Now on ScienceBlogs: The Laboratory at Harvard
Martin Rundkvist's blog. Archaeology, skepticism, Sweden. And books and music and stuff.
Dr. Martin Rundkvist is a Swedish archaeologist, journal editor, public speaker, skeptic, atheist, lefty liberal, bookworm, and father of two.
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....
Posted by Martin R at 5:08 PM • 7 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 5 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 4:10 PM • 4 Comments •
Category: Books
I'm fortunate in that I have always been able to take libraries for granted. I feel at home in them.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 7 Comments •
Category: Books
Ancient texts were preserved and copied largely because they were believed to contain valuable timeless knowledge about the world.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 6 Comments •
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...
Posted by Friendly Scibling at 4:26 PM • 9 Comments •
Category: Books
A body of fiction ascribed to a man who writes nothing.
Posted by Martin R at 9:14 AM • 0 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
"Err, actually, the 1st Millennium is Prehistory. In Scandinavia, that is. We don't have any written sources."
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 5 Comments •
Category: Books
Dancing with Strangers is an account of one of world history's most absurd situations.
Posted by Martin R at 5:24 PM • 5 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 3:20 PM • 3 Comments •
Category: Books
You won't arrive until everybody aboard the ship has negotiated an agreement about what the destination is like.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 17 Comments •
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,...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 20 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 4 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 12:39 PM • 0 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 3 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 2 Comments •
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"....
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 2 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 21 Comments •
Category: Books
Sf is good when it's gripping and exciting: emotionally, artistically and intellectually.
Posted by Martin R at 10:55 AM • 17 Comments •
Category: History
Seeing constant mentions of ninjas and pirates on the web, I became curious about the historical reality of these matters.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 9 Comments •
Category: Books
"Hey everyone, I'm Martin, and I've read a few books since last time."
Posted by Martin R at 8:48 AM • 17 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 9:09 AM • 11 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 1:36 PM • 7 Comments •
Category: History
Things were grim in the Third Reich in the spring of 1945.
Posted by Martin R at 2:52 PM • 10 Comments •
Category: Books
The CAPTCHA project uses brain time that would otherwise just go to waste.
Posted by Martin R at 1:56 PM • 11 Comments •
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"....
Posted by Martin R at 4:12 PM • 5 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 9:11 AM • 4 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 4:58 AM • 6 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 1:32 PM • 1 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 2:01 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Books
Greenblatt's method is to paint a rich and solid historical background to Shakespeare's life and professional activity.
Posted by Martin R at 6:19 AM • 1 Comments •
Category: Film
Three siblings move to a big old house and find the field journal of their great-grand-uncle who studied fairies.
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 2 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 6:21 AM • 4 Comments •
Category: Books
In the US you can't popularise evolutionary biology without taking a stand against obfuscating fundies,
Posted by Martin R at 8:20 AM • 15 Comments •
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....
Posted by Martin R at 1:00 AM • 0 Comments •
Category: Books
Is your living-room table really complete without a fresh copy of a Swedish 50s sf mag?
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 17 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 4:47 AM • 5 Comments •
Category: History
This book is at heart an ethno-political tract.
Posted by Martin R at 1:21 PM • 36 Comments •
Category: Books
I agreed to a really crappy business deal today.
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 14 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
Most of the books will be sold for $8. A bag.
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 8 Comments •
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...
Posted by Martin R at 3:47 PM • 8 Comments •
Category: Humour
It says here that the hero is wearing a piece of cod!
Posted by Martin R at 1:46 PM • 10 Comments •
Category: Books
"It's Jules Verne who's been resurrected and learned to fly!"
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 3 Comments •
Category: Books
I don't think I'll be taking on any more work for Vice.
Posted by Martin R at 2:36 PM • 12 Comments •
Category: Archaeology
He's turned all his data and 14 years of thinking about the site into a pop-sci book for kids!
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 8 Comments •
Category: Books
At Haga, the butterfly can be seen making its green home...
Posted by Martin R at 3:14 PM • 6 Comments •
Category: Books
Would you like to read about werewolf communes?
Posted by Martin R at 4:25 PM • 3 Comments •
Category: Books
"Let us not talk falsely now, the hour's getting late."
Posted by Martin R at 2:29 PM • 7 Comments •
Category: Tech
"What if the machines don't feel like improving themselves."
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 17 Comments •
Category: Books
The paper output/backup-storage device we call "a book" will be produced swiftly by a dedicated machine.
Posted by Martin R at 8:50 AM • 7 Comments •
Highly Allochthonous 11.05.2009
Eruptions 11.05.2009
Not Exactly Rocket Science 11.05.2009
Corpus Callosum 11.05.2009
Starts With a Bang 11.04.2009
