Walterm Miller News Today

As chosen by a bunch of bookworm DIY regulars, including The Last Dinner Party, Bob Vylan, Big Joanie and more.

Michael Dirda's report from Readercon

Over the decades, the book has sold millions of copies and, despite shortcomings, deserves to be read again today because of the threat of nuclear devastation.

Literature Versus Tyranny The stormtroopers of modernity have trampled much underfoot on their monstrous march across the historical landscape. Having abandoned the lessons of the past in the reckless pursuit of an imaginary future, these slaves of the Zeitgeist have killed millions in the name of a mythical progress. The progressives of the French Revolution ushered in a reign of terror, as well as a policy of genocide against the people of the Vendée, butchering anyone who resisted the “pr...

A little more than halfway into Jonathan Lethem’s The Arrest comes a chapter titled “Postapocalyptic and Dystopian Stories”, in which the screenwriter protagonist and his movie-producer friend debate the appeal of such tales while name-checking a panoply of authors and titles – Vonnegut, King, Atwood, Walter Tevis, Philip K. Dick, George R. Stewart, Walter M. Miller, Emily St. John Mandel, Russell Hoban, and especially Cormac McCarthy. McCarthy’s The Road “bugs the fuck out of me,...