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The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler

By John Folk-Williams

The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler

I was late coming to Ray Nayler’s The Mountain in the Sea, partly because it seemed too Earth-bound a story, partly because I thought it might be too much a novel of ideas, cut off from the flesh-and-blood characters that make a story work. My impressions were completely wrong. The Mountain in the Sea is […]

Filed Under: SciFi Mystery-Thriller Tagged With: alien language, androids, artificial intelligence, communication, consciousness, corporate dystopia, octopus, robots, slavery

Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon by Wole Talabi – #WyrdandWonder

By John Folk-Williams

Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon by Wole Talabi

In Wole Talabi’s exciting fantasy adventure, Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon, the spirit world has fallen on hard times. With dwindling followers to make faith offerings, the companies of the gods have to make do with diminished income, and their powers are not quite what they used to be. Shigidi is an ex-god […]

Filed Under: Fantasy Fiction, Wyrd and Wonder Tagged With: Afrofuturist, gods, heist, imagination, magic, sexuality, spirits, transformation, Wole Talabi

Strange Encounters – 3 Science Books for SFF Readers

By John Folk-Williams

Under Alien Skies - Strange Encounters

Strange encounters with alien places and intelligences are the staple of science fiction and fantasy, yet it’s not only in fiction where these can be explored. Many recent popular science books look with great sensitivity and imagination at forms of intelligence on Earth that have been overlooked in the past and at the real environments, […]

Filed Under: Science and Related Books for SFF Readers Tagged With: alien life forms, black holes, consciousness, forests, galaxy, memory, octopus, Peter Wohlleben, Philip Plait, spaceships, Sy Montgomery

Favorite Fantasy Characters – #Wyrd&Wonder

By John Folk-Williams

Thanks to imyril, I wanted to pick up on her tag, Fantasy Characters of the Year, which she first saw at Space & Sorcery. I’m adapting it to Favorite Fantasy Characters of the past year or more without identifying a favorite male, female, villain, etc. – just fictional people that I find unforgettable. This theme […]

Filed Under: Favorite SFF, Wyrd and Wonder Tagged With: Gautam Bhatia, Jadie Jang, Kelly Barnhill, Leslye Penelope, Liz Williams, Marlon James, Nicola Griffith, Nnedi Okorafor

Translation State by Ann Leckie

By John Folk-Williams

Translation State by Ann Leckie

Ann Leckie has written a strange and compelling story in Translation State that is set in a part of her Imperial Radch universe different from what we know from the Ancillary novels. For all its trappings of space opera and bizarre species, it’s very much a captivating story about family, loneliness, friendship, and the need […]

Filed Under: SciFi Mystery-Thriller, Space Opera Tagged With: alien life forms, Ann Leckie, family, friendship, gender, human, politics, self-worth

Lords of Uncreation by Adrian Tchaikovsky

By John Folk-Williams

Lords of Uncreation

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Lords of Uncreation is the third and final volume of the Final Architecture series, including Shards of Earth and Eyes of the Void. What draws me most to this series are the amazing descriptions of the encounters of the Intermediary Idris Telemmier with the creatures of unspace, a level of space beneath the […]

Filed Under: Space Opera Tagged With: Adrian Tchaikovsky, alien life forms, altered minds, multiple worlds, power, spaceships, universe, war

Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse by S.B. Divya

By John Folk-Williams

Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse

Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse and other Possible Situations by S.B. Divya, author of Machinehood and Meru, is a deeply interesting collection of fourteen stories, many quite short, all of them posing life-changing choices for each central character. The prose is supple, ranging from lushly sensuous description to stripped down action. The author perfectly matches […]

Filed Under: Short Fiction Tagged With: choice, consciousness, cyborg, evolution, love, neurodiversity, pain, S.B. Divya, transhuman, uploaded minds

Locus Ballot 2023: Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels and More

By John Folk-Williams

Locus Ballot 2023

Time to pick from the long list of nominees for the Locus ballot 2023, covering work published in 2022. It’s a big list, since it represents the consensus judgment of a large group of reviewers at Locus magazine, and I can’t pretend to have read it all. I think part of the purpose of such […]

Filed Under: Favorite SFF Tagged With: Adrian Tchaikovsky, Alastair Reynolds, Kelly Barnhill, Lavie Tidhar, Linda Nagata, Maurice Broaddus, Nicola Griffith, R.F. Kuang, Simon Jimenez, Tasha Suri

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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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Recent Posts

  • The Mountain in the Sea by Ray NaylerThe Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler
  • Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon by Wole TalabiShigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon by Wole Talabi – #WyrdandWonder
  • Under Alien Skies - Strange EncountersStrange Encounters – 3 Science Books for SFF Readers
  • Favorite Fantasy Characters – #Wyrd&Wonder
  • Translation State by Ann LeckieTranslation State by Ann Leckie
  • Lords of UncreationLords of Uncreation by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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About the Author

A late-comer to the worlds of science fiction, John Folk-Williams circled around it, first by blogging (primarily through Storied Mind) about inner struggles and the mind’s way of distorting reality. Then he turned directly to SFF as an amazing medium for re-envisioning the mind and the worlds it creates. He started this blog as a way to experiment with writing science fiction and to learn from its many masterful practitioners.

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