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Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky – A Review for #SciFiMonth

By John Folk-Williams

Children of Time

I needed to re-read Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky because I was tone-deaf years ago to what the author was doing when I first opened this novel. Yeah, I was a bit turned off by characters who were spiders but more so by the narrative voice of those sections describing their evolution. There was […]

Filed Under: SciFiMonth, Space Opera Tagged With: Adrian Tchaikovsky, alien life forms, civilization, commmunication, gods, language, power, religion, terraforming, war

A Storm of Wings – A Novel of Viriconium by M. John Harrison

By John Folk-Williams

A Storm of Wings Viriconium

From the beginning of M. John Harrison’s A Storm of Wings (1980), you know you’re entering a shattered world with a diminishing human presence, but it is also a dazzling world captured in densely brilliant and beautiful prose. This second novel of the Viriconium series caught me by surprise. The first, The Pastel City (1971), […]

Filed Under: Secondary World Fantasy Tagged With: alien life forms, city, civilization, consciousness, human survival, M. John Harrison, memory, rebirth

3 Great Books about Cities for SciFi Readers

By John Folk-Williams

Four Lost Cities - Great Books about Cities

Since I’ve been writing about cities in science fiction recently, I thought it would be helpful to highlight three great books about cities that can give readers a lot of ideas on the growth and transformation of these centers of human life. People have been congregating in cities since they began to trade goods and […]

Filed Under: Science and Related Books for SFF Readers, SFF Cities Tagged With: Annalee Newitz, archeology, city, civilization, indigenous culture, social change, space community, technology, urban planning

Amazing Cities in Science Fiction – 1

By John Folk-Williams

Cities of science fiction - We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

We have all been dazzled by the artists’ visions of great cities in science fiction movies, like Metropolis, Things to Come, Blade Runner, The Fifth Element, the cities of Star Wars, Trantor in the TV series Foundation or the glimpses we’ve had of Gallifrey in the later Doctor Who stories. But I’m more interested in […]

Filed Under: SFF Cities Tagged With: Alastair Reynolds, alien life forms, China Miéville, city, civilization, Foundation, Isaac Asimov, Revelation Space, Yevgeny Zamyatin

H.G. Wells’ Things to Come – the 1936 Film

By John Folk-Williams

H. G. Wells Things to Come

H. G. Wells wrote the screen adaptation of his future history, The Shape of Things to Come, to give a dramatic setting to his sweeping vision of a world first devastated by war then resurrected by a corps of brilliant engineers. The result was Things to Come, a 1936 film produced by Alexander Korda and […]

Filed Under: Future History, Post-Apocalytic, Scifi TV/Movies, Vintage Science Fiction Tagged With: city, civilization, dystopia, future history, H.G. Wells, space travel, technology, Things to Come

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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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