An all-time great sci-fi story about bears, a wild nun-sex movie that makes me think of Dimes Square, and some great songs

Roundup 01/14/23

Greetings from Read Max HQ, and welcome to our weekly roundup column, in which I pick out some worthwhile and often overlooked books, articles, movies, and music to recommend to paying subscribers. For this week’s round-up, I’ve got:

• A great sci-fi story and a highly recommended alt-history novel in which John Brown sets off a successful black revolution;

• a legendary, gorgeous, rarely-on-streaming movie about nuns going wild (with weird contemporary resonance); and

• a bunch of songs I’ve been listening to.

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Now, the roundup. First, as always, a dispatch from the future: