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You are here: Home / Archives for fable

Norstrilia by Cordwainer Smith

By John Folk-Williams

Norstrilia by Cordwainer Smith

Norstrilia (written as two short novels in the 1960s but not published as one until 1975 after the author’s death), is a unique masterpiece by Paul Linebarger who wrote under the name Cordwainer Smith. The story begins with an odd preface that throws the key elements of the book at you in the manner of […]

Filed Under: Vintage Science Fiction Tagged With: Cordwainer Smith, fable, identity, immortality, patriarchy, religion, slavery, social classes, telepathy, transhuman

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke – A Review

By John Folk-Williams

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Never having read Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell, I picked up her Piranesi with no preconceptions about the sort of book it might be and promptly fell in love with it. It’s a masterful fable about life in this world that introduces us to the mind of a narrator who proclaims himself to […]

Filed Under: Fantasy Fiction Tagged With: alternate worlds, consciousness, fable, identity, memory, Piranesi, psychic powers, Susanna Clarke

Fables of Need: this census-taker by China Miéville and The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati

By John Folk-Williams

This Census-Taker by China Mieville

I’m not sure what leads me to link these two books, as different and far apart in time as they are, but China Miéville’s this census-taker (2016)and Dino Buzzati’s The Tartar Steppe (1938) strike me as fables of human need. I’m not even sure what I mean by that, except that each book tells a […]

Filed Under: Fantasy Fiction, International Speculative Fiction, Reviews Tagged With: boyhood, China Miéville, Dino Buzzati, fable, glory, magic, military, mountains, The City & The City, trauma

The Wall by Gautam Bhatia, Book One of The Chronicles of Sumer

By John Folk-Williams

The Wall Sumer Cities in SFF

Gautam Bhatia’s The Wall is an intricate and compelling cross between fantasy and fable that strikes at something deep within human nature, a yearning to break through the barriers that hem us in. In the world of The Wall, the barrier is a literal one, vast, black, blocking out every sign of a world beyond. […]

Filed Under: Fantasy Fiction, Reviews Tagged With: city, class structure, fable, fantasy, Gautam Bhatia, poetry, politics, religion, song, The Wall

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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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