• Blog
  • About
  • Reviews
  • Great Series Read Project
  • Archive

SciFi Mind

Visions of Future Worlds

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Goodreads
  • Mastodon
You are here: Home / Archives for alien life forms

Strange Encounters – 3 Science Books for SFF Readers

By John Folk-Williams

Under Alien Skies - Strange Encounters

Strange encounters with alien places and intelligences are the staple of science fiction and fantasy, yet it’s not only in fiction where these can be explored. Many recent popular science books look with great sensitivity and imagination at forms of intelligence on Earth that have been overlooked in the past and at the real environments, […]

Filed Under: Science and Related Books for SFF Readers Tagged With: alien life forms, black holes, consciousness, forests, galaxy, memory, octopus, Peter Wohlleben, Philip Plait, spaceships, Sy Montgomery

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

Lords of Uncreation by Adrian Tchaikovsky

By John Folk-Williams

Lords of Uncreation

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Lords of Uncreation is the third and final volume of the Final Architecture series, including Shards of Earth and Eyes of the Void. What draws me most to this series are the amazing descriptions of the encounters of the Intermediary Idris Telemmier with the creatures of unspace, a level of space beneath the […]

Filed Under: Space Opera Tagged With: Adrian Tchaikovsky, alien life forms, altered minds, multiple worlds, power, spaceships, universe, war

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh

By John Folk-Williams

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh

Emily Tesh set herself a difficult task in Some Desperate Glory. Present the reader with a young protagonist raised in a militaristic society who is all about duty, war-breeding, xenophobia, homophobia and worse, then draw her through enough world-shattering experiences to make her interesting, flaws and all, from start to finish. And Tesh hits the […]

Filed Under: Space Opera Tagged With: alien life forms, artificial intelligence, coming of age, family, identity, multiple worlds, spaceships, trauma

Isle of the Dead by Roger Zelazny – #VintageSciFiMonth

By John Folk-Williams

Isle of the Dead by Roger Zelazny

Every January is Vintage Science Fiction Month, the not-a-challenge created by Andrea at the little red reviewer and Retro Rockets podcast as well as Red Star Reviews. It’s definitely one of my favorite scifi celebrations. The original idea was to comment on science fiction written before your birth year – but I believe “vintage” came […]

Filed Under: Space Opera, Vintage Science Fiction Tagged With: alien life forms, gods, multiple worlds, religion, revenge, Roger Zelazny, telepathy

Ringworld by Larry Niven – #VintageSciFiMonth

By John Folk-Williams

Ringworld by Larry Niven

If you’re new, as I am, to Larry Niven’s Known Space world, you’ll find an astonishing amount of information online about this hugely influential series of novels and short stories. Ringworld (1970) was Niven’s first novel in the sequence. There are articles about all the characters, alien species, technologies and events of Known Space as […]

Filed Under: Space Opera, Vintage Science Fiction Tagged With: agency, alien life forms, alien technology, city, fallen world, Known Space, Larry Niven, religion, spaceships

  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to page 3
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Go to page 5
  • Go to Next Page »

Subscribe to SciFi Mind Posts



About SciFi Mind

nebula SciFiMind

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

Search SciFi Mind

Recent Posts

  • The Mountain in the Sea by Ray NaylerThe Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler
  • Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon by Wole TalabiShigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon by Wole Talabi – #WyrdandWonder
  • Under Alien Skies - Strange EncountersStrange Encounters – 3 Science Books for SFF Readers
  • Favorite Fantasy Characters – #Wyrd&Wonder

Categories

Twitter

Twitter feed is not available at the moment.

© 2023 Copyright by John Folk-Williams · Dynamik-Gen On Genesis Framework