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Visions of Future Worlds

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Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky

By John Folk-Williams

Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s gripping novel Shroud reworks one of the oldest stories in the world of a hero lost in a hostile world and trying to get home. Facing the unknown, those who are cast adrift have to use every resource at their disposal and their own wits and training to survive. Of course, in Tchaikovsky’s […]

Filed Under: Space Opera Tagged With: Adrian Tchaikovsky, alien life forms, communication, consciousness, sentient beings, transformation

She Who Knows and One Way Witch by Nnedi Okorafor #Wyrd&Wonder

By John Folk-Williams

She Who Knows

She Who Knows and One Way Witch are the first two novellas in Nnedi Okorafor’s She Who Knows trilogy. This series, in turn, is part of her larger Africanfuturist epic that reaches back 500 years to The Book of Phoenix. I’ve read three parts of Okorafor’s epic story. Who Fears Death is the story of […]

Filed Under: Secondary World Fantasy, Wyrd and Wonder Tagged With: Nnedi Okorafor, oppression, power, racism, religion, shapeshifter, spirits, transformation

Lake of Darkness by Adam Roberts

By John Folk-Williams

Lake of Darkness by Adam Roberts

Adam Roberts’ Lake of Darkness is an absorbing story of utopia and evil in a space opera drama that spans multiple worlds, all of which enjoy a post-scarcity civilization. It’s probably not for everyone, though, since it is heavy on philosophical talk and dense descriptions of the physics of black holes and faster than light […]

Filed Under: Space Opera Tagged With: Adam Roberts, black holes, evil, good society, murder mystery, spaceships, spacetime, utopia

Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor

By John Folk-Williams

Death of the Author

Death of the Author marks the second time (the first being Who Fears Death) Nnedi Okorafor has led me through a reading experience that felt interesting but not overwhelming only to deliver an ending section that made me wonder how she does it. For that ending delivers a powerful impact that changes my view of […]

Filed Under: Post-Apocalytic Tagged With: artificial intelligence, family, identity, imagination, love, Nnedi Okorafor, robots, story-telling

Dissolution by Nicholas Binge

By John Folk-Williams

Dissolution by Nicholas Binge

At its core, Dissolution by Nicholas Binge is a love story about a fiercely determined 83 year-old woman who is trying to recapture the memory and hence the identity of her husband whose selfhood has mostly disappeared. But Dissolution feels nothing like a romance. It is a tense thriller in which the titular phenomenon threatens […]

Filed Under: SciFi Mystery-Thriller Tagged With: horror, identity, love, memory, Nicholas Binge, time travel, transhuman

The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe

By John Folk-Williams

The Fifth Head of Cerberus

As I was starting to take notes for this review of Gene Wolfe’s novel, The Fifth Head of Cerberus (1972), and went back to check on a passage, I would often find that I had missed something and wound up rereading not just that one part but a long or even complete section of this […]

Filed Under: Vintage Science Fiction Tagged With: alien life forms, clones, colonialism, Gene Wolfe, identity, indigenous culture, memory

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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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Recent Posts

  • Shroud by Adrian TchaikovskyShroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky
  • She Who KnowsShe Who Knows and One Way Witch by Nnedi Okorafor #Wyrd&Wonder
  • Lake of Darkness by Adam RobertsLake of Darkness by Adam Roberts
  • Death of the AuthorDeath of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor
  • Dissolution by Nicholas BingeDissolution by Nicholas Binge
  • The Fifth Head of CerberusThe Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe

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About the Author

A late-comer to the worlds of science fiction, John Folk-Williams circled around it, first by blogging (primarily through Storied Mind) about inner struggles and the mind’s way of distorting reality. Then he turned directly to SFF as an amazing medium for re-envisioning the mind and the worlds it creates. He started this blog as a way to experiment with writing science fiction and to learn from its many masterful practitioners.

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