Fifty fantasy & science fiction works that socialists should read. Cool list—if a bit questionable sometimes. (Beloved? Really?) Perhaps not surprisingly, this is all very contiguous with my exam lists. A few notable omissions, off the top of my head: John Brunner's ecopocalyptic The Sheep Look Up (1972), which I've been meaning to blog about for months now; the incomparable Samuel Delany's Triton (1976), likewise; Joanna Russ's The Female Man (1975); and, most unforgivably, Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker (1937), which I've blogged about once or twice and which I must insist again is very, very good.

See also: Portable Learner's reading list for time travel and alternate history, in which I must say I am also surprisingly well-read.

That pun is fully intended.

I'm actually still catching up from the weekend, so that "return to full strength" I mentioned will probably have to wait until later this afternoon or Tuesday morning. Still, I have been saving up some links:

* Be warned: delicious Coca-Cola will destroy your kidneys.

* Via Pandagon, Pittsburgh man Tasered in his own home while sleeping on his own couch.

Police Chief Henry Wiehagen said the officers would not comment, but he disputed Hicks' version of events.

Hicks wasn't asleep, Wiehagen said, he was on the couch prone. The officers could not be certain he was unarmed and Hicks "didn't respond to their reasonable commands," he said.

"These policemen are very cautious and I don't blame them for being cautious," Wiehagen said, noting officers in his department have been shot at.

* Via blucarbnpinwheel, Jonathan Lethem interviews Paul Auster. Two of my favorite writers in one place is very nice.

* Mini-Obama Endorsement Watch: Toni Morrison, who famously proclaimed in 1998 that Bill Clinton was "our first black president. Blacker than any actual person who could ever be elected in our children's lifetime," endorses Barack Obama.

* And at Paleo-Future, how experts think we'll live in 2000 A.D. Other experts have a different opinion.