Fellow frivolous!
It's been frigid, and to read a story about bees was actually a welcome experience. I'm no doubt looking forward to warmer times in the northern hemisphere, but it feels like each spring and summer are now tinged worry: what will the weather do this time, that it hasn't done before? I've been thinking more about this, especially as I work my way through Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry of the Future.
On a separate note, we at Frivolous have been hard at work in creating some new content and want to tease you along the way. We're wrapping up some new initiatives in February, but starting March, look out for...something new! We'll announce more details in a couple of weeks.
BTW - no idea what wonderwickle means and as far as I can Google, I didn't find a definition. Send in a made up definition I'll share the entries in the next letter!
Enjoy this week's notables!
Kim Stanley Robinson in the New Yorker
There's a bit of cognitive dissonance going on this month, while I drive through snow covered streets, buried cars, watching neighbors stoically battle frozen water, all the while listening to Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry of the Future which begins with a population-leveling heat wave. It's a sizeable read with enough non-fiction in there that I keep backing up and re-listening to entire pages.
The New Yorker piece does a wonderful job drawing out Robinson's influences, most notably his admiration for the natural world, and also shows him as one of the fewer utopian sci-fi writers.
Art of Jochen Mühlenbrink
When you first look at these, they look like ordinary panes of glass frosted over. But look closer; it's breathtaking work.
Sunday Morning Transport
Julian Yap and Fran Wilde have started a new weekly publication on Substack, bringing readers short stories each week. January's stories start the year strong with thought-provoking stories, such as Telling the Bees by Kat Howard: a sad story about bee-keeping, magic, and relationships which make us and break us.
~Header illustration by Sarah Hofheins