The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain

While I was growing up, my parents, grandparents, and their siblings were employed as miners, farmers, and railroad workers and I was among the first generation of my family to attend university. Although I work at an observatory in telescope operations, I have never strayed far from academia. In fact, many of the people I work with are university professors. Because of that, I found myself drawn to Sofia Samatar’s novella The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain.

Samatar imagines a societ...