December 2024

Time Out of Joint by Philip K. Dick

The novel “Time Out of Joint” by Philip K. Dick was published for the first time in 1959.

Ragle Gumm is a veteran who doesn’t have a regular job but has found a good source of income in a newspaper contest. That’s because he is extremely good at guessing where a Martian might land on the map that gets published daily.

Despite the fame that comes from this success, Ragle Gumm feels like a failure who doesn’t even have a home of his own since he lives with his sister Margo, his brother-in-law Vic, and their son Sammy. The game requires considerable mental effort, and sometimes he hallucinates. Some strange events are shared by other people such as finding a magazine that talks about Marilyn Monroe, an actress who seems to be famous but no one in the family knows.

A scheme of the organization of the fossils of Asian hominins from the Late Quaternary

An article published in the journal “Nature Communications” reports comments on the variability of hominins that inhabited East Asia between 300,000 and 50,000 years ago and the proposal of a new species named Homo juluensis that includes fossils discovered in various parts of Asia, including those attributed to the Denisovans. Professor Christopher J. Bae of the University of Hawaii at Mānoa and Xiujie Wu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences attempted to bring order to the organization of Asian hominin fossils from the Late Quaternary with the aim of creating a clearer system for understanding the human species that lived in Asia.

Descent by Marko Kloos

The novel “Descent” by Marko Kloos was published for the first time in 2024. It’s the fourth book in The Palladium Wars series and follows “Citadel”.

Color Sergeant Idina Chaudhary leads an unofficial military operation to find the people wreaking havoc on planet Gretia. What turns out to be an arsenal brings progress to the investigation on Odin’s Wolves. Solveig Ragnar is conducting her own investigation, with the complication of having to do it without her father’s security personnel noticing.

Commander Dunstan Park has his mission, but before he can return to space, he crosses paths with Aden Jansen again. As he continues his search for enemies in space, a trace leads him and his crew to chase a spaceship.