Wole Talabi, in his brilliant story collection Convergence Problems, offers an intriguing idea about how stories can be told. It contrasts sharply with the method made famous by James Joyce in Dubliners where characters reach a climactic moment of epiphany in which they grasp some great truth about themselves. That approach has been done to […] The post Convergence Problems by Wole Talabi appeared first on SciFi Mind ..read more

After yet more downtime caused by, first, the misery of a post-covid illness, something like a cold from hell, and then happy times during a special family birthday gathering, I managed to start reading again with Daughter of the Merciful Deep by Leslye Penelope. I was so impressed with her earlier The Monsters We Defy […] The post Daughter of the Merciful Deep by Leslye Penelope appeared first on SciFi Mind ..read more

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 […] The post True Names by Vernor Vinge appeared first on SciFi Mind ..read more

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 fifteen more […] The post Selected Stories by Theodore Sturgeon appeared first on SciFi Mind ..read more

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 […] The post Makeover World – Part 3 appeared first on SciFi Mind ..read more

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 […] The post Makeover World – Part 1 appeared first on SciFi Mind ..read more

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 post People of Light 2 appeared first on SciFi Mind ..read more

“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 […] The post Lost Ark Dreaming by Suyi Davies Okungbowa appeared first on SciFi Mind ..read more

In previous novels of the Inverted Frontier series (Edges, Silver and Needle), Linda Nagata often posed the question of what it took to retain humanity in the face of alien power. In Blade Inverted Frontier 4 (out of a projected 5 volume series) she confronts as never before the potential of human destructiveness. Is it […] The post Blade – Inverted Frontier 4 by Linda Nagata appeared first on SciFi Mind ..read more

Ray Nayler’s beautiful novella, The Tusks of Extinction, focuses on a handful of very different characters whose lives converge on a hunting expedition in the Russian taiga at least a century in the future. That convergence manages to speak volumes about human nature, greed, memory, family bonds, the connection of living things to the earth […] The post The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler appeared first on SciFi Mind ..read more