melissamoorer

Antônio Carlos Jobim - Wave (1967)

Personnel: Antônio Carlos Jobim - piano, guitar, Claus Ogerman - arranger, conductor, Urbie Green - trombone, Jimmy Cleveland - trombone, and Others.

RIDE OR DIE - OCTAVIA SPENCER AS DEBBIE & HANNAH WADDINGHAM AS JUDITH

Keith Haring's story is usually told as a solo rise, but that version leaves out Angel "LA II" Ortiz, a Puerto Rican artist from the Lower East Side who collaborated with Haring from the very beginning. Angel was a teenager when they met, already active in the neighborhood's graffiti culture. He taught Keith how tagging worked on the street, painted alongside him, and guided him through spaces Keith did not come from. Angel's tags, infill, and visual language appear across works that later became associated with Keith Haring's public legacy.

After Keith Haring's death, the story changed. Museums mounted exhibitions, publishers released books, and merchandise entered the market under a single name.

In the time I've been here, I said I wouldn't…I don't know, do feelings. You freaked me out. I don't want to like anyone. So you've been just…totally fucking inconvenient.

I received a free copy from Tor Books via Netgalley in exchange for a fair review. Release date October 6th, 2026.

I've read some of Newitz's work before and I've always loved books set in alien cultures, so I was happy to get a chance to read this new release. In A Wall is Also a Road, Gardenpath is an alien slime mold studying for their graduate degree in a distant part of the galaxy. Their controversial thesis threatens the scientific orthodoxy—and a key piece of their data is the city of Pompeii on our own Earth.

Overall, I found this to be a light and charming novel. Gardenpath's people have a culture similar to ours—after all, they have universities and tenure—but their body language is convincingly alien slime mold based. There's lots of extruded appendages and flattening out. The alien culture is a good medium ground for a sendup of university culture where a student goes against prevailing orthodoxy to prove life is possible on Earth. Also, genuine props to Newitz for taking a sincere shot at the slime mold sex scenes. I won't name names, but many respected scifi authors have chickened out at this critical point. Glad to see an author with convictions.

On the worldbuilding side, the scenes set in Pompeii are strongly written, and it's clear that Newitz has done their research. It's a nice touch that Murtis, the human Gardenpath is closest to, was a real courtesan who did actually exist in the period. A lot of the Roman cultural nuances go right over Gardenpath's head, but that just serves to accentuate the alienness of their POV. Gardenpath in general is naive and rulebound, which keeps the story relatively light. A different perspective character might fixate more on the nuances of a corrupt university engaging in war profiteering. But while Gardenpath engages with these elements of the plot, their primary focus is always their research and their degree.