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You are here: Home / Archives for SciFi Mystery-Thriller

The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Older

By John Folk-Williams

The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles

I’m way ahead of the publication date for this one, but I couldn’t resist jumping right into The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by the remarkable Malka Older. This is Book 2 of the Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti, my favorite detective couple since Holmes and Watson, and it’s another beautiful and charming story. As in […]

Filed Under: SciFi Mystery-Thriller Tagged With: Malka Older, murder mystery, relationships, ruined earth, sapphic love, space colonies

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

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

The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older

By John Folk-Williams

The Mimicking of Known Successes

The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older, author of the remarkable The Centenal Cycle, is a many-layered book that becomes more and more interesting upon closer examination. On the surface, it is a very good mystery about the search for a missing man. It is also a fine relationship story about the investigator, Mossa, […]

Filed Under: SciFi Mystery-Thriller Tagged With: city, human survival, Malka Older, relationships, ruined earth, sapphic love, space colonies

Self-Portrait with Nothing by Aimee Pokwatka

By John Folk-Williams

Self-Portrait with Nothing

Self-Portrait with Nothing by Aimee Pokwatka is a psychological mystery-thriller that uses a fascinating approach to multiple universes that can be crossed through the impact of art. At the opening of the story, we learn that Ula Frost, world-renowned artist whose work is compared to that of Frida Kalo and Georgia O’Keefe, is missing. At […]

Filed Under: SciFi Mystery-Thriller Tagged With: Aimee Pokwatka, art, communication, identity, multiverse, mystery, self-worth

Eversion by Alastair Reynolds

By John Folk-Williams

Eversion by Alastair Reynolds

Eversion by Alastair Reynolds is a masterful surprise in this author’s work, and I found myself reading it straight through. Instead of opening in one of Reynolds’ future worlds, the action starts on a sailing vessel, the Demeter, in a stormy sea off the coast of Norway in either the late 18th or early 19th […]

Filed Under: Reviews, SciFi Mystery-Thriller Tagged With: Alastair Reynolds, artificial intelligence, human emotion, memory, sentient beings, ships, technology, time

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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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