Totally finished The Good Wife of Bath. Started reading Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy, which is likely to be a tough job because there are 105 people waiting to read the book. The author’s two previous titles seem to be equally fascinating.
Writing a review of The Wild Robot before the ebook disappears into the void. Learned that Roz’s full name “ROZZUM unit 7134” derived from the science fiction play R.U.R. (1921) by Cezch author Karel Capek, which means “Rossum’s Universal Robots”. This is said to be the very first introduction of the word “robot” to the English language and to science fiction as a whole!
Wikipedia says Capek (1890-1938) explored many “ethical aspects of industrial inventions and processes already anticipated in the first half of the 20th century”, including “mass production, nuclear weapons and intelligent artificial beings”. He also “expressed fear of social disasters, dictatorship, violence, human stupidity, the unlimited power of corporations, and greed”. “Fear” is a fair word.
What draws my eyes is Capek’s 1936 novel War with the Newts. The book’s writing style and structure are really interesting, especially the last chapter which is rather “metafictional”. “Metafiction” is a word I learned recently while reading “A machine-shaped hand”, “a story from OpenAI’s new creative writing model” as described by The Guardian back in March 2025. Highly recommended. (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/mar/12/a-machine-shaped-hand-read-a-story-from-openais-new-creative-writing-model)
(Day 8 #WarmWinterRead #WWR25 via @librarieschangelives)
Voices under the Sun 陽光下的聲音 