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science fiction

Aug
02
book cover depicting a silver needle-shaped spaceship on a verdant alien landscape

Paradise and Hell: “The Gardens of Delight” by Ian Watson

with some thoughts on the value of modesty in fiction
6 min read
Apr
30
dinosaurs and humans marching beneath a huge wooden crucifix with a pocketwatch hanging off it.

Discovering the True Nature of Time with Brian Aldiss’ “Cryptozoic!”

time travel, psychedelia and Freud
7 min read
Mar
10
book cover depicting a stone bust of a human head surrounded by animal heads

"The Zen Gun" (1983)

cosmic decadence and unionised robots
6 min read
Feb
15
book cover depicting a woman in a silvery bikini, standing before a spaceship and a reddish alien sky

Linguistic Superpowers: Samuel R. Delany's "Babel-17"

the strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis jacked up on steroids
5 min read
Jan
29
an old map of the North Sea depicting both real and fictional islands

The First Secondary World

independent fictional worlds were invented more recently than the steam train
13 min read
Nov
29
A woman in a red silk blouse looks uncertainly at a man in a fur cloak, riding a green alien horse

Love and Hate in Superposition: "The Quantum Rose" by Catherine Asaro

The sci-fi romance novel that's also an in-depth allegory for quantum physics
7 min read
Sep
18
Lurid 70s sci-fi painting, woman in alien landscape with tentacle emerging from her chest

Death is the Soul-Vulture: Ian Watson’s “Deathhunter”

A psychedelic afterlife fantasy that comes so close to greatness
9 min read
Jul
14
Book cover: a huge horizontal crucifix looms over a longhaired man, the Eucharist in front of him

"Behold the Man": Michael Moorcock's Big Middle Finger to Christianity

a juvenile and mean-spirited novel from one of SFF's greatest authors
9 min read
Jun
17
Cover depicting a crying blue-skinned woman in front of a celestial door in front of an exploding planet

Eden Among the Stars: Pauline Gedge’s “Stargate”

An obscure science-fantasy explores the bounds of Tolkien's legacy
9 min read
May
15
Book cover with greenish salamanders in front of a tidal wave and a volcano

Timeless Warning: Karel Čapek’s “War With The Newts”

Nearly a century old, Čapek’s satire remains chillingly prophetic
9 min read