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Visions of Future Worlds

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Days of Shattered Faith by Adrian Tchaikovsky

By John Folk-Williams

Days of Shattered Faith

In his afterward to Days of Shattered Faith, Adrian Tchaikovsky makes the self-evident statement that this third novel in a projected series of five secondary world fantasies, known as The Tyrant Philosophers, is not a work of history. But he says that he owes a lot to a couple of historians, notably Anita Anand and […]

Filed Under: Secondary World Fantasy Tagged With: Adrian Tchaikovsky, city, colonialism, demons, monsters, power, religion, royal succession

Breath of Oblivion by Maurice Broaddus

By John Folk-Williams

Breath of Oblivion Astra Black 2

Breath of Oblivion by Maurice Broaddus is the second novel in his Astra Black series (following 2022’s Sweep of Stars) and moves the story of the Muungano world forward from multiple perspectives, each of which probes the internal struggles of a large cast of characters. While the novel shifts more to deepening our understanding of […]

Filed Under: Space Opera Tagged With: Africanfuturism, alien life forms, colonialism, community, consciousness, family, Maurice Broaddus, oppression, power, religion

The Great When by Alan Moore

By John Folk-Williams

The Great When by Alan Moore

I suppose one little month can’t get much worse than this past November. Following soon after the depressing election came a bureaucratic nightmare threatening health insurance, a case of shingles and, by far the worst of all, the death of a close relative after a long illness. But the one book that brought back a […]

Filed Under: Parallel World Fantasy Tagged With: Alan Moore, alternate worlds, city, identity, London, magic, surreal landscape

The Book of Phoenix by Nnedi Okorafur #SciFiMonth

By John Folk-Williams

The Book of Phoenix

The Book of Phoenix by Nnedi Okorafur adds to the great Africanfuturist epic Okorafur began in Who Fears Death (and which she continues with her new novella, She Who Knows). This is a prequel that describes the destruction that led to the world of the first novel, with its sharp division between light and dark […]

Filed Under: Post-Apocalytic, SciFiMonth Tagged With: Africanfuturism, colonialism, genetic engineering, Nnedi Okorafor, power, religion, slavery, story-telling

Future’s Edge by Gareth L. Powell, A Review for #SciFiMonth

By John Folk-Williams

Future's Edge by Gareth L. Powell

OK, I’m glad to be part of SciFi Month again, and I will get to my review of Gareth L. Powell’s Future’s Edge, but I have to say how hard it is to write anything in the wake of the US election. I guess you have to be a US citizen of strong liberal values […]

Filed Under: SciFiMonth, Space Opera Tagged With: alien life forms, apocalypse, artificial intelligence, Gareth L. Powell, love, refugees, ruined earth, space exploration, spaceships

Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor

By John Folk-Williams

Who Fears Death

Who Fears Death (2010) by Nnedi Okorafor puzzled me at first. The central character, Onyesonwu, (whose name means “who fears death”) is an outcast figure, a child of rape, who is avoided by most people and as a result angry most of the time. But the story reveals her life on two levels, the physical […]

Filed Under: Post-Apocalytic Tagged With: Africanfuturism, colonialism, language, magic, Nnedi Okorafor, power, religion, sacrifice, shapeshifter, spirits

Embassytown by China Miéville

By John Folk-Williams

Embassytown

When I first read China Miéville’s Embassytown, which I now regard as a nearly perfect novel, I didn’t get it. The story seemed to move quite nicely to an anticlimax, I thought, where a potential massacre turns on a dime because of language. My fault – I was expecting the normal sort of adventure and […]

Filed Under: Space Opera Tagged With: alien language, alien life forms, China Miéville, city, colonialism, communication, rebellion

The Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville

By John Folk-Williams

The Last Days of New Paris

I’m a fan of China Miéville‘s fiction, but when I first started The Last Days of New Paris, I was a little baffled. There was a woman riding a velocipede/centaur heading straight into a line of mannequins in a can-can row behind which Nazis were shooting at her, all this in 1950. The prose was […]

Filed Under: Urban Fantasy Tagged With: alternate history, China Miéville, city, life forms, power, surreal landscape

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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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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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