{"id":2648,"date":"2012-06-26T01:00:26","date_gmt":"2012-06-26T08:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/?p=2648"},"modified":"2012-06-26T01:30:06","modified_gmt":"2012-06-26T08:30:06","slug":"sci-fi-from-scotland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/?p=2648","title":{"rendered":"Sci-fi from Scotland"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today I had the chance to go back to the excellent National Library of Scotland<\/a>, which is not a public library, but one in which you must be a registered Reader to access the (voluminous) archives. But still, even as a visitor, I’ve been awed on both of my visits by their rotating exhibitions. Last time it was on writers who were published by John Murray. This time there was a Scottish cinema display<\/a> (Brigadoooon!) and, which captivated me longer, a couple of display cases showing sci-fi books by Scottish authors<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I already knew Iain M. Banks, although I didn’t know he was Scottish. Ditto Charles Stross. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle didn’t solely write detective novels; it turns out he produced some sci-fi as well (“The Lost World”<\/a> is now on my list). There were many other great items I wished I could browse, but given finite reading time I restricted myself to adding only a few more. David Lindsay wrote a book called “A Voyage to Arcturus”<\/a> which has garnered rapturous reviews on goodreads. Hannu Rajaniemi is Finnish by birth, but currently resides in Edinburgh, so his book “The Quantum Thief”<\/a> was included (he had me at “dystopia in which the main character has to break out of The Dilemma Prison”).<\/p>\n

Note: the Library is planning a special exhibition on late 1700’s correspondence (letters) between famous Scots and the founding fathers of the U.S., which unfortunately I’ll miss (starts on July 4). I read an article in their magazine about the upcoming exhibit, which emphasized Scotland’s contribution to the American Revolution (“more than a third of its [the Declaration of Independence’s] signatories were men of Scottish descent.”). It’s always fascinating to see your own country through the lens of another. You can learn more about their American collections here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today I had the chance to go back to the excellent National Library of Scotland, which is not a public library, but one in which you must be a registered Reader to access the (voluminous) archives. But still, even as a visitor, I’ve been awed on both of my visits by their rotating exhibitions. Last […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2648"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2648"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2656,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2648\/revisions\/2656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}