Eversion by Alastair Reynolds is a masterful surprise in this author’s work, and I found myself reading it straight through. Instead of opening in one of Reynolds’ future worlds, the action starts on a sailing vessel, the Demeter, in a stormy sea off the coast of Norway in either the late 18th or early 19th […]
The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction – 2021
The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction (2021), edited by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, reprints 29 gripping stories that test the limits of everyday reality. As diverse as the stories are, most of them push their characters across boundaries between this world and the spirit world, between past and present, human and robot, the living and the […]
The Quantum War by Derek Künsken – A Review for #SciFiMonth
Derek Künsken’s The Quantum War, the third book in The Quantum Evolution series, continues the stories that blend exciting space adventure with probing speculations on the philosophical and religious implications of altering human evolution. At the heart of these novels, set in the 26th century, are new human species, especially the Homo quantus, endowed with […]
Machine (White Space 2) by Elizabeth Bear
There’s nothing like a scary family illness (fortunately all over with now) to take my mind far from blogging for a couple of weeks, and there’s nothing like a compelling Elizabeth Bear novel like Machine to bring me right back. Machine is the second White Space novel, following Ancestral Night, set in the Synarche universe, […]
Multiple Worlds in Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Doors of Eden
Prepare for a wild ride through multiple worlds and fracturing reality in Adrian Tchaikovsky’s latest riveting novel, The Doors of Eden. The winning characters of this fantastic science fiction universe never know when a sudden drop in temperature signals a break in reality through which will pour creatures of one alternate earth or another. Sometimes […]
Purpose and Redemption in the Embers of War Series by Gareth L. Powell
It’s no wonder that, in the vastness of space and amid the destruction of planets and whole populations, finding purpose and redemption for past misdeeds should preoccupy so many rootless characters in Gareth L. Powell’s Embers of War series. With his considerable talent Powell combines space opera action with these deeper shades of meaning. It’s […]
