Alif the Unseen is a mess of a book, but in a good way. There is elements of cyberpunk, graciously borrowed from Neuromancer. There’s revolutionaries straight from today’s news stories. There’s teenager drama that would be right at home at Degrassi High. And underneath all of that is the Quran. Alif is a “grey hat”, which is what H4X0rz (sorry, I’m from the 90s, I had to) are calling themselves now, I guess. Alif’s clients needs to keep their sites of objectionable content up and out […]
1001 Nights, for Beginners
Engraved on the Eye is a collection of 8 short stories told in various settings of Fantasy Middle East, drawing on Islamic and Middle Eastern folklore. It’s an extremely quick read. The stories are entertaining and the characters are lively, jovial, and diverse. Every story has some sort of supernatural creatures; ghuls feature prominently, along with ghul-hunters, martial artists, gunslingers, supervillains, rogues, dervishes,bounty hunters, and shaykhs. As with many short story books, there’s a range in subject matter and quality. I particularly enjoyed Mister Hadj’s Sunset Ride (about a gun-slinging Muslim wizard in […]
Godwin’s Law Doesn’t Apply
There is likely no rule in internet debate as well known as Godwin’s Law. The semi-satirical law coined in 1990 by author/attorney Mike Godwin states (essentially) that the invoking of Hitler or the Nazis by any participant in a debate causes the participant doing so to lose the debate. Godwin’s Law is not without its detractors: Kevin Drum of Mother Jones and liberal firebrand Glenn Greenwald have each argued for its repeal, noting rightly that since WWII analogies are so universally known they can be […]