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Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera

By John Folk-Williams

Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera

Brace yourself for a wild ride through cascading realities, where the dead and living intermingle in daily life, and exploding time scales from Sri Lanka’s present and recent past to the far, far future of an earth boiling under an expanded red sun. This is the world and universe of Vajra Chandrasekera’s Rakesfall. It offers […]

Filed Under: International Speculative Fiction, Post-Apocalytic Tagged With: gods, identity, memory, reality, ruined earth, South Asian fiction, transhuman, Vajra Chandrasekera

Eyes of the Void by Adrian Tchaikovsky

By John Folk-Williams

Eyes of the Void by Adrian Tchaikovsky

I love a space adventure that lures me on with the promise of revealing the fundamental nature of a fictional universe, preferably through a dazzling experience that only the hero has earned the right to have. Well, no one can really explain the nature of everything, at least not very clearly, so far, but Adrian […]

Filed Under: Space Opera Tagged With: Adrian Tchaikovsky, alien life forms, alien minds, altered minds, communication, consciousness, reality, space colonies, universe

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick – A Review for #VintageSciFiMonth

By John Folk-Williams

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick drew me in with one tightly written, deeply engaging scene after another. And like so many of Dick’s novels, it turns the protagonist’s life upside down and inside out in the first couple of chapters. It’s a must-read for any fan of Dick’s fiction. The […]

Filed Under: Vintage Science Fiction Tagged With: dystopia, grief, identity, love, Philip K. Dick, privilege, reality

Slipping by Mohamed Kheir – A Review for #SciFiMonth

By John Folk-Williams

Slipping by Mohamed Kheir

Mohamed Kheir has written in Slipping a brilliant series of stories that drop their characters out of time and space for brief periods and interweave their narratives to challenge the limits of story-telling. The effect is like a folding of reality itself as the terms of their lives change directions in a stray encounter here, […]

Filed Under: Science Fiction in Translation, SciFiMonth, Short Fiction Tagged With: dreams, Egypt, memory, politics, power, reality, singing, story-telling

The Pastel City, a Novel of Viriconium by M. John Harrison – A Review

By John Folk-Williams

A Storm of Wings Viriconium

The Pastel City (1971) is the first story by M. John Harrison in his Viriconium fantasy sequence. This short novel drew me in immediately with its luminous prose and its ability to depict a world in ruins and a world of hope with just a few brilliant visual strokes. Though it begins with a prologue […]

Filed Under: Secondary World Fantasy Tagged With: alien minds, dead civilization, empire, M. John Harrison, power, reality, ruined earth, time, Viriconium

The Escapement by Lavie Tidhar – A Review

By John Folk-Williams

The Escapement by Lavie Tidhar

Lavie Tidhar’s The Escapement starts quietly enough: A man who has been sitting with his very ill son in a hospital room steps out for some fresh air and notices a small red flower by the sidewalk. Then we see that flower through the eyes of the Stranger in a surreal, barren landscape. We are […]

Filed Under: Secondary World Fantasy Tagged With: clowns, consciousness, giants, Lavie Tidhar, reality, surreal landscape, time

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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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