Dr. Shaun Duke, Professional Nerd

Editor. Writer. Professor. Host.

Towards an SF Canon: Curiosities

Due to circumstances beyond my control which involve several people raising interesting ideas in reply to my tweets about my essay “Why the SF Canon Doesn’t Exist,” I’m now neck deep in a massive research project on the formation of literary canons and their placement in SF scholarship (and wider discourse). In reality, I’ve been […]

Why the SF Canon Doesn’t Exist

As is periodically the case in the SFF community, we’re once more in the midst of a conversation about “the classics.” If you’re reading this now, it doesn’t actually matter that I wrote this in 2022; this conversation happens so often that the context above could apply in any given year going back decades, albeit […]

10 Caribbean Books You Should Read At Least Once

As a fan of Caribbean literature who has spent quite a lot of his life reading and thinking about it, it seemed appropriate to finally do one of those “hey, these are the books you should read” lists. And so, I sat down to think about the works I think everyone should read (at least […]

The Bookening: New Reads in the Pyramid of Plenty

Alternate subtitle: A Bear Sits in My Woods! For those that don’t know, I’m a pretty big fan of Elizabeth Bear’s writing. So, too, apparently, my cat, who has spent a goodly portion of the time I’ve spent writing this post sniffing all the books. If my cat approves, then the books must be good, […]

The A-Z Book Survey: Or, Now You’ll Know My Secrets

The blog adventure continues. Today, I’m taking on the A-Z Book Survey, which I found on The Perpetual Page-Turner blog (run by Jamie!). It’s an oldie, but since it appears on the Blog Challenge Project masterlist, I figured fun should override currency. Below, you shall find some vaguely amusing insights into my reading interests and […]

Port and Books: Dow’s 2011 Late Bottled Vintage Porto

Recently, Camestros Felapton shared some beer/book pairings as part of the Blog Challenge Project. I’ve wanted to do something similar in the past for beer or tea, but given that we’re still in a pandemic of uncertain conclusion, my beer and tea access is relatively limited. Small town and all. And so I turn to […]