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Visions of Future Worlds

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Inhibitor Phase by Alastair Reynolds – A Review

By John Folk-Williams

Inhibitor Phase by Alastair Reynolds

Alastair Reynolds brings us back to the Revelation Space universe with the magnificent Inhibitor Phase. It’s a story about sacrifice, redemption, rebirth and basic human bonds of friendship, love and loyalty that builds to a powerful conclusion. Now, a confession here. When I started reading science fiction seriously almost 20 years ago, Alastair Reynolds and […]

Filed Under: Reviews, Space Opera Tagged With: Alastair Reynolds, alien life forms, consciousness, human survival, identity, inhibitors, memory, rebirth, redemption, Revelation Space, sacrifice

Taking on my SciFi TBR – Summer Wrap-Up

By John Folk-Williams

The Bone Ship's Wake

Well, I worked through this summer’s scifi TBR, adding a few more titles along the way, but not all of the novels and stories were quite right for me. I’ve already reviewed the four I really loved – books that changed me in some way. Those are Notes from the Burning Age, And What Can […]

Filed Under: Secondary World Fantasy, Taking on My SFF TBR Tagged With: adventure, David Brin, dragons, fantasy, Fonda Lee, qntm, rebirth, RJ Barker, robots, singularity, The Tide Child Trilogy

Ursula K. Le Guin on What Is Science Fiction?

By John Folk-Williams

What is Science Fiction Ursula K. Le Guin

When I started this blog, I considered having a page offering various answers to the question, What is science fiction? There are so many different, often clashing views that I thought that would be interesting, but I eventually rejected the idea because it seems too pedantic to even suggest that there is or ought to […]

Filed Under: What is Science Fiction Tagged With: art, C.G. Jung, character, consciousness, myth, Philip K. Dick, unconscious, Ursula K. Le Guin

The Escapement by Lavie Tidhar – A Review

By John Folk-Williams

The Escapement by Lavie Tidhar

Lavie Tidhar’s The Escapement starts quietly enough: A man who has been sitting with his very ill son in a hospital room steps out for some fresh air and notices a small red flower by the sidewalk. Then we see that flower through the eyes of the Stranger in a surreal, barren landscape. We are […]

Filed Under: Secondary World Fantasy Tagged With: clowns, consciousness, giants, Lavie Tidhar, reality, surreal landscape, time

10 Great SFF Books Coming This Fall

By John Folk-Williams

Here I am only half way through my short summer TBR list, and already I have 10 great SFF books lined up for the late summer and fall. This list includes mostly new volumes of some of the heavy hitter series of the last decade as well as a couple of stand-alones from writers who […]

Filed Under: Secondary World Fantasy, Taking on My SFF TBR Tagged With: Ada Palmer, Alastair Reynolds, Cat Rambo, Charles Stross, Derek Kunsken, Fonda Lee, Iain M. Banks, James S.A. Corey, Naomi Novik, Nnedi Okorafor

Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky – A Review

By John Folk-Williams

Shards of Earth

Adrian Tchaikovsky has an immense imagination, and the scope of Shards of Earth gives it vast space. Literally vast since the novel and its strange crew of salvagers moves from one planetary system to another through the terrifying bent space-time depths known as unspace in what seem to be moments. But those moments are pure […]

Filed Under: Reviews, Space Opera, Taking on My SFF TBR Tagged With: alien life forms, altered minds, consciousness, family, galactic empires, symbionts

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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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About the Author

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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