The Circumference of the World by Lavie Tidhar is even grander in scope than its title at first suggests. Like many Tidhar novels, it is uniquely brilliant, but this one draws together in its luminous writing many perspectives that take some time to sort out. There is a young woman from Vanuatu, a mathematician in […]
David Mogo Godhunter by Suyi Davies Okungbowa
In David Mogo Godhunter by Suyi Davies Okungbowa (author of Son of the Storm) the end of the world has come to Lagos. After a war among orishas, or gods, in Orun, home of a major pantheon, hundreds of spirits have taken over most of the city in the great Falling. Much of it lies […]
Isle of the Dead by Roger Zelazny – #VintageSciFiMonth
Every January is Vintage Science Fiction Month, the not-a-challenge created by Andrea at the little red reviewer and Retro Rockets podcast as well as Red Star Reviews. It’s definitely one of my favorite scifi celebrations. The original idea was to comment on science fiction written before your birth year – but I believe “vintage” came […]
Ringworld by Larry Niven – #VintageSciFiMonth
If you’re new, as I am, to Larry Niven’s Known Space world, you’ll find an astonishing amount of information online about this hugely influential series of novels and short stories. Ringworld (1970) was Niven’s first novel in the sequence. There are articles about all the characters, alien species, technologies and events of Known Space as […]
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick – #VintageSciFiMonth
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) by Philip K. Dick asks a basic question that is all the more pressing today. What’s the difference between a human being and an android? Dick goes beyond the current debate about the potential replacement of humans by robotic software to produce creative works we feel should only […]
The Stars Undying by Emery Robin
It’s a bold idea for a debut novelist to choose the stories and legends of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar projected into a space opera. Bold, I think, because these were formidable people in life, and I’ve been disappointed too many times with thin fictional replicas of great historical figures. But Emery Robin’s The Stars Undying […]
