To be written about for the BSFA Review, sent to Sweden with rather impressive haste by the publisher, MIT Press. (I hope they’re aware of the rather slow turn-over of reviews at the Review.) Wells is definitely a feature in the retrospective and historical sectors of the intellectual zeitgeist at present; the historical rhyming of the now with the interwar years of the c20th has much to do with that, I suspect, but so does the ongoing revival and rehabilitation (or recrudescence, depending on who you ask) of utopia. Wells could arguably stand as the gold standard (double meaning very much intended) of the technological utopian mode, and as such there’s no dodging the sprawling architecture of his thought if one intends to travel around in the utopian landscape. Adam Roberts’ recent literary biography of Wells—which I have read recently, though not yet written up for Vector—has been hugely useful in situating Wells’ thought in his life and in his times; the historical rhymes mentioned above are cautionary and worrying in that regard. Anyway, this should be an interesting review to write; the Chairman Bruce intro will doubtless provide some interesting insights and angles.

Some domestic notes for those curious about C19 vaccination side effects: six weeks ago, my first dose of the Pfizer didn’t make me feel sick, but did result in three days of only ever feeling half awake, followed by two more days during which my still-recovering ankle ached far worse than it had for some time—an effect I interpreted as my immune system devoting all its bandwidth to dealing with the vaccine, and leaving the ongoing muscular-skeletal work largely fallow while it did so. After yesterday’s second dose, I definitely wasn’t at optimal regarding my ability to think or read, but nowhere near so doped out as the first time; I didn’t experience the notorious overnight fever, either (though I had some unusually surreal dreams, the details of which vanished on waking, as they almost always do). The ankle aches this morning, but not ferociously, and mobility seems largely unimpaired. So it seems that, counter to the common wisdom, I felt a deal more impact from the _first_ jab rather than the second… though I suppose there’s still the possibility that it’ll sneak up on me slowly.