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Sleep Phase by Mohamed Kheir, Translated by Robin Moger

By John Folk-Williams

Sleep Phase by Mohamed Kheir

Mohamed Kheir’s Sleep Phase, beautifully translated by Robin Moger (who also translated Kheir’s story collection, Slipping) brought to mind related neurodivergent conditions that I once wrote about on my mental health blog, Storied Mind. To experience the world as derealized is the feeling that the world around you is not quite real or completely strange […]

Filed Under: International Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction in Translation Tagged With: city, consciousness, identity, memory, Mohamed Kheir, neurodiversity

The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses by Malka Older

By John Folk-Williams

The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses

Malka Older, activist, scholar, teacher, international humanitarian worker and author of The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses is one of my culture heroes for her ability to combine multiple activities, any one of which would constitute a demanding career for less gifted people. This is the third installment in her Mossa and Pleiti mystery series (the […]

Filed Under: SciFi Mystery-Thriller Tagged With: city, language, Malka Older, mystery, relationships, ruined earth, sapphic love, space community

Days of Shattered Faith by Adrian Tchaikovsky

By John Folk-Williams

Days of Shattered Faith

In his afterward to Days of Shattered Faith, Adrian Tchaikovsky makes the self-evident statement that this third novel in a projected series of five secondary world fantasies, known as The Tyrant Philosophers, is not a work of history. But he says that he owes a lot to a couple of historians, notably Anita Anand and […]

Filed Under: Secondary World Fantasy Tagged With: Adrian Tchaikovsky, city, colonialism, demons, monsters, power, religion, royal succession

The Great When by Alan Moore

By John Folk-Williams

The Great When by Alan Moore

I suppose one little month can’t get much worse than this past November. Following soon after the depressing election came a bureaucratic nightmare threatening health insurance, a case of shingles and, by far the worst of all, the death of a close relative after a long illness. But the one book that brought back a […]

Filed Under: Parallel World Fantasy Tagged With: Alan Moore, alternate worlds, city, identity, London, magic, surreal landscape

Embassytown by China Miéville

By John Folk-Williams

Embassytown

When I first read China Miéville’s Embassytown, which I now regard as a nearly perfect novel, I didn’t get it. The story seemed to move quite nicely to an anticlimax, I thought, where a potential massacre turns on a dime because of language. My fault – I was expecting the normal sort of adventure and […]

Filed Under: Space Opera Tagged With: alien language, alien life forms, China Miéville, city, colonialism, communication, rebellion

The Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville

By John Folk-Williams

The Last Days of New Paris

I’m a fan of China Miéville‘s fiction, but when I first started The Last Days of New Paris, I was a little baffled. There was a woman riding a velocipede/centaur heading straight into a line of mannequins in a can-can row behind which Nazis were shooting at her, all this in 1950. The prose was […]

Filed Under: Urban Fantasy Tagged With: alternate history, China Miéville, city, life forms, power, surreal landscape

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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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