Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) by Philip K. Dick asks a basic question that is all the more pressing today. What’s the difference between a human being and an android? Dick goes beyond the current debate about the potential replacement of humans by robotic software to produce creative works we feel should only […]
One Day All This Will Be Yours by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Welcome to the end of time, says the amusingly ruthless narrator of One Day All This Will Be Yours, the brilliant 2021 novella by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Of course, if you were hearing this greeting in person, you wouldn’t have long to live because this sole inhabitant of the end of days and choke-point for time […]
Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi – A Review
Just as I was wending my way through various fantasy worlds, Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi slammed me back into a near future that is just a little bit removed from the ugly realities of today. Onyebuchi’s novella Riot Baby may have been a great outcry of pain, told in powerful prose, but Goliath is a […]
The Annual Migration of Clouds by Premee Mohamed – A Review
Premee Mohamed’s beautiful novella (her third this year)The Annual Migration of Clouds, while set in a dystopian future, is more about a young woman saying goodby and leaving home, like birds leaving the nest, seasons turning, the movement of natural forces. It focuses on hard-won hope in the face of uncertainty rather than the devastating […]
These Lifeless Things by Premee Mohamed – A Review
There is a moment in Premee Mohamed’s brilliant novella, These Lifeless Things, when the narrator, an anthropologist exploring a post-apocalyptic landscape, says in frustration with her “hard” science colleagues that there is more than one way of knowing. That gets to the heart of this absorbing narrative. She has found a treasure in the ruins […]
Notes from the Burning Age by Claire North – A Review
Notes from the Burning Age by Claire North is both an exciting story of spies and traitors in a post-apocalyptic Europe and a powerful study of trauma and belief. It is, above all, the story of Ven Marzouki, who survived a traumatic childhood when he witnessed the great burning of the old civilization and the […]
