Ella Minnow Pea

Hermetic Library Fellow T Polyphilus reviews Ella Minnow Pea [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library] by Mark Dunn.

Dunn Ella Minnow Pea

This fable of alphabetic elision seems more urgent now, I think, than even in in the burgeoning days of the so-called Global War on Terror when it was first published. So much of our discourse is now mediated and overruled by algorithms intended to incite and/or placate that a Bureau of Letter Enforcement seems superfluous–and yet we are more thoroughly surveilled than ever.

The happy ending of the story, while cleverly constructed, rings a Lyttle hollow.

Consider also:

  1. Pygmy
  2. Seeing a Large Cat
  3. The Place of the Lion
  4. “Time to stand down, maybe.” “Nope. Just because there’s no government doesn’t mean our oaths are over. We’ll keep doing what we were tasked to do. Save civilians.”
  5. The Downsized