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The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe

By John Folk-Williams

The Fifth Head of Cerberus

As I was starting to take notes for this review of Gene Wolfe’s novel, The Fifth Head of Cerberus (1972), and went back to check on a passage, I would often find that I had missed something and wound up rereading not just that one part but a long or even complete section of this […]

Filed Under: Vintage Science Fiction Tagged With: alien life forms, clones, colonialism, Gene Wolfe, identity, indigenous culture, memory

Selected Stories by Theodore Sturgeon

By John Folk-Williams

Stories by Theodore Sturgeon

(Revised 3/31/2024) It’s a month since I came down with covid, and I’m still dealing with weird aftereffects. But an excellent way to get my brain going again came to hand in the form of The Selected Stories by Theodore Sturgeon. A lot of collections refer to their stories as “unforgettable” but this set of […]

Filed Under: Short Fiction, Vintage Science Fiction Tagged With: alien civilizations, hopeful future, human survival, identity, mind, post-apocalytic, self-worth, Theodore Sturgeon

Foundation’s Edge by Isaac Asimov

By John Folk-Williams

Foundation's Edge

When Isaac Asimov wrote Foundation’s Edge, a sequel to the original Foundation trilogy, he was very much into his project of integrating all of his major works into one universe. The year of publication was 1982, thirty years after the appearance of the trilogy in novel form and a full forty years after he started […]

Filed Under: Space Opera, Vintage Science Fiction Tagged With: Gaia, galactic empires, Isaac Asimov, mind, psychohistory, robots, spaceships

Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov: A Re-Reading for #SciFiMonth

By John Folk-Williams

Second Foundation

To finish up my re-reading of Isaac Asimov’s original Foundation trilogy, this week I’m looking at his Second Foundation. The novel, published in this form in 1953, is a reprinting of two novellas published in Astounding magazine in 1948-50. This third novel may not have quite the dramatic impact of The Mule (in Foundation and […]

Filed Under: SciFiMonth, Space Opera, Vintage Science Fiction Tagged With: altered minds, consciousness, future history, galactic empires, Isaac Asimov, power, psychic powers, spaceships

Re-Reading Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov

By John Folk-Williams

Foundation and Empire

Up next in my re-read of Isaac Asimov’s original Foundation trilogy is Foundation and Empire. First published in book form in 1952, the novel consists of two novellas originally published in Astounding magazine in 1945, when Asimov was 25 years old. I mention his age since it seems to me that in these stories of […]

Filed Under: Space Opera, Vintage Science Fiction Tagged With: destiny, free will, galactic empires, Isaac Asimov, power, psychic powers, psychohistory

A Few Thoughts about Foundation by Isaac Asimov

By John Folk-Williams

Foundation by Isaac Asimov

Given the lavish production of Apple TV’s Foundation series, I thought it would be interesting to look back at the original Foundation trilogy. Like most people, when I was being introduced to science fiction it was Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels that were thrust upon me as cornerstones of the genre, one of the great achievements […]

Filed Under: Space Opera, Vintage Science Fiction Tagged With: galactic empires, Isaac Asimov, power, psychohistory, religion, space colonies, space governance, war

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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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