The passing of Vernor Vinge, author of the great A Deepness in the Sky and A Fire Upon the Deep, led me to go back to one of his earliest ground-breaking works, the novella True Names, first published in 1981. It’s regarded as the inspiration and first detailed working out of what William Gibson would […]
Selected Stories by Theodore Sturgeon
(Revised 3/31/2024) It’s a month since I came down with covid, and I’m still dealing with weird aftereffects. But an excellent way to get my brain going again came to hand in the form of The Selected Stories by Theodore Sturgeon. A lot of collections refer to their stories as “unforgettable” but this set of […]
Makeover World – Part 3
Here is the third installment in Makeover World, one of the Stories of Elektra series. Like Time Islands, this is a longer story so I’m publishing it in three parts on three successive days. Makeover World is a standalone but is related by setting, character and theme to the others in this series. Here is […]
Makeover World – Part 2
Here is another installment in the Stories of Elektra series. Like Time Islands, this is a longer story so I’m publishing it in three parts on three successive days. Makeover World is a standalone but is related by setting, character and theme to the others in this series. Here is Makeover World – Part 2. […]
Makeover World – Part 1
Here is another installment in the Stories of Elektra series. Like Time Islands, this is a longer story so I’m publishing it in three parts on three successive days. Makeover World is a standalone but is related by setting, character and theme to the others in this series. 1.The searchlight glare flashed in his eyes […]
People of Light 2
After four years and all those immunizations, I finally came down with covid. So I’ve been out of commission for a couple of weeks and just now am regaining my ability to think, read and write.It will take me a while to get back to book reviewing, but in the meantime I’ll be posting here […]
The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohamed
During the recent Coode Street podcast interview with Premee Mohamed, she came up with an interesting phrase that seemed to capture what happens in her latest novel, The Siege of Burning Grass. She said that while juggling all the demands on her time, she often felt like one of her characters being “seduced into usefulness.” […]
Lost Ark Dreaming by Suyi Davies Okungbowa
“What are we but stories that touch?” This crucial question arises early in one of the poetic interludes of this absorbing novella about the drowning world of a future Lagos – Lost Ark Dreaming by Suyi Davies Okungbowa. While most of the city is now underwater, survivors live in the Pinnacle, highest of five towers […]
