Best Posts Series

[elanor_x]

Initially proposed as "Weekly Best Posts" feature turned into "Best Posts Series" upon further consideration. Enjoy!

FANDOM / LITERATURE

Newly discovered great blog "Contrary Brin - Speculations on Science, Technology & the Future" writes on the subject I wondered about too - "How to Define Science Fiction" - and tells about the genre's history of

Comments

[sunnyskywalker]

Very interesting links, will have to read more when I get time!

The October Revolution one also linked to a very interesting debate about the American Revolution (I can vouch for how it's taught in the US, even when the schools are trying to be more balanced - it's hard to get perspective on national mythology and break out of the standard, age-old pattern of how such a course is taught).

[elanor_x]

Enjoy! I do think this specific post has great links and one of reasons is that I haven't gathered them for 1 week, but for ~ a month and had plenty of time to choose out of large variety what stood out. If you're still in HP fandom, I loved the linked HP essay and the site is one of good ones too.

[sunnyskywalker]

The architecture one was interesting. It made me think of the Trans-America building in San Francisco - very striking, but the shape also means a lot of wasted space. Around here, I have a feeling that the Frank Lloyd Wright style of "modern" is coming back more these days instead of the Trans-America kind. His buildings could be striking, but he insisted they fit into the landscape, took a lot of inspiration from nature, and the pictures of building interiors I've seen make the buildings look like something people can actually inhabit. There's a few newish library buildings and a hospital clinic in my area that look kind of like this: they have the kind of clean lines and lack of columns and frills that give them a modernish look, but the outsides have a lot of fieldstone cladding and native plant landscaping, there are a lot of windows for great light inside, and things are proportioned so that it feels light and airy inside but also human-scale and easy to find your way around. I

[elanor_x]

I'm also always interested to learn more about Russian history, because U.S. schools don't teach very much of it.

You're lucky! That blog has numerous posts about Russian and Ukrainian history, then and now. In Tags on the right of her blog page, see tags as: history, Russia, Soviet Union, Ukraine (where I was born). I also love her "Through the Eyes of a Stranger" tag - American realities through the eyes of FSU immigrant. There is some problem in tags, f.e. tags "October Revolution" and "Russian Empire" are in blog, but for some reason not in the cloud. I want to recommend her series of 3 posts "Who Caused the Collapse of the Soviet Union?", which are tagged "Soviet Union", but don't appear when I choose the relevant tag in the cloud. I put words "soviet collapse"
in Search on the main blog page and found the series at the bottom of the 1st page of results. Highly recommended blog in general. Worth checking archives in your free time.