August 2021

The Labyrinth Index by Charles Stross

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The novel “The Labyrinth Index” by Charles Stross was published for the first time in 2018. It’s part of the Laundry series and follows “The Delirium Brief”.

The New Management in the UK has brought about a number of changes, including in the agencies that manage occult activities. Mhari Murphy has been elevated to the rank of Baroness but the price for her is high, as one of the new duties the Prime Minister has entrusted to her is that of executioner after the death penalty has been reinstated.

For Mhari Murphy, the situation gets worse when she’s assigned to lead a team of operatives linked to the Laundry on a mission in the USA. Her task is difficult since it’s the extraction of the President, whose existence was suddenly forgotten by the American population.

Aeta actors on stage

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An article published in the journal “Current Biology” reports the results of a genetic research on 118 ethnic groups living in the Philippines which indicated that in the Aeta, or Ayta, people and in particular in the Aeta Magbukon ethnic group there is the greatest concentration found so far of genes inherited from the Denisovans, the human species whose remains identified with certainty have been discovered mainly in Siberia. A team of researchers conducted this genetic research within a collaboration between the Swedish University of Uppsala, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts of the Philippines (NCCA), and various indigenous communities. The results show an ancient interbreeding between the Aeta and the Denisovans.

My Name Is Legion by Roger Zelazny

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The novella “Home Is the Hangman” by Roger Zelazny was published for the first time in 1975. It won the Hugo and Nebula Awards as the best novella of the year.

A sentient android, technically called a telefactor, was programmed by its creators to make it totally autonomous in its space exploration missions. The result was too good and the telefactor went off on its own and disappeared into space. Years later, its space capsule returns to Earth and a short time later one of its creators is killed.

Determining whether the telefactor has returned to Earth to kill its creators is crucial. Regardless of the results, finding it is absolutely a priority but it’s an extremely delicate investigation. The assignment is entrusted to a person who has experience in the field of technology to the point of being able to keep his identity out of the Central Data Bank and to use false identities.

All Clear by Connie Willis

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The novel “All Clear” by Connie Willis was published for the first time in 2010. Along with “Blackout”, which is the first part of what is actually a two-part novel, it won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards as the best novel of the year.

Michael Davies, Merope Ward, and Polly Churchill are in 1940 for what was supposed to be a research on various events of World War II but something has gone wrong and the portals that were supposed to take them back to 2060 are not opening.

The three historians start thinking that what was considered impossible has happened: they have somehow altered history and as a result are trapped in 1940. In their situation, it becomes increasingly difficult to avoid getting caught up in the events of the war and make things worse.

890 million-year-old fossil structures on the left and the "skeleton" of a modern sponge on the right

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An article published in the journal “Nature” reports a study on microfossils with structures similar to those of modern sponges that have an estimated age of about 890 million years, much older than any fossil attributed with certainty to animals. Geologist Elizabeth Turner of Laurentian University, Canada, studied microfossils from an area of ​​northwestern Canada known for Precambrian fossils, part of the Stone Knife Formation. This study has already divided paleontologists due to the difficulty of ruling out that these are fossils of different origin or even false fossils generated by some type of crystallization.