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Mirrored Heavens by Rebecca Roanhorse (Book 3 of Between Earth and Sky)

By John Folk-Williams

Mirrored Heavens

One of the great themes of Rebecca Roanhorse’s impressive third volume of her Between Earth and Sky trilogy is the struggle of humans to use godlike power without being destroyed by it. In Mirrored Heavens, the major characters either reach for such power or have it imposed on them, and all pay a heavy price. […]

Filed Under: Epic Fantasy Tagged With: city, free will, gods, indigenous culture, magic, power, Rebecca Roanhorse, transformation

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky

By John Folk-Williams

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky

I once read that most novel plots could be reduced to two great starting points: a stranger comes to town, and someone goes on a journey. In Adrian Tchaikovsky’s comic and thought-provoking Service Model, the one-time valet robot named Charles embarks on a journey to discover the source of a fatal error in his routines. […]

Filed Under: Post-Apocalytic Tagged With: Adrian Tchaikovsky, agency, artificial intelligence, free will, human survival, justice, library, robots

Re-Reading Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov

By John Folk-Williams

Foundation and Empire

Up next in my re-read of Isaac Asimov’s original Foundation trilogy is Foundation and Empire. First published in book form in 1952, the novel consists of two novellas originally published in Astounding magazine in 1945, when Asimov was 25 years old. I mention his age since it seems to me that in these stories of […]

Filed Under: Space Opera, Vintage Science Fiction Tagged With: destiny, free will, galactic empires, Isaac Asimov, power, psychic powers, psychohistory

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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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