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Excession by Iain M. Banks – A Culture Novel

By John Folk-Williams

Excession by Iain M. Banks

Well, it’s a new year – and good wishes all around! After a mentally tired December when I wrote little, I relaxed while getting to know the work of Roger Zelazny – and re-reading Iain M. Banks’ Excession, the fifth of his Culture books. Some people suggest starting with other novels set in this universe […]

Filed Under: Space Opera Tagged With: alien life forms, artificial intelligence, gender, Iain M. Banks, identity, spaceships, The Culture

Best SFF TV Scenes of 2022

By John Folk-Williams

This blog is obviously devoted to reviewing books, for the most part, but after reading imyril’s post on Severance, I starting thinking of the great scenes of SFF TV that I watched this past year. I can’t pretend to any great knowledge of SFF TV shows, but this year forced me to pay attention because […]

Filed Under: Scifi TV/Movies Tagged With: Andor, His Dark Materials, House of the Dragon, Night Sky, Philip Pullman, Severance, The Peripheral, William Gibson

9 Favorite Fantasy Fiction Books I Read in 2022

By John Folk-Williams

Babel An Arcane History

Though I’ve usually thought of myself as a science fiction reader primarily, this year’s favorite fantasy fiction has shown me how diverse and vital this vast category can be. None of the nine books in this list resorts to the tired conventions of Eurocentric medieval-style settings and hero questing. Each one takes a completely original […]

Filed Under: Favorite SFF, Secondary World Fantasy Tagged With: Emery Robin, Jadie Jang, Leslye Penelope, Ling Ma, Liz Williams, Nicola Griffith, R.F. Kuang, Simon Jimenez, Tasha Suri

9 Favorite Science Fiction Novels of 2022

By John Folk-Williams

Eversion by Alastair Reynolds

End-of-year time seems to slow down a bit from rest-of-the-year time, and that enforced (relative) rest gives me a break to look back for my favorite science fiction novels of 2022. I have to say that the current period, imho, eclipses past golden ages of SFF and redefines standards in a fundamental way. There is […]

Filed Under: Favorite SFF Tagged With: Adrian Tchaikovsky, Aimee Pokwatka, Alastair Reynolds, Gigi Ganguly, Lavie Tidhar, Linda Nagata, Maurice Broaddus, Olga Ravn, Tochi Onyebuchi

Redemption Ark by Alastair Reynolds – # SciFiMonth Review

By John Folk-Williams

Redemption Ark by Alastair Reynolds

It may seem strange to pick the middle book of a trilogy for my rereading of Revelation Space (now called the Inhibitor Trilogy). But Alastair Reynolds’ Redemption Ark is a magnificent novel that stands mostly on its own and goes in depth into the major Conjoiner characters and the threat to humanity posed by the […]

Filed Under: SciFiMonth, Space Opera Tagged With: Alastair Reynolds, alien life forms, altered minds, redemption, Revelation Space, robots, spaceships, transhuman

Neuromancer by William Gibson – A Review for #SciFiMonth

By John Folk-Williams

Neuromancer by William Gibson

Like any great novel that does something really new, William Gibson’s Neuromancer, can be hard to get into. And it still feels new, at least to me, almost forty years after its publication, despite the fact that cyberpunk has become so common a sub-genre. Neuromancer is so uniquely itself that it’s hard to make the […]

Filed Under: Cyberpunk, Great Series Read Project, SciFiMonth Tagged With: addiction, artificial intelligence, clones, cyberspace, future, memory, virtual reality, William Gibson

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About SciFi Mind

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Something is struggling to be born in this damaged and inspiring world, and I believe science fiction and its speculative cousins are helping us figure out what it is. It’s pushing the imaginations of fiction writers to bend and twist familiar forms to try to capture the forces that are hurling us into a barely conceivable future. This blog is my small way of exploring the half-perceived … Read More about About

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