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, […]
When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill
Set primarily in an alternative version of the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, Kelly Barnhill’s magnificent When Women Were Dragons tells many stories. There is the story of the mass dragoning of April 25, 1955, when over 642,987 mothers and wives stepped out of their human skins to live as dragons, and of […]
Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny – #VintageSciFiMonth
I had intended to write about a new science fiction novel this week, but that turned out to be a disappointment. So I’m eagerly diving into Nine Princes in Amber, the first book in Roger Zelazny‘s epic 10 volume fantasy series, The Chronicles of Amber. This rounds out my contribution to the great not-a-challenge of […]
Neuromancer by William Gibson – A Review for #SciFiMonth
Like any great novel that does something really new, William Gibson’s Neuromancer, can be hard to get into. And it still feels new, at least to me, almost forty years after its publication, despite the fact that cyberpunk has become so common a sub-genre. Neuromancer is so uniquely itself that it’s hard to make the […]
Hidden Solace by Karl Drinkwater: A #SciFiMonth Review
Karl Drinkwater’s Hidden Solace is the third volume of the projected five-novel space opera Lost Solace series. Like its predecessors, Hidden Solace, transforms a familiar scifi trope (here, the prisoner trying to escape from an impossibly isolated and well-defended structure) into something exciting and new. The writing is riveting and intense and kept me going […]
Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky for #SciFiMonth
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 […]
