Academic Exercises
K. J. Parker
Subterranean Press
signed limited hardcover (sold out)
ebook $6.99 Kindle Nook Kobo
Academic Exercises is K. J. Parker’s first collection of short fiction, and I absolutely loved it. Many of the stories involve a school of magic, although its practitioners call it philosophy, called the Studium. This where the title of the book comes from. Parker understands academic infighting and all that goes with, although I found that aspect of the book a little tame it.
One institution I was at for a couple of years (many years ago, not where I am now) had an instructor who was running for Congress get arrested in the parking lot of IHOP while waving a machete and screaming about the right to bear arms; one department head murdered in his home by his same sex lover; and one adjunct prof pick up a woman hitchhiker, take her back to his place to do a few lines of coke and instead lock her in his closet for a couple of weeks as his love slave. (She managed to escape; he jumped bail and was caught about a year later after a shoot-out in Oklahoma.) And that was just in a two year period. Like I said, Parker’s academia is tame compared to that. Continue reading
