Now on ScienceBlogs: The Laboratory at Harvard

Seed Media Group

Aardvarchaeology

Martin Rundkvist's blog. Archaeology, skepticism, Sweden. And books and music and stuff.

Profile

Martin Rundkvist Dr. Martin Rundkvist is a Swedish archaeologist, journal editor, public speaker, skeptic, atheist, lefty liberal, bookworm, and father of two.

free debate My Amazon.com Wish List

Search

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Archives

Blogroll

Good Blog Carnivals

Books:

See You at ImagiCon 2

Category: Books

I'll be at the ImagiCon 2 speculative fiction convention in the burbs of Stockholm on Saturday the 17th. I'm chairing a panel discussion on time travel and paradoxes at 15:00, and I'm on a panel about interstellar law at 21:00....

Read on »

Geekdom Mainstreamed

Category: Books

On the commuter train the other day I suddenly realised that I was seeing three rather prim middle-aged middle-class people reading novels, and that all three were genre fiction.The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Douglas Adams 1980. (science...

Read on »

A Tale of Demonic Possession

Category: Books

Daryl Gregory has published a number of very good short stories over the past few years, notably a few science fiction pieces based on neuropsychiatry. So I was very keen to read his first novel, Pandemonium (Ballantine/Del Ray 2008). Genrewise...

Read on »

My Libraries

Category: Books

I'm fortunate in that I have always been able to take libraries for granted. I feel at home in them.

Read on »

The Knowledge of the Ancients

Category: Books

Ancient texts were preserved and copied largely because they were believed to contain valuable timeless knowledge about the world.

Read on »

Bookshelves

Category: Books

I'm now in that state of summer leisure mixed with the responsibility of providing entertainment for the kids that causes a man to forget what day it is of the week. And so a week's fun is no longer...

Read on »

The Man Who Wasn't There

Category: Books

A body of fiction ascribed to a man who writes nothing.

Read on »

Talking to Publishers

Category: Archaeology

"Err, actually, the 1st Millennium is Prehistory. In Scandinavia, that is. We don't have any written sources."

Read on »

Inga Clendinnen: Dancing with Strangers

Category: Books

Dancing with Strangers is an account of one of world history's most absurd situations.

Read on »

May Entertainments

Category: Tree House Ruins

One of these men is an extremely zany comics artist and celebrated wit. The other is a stuffy scholar in an abstruse field. We've had a three-day holiday thanks to Friday being 1 May -- a red-letter day in...

Read on »

Ursula LeGuin and the Post-Modernist Warp Drive

Category: Books

You won't arrive until everybody aboard the ship has negotiated an agreement about what the destination is like.

Read on »

Neal Stephenson's Anathem

Category: Books

Neal Stephenson's 90s science fiction novels Snow Crash and The Diamond Age are unforgettable, but his 2003-2004 suite of historical novels failed to pull me in. So when I learned that his 2008 effort Anathem is a science fiction story,...

Read on »

The Onion on a Lovecraftian School Board Member

Category: Books

ARKHAM, MA--Arguing that students should return to the fundamentals taught in the Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Necronomicon in order to develop the skills they need to be driven to the very edge of sanity, Arkham school board member Charles West...

Read on »

2008 Science Blogging Anthology Published

Category: Blogging

The 2008 Open Laboratory anthology collecting last year's best science blogging is now available on paper and for download. I'm not featured this year, but I was one of the judges, and I can tell you there's some great stuff...

Read on »

New Photo Book on Abandoned Buildings

Category: Archaeology

Now and then I blog about abandoned tree houses. But of course, real large houses are even more fascinating in their extended boundary state between dwelling and archaeological site (as I wrote about in January '06). I recently read...

Read on »

Best Reads of 2008

Category: Books

Looking for a good book? Here are my best reads in English of 2008.Will in the World. How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. Stephen Greenblatt 2004. The great man in his historical context. Casino Royale. Ian Fleming 1953. Finely written about the...

Read on »

Past Crimes

Category: Books

Chester library has two thematic fiction sections that I've never seen at Swedish libraries. One offers historical fiction. The other, also quite large, is all mystery novels set in the distant past -- labelled "Past Crimes"....

Read on »

Four Great 90s Authors

Category: Books

Four of my favourite authors were born in the 1890s and wrote mainly from the inter-war years onward.H.P. Lovecraft 1890-1937 J.R.R. Tolkien 1892-1973 F.G. Bengtsson 1894-1954 F. Nilsson Piraten 1895-1972 There seems to be something about that generation's idiom, taste...

Read on »

Science Fiction Is Where I'm From

Category: Books

Sf is good when it's gripping and exciting: emotionally, artistically and intellectually.

Read on »

Lad Lit: Ninjas and Pirates

Category: History

Seeing constant mentions of ninjas and pirates on the web, I became curious about the historical reality of these matters.

Read on »

Bookaholics Anonymous

Category: Books

"Hey everyone, I'm Martin, and I've read a few books since last time."

Read on »

Donkey Shot

Category: Gaming

I'm reading Steven L. Kent's engrossing 2001 book The Ultimate History of Video Games, and of course it reminds me of a lot of games I played as a kid. My first real video games were played on the...

Read on »

New Swedish Fantasy Novel

Category: Books

My erudite friend Florence Vilén (historian of religion, haiku poet, aficionado of gems and classical music) has published her first novel in Swedish. Tungelblodet ("Blood of the Moon") is high fantasy set in a northern archipelago where wind-witches help fishermen...

Read on »

Book Review: Alsdorf, Auf den Spuren

Category: History

Things were grim in the Third Reich in the spring of 1945.

Read on »

Ocular Character Recognition

Category: Books

The CAPTCHA project uses brain time that would otherwise just go to waste.

Read on »

Apocryphal Moomin Land

Category: Books

Naantali is a small coastal town near Turku in Finland. The name is a fennicisation of Sw. Nådendal, which in turn stems from the name of a Bridgetine abbey founded there in the 15th century. Vallis Gratia, "Valley of Grace"....

Read on »

Book Review: Davidson, Doctor Eszterhazy

Category: Books

Having read what I had to say about Orsinian Tales, Ursula K. LeGuin's 1976 collection of short stories set in an alternative Balkans, Dear Reader Tty suggested that I read Avram Davidson's Doctor Eszterhazy stories. For this I thank him...

Read on »

LeGuin Physics Bug

Category: Books

Since some time in the early 80s I've laboured delightedly and intermittently to catch up with Ursula K. LeGuins oeuvre. I've covered her collections of short fiction and essays, and I will soon have her novels done, leaving the poetry...

Read on »

Surrealist Love Story

Category: Humour

Over at Podcastle, I just heard an amazing reading/performance of an amazing surrealist love story, "Fourteen Experiments in Postal Delivery". It was written by John Schoffstall, first published as text two years ago, and read by Heather Lindsley at Random...

Read on »

Time Travel Story

Category: Books

[More blog entries about fiction, timetravel, sf, sciencefiction; sf, sciencefiction, tidsresor, litteratur, novell]Alvin Gavel just graduated from high school. (He's the son of Aard regular Kai who keeps the bilingual Pointless Anecdotes blog.) This young man has to my knowledge...

Read on »

Book Review: Greenblatt, Will in the World

Category: Books

Greenblatt's method is to paint a rich and solid historical background to Shakespeare's life and professional activity.

Read on »

Film Review: Spiderwick Chronicles

Category: Film

Three siblings move to a big old house and find the field journal of their great-grand-uncle who studied fairies.

Read on »

Great Science Fiction Podcast

Category: Books

I've been a devotee of Escape Pod, the weekly science-fiction short-story podcast, for 2.5 years now. Its audience has grown and grown and grown until Escape Pod is now the world's second-largest paying market for sf short fiction regardless...

Read on »

Book review: Prothero, Evolution

Category: Books

In the US you can't popularise evolutionary biology without taking a stand against obfuscating fundies,

Read on »

Scholary Journals Anthology Reviewed

Category: Books

The anthology I edited last spring, Scholarly Journals Between the Past and the Future, has received one long thoughtful review by Alun at Archaeoastronomy and another one by the Grumpy Old Bookman....

Read on »

Swedish Golden Age Science Fiction Mags

Category: Books

Is your living-room table really complete without a fresh copy of a Swedish 50s sf mag?

Read on »

Aard in Open Lab 2007 Anthology

Category: Books

I just learned that my blog entry Your Folks, My Folks in Prehistory has been selected for inclusion in the 2007 Open Lab science blogging anthology! Yay! I was likewise honoured a year ago when I had an entry...

Read on »

Book Review: Kroik, Hellre Mista sitt Huvud

Category: History

This book is at heart an ethno-political tract.

Read on »

Greed and Buffoonery in Academic Publishing

Category: Books

I agreed to a really crappy business deal today.

Read on »

Archaeobooks Blowout 27 October

Category: Archaeology

Most of the books will be sold for $8. A bag.

Read on »

Anybody Paying Attention to Books/Albums Lists?

Category: Books

I'm thinking maybe it isn't worth the effort to keep the Good Books and Good Albums lists going in the left-hand column. Better to put that effort into writing more blog entries about books and albums? Dear Reader, if you're...

Read on »

Mistranslations of the Third Kind

Category: Humour

It says here that the hero is wearing a piece of cod!

Read on »

Jules Verne's Tomb

Category: Books

"It's Jules Verne who's been resurrected and learned to fly!"

Read on »

Vice Magazine and the Stockholm Sluice

Category: Books

I don't think I'll be taking on any more work for Vice.

Read on »

Jonathan's Mortuary House

Category: Archaeology

He's turned all his data and 14 years of thinking about the site into a pop-sci book for kids!

Read on »

Carl Michael Bellman's Butterfly

Category: Books

At Haga, the butterfly can be seen making its green home...

Read on »

Book Review: Barlow, Sharp Teeth

Category: Books

Would you like to read about werewolf communes?

Read on »

Book Review: Weisman, The World Without Us

Category: Books

"Let us not talk falsely now, the hour's getting late."

Read on »

Singularity and AI Free Will

Category: Tech

"What if the machines don't feel like improving themselves."

Read on »

Book-On-Demand at the Tobacconist's

Category: Books

The paper output/backup-storage device we call "a book" will be produced swiftly by a dedicated machine.

Read on »

eXTReMe Tracker

ScienceBlogs

Search ScienceBlogs:

Go to:

Advertisement
Follow ScienceBlogs on Twitter
Visit the Collective Imagination blog
Advertisement
Enter to win

© 2006-2009 Seed Media Group LLC. ScienceBlogs is a registered trademark of Seed Media Group. All rights reserved.

Sites by Seed Media Group: Seed Media Group | ScienceBlogs | SEEDMAGAZINE.COM