The Bio Park is the ultimate playground. A fully functioning ecological system almost a mile underground--later converted to an amusement park--it took years to build and hundreds of millions to develop. Unfortunately, it is losing money, so Linked Corporation has decided to seal the thirty foot doors with thousands of tons of blasted earth until the park has accrued in value.The closing party drew a huge crowd of sightseers, thrill seekers, and partiers, even at a thousand dollars ...

My forty-day trip involved both Silvio and the Canary Islands. The outside world was still struggling with Covid, but the Canaries were a kind of haven. We moved in a complacent bubble through historical villages and freshly painted hotels and poolside bars. We traveled to lush and beautiful La Palma and more rustic and traditional La Gomera, but mainly we spent our days on Tenerife. As we had on the other islands, we drove every road and path on Tenerife, returning to favourite spots unti...

My latest trip to South East Asia differed from other trips in that I was older, my traveling companion was younger, and Thailand had changed. I didn't plan to return to the country, but my friend had taken a teaching practicum in Bangkok, and we both thought we would enjoy exploring the north of the country before her term began. We laid our plans a few months in advance, but like most trips, it didn't turn out exactly as we had planned. We learned to manage each other's foibles and annoy...

We usually imagine environmental concerns in terms of a human-caused litany of losses. We have heard about the loss of biodiversity, deforestation, degradation of land, climate change, toxins in the air, and the disappearance of clean water and soil. Amongst that welter of information, if we were admit the selfish truth, we typically think about how such disasters might affect us. We consider food security, human sperm counts, and endocrine interrupters in the water. Too rapidly for the Pl...

When Amy set out to write a novel, and thus establish herself as a writer to be reckoned with, she was faced with a problem. Although most novelists begin semi-autobiographically, her own life in the small town of Crooked River—with its endless cycles of mowing lawns and setting tables—was far too boring. No one could possibly be interested in what she had to say if she were the subject.That drove Amy to tell a thinly-veiled and largely-invented story about Kalicia, easily the most...

The desire to live more frugally, responsibly, and environmentally is loose in the land now. Despite the popularity of a minimalism which had its adherents buying more to pretend they had less, many people have a genuine interest in living more carefully. Learning to reduce our impact runs deeper than saving money or using those savings to buy more consumer goods. Instead, people are starting to question the entire consumer enterprise and to suggest alternatives.Much of the interest...

Having the time to think, to react, and to frantically plan, is worse in some ways than gut-wrenching terror and desperate action. A sudden attack or viral overload is horrifying. They are wrapped in tales of societal niceties disappearing and ravening beasts tearing from suburban homes to feed on the offal of a collapsed society. The movies minutely describe the people who scream from buildings in the city, how hundreds gutter in gas attacks or die when shrapnel shreds their town, but the...

This annotated edition of H. G. Wells' first and justly most famous novel, The Time Machine, is meant to encourage the pursuits of scholars who are either encountering Wells' influential classic for the first time or are returning to it in order to delve more deeply into its antecedents and influences.In a story that continues to have resonance for the modern reader, Wells imagined his future world deeply divided along class lines which had split the human species into two: the Morl...

This annotated edition of H. G. Wells' second novel, The Island of Doctor Moreau, is meant to encourage the pursuits of scholars who are either encountering Wells' influential classic for the first time or are returning to it in order to delve more deeply into its antecedents and influences. In the novel, Prendick, an aimless gentleman naturalist, becomes shipwrecked on the island where Moreau is creating bestial humans by a cruel and scientifically questionable application of vivisection ...

Parables are exercises in abbreviation. Like allegories and allusions, parables rely on more than the words on the page as they expand their relevance and reach. They call upon the tropes of oft-told stories, universal narratives, trim story back to its basics, and use familiar characters like those described by Vladimir Propp.A giant becomes an ogre, a young woman a desperate heroine, a child an adventurer or someone who needs saving, and a stalwart man a sword-wielding, cudgel-fl...

Although Canada is a country with a huge variety of geographical regions and ethnic diversity, Canadian colonial culture is a soothing, nearly featureless blanket spread across a largely misunderstood terrain and people. From the distance, the blanket appears homogenous, but a close examination reveals the many different threads that make up the whole, and its patchwork nature is more diverse strands than grayish mud, blood, and granite.This homogeneity is less a trick of the eyes ...

This annotated edition of World Brain is meant to stimulate scholars to return to this giant intellect, a writer who, with only microfiche to inspire his understanding of the possibilities of communications technology, imagined a connected and coordinated world sharing a huge knowledge base.Wells was inspired by the needs of a world teetering on the brink of global war, and eagerly met with Stalin and Roosevelt to learn what they knew of the peace process. When he found them without...