Getting within sight of the end. In the last month, I read sixteen books. I need to read only 30 more by December. I may indeed finish early. No counting chickens though.
#PhD #CompExams #Literature #SciFi #Utopia #Scotland

Days left: 97
Works read: 107
Works left: 30
Days ahead: 67

In my utopian and SF studies, one thing I keep banging my head against is everyone declaring loudly that Delany’s *Triton* is a utopia, A) without addressing that he called it a “heterotropia” in direct response to Le Guin’s *Dispossessed* that did use the word “utopia,” and, more importantly, B) without ever citing Foucault, where Delany got the word “heterotopia” from in the first place, which Delany declares directly.

Again and again and again.

#PhD #CompExams #Utopia #SciFi #Delany

Progress towards #PhD #CompExams: finally past an important post.

Days Left: 112
Works Read: 100 🎉🎉
Works Left: 37
Days ahead: 78

All day I've been #syllabus and #canvas prepping. I just want to work on my #CompExams.

Nothing quite like reading a spirited defense of Charles Fourier to make him sound like the most ridiculous kook ever. #PhD #Literature #CompExams #Utopia

Next up: finally finish Manuel and Manuel’s *Utopian Thought in the Western World* and get to Moylan’s *Demand the Impossible*. #PhD #Literature #CompExams #SciFi #Utopia

Finally finished Adam Roberts‘s *History of Science Fiction* after gnawing on it for over a month.

Great scope, especially in the first five chapters (Classicism to Enlightenment). In a 3rd ed., I hope his comments on the difficulty of video games would be stronger, however.

Also it should critique the joining of respect (awards, popularity) with money, implying that there is an ought-ness to the connection: goon Protestantism, but more needed on Capitalism #PhD #CompExams #Literature #SciFi

With finishing Colin Greenland’s *The Entropy Exhibition*, I’ve now read 90/137 books for my comp exams.

I have a few critiques of Greenland’s book, but overwhelmingly it’s a great examination of the SF New Wave / *New Worlds* magazine phenomenon. A second edition might be good, too, to expand—a further retrospective and maybe a little beyond Aldiss, Ballard, and Moorcock. It made me like *Cure for Cancer* more, though!

#PhD #Literature #CompExams #SciFi

I’m in the home stretch. Ahead of me are a very few narratives and mostly thin volumes of essays. On my way! #PhD #CompExams #Literature #Utopia #Scotland #SciFi

Am I literally the only person who has problems keeping Mikhail Bakunin and Mikhail Bakhtin straight? See also Arthur Kroeber and Arthur Koestler. #PhD #Literature #CompExams #Utopia

If anyone doubts my commitment to my #PhD program and my #CompExams prep in particular, I haven’t even BOUGHT Metroid Prime or Zelda Tears of the Kingdom.

I seem to have come to the point in my study of utopias and SF (Manuel & Manuel; Suvin; Roberts) where I read about Giordano Bruno all the time. #PhD #CompExams #Utopia #SciFi

At least I’m now on the downhill slide! #PhD #CompExams #Literature

So I guess I’m reading this now. Epilogue ends on page 814, index on 896. Woof. #PhD #Literature #CompExams #Utopia

Today’s goal: finish Michael Moorcock’s *A Cure for Cancer*. I’m already at 80/360 pages and I hate it. He wrote two more Jerry Cornelius novels AFTER this.

The 70s were a weird time.

#PhD #Literature #CompExams #SciFi

Today’s goal: finish Michael Moorcock’s *A Cure for Cancer*. I’m already at 80/360 pages and I hate it. He wrote two more Jerry Cornelius novels AFTER this.

The 70s were a weird time.

#PhD #Literature #CompExams #SciFi

So read two books today, rereading Delany’s *Babel-17* and *Nova*, two very different takes on #SpaceOpera (hot take: *Nova* is better because its digressions are more fully inhabited and its ending is complex rather than pat).

AND I figured out that I read two books earlier this year without checking them off the list—so now I’m officially over the hump. HALFWAY DONE!

Tomorrow: a reread of Le Guin’s *Left Hand of Darkness*!

#PhD #Literature #CompExams #SciFi #Utopia

Finished Wyndham’s *The Midwich Cuckoos* and continuing on my way. Next up, Wyndham’s *The Outward Urge*, Buber’s *Paths in Utopia*, and continuing with Roberts’s *History of Science Fixtion*.
#PhD #Literature #CompExams #SciFi #Utopia

It is quite the thing to go from reading Skinner’s *Walden Two* (1948), with its social behavioral engineering and group childrearing, to Wyndham’s *The Midwich Cuckoos* (1957) with the same, yet portrayed as sinister. The main difference is whose choice it is to surrender.

#PhD #CompExams #Literature #Utopia #SciFi

Me: ahh, what a nice, relaxing summer as a teacher! Sitting around, chilling out…

Also me: oh right comp exams.

#PhD #Literature #CompExams