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Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

By John Folk-Williams

Parable of the Sower

So, another creeping infirmity makes it harder for me to focus for long on the printed (or ebook) page, and I have finally started listening to audio books. I started with two novels that, at first glance, could not be more dissimilar: Octavia E. Butler’s The Parable of the Sower and China Miéville’s The Last […]

Filed Under: Post-Apocalytic Tagged With: climate change, human survival, Octavia E. Butler, power, religion, social change, world collapse

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

Selected Stories by Theodore Sturgeon

By John Folk-Williams

Stories by Theodore Sturgeon

(Revised 3/31/2024) It’s a month since I came down with covid, and I’m still dealing with weird aftereffects. But an excellent way to get my brain going again came to hand in the form of The Selected Stories by Theodore Sturgeon. A lot of collections refer to their stories as “unforgettable” but this set of […]

Filed Under: Short Fiction, Vintage Science Fiction Tagged With: alien civilizations, hopeful future, human survival, identity, mind, post-apocalytic, self-worth, Theodore Sturgeon

The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler

By John Folk-Williams

The Tusks of Extinction

Ray Nayler’s beautiful novella, The Tusks of Extinction, focuses on a handful of very different characters whose lives converge on a hunting expedition in the Russian taiga at least a century in the future. That convergence manages to speak volumes about human nature, greed, memory, family bonds, the connection of living things to the earth […]

Filed Under: Future History Tagged With: consciousness, extinction, human survival, memory, Ray Nayler, species, uploaded minds

The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older

By John Folk-Williams

The Mimicking of Known Successes

The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older, author of the remarkable The Centenal Cycle, is a many-layered book that becomes more and more interesting upon closer examination. On the surface, it is a very good mystery about the search for a missing man. It is also a fine relationship story about the investigator, Mossa, […]

Filed Under: SciFi Mystery-Thriller Tagged With: city, human survival, Malka Older, relationships, ruined earth, sapphic love, space colonies

Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky for #SciFiMonth

By John Folk-Williams

Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky

By now, I just accept the fact that Adrian Tchaikovsky can write about anything in SFF and do it brilliantly. Children of Memory, which follows the award-winning Children of Time and Children of Ruin, continues this great saga of human evolution and species uplift in multiple star systems. There is a moving and exciting story […]

Filed Under: Great Series Read Project, SciFiMonth, Space Opera Tagged With: Adrian Tchaikovsky, human survival, identity, memory, sentient beings, space colonies, terraforming

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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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