I needed to re-read Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky because I was tone-deaf years ago to what the author was doing when I first opened this novel. Yeah, I was a bit turned off by characters who were spiders but more so by the narrative voice of those sections describing their evolution. There was […]
Archives for 2023
Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov: A Re-Reading for #SciFiMonth
To finish up my re-reading of Isaac Asimov’s original Foundation trilogy, this week I’m looking at his Second Foundation. The novel, published in this form in 1953, is a reprinting of two novellas published in Astounding magazine in 1948-50. This third novel may not have quite the dramatic impact of The Mule (in Foundation and […]
Julia: A Retelling of George Orwell’s 1984 by Sandra Newman
I hesitated to put up this review of Julia by Sandra Newman since I recently indicated that my reviewing time, limited due to illness, would be devoted to books that really inspired me in some way. Well, this one didn’t, but it was the last commitment I made to NetGalley, so I wrote a brief […]
Re-Reading Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov
Up next in my re-read of Isaac Asimov’s original Foundation trilogy is Foundation and Empire. First published in book form in 1952, the novel consists of two novellas originally published in Astounding magazine in 1945, when Asimov was 25 years old. I mention his age since it seems to me that in these stories of […]
Menewood by Nicola Griffith
As Nicola Griffith, author of Menewood, second in her Hild series, said in a recent interview, she expects to be writing about this seventh century British saint (the abbess of Whitby in her later years) for the rest of her life. The character of Hild she has created through 20 years of research is unforgettably […]
A Few Thoughts about Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Given the lavish production of Apple TV’s Foundation series, I thought it would be interesting to look back at the original Foundation trilogy. Like most people, when I was being introduced to science fiction it was Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels that were thrust upon me as cornerstones of the genre, one of the great achievements […]