazakhstan, which, although they constitute a legitimate expression of protest by the peoples against stagnant rulers, from a geopolitical point of view can be interpreted as meddling strategies to penetrate areas adjacent to Russias border and advance through the heart of Central Asia towards strategic positions.

Nor can economic interests, with which moral business trolls gloat.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, most governments called for dialogue and a peaceful solution, which is undoubtedly a path consistent with the Peace Zone Declaration achieved by the region at the CELAC Summit in 2014.

It is necessary to understand that we are heading towards a unique planetary civilisation, in which we will have to embrace a new utopia, the utopia corresponding to this period of History: that of building a Universal Human Nation, where different peoples and cultures fit, where only violence, discrimination or misery have no place.

We know when wars begin and why: only to maintain or conquer power, which cannot be justified.

That is why we also know when wars and invasions must end, not only this war but also all other wars: Right now.

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Wars don't start when the first bullets whistle - PRESSENZA International News Agency

As threats to democracy everywhere seem to be increasing, the discussions surrounding the threats rarely offer practical solutions to the problems plaguing the system. A Therapy for Dying Democracies by Theodore C. Stathis is an impressive book offering insights as well as a plan of action for saving democracy which is especially timely at this particular moment in history.

The books description notes that the world economic crisis and the provocatively unjust distribution of wealth have exposed the real crisis, which is a political one. All the malfunctioning democracies that are gradually growing into oligarchic governments have become the main focus of many political experts.

Books about democracy including such titles as Are Democracies Dying? and How Democracies Die have reinvigorated global interest in ancient Greek democracy and even though many publications refer to it, they do not propose any functional and substantial solutions that keep up with the present; as a result, direct democracy is being rejected, not only by the enemies of this political system, but also by well-meaning prominent figures and public officials, who consider it as being nothing but a utopia, Stathis writes.

A Therapy for Dying Democracies contains a remedy for our modern malfunctioning democracies, which suffer from a lack of democracy. Actually, the dying democracies, one by one, are removing their democratic masks and reveal their real identity, which is oligarchic in nature, Stathis notes.

A Therapy for Dying Democracies is a unique proposal and shows how the operational difficulties of ancient Greek democracy can be bypassed, and presents for the first time worldwide an effective way that shows how true democratic governments can be established today.

Stathis has the equivalent of a B.Sc. degree from the Technical University in Vienna, as well as a M.Sc. and an Eng. Sc.D. degree from Columbia University, New York. He is president of the Foundation for Mediterranean Studies. He has worked as an assistant researcher at Columbia University and as an assistant professor at Manhattan College, New York, and at New York University, where he also worked as a researcher. He was a scientific expert, and later a lecturer, at the University of Patras, and a visiting professor at the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki.

Stathis was president of Advanced Acoustical Research Inc. in New York, executive director of N.B.G. Bancassurance, president and executive director of National Capital S.A. (National Bank of Greece Subsidiaries), and Adviser to the Board of the National Bank of Greece, as well as president of the Musical and Educational Organization of Greece (Athens Camerata Friends of Music Orchestra).

He served for 15 years as a Member of the Greek Parliament, and as an Undersecretary for the Greek Ministry of Defense, as a Deputy Minister for the Greek Ministry of Culture, and as Minister of Agriculture.

He is the composer of four operas (three of which have been performed at the Athens Concert Hall- Megaron Mousikis): Antigone, based on the play by Sophocles (see excerpts on YouTube), Opus Elgin: The Destruction of the Parthenon, Alcestis based on the play by Euripides, and Theodora (set in the time of Justinian); he has also composed a number of quartets for strings, and numerous songs. As a writer, he has published several articles on science and politics, and is the author of National Defense and Its Achilles Heel, In Search of a Model for Democracy Today, and The Trojan Horse of Democracy.

A Therapy for Dying Democracies by Theodore C. Stathis is available online: https://bit.ly/3IuqhAG.

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Stathis' A Therapy for Dying Democracies - The National Herald

York Theatre Royal will be hosting Utopia Theatres production of Heres What She Said to Me on March 17 and March 18.

The production has been developed and will be directed by Mojisola Elufowoju who graduated from York St John with a degree in Theatre and Directing in 2011.

She said: I found almost that Id found myself when I did that particular course. I knew what I wanted to do. You just try your hand at something, and you just know that something about it feels within the skills youve already got.

Heres What She Said To Me was written by Oladipo Agboluaje after conversations with Mojisola Elufowoju.

The production will combine drama with music, poetry and more to tell a moving story.

Mojisola Elufowoju said: We are so excited to finally be able to take our production of Heres What She Said to Me on tour. Since its first staging in 2020, we always intended to bring the production to audiences across the country.

Tickets are available here, at the York Theatre Royal website.

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York Theatre Royal to host brand new show this March | York Press - York Press

Theres a lot of great science fiction, fantasy, and horror published every month by large presses. But indie presses are also publishing plenty of great worksome of which can go under the radar. With that in mind, heres a look at some notable books due out in March and April 2022 on independent presses. Its not everything, but it might point you in some unexpected directions with your spring reading.

As cryptids go, few are stranger than Mothman, a bizarre creature said to lurk in the woods of West Virginia. Its been the subject of prose nonfiction and ominous comics; theres even a Mothman riff in the game Fallout 76. And if the cover and Mountain State location are any indication, its also what Laurel Hightower is writing about in her new novel Below, about a woman whose drive through the mountains takes a sinister turn. (March 29, 2022; Perpetual Motion/Ghoulish Books)

What does it mean when youre not who you thought you were? Alternately: the categories of beauty queen and sleeper agent have, historically speaking, not had much overlap. Candace Wuehles forthcoming Monarch poses the question: what if someone could lay claim to both of those job descriptions? Throw in a touch of the occult and a bit of punk rock and you have an intriguing combination. (March 29, 2022; Soft Skull Press)

When it comes to John Elizabeth Stintzis novel My Volcano, a volcano bursting from the ground below Central Park manages to be one of the less weird aspects of the plot. Stinzis novel also includes time travel, folktales, and a character transforming into a being with a steadily growing hive mind. This is not a book that lacks ambition. (March 22, 2022; Two Dollar Radio)

For years, Jon Frankel has been at work on a series of novels set in a future United States devastated by climate change. A 2020 profile of Frankel described his work in bold terms: Its Shakespeare as a B movie, its the alienation of Chandlers Philip Marlow. The next part of his massive novel Isle of Dogs is due out this spring; the first part dealt with political intrigue in the U.S. circa 2500. (April 2022; Whiskey Tit)

Several of Yoko Tawadas novels have taken readers into strange corners of the future, including The Emissary. Next up for her in English translation is Scattered All Over the Earth, translated by Margaret Mitsutani. Its the first book in a trilogy, set in a near future where climate change abounds and Japan has vanished from the map. (March 1, 2022; New Directions)

Dystopian states can abound with magic just as easily as they can with science. In Eugen Bacons novel Mage of Fools, a dictator has made use of uncanny abilities to devastate the environment. The novels protagonist must find a way to end their reign using suppressed literature and the possibility of a better life for all. (March 15, 2022; Meerkat Press)

Blurbs dont always get my attention, but when both Vanessa Veselka and Paul Tremblay are raving about your book, thats bound to catch my eye. The book in question is Cara Hoffmans collection Ruin, which encompasses everything from talking animals to children making use of strange disguises. Turns out blending the sinister and the surreal makes for a compelling combination. (April 5, 2022; PM Press)

If you havent yet encountered John Langans fiction, 2022 is a great time for it. Langan writes emotionally resonant, formally brilliant stories that veer into the occult and the outright horrific. The spring, an expanded edition of his debut collection Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters will see print. Its an excellent introduction to a prodigiously talented writer. (March 2022; Word Horde)

Lets not forget that poetry can also transport readers into speculative, uncanny, or otherwise fantastical realms. In this case, Adrian Ernesto Cepedas We Are the Ones Possessed, a collection that cites both Carmen Maria Machado and Nick Cave as inspirations. These works promise to impart a sense of dread and fan out into the world of death. (March 2022; CLASH Books)

First and foremost, Chelsea Vowels Buffalo Is the New Buffalo has an astoundingly good title, one thats evocative and instantly memorable. That its described by the publisher as a work of Metis futurism is also very intriguing. Vowels collection takes familiar science fiction structures and charts new ground within them; its the anti-colonialist collection you didnt know you were waiting for. (April 26, 2022; Arsenal Pulp Press)

Richard Butner has been writing surreal, fantastical stories for a while now, and this year will see the publication of his debut collection. Its called The Adventurists, and it abounds with mysterious doorways, lost royalty, and lovelorn ghosts. The review at Publishers Weekly made comparisons to the unlikely trio of John Crowley, Ray Bradbury, and Sally Rooney which is certainly an attention-getting combination. (March 22, 2022; Small Beer Press)

You may well have read some of Vandana Singhs short fiction in these very (digital) pages. Now, she has a book due out as part of PM Presss excellent Outspoken Authors series. Utopias of the Third Kind brings together fiction and nonfiction that finds Singh exploring the notion of what a utopia could be and how we might get there. (March 22, 2022; PM Press)

Can old myths coexist with modern accounts of violence and isolation? Read Irene Sols When I Sing, Mountains Dance (translated by Mara Faye Lethem) and you may well have your answer. This is a novel where witches narrate part of the story, where ghosts are as central to the story as the living, and where the landscape itself takes on a massive stature. (March 15, 2022; Graywolf Press)

If youve read Catherynne M. Valentes novel Deathless, you may be familiar with the story of Koschei the Deathless. Valentes book juxtaposed this figure with one part of the history of the Soviet Union; Katya Kazbeks Little Foxes Took Up Matches also hearkens back to this folktale, but ventures into the waning days of the U.S.S.R., and addresses themes of identity and family as it does so. (April 5, 2022; Tin House)

How many stories have gotten your attention by recounting an account of something strange happening in nearby woods? Masatsugu Onos At the Edge of the Woods (translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter) tells the story of a family who arrive in a new home and find that the woods near their house are home to something uncanny. How does that change them in turn? Well, youll have to read it to find out. (April 12, 2022; Two Lines Press)

Tobias Carroll is the managing editor of Vol.1 Brooklyn. He is the author of the short story collection Transitory (Civil Coping Mechanisms) and the novel Reel (Rare Bird Books).

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Can't Miss Indie Press Speculative Fiction for March and April 2022 - tor.com

Had it been released at any point in the past few years, Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes would have been an important documentary; a feature-length blend of audio interviews and largely unseen archive footage that puts the 1986 disaster into horrifying new perspective. That it comes out now just days after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, including an attack on the Chernobyl site itself makes it as unmissable as it is harrowing.

Obviously, this timeliness was never the intention. Indeed, the film-maker James Jones had a different historical event in mind when he started work on it two years ago. I initially thought the relevance was Covid, he says. Like Chernobyl, the early days of the pandemic were marked with mysterious illnesses that the local government attempted to keep a lid on. I was interested in the idea that this invisible enemy was threatening us, he says. An authoritarian regime was lying about it, and Chinese citizens were starting to voice their disquiet publicly.

The seed of the documentary was planted when Jones read two books on the disaster during lockdown Not good for my mental state, he says in retrospect. But completely fascinating. One contained a footnote that caught his eye. It referenced footage that was shot in Pripyat [in northern Ukraine] the weekend after the accident, he says. Despite the fact that the worst nuclear disaster in history had happened down the road hours earlier, releasing 400 times more radioactive material into the atmosphere than the Hiroshima bomb, the footage showed residents milling about as if nothing had happened.

You can see mothers pushing babies around and kids playing football in the sand, says Jones. Then you start to see these white flashes on the film because of the insanely high level of radiation. It was so chilling. Nevertheless, the existence of this footage spurred him to seek out more. Via a wealth of sources national archives, propaganda films, collapsed Soviet documentary studios, western news reports, children and soldiers who happened to have video cameras at the time he began to piece together a blistering documentary that draws a straight line from the USSRs attempts to play down the disaster to the fall of the Soviet Union itself.

Although Chernobyl is one of those historical punctuation points on which everyone thinks they have a decent overview, not least due to Skys recent drama series, The Lost Tapes is studded with moments of footage so extraordinary that you are unlikely to forget them. A clean-up helicopter crashing to the ground over the explosion site. Searing footage of injuries and mutations to humans and animals. Wooden grave markers in an irradiated forest.

But perhaps the most unforgettable sequence is of the so-called liquidators; civil and military personnel who, after the robot designed to do the job became overloaded with radiation and malfunctioned, were tasked with clearing tons of contaminated material from the roof of the building by hand. We see them fashioning rudimentary PPE by tying lead sheets to their bodies, and joking nervously about vodka. Then there is one clip where a camera follows a group of liquidators up a ladder and out on to the roof itself. It is absolutely extraordinary, like being led by the hand into the mouth of hell. It was the most dangerous place on Earth at the time, Jones says. Many of them had no idea what they were doing.

Equally distressing is the footage shot around Pripyat before the disaster. The place looks like a utopia. Its clean and open, filled with so many children that a government official proudly opens the new wing of a maternity ward to cope with capacity. Jones admits that this footage has an air of Soviet propaganda to it, but it does seem a largely accurate reflection of how people who lived there felt about their town.

It just humanised the place, says Jones of this footage. I loved the drama series, but it is relentlessly grim. I think the only shot you see of the actual town is when a bird falls from the sky and dies. But this whole other reality existed, of people swimming in the sea and having ordinary lives. So when the tragedy does hit, you feel that this wasnt the distant world of grim Soviet citizens. It was a lively and joyous place.

One thread the documentary does share with the series, though, is Lyudmilla Ignatenko. Played by Jessie Buckley in the drama, she is a Ukrainian, pregnant at the time of the accident, whose husband died of severe radiation poisoning after trying to put out the blaze.

Ignatenko is one of the primary interviewees in The Lost Tapes. She displays similar emotional backbone here, providing an audio recollection of the horror she witnessed with remarkable clearheadedness. Lyudmilla has been through so much tragedy, says Jones, awestruck.

Some of the more homespun archive footage also helps remind us how relatively recent the disaster was. To watch the uniformed cast of the Chernobyl series or any official Soviet footage from that time, much of which was still shot on black and white film to save upgrading their kit you could be lulled into thinking all this took place in the 1950s or 60s. But Joness wealth of new video footage, with some startlingly era-appropriate fashion, helps to underline that in terms of history, this happened very recently.

It feels properly 80s, says Jones. Actually there was a great clip I really wanted to use where theres a really 80s disco, and just like flashing lights and DJs and stuff. But it felt slightly wrong tonally to include it.

For all the visceral horror of Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes, the thing that drags the film into the now is the torrent of disinformation that gushed out of the USSR in the wake of the tragedy. Despite the rest of the world reacting with justified alarm at the threat to life, the Soviet government clamped shut and refused to acknowledge anything that wasnt fully undeniable, regardless of evidence. Pripyat residents are evacuated, but told they will return in a matter of days. Patients dying of unimaginable radiation burns were brushed away as having no connection to Chernobyl. The documentary claims that 200,000 people are estimated to have died as a direct result of the disaster. The official Soviet tally remains at 13. To put it in modern terms, this was fake news on a colossal scale.

Eventually, people learned the truth and public anger at the cover-up was such that Ukrainian independence soon followed, as did the final collapse of the USSR. I ask Jones whether, in the age of the internet, something so big could be covered as easily.

You would think it would be impossible but then you look at Russia, at eastern Ukraine. If people are watching state television, particularly people at a certain age, you really can control what people think. I guess Putins tactic now is just to sow confusion everywhere so people feel they cant trust anything, whether its state TV or some conspiracy theory on Facebook. The actual truth is just one of many things running around. Youd like to think that, if people were dying from radiation or getting cancer or their hair was falling out, that it would be documented. But I dont know. My faith in the modern world has been shaken.

Securing all the footage was such an arduous job that it took him right up to the wire. It was scattered around Russia and Ukraine, and it was just a nightmare, he says. Soviet bureaucracy, the pandemic, sanctions. Our payments to Russia kept getting stopped by banks. It was laughable. Until two or three weeks ago, I thought there was no way we could deliver on time.

The documentary was finally handed in a week ago. Literally in the nick of time, says Jones. If the war had started earlier, the film wouldnt have been finished. That brings us to the subject that has cast a shadow over the interview, the documentary, and the world at large. Throughout our talk, Jones has spoken adoringly of his Ukrainian producers who helped to hunt down the archive footage, along with the crew and interview subjects from the area. Have they been in touch since the invasion? Pretty much all of them, yeah, he replies. How are they doing? They are all terrified, you know? Angry. They are all feeling pretty helpless.

And Lyudmilla Ignatenko? I texted yesterday saying, you know, I hope youre OK. I always talk to her in Russian when we text, he says. This time, she replied in Ukrainian.

Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes is on Sky Documentaries tonight at 9pm.

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Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes stunning TV that is suddenly unmissable - The Guardian