Reluctant Android is now available for pre-order as an ebook from Amazon and Smashwords. Pre-order means you can order it now for $3.99 and it will be delivered to you on September 1, 2018, the official launch date. Meanwhile you can … Continue reading
New Book Review I’ve reorganized my “psi-fi” site (www.psi-fi.net): “Psychological Fiction in a Technology World.” That’s where I review sci-fi books by the standards of psi-fi, a genre I made up. It’s about exploring the nature of human consciousness and … Continue reading
This sci-fi novel is addressed to “young adults” defined as aged 14 and up. It was recommended to me for reasons I can no longer remember. I don’t read or write YA fiction, so I have to give allowance for … Continue reading
The first two chapters of this slim volume were most helpful to me. “What is science-fiction?” is not an easy question, especially in distinguishing it from fantasy and the broader category of speculative fiction. Basically, Card says sci-fi concerns experience … Continue reading
Revenge of the Robots RUR is a play, first produced in 1922, remembered for introducing the word “robot” into the English lexicon. The story is, lifelike robots are manufactured by the millions to be servants and laborers so humans will … Continue reading
One’s personal viewpoint, constrained as it is by embodiment in time and location, is necessarily only one way of seeing things. Fortunately, we are capable of abstraction and generalization, so we can imagine viewpoints other than our own, and even, … Continue reading
An astronaut is injured in a dust storm on Mars. His crewmates give him up for dead and head home. Miraculously, he survives (some extreme hand-waving is needed to explain that). He makes it to the inflated canvas habitat left … Continue reading
This sci-fi adventure gets points for creativity. A small crew from earth investigates an alien ship somewhere out in the Oort cloud. The stimulating questions include, how would you communicate with aliens, and, what are the aliens like? Usually in … Continue reading
Six characters write diaries and letters, along with the transcript of a conversation, all presented in rotation. There are no dramatic scenes in real time, and no plot. Everything is remembered and told from afar through a haze of maudlin emotion. … Continue reading
In this classic sci-fi adventure from the 1960’s, two warring groups, the Rangers and the Wardens, fight each other in various places and times over the centuries. Time tunnels were built in some distant future that allowed these tribes to … Continue reading