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 […]
A Storm of Wings – A Novel of Viriconium by M. John Harrison
From the beginning of M. John Harrison’s A Storm of Wings (1980), you know you’re entering a shattered world with a diminishing human presence, but it is also a dazzling world captured in densely brilliant and beautiful prose. This second novel of the Viriconium series caught me by surprise. The first, The Pastel City (1971), […]
Needle by Linda Nagata (Inverted Frontier Book 3)
Needle is the third book in Linda Nagata’s compelling Inverted Frontier series that began with Edges and continued with Silver. This is an epic story of the search for remnants of human civilizations reaching back from the farthest reach of settlement toward the origin of it all. Urban and the crew of the Dragon encounter […]
These Lifeless Things by Premee Mohamed – A Review
There is a moment in Premee Mohamed’s brilliant novella, These Lifeless Things, when the narrator, an anthropologist exploring a post-apocalyptic landscape, says in frustration with her “hard” science colleagues that there is more than one way of knowing. That gets to the heart of this absorbing narrative. She has found a treasure in the ruins […]
Inhibitor Phase by Alastair Reynolds – A Review
Alastair Reynolds brings us back to the Revelation Space universe with the magnificent Inhibitor Phase. It’s a story about sacrifice, redemption, rebirth and basic human bonds of friendship, love and loyalty that builds to a powerful conclusion. Now, a confession here. When I started reading science fiction seriously almost 20 years ago, Alastair Reynolds and […]
