The Blue, Beautiful World by Karen Lord, the latest in her Cygnus Beta novels, is unlike any science fictional work I’ve recently read. It depicts familiar elements: a vast scale of galactic politics, a humanoid diaspora in space, a climate-changed Earth where cities are being enclosed in protective globes and many current nation states have […]
Strange Encounters – 3 Science Books for SFF Readers
Strange encounters with alien places and intelligences are the staple of science fiction and fantasy, yet it’s not only in fiction where these can be explored. Many recent popular science books look with great sensitivity and imagination at forms of intelligence on Earth that have been overlooked in the past and at the real environments, […]
Belladonna Nights and Other Stories by Alastair Reynolds
Belladonna Nights and Other Stories is a great way to get into Alastair Reynolds’ short fiction. Ever since reading the beautiful “Nightingale” in Galactic North, set in the Revelation Space universe, I’ve been alert to a theme of personal loss and grief caused by separation from a loved one or because of the imminence of […]
Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker: Seeing the Whole of Things
Considering the convulsing world of 1937 on the eve of World War II, Olaf Stapledon introduced Star Maker with a powerful rationale for science fiction in a time of crisis: “…[P]erhaps the attempt to see our turbulent world against a background of stars may, after all, increase, not lessen, the significance of the present human […]
