It is common knowledge that Frank Herbert’s classic Dune novels are chock-full of Islamic and MENA (Middle Eastern and North African) references.1 However, as a Muslim reader, I have long maintained that the Muslim influences go deeper than many may have realized. I am of the theory that if one is Muslim, or otherwise intimately aware of Muslim traditions, that person’s experience of Dune differs vastly from any other reader’s encounter with the saga.

Arden Vul is heavy on the prepped facts which is cumbersome but enables so much interconnectivity. As just one example (out of dozens of such examples per session), someone’s shoe is missing in one room and that shoe then actually is somewhere else in this ginormous dungeon. There are books and rings and… ugh, I shouldn’t‘ve mentioned the rings because that’s a problem here. This book puts the awesomest most mindblowing stuff in the hands of the most pushover, easy-to-kill villains. Again, the setup and overall construction and sheer tier-one–ness is what makes this so awesome, not the content itself.

Review of Atomic

Typical Contents is a guide to clothing. We find and review items that offer the best design, value and quality on the market.

I spent a few days looking at the Nomad Network and its Nomadnet client and wrote my first impressions.

The fundamental power of Gene Wolfe as a writer, when he was firing on all cylinders, was that he could provide you with something that looked complete but fundamentally was not. You felt like you had to chase it. I’m still chasing it. The Book of the New Sun asks the reader to do a lot of work to get to a place where they can be satisfied with what they’ve read.

The past few years have seen various attempts within computing, programming and hacker communities to apply ‘degrowth’ principles to their work – i.e. sketching out ways to de-couple digital technology from the growth-focused imperatives of capitalist societies. These efforts have so far progressed in a piecemeal manner, led by assorted groups with broad interests around ‘radically sustainable computing’ (Heikkilä 2021). The hope, of course, is that these initial developments might signal the beginnings of mainstream change.