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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

Robotic Ambitions Kickstarter from Apex

By John Folk-Williams

Robotic Ambitions Apex Book Company

Apex Book Company will begin a Kickstarter campaign on February 21st to raise funds for a new anthology, Robotic Ambitions. I don’t usually join in campaigns like this, but Apex is an important institution in the SFF world. I’d like to help make this book possible — I have to add that I have no […]

Filed Under: Short Fiction Tagged With: androids, Apex Books, artificial intelligence, consciousness, robots

Bliss Montage by Ling Ma

By John Folk-Williams

Bliss Montage

One of the things that makes Ling Ma’s stories in Bliss Montage so extraordinary is her ability to blend keen perceptions of human relationships with fantasy elements that somehow make the fantastic an intimate part of ordinary life. There is the house in “LA” the narrator shares with a hundred ex-boyfriends, the pickup date in […]

Filed Under: Fantasy Fiction, Short Fiction Tagged With: fantasy, identity, Ling Ma, love, memory, rebirth, relationships, self-worth

New Voices in Chinese Science Fiction, Edited by Neil Clarke, Xia Jia, Regina Kanyu Wang

By John Folk-Williams

New Voices in Chinese Science Fiction

In her introduction to New Voices in Chinese Science Fiction, Xia Jia explains how she and the other editors selected and found translators for the work of eight writers who had never before had their stories presented to the English-speaking world. I found the eight stories the editors chose to be fascinating. Several are brilliant […]

Filed Under: International Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction in Translation, Short Fiction Tagged With: artificial intelligence, Chinese science fiction, death, neuroscience, robots, tradition, virtual reality

Belladonna Nights and Other Stories by Alastair Reynolds

By John Folk-Williams

Belladonna Nights by Alastair Reynolds

Belladonna Nights and Other Stories is a great way to get into Alastair Reynolds’ short fiction. Ever since reading the beautiful “Nightingale” in Galactic North, set in the Revelation Space universe, I’ve been alert to a theme of personal loss and grief caused by separation from a loved one or because of the imminence of […]

Filed Under: Short Fiction Tagged With: Alastair Reynolds, alien life forms, galaxy, grief, loss, Revelation Space, spaceships, war

The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction – 2021

By John Folk-Williams

Year's Best African Speculative Fiction 2021

The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction (2021), edited by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, reprints 29 gripping stories that test the limits of everyday reality. As diverse as the stories are, most of them push their characters across boundaries between this world and the spirit world, between past and present, human and robot, the living and the […]

Filed Under: International Speculative Fiction, Short Fiction Tagged With: Africa, Africanfuturism, alternate worlds, ancestors, robots, self-worth, sentient beings, spirits

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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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