• Blog
  • About
  • Stories of Elektra
  • Great Series Read Project
  • Archive

SciFi Mind

Visions of Future Worlds

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Goodreads
  • Mastodon
You are here: Home / Archives for evolution

Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky

By John Folk-Williams

Alien Clay

Adrian Tchaikovsky takes on familiar themes in Alien Clay, but, as always, he shuffles the cards of his imagined realities to create a story that is also uniquely powerful. Arton Daghdev, an academic revolutionary who transgressed the rules of orthodoxy imposed by the dictatorial Mandate on Earth (similar to the Perfection ideology in Days of […]

Filed Under: Space Opera Tagged With: Adrian Tchaikovsky, alien life forms, colonialism, community, evolution, power, rebellion, space colonies, spaceships

Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse by S.B. Divya

By John Folk-Williams

Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse

Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse and other Possible Situations by S.B. Divya, author of Machinehood and Meru, is a deeply interesting collection of fourteen stories, many quite short, all of them posing life-changing choices for each central character. The prose is supple, ranging from lushly sensuous description to stripped down action. The author perfectly matches […]

Filed Under: Short Fiction Tagged With: choice, consciousness, cyborg, evolution, love, neurodiversity, pain, S.B. Divya, transhuman, uploaded minds

Meru by S.B. Divya, The Alloy Era, Book I

By John Folk-Williams

Meru by S.B. Divya

Meru by S.B. Divya is an intriguing space opera that presents a future Earth, ruined by humans, and now dominated by evolved sentient beings, known as alloys. A distant planet, named Meru, is evolving primitive life forms and has oxygen in its atmosphere, but humans, in their baseline form, are forbidden to settle there or […]

Filed Under: Space Opera Tagged With: evolution, exoplanets, genetic change, ruined earth, S.B. Divya, sentient beings, spaceships

Otherlands and More Science Books for Science Fiction Readers

By John Folk-Williams

Otherlands - Science Books for SciFi Readers

Here are three excellent books about science that I’ve found helpful for updating ideas about the origins of life, the nature of the mind and the vanished worlds of extinct creatures and environments that preceded our present precarious moment. Otherlands: A Journey Through Earth’s Extinct Worlds by Thomas Halliday is one of the most extraordinary […]

Filed Under: Science and Related Books for SFF Readers Tagged With: alternate worlds, brain, cognition, evolution, genetic change, human survival, life forms, navigation, species, subminds

The Quantum War by Derek Künsken – A Review for #SciFiMonth

By John Folk-Williams

The Quantum War by Derek Kunsken #scifimonth

Derek Künsken’s The Quantum War, the third book in The Quantum Evolution series, continues the stories that blend exciting space adventure with probing speculations on the philosophical and religious implications of altering human evolution. At the heart of these novels, set in the 26th century, are new human species, especially the Homo quantus, endowed with […]

Filed Under: Great Series Read Project, SciFiMonth Tagged With: artificial intelligence, brain, consciousness, Derek Kunsken, evolution, genetic engineering, religion, sacrifice, sentient beings, Venus

Multiple Worlds in Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Doors of Eden

By John Folk-Williams

Multiple Worlds in Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Prepare for a wild ride through multiple worlds and fracturing reality in Adrian Tchaikovsky’s latest riveting novel, The Doors of Eden. The winning characters of this fantastic science fiction universe never know when a sudden drop in temperature signals a break in reality through which will pour creatures of one alternate earth or another. Sometimes […]

Filed Under: Reviews Tagged With: Adrian Tchaikovsky, alien life forms, alternate earth, evolution, multiple worlds, sentient beings

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

  • She Who KnowsShe Who Knows and One Way Witch by Nnedi Okorafor #Wyrd&Wonder
  • Lake of Darkness by Adam RobertsLake of Darkness by Adam Roberts
  • Death of the AuthorDeath of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor
  • Dissolution by Nicholas BingeDissolution by Nicholas Binge
  • The Fifth Head of CerberusThe Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe
  • The Sentence by Gautam BhatiaThe Sentence by Gautam Bhatia

Categories

© 2025 Copyright by John Folk-Williams · Dynamik-Gen On Genesis Framework