Ringolevio by Emmett Grogan

Ringolevio: A Life Played for Keeps by Emmett Grogan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Back in the hirsute Seventies as a callow youth, when I first read about this hippie Robin Hood, I considered him to be a hero – the archetypal rebel without a cause, cocking a snook at the ‘Establishment.’ Those were the Mary-Jane-suffused days of Hair and Woodstock, Lucy ruled the Skies (skies that were kissed by Jimi Hendrix) with Diamonds, deaf, dumb and blind Tommy played Who’s Pin Ball and we ‘freaked out.’ Now weary with years of cynicism behind me, I find the author to be a mere on-and-off junkie, compulsive thief and regular jailbird

Kenny Wisdom spent seven months without bail in that cramped moss-ridden-rat-infested-syphilitic-conjunctivitic-tuberculous-marasmic-anaemic-choreal-cancerous-scabied-ringwormed-rotten-crippling-languishing-ulcerated-septic dungeon of bronchopneumonia…

The hippie ethos was embodied in the nihilistic manifesto of The Hun

Give up jobs. Be with people. Defend against property

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Exhalation by Ted Chiang

Exhalation by Ted Chiang
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Some startlingly original ideas like the title story:

Everyday we consume two lungs heavy with air; everyday we remove the empty ones from our chest and replace them with full ones.

and

I have journeyed all the way to the edge of the world, and seen the solid chromium wall that extends from the ground up into the infinite sky

I found this the best story in the SF sub-genre of steam punk – in this case, argon punk.
The story about the automatic nanny could qualify as steam punk. There are hints of flat-earther philosophy, alternate realities, sentient robots (more accurately, software packages), time-travel, young-earth creationism etc. The stories are all dark and the narrative style, unfortunately, is rather dull and dry, hence the three star rating.

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