#kimstanleyrobinson — Public Fediverse posts

#KimStanleyRobinson describes the work of the National Science Foundation (#NSF) in combating #ClimateChange in his fictional trilogy Science In The Capital. Only, he chose a universe where Americans elected an environmentalist president, and (almost) everyone works to save the planet from climate disaster. Starting new wars for oil and supporting genocide wasn't even imagined as a possibility in that universe.

In this universe though, environmental activist Al Gore was

1/

#USpol #KSR

@Snoro
Stan's written about this, with some great social/communal adaptations in his usual detail (I mainly remember the collective living and the airships...) #precog #clifi #kimstanleyrobinson #optimism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_2140

Blev tipsad av Robinson från @gnomvid s blogg. Här är det geopolitik i en nära framtid där Kina koloniserat månens sydpol. Förutom månbaser och kvantkommunikation känns det som världen förändrats mer i idag sen den skrevs 2018 än i det 2048 den utspelar sig.
#bok #boktips #kimstanleyrobinson

Huge thanks to Kim Stanley Robinson for these generous words about T. K. Rex's THE WILDCRAFT DRONES. “These exciting stories...give us a much-needed vision of how things could turn out well, despite the many dangers we are facing. They gave me hope and made me laugh— what a great mix!”

#climatefiction #clifi #solarpunk #ecofiction #sciencefictionbooks #speculativefiction #climatechangefiction #hopepunk #kimstanleyrobinson #bookstodon

In periods of upheaval, the danger isn’t disagreement — it’s mistaking our narrative for the terrain itself. When material conditions change and our interpretation doesn’t, suffering compounds.

Learning requires humility toward reality.

Full reflection here:
https://emotusoperandi.medium.com/blessing-or-curse-20eb1cdc9a36

#BlessingOrCurse #SharedReality #CollectiveLearning #MoralReckoning #KimStanleyRobinson

My 2025 in Review (Best Science Fiction Novels and Short Fiction, Reading Initiatives, and Bonus Categories)

• Graphic created by my father

Here’s to happy reading in 2026! I hope you had a successful reading year. Whether you are a lurker, occasional visitor, a regular commenter, a follower on Bluesky or Mastodon, thank you for your continued support. As I say year after year, It’s hard to express how important (and encouraging) the discussions that occur in the comments, social media, and via email are to me. I’m so thankful for the lovely and supportive community of readers, writers, and discussion partners that stop by.

What were your favorite vintage SF reads–published pre-1985–of 2025? Let me know in the comments.

Throughout the later part of the year I’ve dropped hints about a research project. Perceptive readers might have parsed together the contours of the research: late 19th/early 20th century, utopian, African American, the American South, radical politics… It’s taking longer than expected. I’ve read a good ten monographs, five dissertations, countless articles. I’ve written twenty pages. I hoped to have it posted by early in this year. Alas. It’s coming together–slowly. Stay tuned.

Without further ado, here are my favorite novels (I only read a few) and short stories (I read a ton of those) I read in 2025 with bonus categories. I made sure to link my longer reviews where applicable if you want a deeper dive.

Check out my 2024, 2023, 2022, and 2021 rundowns if you haven’t already. I have archived all my annual rundowns on my article index page if you wanted to peruse earlier years.

My Top 5 Science Fiction Novels of 2025

• Alan Gutierrez’s cover for the 1985 edition

1. Octavia E. Butler’s Clay’s Ark (1984), 4.5/5 (Very Good). Full review.

Octavia E. Butler’s Clay’s Ark is the final published volume of her Patternist sequence (1976-1984). It is the third novel according to the internal chronology of the series. Clay’s Ark is, without doubt, the most horrifyingly bleak science fiction novel I have ever read. It’s stark. It’s sinister. It’s at turns deeply affective before descending into extreme violence and displaced morality. The moral conundrum that underpins the central problem, the spread of an extraterrestrial disease, unfurls with an unnerving alien logic. Butler’s characters are trapped by the demands of the alien microbes, scarred by the pervasive sense that their humanity is slipping away, and consumed by the fear of starting an epidemic. A true confrontation of the moment cannot lead to anything other than suicide or the first steps towards an apocalyptic transformation.

• Mark Weber’s cover for the 1st edition

2. Kim Stanley Robinson’s Icehenge (1984), 4.5/5 (Very Good). Full review.

Kim Stanley Robinson’s Icehenge, a fix-up from two previously published stories “To Leave a Mark” (1982) and “On the North Pole of Pluto” (1980), tells three interconnected tales that all connect to a mysterious monolith left on Pluto (the titular Icehenge). By design Icehenge instead follows the action after the action: men and women attempting to figure out their own place in a world characterizes by lifespans that stretch hundreds and hundreds of years. And its this brilliant interconnection between self-conception and the operations of history that Robinson succeeds and casts his spell. The story is well-told, polished, and filled with fascinating details (technological and sociological).

• Peter Jones’ cover for the 1978 UK edition

3. Joe Haldeman’s All My Sins Remembered (1977), 4/5 (Good). Full review.

The vast Confederación is comprised of radically distinct worlds ruled by the entire spectrum of political systems with both alien and non-alien inhabitants. There are few rules: don’t take advantage of indigenous populations and don’t wage wars on neighboring planets. At 22, the naive Otto McGavin, an Anglo-Buddhist, joins the Confederación as an agent to protect the rights of humans and non-humans. But there’s a twist. Under deep hypnosis a construct of Otto McGavin will be created for each mission. He’ll take on the identity–under a sheath of plasticine flesh–of whatever person he needs to be depending on the task.  The story follows Otto on three missions over many years.  The interlocking segments convey the deep trauma Otto must confront before he’s immersed in another persona and sent on another mission. His idealism clashes with the violence he must perpetuate. His sense of self conflicts with the violent actions of his “constructs.” The looming sense of dread and despair must finally have its reckoning.

• Uncredited cover for the 1983 edition

4. Zoë Fairbairns’ Benefits (1979), 3.75/5 (Good). Full review.

Zoë Fairbairns charts the struggles of the British women’s liberation movement in a dystopic near future. An anti-feminist fringe political party called FAMILY comes to power, simultaneously proclaiming family values while systematically dismantling the welfare state. Benefits effectively eviscerates governmental doublespeak and champions the need to organize and educate in order to fight against patriarchal forces and messianic movements that promise to solve all our ills.

• Colin Hay’s cover for the 1976 edition

5. Edgar Pangborn’s The Company of Glory (1975), 3.5/5 (Good). Full review.

Edgar Pangborn is an unsung SF hero in my book. At his best, he’s a deeply humanistic writer interested in moments of effective metafictional play on the nature of narrative. The Company of Glory (serialized 1974, 1975) is the third novel in the Tales of Darkening World sequence. It forms a prequel to Pangborn’s masterpiece Davy (1964). As with Davy, The Company of Glory attempts to create multiple interlocking layers of narrative, stories within the stories, quotations from various diaries, and the interjections of the overarching narrator of the entire collection of texts who remains anonymous until the final pages. Unfortunately, The Company of Glory is a deeply flawed novel. Recommended only for Pangborn’s fans. Read Davy first if you’re new to his work.

My Top 20 Science Fiction Short Stories Reads of 2025 (click titles for my full review)

1. Philip K. Dick’s “Foster, You’re Dead” (1955), 5/5 (Masterpiece): I featured on a podcast about this story. When the episode is posted, I’ll make sure to link it. Mike Foster spends his school days practicing survival skills–digging, making knives, weaving baskets–in case of a nuclear attack. The kids snicker at him as he walks past. They don’t own a fallout shelter at home. His father refuses to pay into the NATS (National Security fund). If a bomb hit, Mike wouldn’t even be granted access to the school shelter. He’s possessed by a deep, perpetual, encompassing trauma.

2. Fritz Leiber’s “Coming Attraction” (1950), 5/5 (Masterpiece): A rare reread! Leiber imagines an America transformed after a limited nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The physical landscape mirrors the psychological scars of New York’s inhabitants. Perverse new forms of TV entertainment, in particular male wrestlers pitted against masked women, transfix all audiences.

3. Jack Dann’s “A Quiet Revolution for Death” (1978), 5/5 (Masterpiece): Roger and his family head out of the city for a picnic in a vast cemetery. Roger dreams that he is an angel of God guiding mankind through the realm. Visiting the cemetery is an act of devotion. While other kids plug themselves into feelies, Bennie is a fanatic disciple of his father’s pseudo-philosophy of embracing the macabre. Sandra, Roger’s wife, plays along. The kids see through her dislike of the cemetery and the burial rituals happening around them.

4. Izumi Suzuki’s“Terminal Boredom” (1984, trans. by Daniel Joseph 2021), 4.5/5 (Very Good): A nameless young female main character recounts her interactions her one-time boyfriend. HE wants to reconnect with his mother, who abandoned his family. HE joins a staged show called The Psychoanalysis Room in an attempt to convince his mother to take “pity and come and find” him. She also has a dysfunctional family. Her mother, a TV executive, struggles/refuses to connect to her daughter. Like some manifestation of the modern hikikomori, they often refuse to communicate with others, eat as a group or eat at all for days on end, or leave their dwellings for the sun and vista of the aboveground. Both find solace and escape in the vacuities and artifice of television.

5. Philip K. Dick’s “Explorers We” (1959), 4.5/5 (Very Good): Six astronauts return to earth from a voyage to Mars. But they are not treated as heroes. Instead people flee. I found “Explorers We” a well-crafted existential terror. The story plays with narrative expectation and hints at a cosmic enormity that will, at least in this iteration, remain unknown.

6. James Tiptree, Jr.’s “Painwise” (1972), 4.5/5 (Very Good): An explorer who feels no pain is hurled mercilessly from planet to plant where is he tortured, experimented upon, and broken again, and again, and again. His sense of time dissipates. Space becomes a hellscape that he cannot escape. And each time he’s lifted back to his scout ship where a mechanical boditech stitches him back together.

7. Jack Dann’s “The Dybbuk Dolls” (1975), 4.5/5 (Very Good): Chaim Lewis works at a sex shop down below in the Undercity, one of many identical spheres, one mile in diameter, buried one thousand feet below the ground.  As Chaim finishes up his shift in the dingy shop, a group of visitors ask about his hook-ins and 21st century pornos. Eventually one of them asks him about his alien sex doll collection. And when he returns to the room with the dolls, he discovers they’ve all been unpacked and they imprint themselves on his mind! Cue a descent into the bizarre…

8.  Jack Williamson’s “Guinevere for Everybody” (1955), 4.5/5 (Very Good): An artificially created Guinevere stands “chained” in a “vending machine” tempting sleepy passengers in an airport with her plaintive calls. I did not know Williamson had this type of vision in him! The surprise of the year!

9. George H. Smith’s “The Last Days of L. A.” (1959), 4/5 (Good): A nameless character (“you”) wakes from a recurring dream: “the dream that has haunted the whole world since that day in 1945.” A dream of apocalyptic annihilation, in infinite variations. A narrative repetition takes form: Nuclear nightmare. The waking moment. The aimless quest for understanding. Communing with other lost souls. The retreat to the bottle. Fragments of the news suggest a world unraveling.

10. Theodore Sturgeon’s “The Stars Are the Styx” (1950), 4/5 (Good): The premise: Humans created Curbstone, an artificial satellite around Earth, to facilitate the ultimate scientific achievement–near instantaneous transportation across the galaxy. How? Individual spaceships, with a solitary crew person or couple, will be hurled out from Curbstone at various points across the space time continuum. The story revolves around the aging (and rotund) Senior Release Officer on Curbstone, who certifies, counsels, and guides the strange collection of humans who gather at the station willing to take such a risk.

11. Richard Matheson’s “Dance of the Dead” (1955), 4/5 (Good): In a drug and alcohol drenched near-future, a group of young adults take a break-neck road drip and stray from the path set out by parents and small town community. Manifesting the SPEED of the car, Matheson’s prose resonates with pulse and hum, snippets of song and signage, slang and youthful lust. It’s frantic. It’s zappy. It’s vibrant. Recommended for fans of the more linguistically experimental (and bleak) of 50s visions.

12. Jack Dann’s “Rags” (1973), 4/5 (Good): Joanna wanders the streets without seeing a single person. Everything she sees—from garbage cans to parked cars–seem in be various states of decay (“dented, rusted, and discolored”). She teaches herself a new way to walk to avoid the “invisible beings” that flit around her (6). She remembers a past sickness. Deaths in the family. She makes new rules of movement and perception as an act of preservation.  And suddenly she sees The Purple Cat.

13. Jack Dann’s “Fragmentary Blue” (variant title: “There are no Bannisters”) (1973), 4/5 (Good): he elderly dwell underground in large domed cities. It’s a commercial and media-inundated world — tiny machines grant “feeling” as you watch commercials. Professor Fleitman, who “could not rationalize having an orgasm over a cigarette advertisement,” presents a new idea to galvanize the elderly to Entertainment Committee. Rather than a feelie or a movie he wants to put on a circus.

14. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s “Wanderers and Travellers” (1963, trans. 1966), 4/5 (Good): Stanisław Ivanovich spends his days submerged in lakes and rivers tagging septopods, a new octopus-like species discovered on Earth. His daughter, Marsha, assists from above. When he emerges from a lake, Marsha is deep in conversation with Leonid Andreevich Gorbovsky, an astroarchaeologist implied to be on leave from an expedition. The two scientists–IIvanovich, with his eyes on earthly mystery, and Gorbovsky, untangling the traces of potential intelligences across the cosmos–and Marsha engage in a series of discussions about the nature of the universe.

15. John Wyndham’s “The Man From Beyond” (variant title: “The Man from Earth”) (1934), 3.5/5 (Good): Somewhere on the Venusian surface the Valley of Dur, with its amalgamation of gasses, traps unsuspecting denizens who wander into its depths. In the city of Takon, Venusians, six-limbed creatures with silvery hair, ogle the strange beasts extricated and caged and exhibited from the Valley. The child, transfixed by the man’s noises and scrawls, pushes his stylus and pad under the bars. And Morgan Gratz, stranded astronaut and self-confessed murderer, draws for the child the respective locations of their planets.

16. Katherine MacLean’s “Contagion” (1950), 3.5/5 (Good) is a contact with an alien planet tale that’s legitimately odd. A hunting party looking for specimens of alien life in order to dissect, sets off from the spaceship Explorer across an alien planet called Minos. Reasonably, the crew is obsessed with a minute medical analysis of flora and fauna. The hunting party encounters a majestically shaped human who spins a crazy tale of adaptation and disease. 

17. Cherry Wilder’s “The Ark of James Carlyle” (1974), 3.5/5 (Good): Carlyle spends his tour of duty in a hut with a wood platform on small landmass surrounded by an “oily purple sea” on an alien planet. A crisis hits — and he suddenly learns the reason for the singular trees that grow in the center of each island.

18. E. C. Tubb’s“Without Bugles” (1952), 3.5/5 (Good): A naive journalist struggles to confront her heroic idealism, regurgitated through the media, in her attempt to save the Mars colony afflicted with a futuristic case of the black lung.

19.  Frank K. Kelly’s “Famine on Mars” (1934), 3.5/5 (Good): President Herbert Hoover infamously proclaimed on the eve of the Great Depression that “given the chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, we shall soon with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation.” “Famine on Mars,” published five years into the Great Depression, evokes similar paradigmatic shifts between propagandistic proclamation and harsh reality. Kelly spins a nightmare account of a famine on Mars and a plan to save the starving legions.

20. Gerald Kersh’s “Whatever Happened to Corporal Cuckoo?” (1953), 3.5/5 (Good): Kersh imagines a literary version of himself returning to New York City from WWII interacting with a fantastical manifestation of a Wound Man on board the Cunard White Star liner Queen Mary. Corporal Cuckoo, the “Wound Man” in question, regals the narrator (Kersh) with the history of his scarred and mutilated form that mysteriously heals from every injury.

Reading Initiatives

I have continued, resurrected, and created new science fiction short story reading series over the course of the year. Most of the stories I’ve picked for the series are available in some fashion online via links to Internet Archive in each review. I’ve included installments from 2024 in each series below. Feel free to read along with me! And thanks for all the great conversation.

Galaxy Science Fiction Read-through (started 2025)

1. Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (October 1950)
2. Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (November 1950) 

Organized Labor and Unions in Science Fiction (started in 2024)

1. Mack Reynolds’ The Earth War (1964)
2. Zoë Fairbairns’ Benefits (1979)

The First Three Published Short Fictions by Female Authors (continued from 2021)

1. Cherry Wilder (1930-2002)

Translated Short Stories in Translation (with Rachel S. Cordasco) (started in 2024)

1. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s “Wanderers and Travellers” (1963, trans. 1966)
2.  Izumi Suzuki’s “Terminal Boredom” (1984, trans. by Daniel Joseph 2021)

The Media Landscape of the Future (started in 2022)

1. George H. Smith’s “In the Imagicon” (1966)
2. Izumi Suzuki’s “Terminal Boredom” (1984)
3. Jack Dann’s “Fragmentary Blue” (variant title: “There are no Bannisters”) (1973)

The Search for the Depressed Astronaut  (continued from 2020)

1. Philip K. Dick’s “Explorers We” (1959) 
2. James Tiptree, Jr.’s “Painwise” (1972)
3. E. C. Tubb’s “Without Bugles” (1952)
4. E. C. Tubb’s “Home is the Hero” (1952)
5. E. C. Tubb’s “Pistol Point” (1953)
6. John Wyndham’s “The Man From Beyond” (variant title: “The Man from Earth”) (1934)

Generation Ship Short Stories (continued from 2019)

1. George Hay’s Flight of the “Hesper” (1952)

Exploration Logs (continued from 2022)

1. Exploration Log 7: Interview with Jordan S. Carroll, author of Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (2024)
2. Exploration Log 8: Pat M. Kuras and Rob Schmieder’s “When It Changed: Lesbians, Gay Men, and Science Fiction Fandom” (1980)
3. Exploration Log 9: Three More Interviews with Clifford D. Simak (1904-1988)
4. Exploration Log 10: Interview with Jaroslav Olša, Jr., author of Dreaming of Autonomous Vehicles: Miloslav (Miles) J. Breuer: Czech-American Writer and the Birth of Science Fiction (2025)
5. Exploration Log 11: Interview with Chukwunonso Ezeiyoke, author of Nigerian Speculative Fiction: The Evolution (2025)

My Top 4 History Reads of 2025

A large portion of my history reading this year pushed my general interest in labor history and leftist politics backwards into the 19th century. Unusual for me I know! Often I write about what I can write about not what I plan on writing about. A brief caveat worth repeating: I’m a PhD-wielding historian and have a high tolerance for academic texts. That said, I’d classify everything in my list as on the approachable side of things if you know the broad strokes of American history.

1. Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp’s Setting Down the Sacred Past: African-American Race Histories (2010): This filled a complete hole in my knowledge. While I had encountered history-centric militant abolitionist texts written by black authors, I did not know how they fitted into the larger historiographic project of the era. As my PhD looked at universal histories in the medieval period, I’m a sucker for all kinds of histories of historiography! This is a good one.

2. Deborah Beckel’s Radical Reform: Interracial Politics in Post-Emancipation North Carolina (2011): I read this one for my research project on a black utopian author. Beckel’s brilliant monograph looks at the race and politics in North Carolina after the end of Reconstruction–a “fusion” government of Republicans and Populists managed to take power (temporarily) from the white supremacist Democratic status quo in the 1890s. Depressing. Fascinating. I’m waiting for an alt-history that uses the 1898 election in North Carolina as a jonbar hinge — hah!

3. Edward K. Spann’s Brotherly Tomorrows: Movements for A Cooperative Society in America (1989): While an older monograph, Spann’s work is a fantastic survey of the fascinating range of radical social idealism-inspired communities that proliferated across America. I’m obsessed by left-wing ideologies that permeate the rural world and movements for working-class utopianism. Spann will inspire you to track down newer monographs on the social movements he surveys.

4. Jordan S. Carroll’s Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (2025): Rightly won the Hugo! I interviewed Carroll in January. In the book, he examines the ways the alt-right uses classic science fiction imagery and authors to mainstream fascism and advocate for the overthrow of the state. This is a short monograph designed to encourage thought. Highly recommended.

Goals for 2026

1. Keep reading and writing.

2. Read more reviews by other bloggers.

3. Cover more SF in translation.

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

#1950s #1960s #1970s #ArkadyAndBorisStrugatsky #bookReview #bookReviews #books #CherryWilder #ECTubb #EdgarPangborn #fiction #FrankKKelly #fritzLeiber #GeorgeHSmith #GeraldKersh #IzumiSuzuki #JackDann #JackWilliamson #JamesTiptreeJr #JoeHaldeman #JohnWyndham #KatherineMacLean #KimStanleyRobinson #OctaviaEButler #philipKDick #RichardMatheson #sciFi #scienceFiction #TheodoreSturgeon #ZoeFairbairns

My 2025 in Review (Best Science Fiction Novels and Short Fiction, Reading Initiatives, and Bonus Categories)

• Graphic created by my father

Here’s to happy reading in 2026! I hope you had a successful reading year. Whether you are a lurker, occasional visitor, a regular commenter, a follower on Bluesky or Mastodon, thank you for your continued support. As I say year after year, It’s hard to express how important (and encouraging) the discussions that occur in the comments, social media, and via email are to me. I’m so thankful for the lovely and supportive community of readers, writers, and discussion partners that stop by.

What were your favorite vintage SF reads–published pre-1985–of 2025? Let me know in the comments.

Throughout the later part of the year I’ve dropped hints about a research project. Perceptive readers might have parsed together the contours of the research: late 19th/early 20th century, utopian, African American, the American South, radical politics… It’s taking longer than expected. I’ve read a good ten monographs, five dissertations, countless articles. I’ve written twenty pages. I hoped to have it posted by early in this year. Alas. It’s coming together–slowly. Stay tuned.

Without further ado, here are my favorite novels (I only read a few) and short stories (I read a ton of those) I read in 2025 with bonus categories. I made sure to link my longer reviews where applicable if you want a deeper dive.

Check out my 2024, 2023, 2022, and 2021 rundowns if you haven’t already. I have archived all my annual rundowns on my article index page if you wanted to peruse earlier years.

My Top 5 Science Fiction Novels of 2025

• Alan Gutierrez’s cover for the 1985 edition

1. Octavia E. Butler’s Clay’s Ark (1984), 4.5/5 (Very Good). Full review.

Octavia E. Butler’s Clay’s Ark is the final published volume of her Patternist sequence (1976-1984). It is the third novel according to the internal chronology of the series. Clay’s Ark is, without doubt, the most horrifyingly bleak science fiction novel I have ever read. It’s stark. It’s sinister. It’s at turns deeply affective before descending into extreme violence and displaced morality. The moral conundrum that underpins the central problem, the spread of an extraterrestrial disease, unfurls with an unnerving alien logic. Butler’s characters are trapped by the demands of the alien microbes, scarred by the pervasive sense that their humanity is slipping away, and consumed by the fear of starting an epidemic. A true confrontation of the moment cannot lead to anything other than suicide or the first steps towards an apocalyptic transformation.

• Mark Weber’s cover for the 1st edition

2. Kim Stanley Robinson’s Icehenge (1984), 4.5/5 (Very Good). Full review.

Kim Stanley Robinson’s Icehenge, a fix-up from two previously published stories “To Leave a Mark” (1982) and “On the North Pole of Pluto” (1980), tells three interconnected tales that all connect to a mysterious monolith left on Pluto (the titular Icehenge). By design Icehenge instead follows the action after the action: men and women attempting to figure out their own place in a world characterizes by lifespans that stretch hundreds and hundreds of years. And its this brilliant interconnection between self-conception and the operations of history that Robinson succeeds and casts his spell. The story is well-told, polished, and filled with fascinating details (technological and sociological).

• Peter Jones’ cover for the 1978 UK edition

3. Joe Haldeman’s All My Sins Remembered (1977), 4/5 (Good). Full review.

The vast Confederación is comprised of radically distinct worlds ruled by the entire spectrum of political systems with both alien and non-alien inhabitants. There are few rules: don’t take advantage of indigenous populations and don’t wage wars on neighboring planets. At 22, the naive Otto McGavin, an Anglo-Buddhist, joins the Confederación as an agent to protect the rights of humans and non-humans. But there’s a twist. Under deep hypnosis a construct of Otto McGavin will be created for each mission. He’ll take on the identity–under a sheath of plasticine flesh–of whatever person he needs to be depending on the task.  The story follows Otto on three missions over many years.  The interlocking segments convey the deep trauma Otto must confront before he’s immersed in another persona and sent on another mission. His idealism clashes with the violence he must perpetuate. His sense of self conflicts with the violent actions of his “constructs.” The looming sense of dread and despair must finally have its reckoning.

• Uncredited cover for the 1983 edition

4. Zoë Fairbairns’ Benefits (1979), 3.75/5 (Good). Full review.

Zoë Fairbairns charts the struggles of the British women’s liberation movement in a dystopic near future. An anti-feminist fringe political party called FAMILY comes to power, simultaneously proclaiming family values while systematically dismantling the welfare state. Benefits effectively eviscerates governmental doublespeak and champions the need to organize and educate in order to fight against patriarchal forces and messianic movements that promise to solve all our ills.

• Colin Hay’s cover for the 1976 edition

5. Edgar Pangborn’s The Company of Glory (1975), 3.5/5 (Good). Full review.

Edgar Pangborn is an unsung SF hero in my book. At his best, he’s a deeply humanistic writer interested in moments of effective metafictional play on the nature of narrative. The Company of Glory (serialized 1974, 1975) is the third novel in the Tales of Darkening World sequence. It forms a prequel to Pangborn’s masterpiece Davy (1964). As with Davy, The Company of Glory attempts to create multiple interlocking layers of narrative, stories within the stories, quotations from various diaries, and the interjections of the overarching narrator of the entire collection of texts who remains anonymous until the final pages. Unfortunately, The Company of Glory is a deeply flawed novel. Recommended only for Pangborn’s fans. Read Davy first if you’re new to his work.

My Top 20 Science Fiction Short Stories Reads of 2025 (click titles for my full review)

1. Philip K. Dick’s “Foster, You’re Dead” (1955), 5/5 (Masterpiece): I featured on a podcast about this story. When the episode is posted, I’ll make sure to link it. Mike Foster spends his school days practicing survival skills–digging, making knives, weaving baskets–in case of a nuclear attack. The kids snicker at him as he walks past. They don’t own a fallout shelter at home. His father refuses to pay into the NATS (National Security fund). If a bomb hit, Mike wouldn’t even be granted access to the school shelter. He’s possessed by a deep, perpetual, encompassing trauma.

2. Fritz Leiber’s “Coming Attraction” (1950), 5/5 (Masterpiece): A rare reread! Leiber imagines an America transformed after a limited nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The physical landscape mirrors the psychological scars of New York’s inhabitants. Perverse new forms of TV entertainment, in particular male wrestlers pitted against masked women, transfix all audiences.

3. Jack Dann’s “A Quiet Revolution for Death” (1978), 5/5 (Masterpiece): Roger and his family head out of the city for a picnic in a vast cemetery. Roger dreams that he is an angel of God guiding mankind through the realm. Visiting the cemetery is an act of devotion. While other kids plug themselves into feelies, Bennie is a fanatic disciple of his father’s pseudo-philosophy of embracing the macabre. Sandra, Roger’s wife, plays along. The kids see through her dislike of the cemetery and the burial rituals happening around them.

4. Izumi Suzuki’s“Terminal Boredom” (1984, trans. by Daniel Joseph 2021), 4.5/5 (Very Good): A nameless young female main character recounts her interactions her one-time boyfriend. HE wants to reconnect with his mother, who abandoned his family. HE joins a staged show called The Psychoanalysis Room in an attempt to convince his mother to take “pity and come and find” him. She also has a dysfunctional family. Her mother, a TV executive, struggles/refuses to connect to her daughter. Like some manifestation of the modern hikikomori, they often refuse to communicate with others, eat as a group or eat at all for days on end, or leave their dwellings for the sun and vista of the aboveground. Both find solace and escape in the vacuities and artifice of television.

5. Philip K. Dick’s “Explorers We” (1959), 4.5/5 (Very Good): Six astronauts return to earth from a voyage to Mars. But they are not treated as heroes. Instead people flee. I found “Explorers We” a well-crafted existential terror. The story plays with narrative expectation and hints at a cosmic enormity that will, at least in this iteration, remain unknown.

6. James Tiptree, Jr.’s “Painwise” (1972), 4.5/5 (Very Good): An explorer who feels no pain is hurled mercilessly from planet to plant where is he tortured, experimented upon, and broken again, and again, and again. His sense of time dissipates. Space becomes a hellscape that he cannot escape. And each time he’s lifted back to his scout ship where a mechanical boditech stitches him back together.

7. Jack Dann’s “The Dybbuk Dolls” (1975), 4.5/5 (Very Good): Chaim Lewis works at a sex shop down below in the Undercity, one of many identical spheres, one mile in diameter, buried one thousand feet below the ground.  As Chaim finishes up his shift in the dingy shop, a group of visitors ask about his hook-ins and 21st century pornos. Eventually one of them asks him about his alien sex doll collection. And when he returns to the room with the dolls, he discovers they’ve all been unpacked and they imprint themselves on his mind! Cue a descent into the bizarre…

8.  Jack Williamson’s “Guinevere for Everybody” (1955), 4.5/5 (Very Good): An artificially created Guinevere stands “chained” in a “vending machine” tempting sleepy passengers in an airport with her plaintive calls. I did not know Williamson had this type of vision in him! The surprise of the year!

9. George H. Smith’s “The Last Days of L. A.” (1959), 4/5 (Good): A nameless character (“you”) wakes from a recurring dream: “the dream that has haunted the whole world since that day in 1945.” A dream of apocalyptic annihilation, in infinite variations. A narrative repetition takes form: Nuclear nightmare. The waking moment. The aimless quest for understanding. Communing with other lost souls. The retreat to the bottle. Fragments of the news suggest a world unraveling.

10. Theodore Sturgeon’s “The Stars Are the Styx” (1950), 4/5 (Good): The premise: Humans created Curbstone, an artificial satellite around Earth, to facilitate the ultimate scientific achievement–near instantaneous transportation across the galaxy. How? Individual spaceships, with a solitary crew person or couple, will be hurled out from Curbstone at various points across the space time continuum. The story revolves around the aging (and rotund) Senior Release Officer on Curbstone, who certifies, counsels, and guides the strange collection of humans who gather at the station willing to take such a risk.

11. Richard Matheson’s “Dance of the Dead” (1955), 4/5 (Good): In a drug and alcohol drenched near-future, a group of young adults take a break-neck road drip and stray from the path set out by parents and small town community. Manifesting the SPEED of the car, Matheson’s prose resonates with pulse and hum, snippets of song and signage, slang and youthful lust. It’s frantic. It’s zappy. It’s vibrant. Recommended for fans of the more linguistically experimental (and bleak) of 50s visions.

12. Jack Dann’s “Rags” (1973), 4/5 (Good): Joanna wanders the streets without seeing a single person. Everything she sees—from garbage cans to parked cars–seem in be various states of decay (“dented, rusted, and discolored”). She teaches herself a new way to walk to avoid the “invisible beings” that flit around her (6). She remembers a past sickness. Deaths in the family. She makes new rules of movement and perception as an act of preservation.  And suddenly she sees The Purple Cat.

13. Jack Dann’s “Fragmentary Blue” (variant title: “There are no Bannisters”) (1973), 4/5 (Good): he elderly dwell underground in large domed cities. It’s a commercial and media-inundated world — tiny machines grant “feeling” as you watch commercials. Professor Fleitman, who “could not rationalize having an orgasm over a cigarette advertisement,” presents a new idea to galvanize the elderly to Entertainment Committee. Rather than a feelie or a movie he wants to put on a circus.

14. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s “Wanderers and Travellers” (1963, trans. 1966), 4/5 (Good): Stanisław Ivanovich spends his days submerged in lakes and rivers tagging septopods, a new octopus-like species discovered on Earth. His daughter, Marsha, assists from above. When he emerges from a lake, Marsha is deep in conversation with Leonid Andreevich Gorbovsky, an astroarchaeologist implied to be on leave from an expedition. The two scientists–IIvanovich, with his eyes on earthly mystery, and Gorbovsky, untangling the traces of potential intelligences across the cosmos–and Marsha engage in a series of discussions about the nature of the universe.

15. John Wyndham’s “The Man From Beyond” (variant title: “The Man from Earth”) (1934), 3.5/5 (Good): Somewhere on the Venusian surface the Valley of Dur, with its amalgamation of gasses, traps unsuspecting denizens who wander into its depths. In the city of Takon, Venusians, six-limbed creatures with silvery hair, ogle the strange beasts extricated and caged and exhibited from the Valley. The child, transfixed by the man’s noises and scrawls, pushes his stylus and pad under the bars. And Morgan Gratz, stranded astronaut and self-confessed murderer, draws for the child the respective locations of their planets.

16. Katherine MacLean’s “Contagion” (1950), 3.5/5 (Good) is a contact with an alien planet tale that’s legitimately odd. A hunting party looking for specimens of alien life in order to dissect, sets off from the spaceship Explorer across an alien planet called Minos. Reasonably, the crew is obsessed with a minute medical analysis of flora and fauna. The hunting party encounters a majestically shaped human who spins a crazy tale of adaptation and disease. 

17. Cherry Wilder’s “The Ark of James Carlyle” (1974), 3.5/5 (Good): Carlyle spends his tour of duty in a hut with a wood platform on small landmass surrounded by an “oily purple sea” on an alien planet. A crisis hits — and he suddenly learns the reason for the singular trees that grow in the center of each island.

18. E. C. Tubb’s“Without Bugles” (1952), 3.5/5 (Good): A naive journalist struggles to confront her heroic idealism, regurgitated through the media, in her attempt to save the Mars colony afflicted with a futuristic case of the black lung.

19.  Frank K. Kelly’s “Famine on Mars” (1934), 3.5/5 (Good): President Herbert Hoover infamously proclaimed on the eve of the Great Depression that “given the chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, we shall soon with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation.” “Famine on Mars,” published five years into the Great Depression, evokes similar paradigmatic shifts between propagandistic proclamation and harsh reality. Kelly spins a nightmare account of a famine on Mars and a plan to save the starving legions.

20. Gerald Kersh’s “Whatever Happened to Corporal Cuckoo?” (1953), 3.5/5 (Good): Kersh imagines a literary version of himself returning to New York City from WWII interacting with a fantastical manifestation of a Wound Man on board the Cunard White Star liner Queen Mary. Corporal Cuckoo, the “Wound Man” in question, regals the narrator (Kersh) with the history of his scarred and mutilated form that mysteriously heals from every injury.

Reading Initiatives

I have continued, resurrected, and created new science fiction short story reading series over the course of the year. Most of the stories I’ve picked for the series are available in some fashion online via links to Internet Archive in each review. I’ve included installments from 2024 in each series below. Feel free to read along with me! And thanks for all the great conversation.

Galaxy Science Fiction Read-through (started 2025)

1. Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (October 1950)
2. Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (November 1950) 

Organized Labor and Unions in Science Fiction (started in 2024)

1. Mack Reynolds’ The Earth War (1964)
2. Zoë Fairbairns’ Benefits (1979)

The First Three Published Short Fictions by Female Authors (continued from 2021)

1. Cherry Wilder (1930-2002)

Translated Short Stories in Translation (with Rachel S. Cordasco) (started in 2024)

1. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s “Wanderers and Travellers” (1963, trans. 1966)
2.  Izumi Suzuki’s “Terminal Boredom” (1984, trans. by Daniel Joseph 2021)

The Media Landscape of the Future (started in 2022)

1. George H. Smith’s “In the Imagicon” (1966)
2. Izumi Suzuki’s “Terminal Boredom” (1984)
3. Jack Dann’s “Fragmentary Blue” (variant title: “There are no Bannisters”) (1973)

The Search for the Depressed Astronaut  (continued from 2020)

1. Philip K. Dick’s “Explorers We” (1959) 
2. James Tiptree, Jr.’s “Painwise” (1972)
3. E. C. Tubb’s “Without Bugles” (1952)
4. E. C. Tubb’s “Home is the Hero” (1952)
5. E. C. Tubb’s “Pistol Point” (1953)
6. John Wyndham’s “The Man From Beyond” (variant title: “The Man from Earth”) (1934)

Generation Ship Short Stories (continued from 2019)

1. George Hay’s Flight of the “Hesper” (1952)

Exploration Logs (continued from 2022)

1. Exploration Log 7: Interview with Jordan S. Carroll, author of Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (2024)
2. Exploration Log 8: Pat M. Kuras and Rob Schmieder’s “When It Changed: Lesbians, Gay Men, and Science Fiction Fandom” (1980)
3. Exploration Log 9: Three More Interviews with Clifford D. Simak (1904-1988)
4. Exploration Log 10: Interview with Jaroslav Olša, Jr., author of Dreaming of Autonomous Vehicles: Miloslav (Miles) J. Breuer: Czech-American Writer and the Birth of Science Fiction (2025)
5. Exploration Log 11: Interview with Chukwunonso Ezeiyoke, author of Nigerian Speculative Fiction: The Evolution (2025)

My Top 4 History Reads of 2025

A large portion of my history reading this year pushed my general interest in labor history and leftist politics backwards into the 19th century. Unusual for me I know! Often I write about what I can write about not what I plan on writing about. A brief caveat worth repeating: I’m a PhD-wielding historian and have a high tolerance for academic texts. That said, I’d classify everything in my list as on the approachable side of things if you know the broad strokes of American history.

1. Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp’s Setting Down the Sacred Past: African-American Race Histories (2010): This filled a complete hole in my knowledge. While I had encountered history-centric militant abolitionist texts written by black authors, I did not know how they fitted into the larger historiographic project of the era. As my PhD looked at universal histories in the medieval period, I’m a sucker for all kinds of histories of historiography! This is a good one.

2. Deborah Beckel’s Radical Reform: Interracial Politics in Post-Emancipation North Carolina (2011): I read this one for my research project on a black utopian author. Beckel’s brilliant monograph looks at the race and politics in North Carolina after the end of Reconstruction–a “fusion” government of Republicans and Populists managed to take power (temporarily) from the white supremacist Democratic status quo in the 1890s. Depressing. Fascinating. I’m waiting for an alt-history that uses the 1898 election in North Carolina as a jonbar hinge — hah!

3. Edward K. Spann’s Brotherly Tomorrows: Movements for A Cooperative Society in America (1989): While an older monograph, Spann’s work is a fantastic survey of the fascinating range of radical social idealism-inspired communities that proliferated across America. I’m obsessed by left-wing ideologies that permeate the rural world and movements for working-class utopianism. Spann will inspire you to track down newer monographs on the social movements he surveys.

4. Jordan S. Carroll’s Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (2025): Rightly won the Hugo! I interviewed Carroll in January. In the book, he examines the ways the alt-right uses classic science fiction imagery and authors to mainstream fascism and advocate for the overthrow of the state. This is a short monograph designed to encourage thought. Highly recommended.

Goals for 2026

1. Keep reading and writing.

2. Read more reviews by other bloggers.

3. Cover more SF in translation.

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

My 2025 in Review (Best Science Fiction Novels and Short Fiction, Reading Initiatives, and Bonus Categories)

• Graphic created by my father

Here’s to happy reading in 2026! I hope you had a successful reading year. Whether you are a lurker, occasional visitor, a regular commenter, a follower on Bluesky or Mastodon, thank you for your continued support. As I say year after year, It’s hard to express how important (and encouraging) the discussions that occur in the comments, social media, and via email are to me. I’m so thankful for the lovely and supportive community of readers, writers, and discussion partners that stop by.

What were your favorite vintage SF reads–published pre-1985–of 2025? Let me know in the comments.

Throughout the later part of the year I’ve dropped hints about a research project. Perceptive readers might have parsed together the contours of the research: late 19th/early 20th century, utopian, African American, the American South, radical politics… It’s taking longer than expected. I’ve read a good ten monographs, five dissertations, countless articles. I’ve written twenty pages. I hoped to have it posted by early in this year. Alas. It’s coming together–slowly. Stay tuned.

Without further ado, here are my favorite novels (I only read a few) and short stories (I read a ton of those) I read in 2025 with bonus categories. I made sure to link my longer reviews where applicable if you want a deeper dive.

Check out my 2024, 2023, 2022, and 2021 rundowns if you haven’t already. I have archived all my annual rundowns on my article index page if you wanted to peruse earlier years.

My Top 5 Science Fiction Novels of 2025

• Alan Gutierrez’s cover for the 1985 edition

1. Octavia E. Butler’s Clay’s Ark (1984), 4.5/5 (Very Good). Full review.

Octavia E. Butler’s Clay’s Ark is the final published volume of her Patternist sequence (1976-1984). It is the third novel according to the internal chronology of the series. Clay’s Ark is, without doubt, the most horrifyingly bleak science fiction novel I have ever read. It’s stark. It’s sinister. It’s at turns deeply affective before descending into extreme violence and displaced morality. The moral conundrum that underpins the central problem, the spread of an extraterrestrial disease, unfurls with an unnerving alien logic. Butler’s characters are trapped by the demands of the alien microbes, scarred by the pervasive sense that their humanity is slipping away, and consumed by the fear of starting an epidemic. A true confrontation of the moment cannot lead to anything other than suicide or the first steps towards an apocalyptic transformation.

• Mark Weber’s cover for the 1st edition

2. Kim Stanley Robinson’s Icehenge (1984), 4.5/5 (Very Good). Full review.

Kim Stanley Robinson’s Icehenge, a fix-up from two previously published stories “To Leave a Mark” (1982) and “On the North Pole of Pluto” (1980), tells three interconnected tales that all connect to a mysterious monolith left on Pluto (the titular Icehenge). By design Icehenge instead follows the action after the action: men and women attempting to figure out their own place in a world characterizes by lifespans that stretch hundreds and hundreds of years. And its this brilliant interconnection between self-conception and the operations of history that Robinson succeeds and casts his spell. The story is well-told, polished, and filled with fascinating details (technological and sociological).

• Peter Jones’ cover for the 1978 UK edition

3. Joe Haldeman’s All My Sins Remembered (1977), 4/5 (Good). Full review.

The vast Confederación is comprised of radically distinct worlds ruled by the entire spectrum of political systems with both alien and non-alien inhabitants. There are few rules: don’t take advantage of indigenous populations and don’t wage wars on neighboring planets. At 22, the naive Otto McGavin, an Anglo-Buddhist, joins the Confederación as an agent to protect the rights of humans and non-humans. But there’s a twist. Under deep hypnosis a construct of Otto McGavin will be created for each mission. He’ll take on the identity–under a sheath of plasticine flesh–of whatever person he needs to be depending on the task.  The story follows Otto on three missions over many years.  The interlocking segments convey the deep trauma Otto must confront before he’s immersed in another persona and sent on another mission. His idealism clashes with the violence he must perpetuate. His sense of self conflicts with the violent actions of his “constructs.” The looming sense of dread and despair must finally have its reckoning.

• Uncredited cover for the 1983 edition

4. Zoë Fairbairns’ Benefits (1979), 3.75/5 (Good). Full review.

Zoë Fairbairns charts the struggles of the British women’s liberation movement in a dystopic near future. An anti-feminist fringe political party called FAMILY comes to power, simultaneously proclaiming family values while systematically dismantling the welfare state. Benefits effectively eviscerates governmental doublespeak and champions the need to organize and educate in order to fight against patriarchal forces and messianic movements that promise to solve all our ills.

• Colin Hay’s cover for the 1976 edition

5. Edgar Pangborn’s The Company of Glory (1975), 3.5/5 (Good). Full review.

Edgar Pangborn is an unsung SF hero in my book. At his best, he’s a deeply humanistic writer interested in moments of effective metafictional play on the nature of narrative. The Company of Glory (serialized 1974, 1975) is the third novel in the Tales of Darkening World sequence. It forms a prequel to Pangborn’s masterpiece Davy (1964). As with Davy, The Company of Glory attempts to create multiple interlocking layers of narrative, stories within the stories, quotations from various diaries, and the interjections of the overarching narrator of the entire collection of texts who remains anonymous until the final pages. Unfortunately, The Company of Glory is a deeply flawed novel. Recommended only for Pangborn’s fans. Read Davy first if you’re new to his work.

My Top 20 Science Fiction Short Stories Reads of 2025 (click titles for my full review)

1. Philip K. Dick’s “Foster, You’re Dead” (1955), 5/5 (Masterpiece): I featured on a podcast about this story. When the episode is posted, I’ll make sure to link it. Mike Foster spends his school days practicing survival skills–digging, making knives, weaving baskets–in case of a nuclear attack. The kids snicker at him as he walks past. They don’t own a fallout shelter at home. His father refuses to pay into the NATS (National Security fund). If a bomb hit, Mike wouldn’t even be granted access to the school shelter. He’s possessed by a deep, perpetual, encompassing trauma.

2. Fritz Leiber’s “Coming Attraction” (1950), 5/5 (Masterpiece): A rare reread! Leiber imagines an America transformed after a limited nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The physical landscape mirrors the psychological scars of New York’s inhabitants. Perverse new forms of TV entertainment, in particular male wrestlers pitted against masked women, transfix all audiences.

3. Jack Dann’s “A Quiet Revolution for Death” (1978), 5/5 (Masterpiece): Roger and his family head out of the city for a picnic in a vast cemetery. Roger dreams that he is an angel of God guiding mankind through the realm. Visiting the cemetery is an act of devotion. While other kids plug themselves into feelies, Bennie is a fanatic disciple of his father’s pseudo-philosophy of embracing the macabre. Sandra, Roger’s wife, plays along. The kids see through her dislike of the cemetery and the burial rituals happening around them.

4. Izumi Suzuki’s“Terminal Boredom” (1984, trans. by Daniel Joseph 2021), 4.5/5 (Very Good): A nameless young female main character recounts her interactions her one-time boyfriend. HE wants to reconnect with his mother, who abandoned his family. HE joins a staged show called The Psychoanalysis Room in an attempt to convince his mother to take “pity and come and find” him. She also has a dysfunctional family. Her mother, a TV executive, struggles/refuses to connect to her daughter. Like some manifestation of the modern hikikomori, they often refuse to communicate with others, eat as a group or eat at all for days on end, or leave their dwellings for the sun and vista of the aboveground. Both find solace and escape in the vacuities and artifice of television.

5. Philip K. Dick’s “Explorers We” (1959), 4.5/5 (Very Good): Six astronauts return to earth from a voyage to Mars. But they are not treated as heroes. Instead people flee. I found “Explorers We” a well-crafted existential terror. The story plays with narrative expectation and hints at a cosmic enormity that will, at least in this iteration, remain unknown.

6. James Tiptree, Jr.’s “Painwise” (1972), 4.5/5 (Very Good): An explorer who feels no pain is hurled mercilessly from planet to plant where is he tortured, experimented upon, and broken again, and again, and again. His sense of time dissipates. Space becomes a hellscape that he cannot escape. And each time he’s lifted back to his scout ship where a mechanical boditech stitches him back together.

7. Jack Dann’s “The Dybbuk Dolls” (1975), 4.5/5 (Very Good): Chaim Lewis works at a sex shop down below in the Undercity, one of many identical spheres, one mile in diameter, buried one thousand feet below the ground.  As Chaim finishes up his shift in the dingy shop, a group of visitors ask about his hook-ins and 21st century pornos. Eventually one of them asks him about his alien sex doll collection. And when he returns to the room with the dolls, he discovers they’ve all been unpacked and they imprint themselves on his mind! Cue a descent into the bizarre…

8.  Jack Williamson’s “Guinevere for Everybody” (1955), 4.5/5 (Very Good): An artificially created Guinevere stands “chained” in a “vending machine” tempting sleepy passengers in an airport with her plaintive calls. I did not know Williamson had this type of vision in him! The surprise of the year!

9. George H. Smith’s “The Last Days of L. A.” (1959), 4/5 (Good): A nameless character (“you”) wakes from a recurring dream: “the dream that has haunted the whole world since that day in 1945.” A dream of apocalyptic annihilation, in infinite variations. A narrative repetition takes form: Nuclear nightmare. The waking moment. The aimless quest for understanding. Communing with other lost souls. The retreat to the bottle. Fragments of the news suggest a world unraveling.

10. Theodore Sturgeon’s “The Stars Are the Styx” (1950), 4/5 (Good): The premise: Humans created Curbstone, an artificial satellite around Earth, to facilitate the ultimate scientific achievement–near instantaneous transportation across the galaxy. How? Individual spaceships, with a solitary crew person or couple, will be hurled out from Curbstone at various points across the space time continuum. The story revolves around the aging (and rotund) Senior Release Officer on Curbstone, who certifies, counsels, and guides the strange collection of humans who gather at the station willing to take such a risk.

11. Richard Matheson’s “Dance of the Dead” (1955), 4/5 (Good): In a drug and alcohol drenched near-future, a group of young adults take a break-neck road drip and stray from the path set out by parents and small town community. Manifesting the SPEED of the car, Matheson’s prose resonates with pulse and hum, snippets of song and signage, slang and youthful lust. It’s frantic. It’s zappy. It’s vibrant. Recommended for fans of the more linguistically experimental (and bleak) of 50s visions.

12. Jack Dann’s “Rags” (1973), 4/5 (Good): Joanna wanders the streets without seeing a single person. Everything she sees—from garbage cans to parked cars–seem in be various states of decay (“dented, rusted, and discolored”). She teaches herself a new way to walk to avoid the “invisible beings” that flit around her (6). She remembers a past sickness. Deaths in the family. She makes new rules of movement and perception as an act of preservation.  And suddenly she sees The Purple Cat.

13. Jack Dann’s “Fragmentary Blue” (variant title: “There are no Bannisters”) (1973), 4/5 (Good): he elderly dwell underground in large domed cities. It’s a commercial and media-inundated world — tiny machines grant “feeling” as you watch commercials. Professor Fleitman, who “could not rationalize having an orgasm over a cigarette advertisement,” presents a new idea to galvanize the elderly to Entertainment Committee. Rather than a feelie or a movie he wants to put on a circus.

14. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s “Wanderers and Travellers” (1963, trans. 1966), 4/5 (Good): Stanisław Ivanovich spends his days submerged in lakes and rivers tagging septopods, a new octopus-like species discovered on Earth. His daughter, Marsha, assists from above. When he emerges from a lake, Marsha is deep in conversation with Leonid Andreevich Gorbovsky, an astroarchaeologist implied to be on leave from an expedition. The two scientists–IIvanovich, with his eyes on earthly mystery, and Gorbovsky, untangling the traces of potential intelligences across the cosmos–and Marsha engage in a series of discussions about the nature of the universe.

15. John Wyndham’s “The Man From Beyond” (variant title: “The Man from Earth”) (1934), 3.5/5 (Good): Somewhere on the Venusian surface the Valley of Dur, with its amalgamation of gasses, traps unsuspecting denizens who wander into its depths. In the city of Takon, Venusians, six-limbed creatures with silvery hair, ogle the strange beasts extricated and caged and exhibited from the Valley. The child, transfixed by the man’s noises and scrawls, pushes his stylus and pad under the bars. And Morgan Gratz, stranded astronaut and self-confessed murderer, draws for the child the respective locations of their planets.

16. Katherine MacLean’s “Contagion” (1950), 3.5/5 (Good) is a contact with an alien planet tale that’s legitimately odd. A hunting party looking for specimens of alien life in order to dissect, sets off from the spaceship Explorer across an alien planet called Minos. Reasonably, the crew is obsessed with a minute medical analysis of flora and fauna. The hunting party encounters a majestically shaped human who spins a crazy tale of adaptation and disease. 

17. Cherry Wilder’s “The Ark of James Carlyle” (1974), 3.5/5 (Good): Carlyle spends his tour of duty in a hut with a wood platform on small landmass surrounded by an “oily purple sea” on an alien planet. A crisis hits — and he suddenly learns the reason for the singular trees that grow in the center of each island.

18. E. C. Tubb’s“Without Bugles” (1952), 3.5/5 (Good): A naive journalist struggles to confront her heroic idealism, regurgitated through the media, in her attempt to save the Mars colony afflicted with a futuristic case of the black lung.

19.  Frank K. Kelly’s “Famine on Mars” (1934), 3.5/5 (Good): President Herbert Hoover infamously proclaimed on the eve of the Great Depression that “given the chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, we shall soon with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation.” “Famine on Mars,” published five years into the Great Depression, evokes similar paradigmatic shifts between propagandistic proclamation and harsh reality. Kelly spins a nightmare account of a famine on Mars and a plan to save the starving legions.

20. Gerald Kersh’s “Whatever Happened to Corporal Cuckoo?” (1953), 3.5/5 (Good): Kersh imagines a literary version of himself returning to New York City from WWII interacting with a fantastical manifestation of a Wound Man on board the Cunard White Star liner Queen Mary. Corporal Cuckoo, the “Wound Man” in question, regals the narrator (Kersh) with the history of his scarred and mutilated form that mysteriously heals from every injury.

Reading Initiatives

I have continued, resurrected, and created new science fiction short story reading series over the course of the year. Most of the stories I’ve picked for the series are available in some fashion online via links to Internet Archive in each review. I’ve included installments from 2024 in each series below. Feel free to read along with me! And thanks for all the great conversation.

Galaxy Science Fiction Read-through (started 2025)

1. Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (October 1950)
2. Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (November 1950) 

Organized Labor and Unions in Science Fiction (started in 2024)

1. Mack Reynolds’ The Earth War (1964)
2. Zoë Fairbairns’ Benefits (1979)

The First Three Published Short Fictions by Female Authors (continued from 2021)

1. Cherry Wilder (1930-2002)

Translated Short Stories in Translation (with Rachel S. Cordasco) (started in 2024)

1. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s “Wanderers and Travellers” (1963, trans. 1966)
2.  Izumi Suzuki’s “Terminal Boredom” (1984, trans. by Daniel Joseph 2021)

The Media Landscape of the Future (started in 2022)

1. George H. Smith’s “In the Imagicon” (1966)
2. Izumi Suzuki’s “Terminal Boredom” (1984)
3. Jack Dann’s “Fragmentary Blue” (variant title: “There are no Bannisters”) (1973)

The Search for the Depressed Astronaut  (continued from 2020)

1. Philip K. Dick’s “Explorers We” (1959) 
2. James Tiptree, Jr.’s “Painwise” (1972)
3. E. C. Tubb’s “Without Bugles” (1952)
4. E. C. Tubb’s “Home is the Hero” (1952)
5. E. C. Tubb’s “Pistol Point” (1953)
6. John Wyndham’s “The Man From Beyond” (variant title: “The Man from Earth”) (1934)

Generation Ship Short Stories (continued from 2019)

1. George Hay’s Flight of the “Hesper” (1952)

Exploration Logs (continued from 2022)

1. Exploration Log 7: Interview with Jordan S. Carroll, author of Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (2024)
2. Exploration Log 8: Pat M. Kuras and Rob Schmieder’s “When It Changed: Lesbians, Gay Men, and Science Fiction Fandom” (1980)
3. Exploration Log 9: Three More Interviews with Clifford D. Simak (1904-1988)
4. Exploration Log 10: Interview with Jaroslav Olša, Jr., author of Dreaming of Autonomous Vehicles: Miloslav (Miles) J. Breuer: Czech-American Writer and the Birth of Science Fiction (2025)
5. Exploration Log 11: Interview with Chukwunonso Ezeiyoke, author of Nigerian Speculative Fiction: The Evolution (2025)

My Top 4 History Reads of 2025

A large portion of my history reading this year pushed my general interest in labor history and leftist politics backwards into the 19th century. Unusual for me I know! Often I write about what I can write about not what I plan on writing about. A brief caveat worth repeating: I’m a PhD-wielding historian and have a high tolerance for academic texts. That said, I’d classify everything in my list as on the approachable side of things if you know the broad strokes of American history.

1. Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp’s Setting Down the Sacred Past: African-American Race Histories (2010): This filled a complete hole in my knowledge. While I had encountered history-centric militant abolitionist texts written by black authors, I did not know how they fitted into the larger historiographic project of the era. As my PhD looked at universal histories in the medieval period, I’m a sucker for all kinds of histories of historiography! This is a good one.

2. Deborah Beckel’s Radical Reform: Interracial Politics in Post-Emancipation North Carolina (2011): I read this one for my research project on a black utopian author. Beckel’s brilliant monograph looks at the race and politics in North Carolina after the end of Reconstruction–a “fusion” government of Republicans and Populists managed to take power (temporarily) from the white supremacist Democratic status quo in the 1890s. Depressing. Fascinating. I’m waiting for an alt-history that uses the 1898 election in North Carolina as a jonbar hinge — hah!

3. Edward K. Spann’s Brotherly Tomorrows: Movements for A Cooperative Society in America (1989): While an older monograph, Spann’s work is a fantastic survey of the fascinating range of radical social idealism-inspired communities that proliferated across America. I’m obsessed by left-wing ideologies that permeate the rural world and movements for working-class utopianism. Spann will inspire you to track down newer monographs on the social movements he surveys.

4. Jordan S. Carroll’s Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (2025): Rightly won the Hugo! I interviewed Carroll in January. In the book, he examines the ways the alt-right uses classic science fiction imagery and authors to mainstream fascism and advocate for the overthrow of the state. This is a short monograph designed to encourage thought. Highly recommended.

Goals for 2026

1. Keep reading and writing.

2. Read more reviews by other bloggers.

3. Cover more SF in translation.

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

My 2025 in Review (Best Science Fiction Novels and Short Fiction, Reading Initiatives, and Bonus Categories)

• Graphic created by my father

Here’s to happy reading in 2026! I hope you had a successful reading year. Whether you are a lurker, occasional visitor, a regular commenter, a follower on Bluesky or Mastodon, thank you for your continued support. As I say year after year, It’s hard to express how important (and encouraging) the discussions that occur in the comments, social media, and via email are to me. I’m so thankful for the lovely and supportive community of readers, writers, and discussion partners that stop by.

What were your favorite vintage SF reads–published pre-1985–of 2025? Let me know in the comments.

Throughout the later part of the year I’ve dropped hints about a research project. Perceptive readers might have parsed together the contours of the research: late 19th/early 20th century, utopian, African American, the American South, radical politics… It’s taking longer than expected. I’ve read a good ten monographs, five dissertations, countless articles. I’ve written twenty pages. I hoped to have it posted by early in this year. Alas. It’s coming together–slowly. Stay tuned.

Without further ado, here are my favorite novels (I only read a few) and short stories (I read a ton of those) I read in 2025 with bonus categories. I made sure to link my longer reviews where applicable if you want a deeper dive.

Check out my 2024, 2023, 2022, and 2021 rundowns if you haven’t already. I have archived all my annual rundowns on my article index page if you wanted to peruse earlier years.

My Top 5 Science Fiction Novels of 2025

• Alan Gutierrez’s cover for the 1985 edition

1. Octavia E. Butler’s Clay’s Ark (1984), 4.5/5 (Very Good). Full review.

Octavia E. Butler’s Clay’s Ark is the final published volume of her Patternist sequence (1976-1984). It is the third novel according to the internal chronology of the series. Clay’s Ark is, without doubt, the most horrifyingly bleak science fiction novel I have ever read. It’s stark. It’s sinister. It’s at turns deeply affective before descending into extreme violence and displaced morality. The moral conundrum that underpins the central problem, the spread of an extraterrestrial disease, unfurls with an unnerving alien logic. Butler’s characters are trapped by the demands of the alien microbes, scarred by the pervasive sense that their humanity is slipping away, and consumed by the fear of starting an epidemic. A true confrontation of the moment cannot lead to anything other than suicide or the first steps towards an apocalyptic transformation.

• Mark Weber’s cover for the 1st edition

2. Kim Stanley Robinson’s Icehenge (1984), 4.5/5 (Very Good). Full review.

Kim Stanley Robinson’s Icehenge, a fix-up from two previously published stories “To Leave a Mark” (1982) and “On the North Pole of Pluto” (1980), tells three interconnected tales that all connect to a mysterious monolith left on Pluto (the titular Icehenge). By design Icehenge instead follows the action after the action: men and women attempting to figure out their own place in a world characterizes by lifespans that stretch hundreds and hundreds of years. And its this brilliant interconnection between self-conception and the operations of history that Robinson succeeds and casts his spell. The story is well-told, polished, and filled with fascinating details (technological and sociological).

• Peter Jones’ cover for the 1978 UK edition

3. Joe Haldeman’s All My Sins Remembered (1977), 4/5 (Good). Full review.

The vast Confederación is comprised of radically distinct worlds ruled by the entire spectrum of political systems with both alien and non-alien inhabitants. There are few rules: don’t take advantage of indigenous populations and don’t wage wars on neighboring planets. At 22, the naive Otto McGavin, an Anglo-Buddhist, joins the Confederación as an agent to protect the rights of humans and non-humans. But there’s a twist. Under deep hypnosis a construct of Otto McGavin will be created for each mission. He’ll take on the identity–under a sheath of plasticine flesh–of whatever person he needs to be depending on the task.  The story follows Otto on three missions over many years.  The interlocking segments convey the deep trauma Otto must confront before he’s immersed in another persona and sent on another mission. His idealism clashes with the violence he must perpetuate. His sense of self conflicts with the violent actions of his “constructs.” The looming sense of dread and despair must finally have its reckoning.

• Uncredited cover for the 1983 edition

4. Zoë Fairbairns’ Benefits (1979), 3.75/5 (Good). Full review.

Zoë Fairbairns charts the struggles of the British women’s liberation movement in a dystopic near future. An anti-feminist fringe political party called FAMILY comes to power, simultaneously proclaiming family values while systematically dismantling the welfare state. Benefits effectively eviscerates governmental doublespeak and champions the need to organize and educate in order to fight against patriarchal forces and messianic movements that promise to solve all our ills.

• Colin Hay’s cover for the 1976 edition

5. Edgar Pangborn’s The Company of Glory (1975), 3.5/5 (Good). Full review.

Edgar Pangborn is an unsung SF hero in my book. At his best, he’s a deeply humanistic writer interested in moments of effective metafictional play on the nature of narrative. The Company of Glory (serialized 1974, 1975) is the third novel in the Tales of Darkening World sequence. It forms a prequel to Pangborn’s masterpiece Davy (1964). As with Davy, The Company of Glory attempts to create multiple interlocking layers of narrative, stories within the stories, quotations from various diaries, and the interjections of the overarching narrator of the entire collection of texts who remains anonymous until the final pages. Unfortunately, The Company of Glory is a deeply flawed novel. Recommended only for Pangborn’s fans. Read Davy first if you’re new to his work.

My Top 20 Science Fiction Short Stories Reads of 2025 (click titles for my full review)

1. Philip K. Dick’s “Foster, You’re Dead” (1955), 5/5 (Masterpiece): I featured on a podcast about this story. When the episode is posted, I’ll make sure to link it. Mike Foster spends his school days practicing survival skills–digging, making knives, weaving baskets–in case of a nuclear attack. The kids snicker at him as he walks past. They don’t own a fallout shelter at home. His father refuses to pay into the NATS (National Security fund). If a bomb hit, Mike wouldn’t even be granted access to the school shelter. He’s possessed by a deep, perpetual, encompassing trauma.

2. Fritz Leiber’s “Coming Attraction” (1950), 5/5 (Masterpiece): A rare reread! Leiber imagines an America transformed after a limited nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The physical landscape mirrors the psychological scars of New York’s inhabitants. Perverse new forms of TV entertainment, in particular male wrestlers pitted against masked women, transfix all audiences.

3. Jack Dann’s “A Quiet Revolution for Death” (1978), 5/5 (Masterpiece): Roger and his family head out of the city for a picnic in a vast cemetery. Roger dreams that he is an angel of God guiding mankind through the realm. Visiting the cemetery is an act of devotion. While other kids plug themselves into feelies, Bennie is a fanatic disciple of his father’s pseudo-philosophy of embracing the macabre. Sandra, Roger’s wife, plays along. The kids see through her dislike of the cemetery and the burial rituals happening around them.

4. Izumi Suzuki’s“Terminal Boredom” (1984, trans. by Daniel Joseph 2021), 4.5/5 (Very Good): A nameless young female main character recounts her interactions her one-time boyfriend. HE wants to reconnect with his mother, who abandoned his family. HE joins a staged show called The Psychoanalysis Room in an attempt to convince his mother to take “pity and come and find” him. She also has a dysfunctional family. Her mother, a TV executive, struggles/refuses to connect to her daughter. Like some manifestation of the modern hikikomori, they often refuse to communicate with others, eat as a group or eat at all for days on end, or leave their dwellings for the sun and vista of the aboveground. Both find solace and escape in the vacuities and artifice of television.

5. Philip K. Dick’s “Explorers We” (1959), 4.5/5 (Very Good): Six astronauts return to earth from a voyage to Mars. But they are not treated as heroes. Instead people flee. I found “Explorers We” a well-crafted existential terror. The story plays with narrative expectation and hints at a cosmic enormity that will, at least in this iteration, remain unknown.

6. James Tiptree, Jr.’s “Painwise” (1972), 4.5/5 (Very Good): An explorer who feels no pain is hurled mercilessly from planet to plant where is he tortured, experimented upon, and broken again, and again, and again. His sense of time dissipates. Space becomes a hellscape that he cannot escape. And each time he’s lifted back to his scout ship where a mechanical boditech stitches him back together.

7. Jack Dann’s “The Dybbuk Dolls” (1975), 4.5/5 (Very Good): Chaim Lewis works at a sex shop down below in the Undercity, one of many identical spheres, one mile in diameter, buried one thousand feet below the ground.  As Chaim finishes up his shift in the dingy shop, a group of visitors ask about his hook-ins and 21st century pornos. Eventually one of them asks him about his alien sex doll collection. And when he returns to the room with the dolls, he discovers they’ve all been unpacked and they imprint themselves on his mind! Cue a descent into the bizarre…

8.  Jack Williamson’s “Guinevere for Everybody” (1955), 4.5/5 (Very Good): An artificially created Guinevere stands “chained” in a “vending machine” tempting sleepy passengers in an airport with her plaintive calls. I did not know Williamson had this type of vision in him! The surprise of the year!

9. George H. Smith’s “The Last Days of L. A.” (1959), 4/5 (Good): A nameless character (“you”) wakes from a recurring dream: “the dream that has haunted the whole world since that day in 1945.” A dream of apocalyptic annihilation, in infinite variations. A narrative repetition takes form: Nuclear nightmare. The waking moment. The aimless quest for understanding. Communing with other lost souls. The retreat to the bottle. Fragments of the news suggest a world unraveling.

10. Theodore Sturgeon’s “The Stars Are the Styx” (1950), 4/5 (Good): The premise: Humans created Curbstone, an artificial satellite around Earth, to facilitate the ultimate scientific achievement–near instantaneous transportation across the galaxy. How? Individual spaceships, with a solitary crew person or couple, will be hurled out from Curbstone at various points across the space time continuum. The story revolves around the aging (and rotund) Senior Release Officer on Curbstone, who certifies, counsels, and guides the strange collection of humans who gather at the station willing to take such a risk.

11. Richard Matheson’s “Dance of the Dead” (1955), 4/5 (Good): In a drug and alcohol drenched near-future, a group of young adults take a break-neck road drip and stray from the path set out by parents and small town community. Manifesting the SPEED of the car, Matheson’s prose resonates with pulse and hum, snippets of song and signage, slang and youthful lust. It’s frantic. It’s zappy. It’s vibrant. Recommended for fans of the more linguistically experimental (and bleak) of 50s visions.

12. Jack Dann’s “Rags” (1973), 4/5 (Good): Joanna wanders the streets without seeing a single person. Everything she sees—from garbage cans to parked cars–seem in be various states of decay (“dented, rusted, and discolored”). She teaches herself a new way to walk to avoid the “invisible beings” that flit around her (6). She remembers a past sickness. Deaths in the family. She makes new rules of movement and perception as an act of preservation.  And suddenly she sees The Purple Cat.

13. Jack Dann’s “Fragmentary Blue” (variant title: “There are no Bannisters”) (1973), 4/5 (Good): he elderly dwell underground in large domed cities. It’s a commercial and media-inundated world — tiny machines grant “feeling” as you watch commercials. Professor Fleitman, who “could not rationalize having an orgasm over a cigarette advertisement,” presents a new idea to galvanize the elderly to Entertainment Committee. Rather than a feelie or a movie he wants to put on a circus.

14. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s “Wanderers and Travellers” (1963, trans. 1966), 4/5 (Good): Stanisław Ivanovich spends his days submerged in lakes and rivers tagging septopods, a new octopus-like species discovered on Earth. His daughter, Marsha, assists from above. When he emerges from a lake, Marsha is deep in conversation with Leonid Andreevich Gorbovsky, an astroarchaeologist implied to be on leave from an expedition. The two scientists–IIvanovich, with his eyes on earthly mystery, and Gorbovsky, untangling the traces of potential intelligences across the cosmos–and Marsha engage in a series of discussions about the nature of the universe.

15. John Wyndham’s “The Man From Beyond” (variant title: “The Man from Earth”) (1934), 3.5/5 (Good): Somewhere on the Venusian surface the Valley of Dur, with its amalgamation of gasses, traps unsuspecting denizens who wander into its depths. In the city of Takon, Venusians, six-limbed creatures with silvery hair, ogle the strange beasts extricated and caged and exhibited from the Valley. The child, transfixed by the man’s noises and scrawls, pushes his stylus and pad under the bars. And Morgan Gratz, stranded astronaut and self-confessed murderer, draws for the child the respective locations of their planets.

16. Katherine MacLean’s “Contagion” (1950), 3.5/5 (Good) is a contact with an alien planet tale that’s legitimately odd. A hunting party looking for specimens of alien life in order to dissect, sets off from the spaceship Explorer across an alien planet called Minos. Reasonably, the crew is obsessed with a minute medical analysis of flora and fauna. The hunting party encounters a majestically shaped human who spins a crazy tale of adaptation and disease. 

17. Cherry Wilder’s “The Ark of James Carlyle” (1974), 3.5/5 (Good): Carlyle spends his tour of duty in a hut with a wood platform on small landmass surrounded by an “oily purple sea” on an alien planet. A crisis hits — and he suddenly learns the reason for the singular trees that grow in the center of each island.

18. E. C. Tubb’s“Without Bugles” (1952), 3.5/5 (Good): A naive journalist struggles to confront her heroic idealism, regurgitated through the media, in her attempt to save the Mars colony afflicted with a futuristic case of the black lung.

19.  Frank K. Kelly’s “Famine on Mars” (1934), 3.5/5 (Good): President Herbert Hoover infamously proclaimed on the eve of the Great Depression that “given the chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, we shall soon with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation.” “Famine on Mars,” published five years into the Great Depression, evokes similar paradigmatic shifts between propagandistic proclamation and harsh reality. Kelly spins a nightmare account of a famine on Mars and a plan to save the starving legions.

20. Gerald Kersh’s “Whatever Happened to Corporal Cuckoo?” (1953), 3.5/5 (Good): Kersh imagines a literary version of himself returning to New York City from WWII interacting with a fantastical manifestation of a Wound Man on board the Cunard White Star liner Queen Mary. Corporal Cuckoo, the “Wound Man” in question, regals the narrator (Kersh) with the history of his scarred and mutilated form that mysteriously heals from every injury.

Reading Initiatives

I have continued, resurrected, and created new science fiction short story reading series over the course of the year. Most of the stories I’ve picked for the series are available in some fashion online via links to Internet Archive in each review. I’ve included installments from 2024 in each series below. Feel free to read along with me! And thanks for all the great conversation.

Galaxy Science Fiction Read-through (started 2025)

1. Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (October 1950)
2. Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (November 1950) 

Organized Labor and Unions in Science Fiction (started in 2024)

1. Mack Reynolds’ The Earth War (1964)
2. Zoë Fairbairns’ Benefits (1979)

The First Three Published Short Fictions by Female Authors (continued from 2021)

1. Cherry Wilder (1930-2002)

Translated Short Stories in Translation (with Rachel S. Cordasco) (started in 2024)

1. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s “Wanderers and Travellers” (1963, trans. 1966)
2.  Izumi Suzuki’s “Terminal Boredom” (1984, trans. by Daniel Joseph 2021)

The Media Landscape of the Future (started in 2022)

1. George H. Smith’s “In the Imagicon” (1966)
2. Izumi Suzuki’s “Terminal Boredom” (1984)
3. Jack Dann’s “Fragmentary Blue” (variant title: “There are no Bannisters”) (1973)

The Search for the Depressed Astronaut  (continued from 2020)

1. Philip K. Dick’s “Explorers We” (1959) 
2. James Tiptree, Jr.’s “Painwise” (1972)
3. E. C. Tubb’s “Without Bugles” (1952)
4. E. C. Tubb’s “Home is the Hero” (1952)
5. E. C. Tubb’s “Pistol Point” (1953)
6. John Wyndham’s “The Man From Beyond” (variant title: “The Man from Earth”) (1934)

Generation Ship Short Stories (continued from 2019)

1. George Hay’s Flight of the “Hesper” (1952)

Exploration Logs (continued from 2022)

1. Exploration Log 7: Interview with Jordan S. Carroll, author of Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (2024)
2. Exploration Log 8: Pat M. Kuras and Rob Schmieder’s “When It Changed: Lesbians, Gay Men, and Science Fiction Fandom” (1980)
3. Exploration Log 9: Three More Interviews with Clifford D. Simak (1904-1988)
4. Exploration Log 10: Interview with Jaroslav Olša, Jr., author of Dreaming of Autonomous Vehicles: Miloslav (Miles) J. Breuer: Czech-American Writer and the Birth of Science Fiction (2025)
5. Exploration Log 11: Interview with Chukwunonso Ezeiyoke, author of Nigerian Speculative Fiction: The Evolution (2025)

My Top 4 History Reads of 2025

A large portion of my history reading this year pushed my general interest in labor history and leftist politics backwards into the 19th century. Unusual for me I know! Often I write about what I can write about not what I plan on writing about. A brief caveat worth repeating: I’m a PhD-wielding historian and have a high tolerance for academic texts. That said, I’d classify everything in my list as on the approachable side of things if you know the broad strokes of American history.

1. Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp’s Setting Down the Sacred Past: African-American Race Histories (2010): This filled a complete hole in my knowledge. While I had encountered history-centric militant abolitionist texts written by black authors, I did not know how they fitted into the larger historiographic project of the era. As my PhD looked at universal histories in the medieval period, I’m a sucker for all kinds of histories of historiography! This is a good one.

2. Deborah Beckel’s Radical Reform: Interracial Politics in Post-Emancipation North Carolina (2011): I read this one for my research project on a black utopian author. Beckel’s brilliant monograph looks at the race and politics in North Carolina after the end of Reconstruction–a “fusion” government of Republicans and Populists managed to take power (temporarily) from the white supremacist Democratic status quo in the 1890s. Depressing. Fascinating. I’m waiting for an alt-history that uses the 1898 election in North Carolina as a jonbar hinge — hah!

3. Edward K. Spann’s Brotherly Tomorrows: Movements for A Cooperative Society in America (1989): While an older monograph, Spann’s work is a fantastic survey of the fascinating range of radical social idealism-inspired communities that proliferated across America. I’m obsessed by left-wing ideologies that permeate the rural world and movements for working-class utopianism. Spann will inspire you to track down newer monographs on the social movements he surveys.

4. Jordan S. Carroll’s Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (2025): Rightly won the Hugo! I interviewed Carroll in January. In the book, he examines the ways the alt-right uses classic science fiction imagery and authors to mainstream fascism and advocate for the overthrow of the state. This is a short monograph designed to encourage thought. Highly recommended.

Goals for 2026

1. Keep reading and writing.

2. Read more reviews by other bloggers.

3. Cover more SF in translation.

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

#1950s #1960s #1970s #ArkadyAndBorisStrugatsky #bookReview #bookReviews #books #CherryWilder #ECTubb #EdgarPangborn #fiction #FrankKKelly #fritzLeiber #GeorgeHSmith #GeraldKersh #IzumiSuzuki #JackDann #JackWilliamson #JamesTiptreeJr #JoeHaldeman #JohnWyndham #KatherineMacLean #KimStanleyRobinson #OctaviaEButler #philipKDick #RichardMatheson #sciFi #scienceFiction #TheodoreSturgeon #ZoeFairbairns

My 2025 in Review (Best Science Fiction Novels and Short Fiction, Reading Initiatives, and Bonus Categories)

• Graphic created by my father

Here’s to happy reading in 2026! I hope you had a successful reading year. Whether you are a lurker, occasional visitor, a regular commenter, a follower on Bluesky or Mastodon, thank you for your continued support. As I say year after year, It’s hard to express how important (and encouraging) the discussions that occur in the comments, social media, and via email are to me. I’m so thankful for the lovely and supportive community of readers, writers, and discussion partners that stop by.

What were your favorite vintage SF reads–published pre-1985–of 2025? Let me know in the comments.

Throughout the later part of the year I’ve dropped hints about a research project. Perceptive readers might have parsed together the contours of the research: late 19th/early 20th century, utopian, African American, the American South, radical politics… It’s taking longer than expected. I’ve read a good ten monographs, five dissertations, countless articles. I’ve written twenty pages. I hoped to have it posted by early in this year. Alas. It’s coming together–slowly. Stay tuned.

Without further ado, here are my favorite novels (I only read a few) and short stories (I read a ton of those) I read in 2025 with bonus categories. I made sure to link my longer reviews where applicable if you want a deeper dive.

Check out my 2024, 2023, 2022, and 2021 rundowns if you haven’t already. I have archived all my annual rundowns on my article index page if you wanted to peruse earlier years.

My Top 5 Science Fiction Novels of 2025

• Alan Gutierrez’s cover for the 1985 edition

1. Octavia E. Butler’s Clay’s Ark (1984), 4.5/5 (Very Good). Full review.

Octavia E. Butler’s Clay’s Ark is the final published volume of her Patternist sequence (1976-1984). It is the third novel according to the internal chronology of the series. Clay’s Ark is, without doubt, the most horrifyingly bleak science fiction novel I have ever read. It’s stark. It’s sinister. It’s at turns deeply affective before descending into extreme violence and displaced morality. The moral conundrum that underpins the central problem, the spread of an extraterrestrial disease, unfurls with an unnerving alien logic. Butler’s characters are trapped by the demands of the alien microbes, scarred by the pervasive sense that their humanity is slipping away, and consumed by the fear of starting an epidemic. A true confrontation of the moment cannot lead to anything other than suicide or the first steps towards an apocalyptic transformation.

• Mark Weber’s cover for the 1st edition

2. Kim Stanley Robinson’s Icehenge (1984), 4.5/5 (Very Good). Full review.

Kim Stanley Robinson’s Icehenge, a fix-up from two previously published stories “To Leave a Mark” (1982) and “On the North Pole of Pluto” (1980), tells three interconnected tales that all connect to a mysterious monolith left on Pluto (the titular Icehenge). By design Icehenge instead follows the action after the action: men and women attempting to figure out their own place in a world characterizes by lifespans that stretch hundreds and hundreds of years. And its this brilliant interconnection between self-conception and the operations of history that Robinson succeeds and casts his spell. The story is well-told, polished, and filled with fascinating details (technological and sociological).

• Peter Jones’ cover for the 1978 UK edition

3. Joe Haldeman’s All My Sins Remembered (1977), 4/5 (Good). Full review.

The vast Confederación is comprised of radically distinct worlds ruled by the entire spectrum of political systems with both alien and non-alien inhabitants. There are few rules: don’t take advantage of indigenous populations and don’t wage wars on neighboring planets. At 22, the naive Otto McGavin, an Anglo-Buddhist, joins the Confederación as an agent to protect the rights of humans and non-humans. But there’s a twist. Under deep hypnosis a construct of Otto McGavin will be created for each mission. He’ll take on the identity–under a sheath of plasticine flesh–of whatever person he needs to be depending on the task.  The story follows Otto on three missions over many years.  The interlocking segments convey the deep trauma Otto must confront before he’s immersed in another persona and sent on another mission. His idealism clashes with the violence he must perpetuate. His sense of self conflicts with the violent actions of his “constructs.” The looming sense of dread and despair must finally have its reckoning.

• Uncredited cover for the 1983 edition

4. Zoë Fairbairns’ Benefits (1979), 3.75/5 (Good). Full review.

Zoë Fairbairns charts the struggles of the British women’s liberation movement in a dystopic near future. An anti-feminist fringe political party called FAMILY comes to power, simultaneously proclaiming family values while systematically dismantling the welfare state. Benefits effectively eviscerates governmental doublespeak and champions the need to organize and educate in order to fight against patriarchal forces and messianic movements that promise to solve all our ills.

• Colin Hay’s cover for the 1976 edition

5. Edgar Pangborn’s The Company of Glory (1975), 3.5/5 (Good). Full review.

Edgar Pangborn is an unsung SF hero in my book. At his best, he’s a deeply humanistic writer interested in moments of effective metafictional play on the nature of narrative. The Company of Glory (serialized 1974, 1975) is the third novel in the Tales of Darkening World sequence. It forms a prequel to Pangborn’s masterpiece Davy (1964). As with Davy, The Company of Glory attempts to create multiple interlocking layers of narrative, stories within the stories, quotations from various diaries, and the interjections of the overarching narrator of the entire collection of texts who remains anonymous until the final pages. Unfortunately, The Company of Glory is a deeply flawed novel. Recommended only for Pangborn’s fans. Read Davy first if you’re new to his work.

My Top 20 Science Fiction Short Stories Reads of 2025 (click titles for my full review)

1. Philip K. Dick’s “Foster, You’re Dead” (1955), 5/5 (Masterpiece): I featured on a podcast about this story. When the episode is posted, I’ll make sure to link it. Mike Foster spends his school days practicing survival skills–digging, making knives, weaving baskets–in case of a nuclear attack. The kids snicker at him as he walks past. They don’t own a fallout shelter at home. His father refuses to pay into the NATS (National Security fund). If a bomb hit, Mike wouldn’t even be granted access to the school shelter. He’s possessed by a deep, perpetual, encompassing trauma.

2. Fritz Leiber’s “Coming Attraction” (1950), 5/5 (Masterpiece): A rare reread! Leiber imagines an America transformed after a limited nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The physical landscape mirrors the psychological scars of New York’s inhabitants. Perverse new forms of TV entertainment, in particular male wrestlers pitted against masked women, transfix all audiences.

3. Jack Dann’s “A Quiet Revolution for Death” (1978), 5/5 (Masterpiece): Roger and his family head out of the city for a picnic in a vast cemetery. Roger dreams that he is an angel of God guiding mankind through the realm. Visiting the cemetery is an act of devotion. While other kids plug themselves into feelies, Bennie is a fanatic disciple of his father’s pseudo-philosophy of embracing the macabre. Sandra, Roger’s wife, plays along. The kids see through her dislike of the cemetery and the burial rituals happening around them.

4. Izumi Suzuki’s“Terminal Boredom” (1984, trans. by Daniel Joseph 2021), 4.5/5 (Very Good): A nameless young female main character recounts her interactions her one-time boyfriend. HE wants to reconnect with his mother, who abandoned his family. HE joins a staged show called The Psychoanalysis Room in an attempt to convince his mother to take “pity and come and find” him. She also has a dysfunctional family. Her mother, a TV executive, struggles/refuses to connect to her daughter. Like some manifestation of the modern hikikomori, they often refuse to communicate with others, eat as a group or eat at all for days on end, or leave their dwellings for the sun and vista of the aboveground. Both find solace and escape in the vacuities and artifice of television.

5. Philip K. Dick’s “Explorers We” (1959), 4.5/5 (Very Good): Six astronauts return to earth from a voyage to Mars. But they are not treated as heroes. Instead people flee. I found “Explorers We” a well-crafted existential terror. The story plays with narrative expectation and hints at a cosmic enormity that will, at least in this iteration, remain unknown.

6. James Tiptree, Jr.’s “Painwise” (1972), 4.5/5 (Very Good): An explorer who feels no pain is hurled mercilessly from planet to plant where is he tortured, experimented upon, and broken again, and again, and again. His sense of time dissipates. Space becomes a hellscape that he cannot escape. And each time he’s lifted back to his scout ship where a mechanical boditech stitches him back together.

7. Jack Dann’s “The Dybbuk Dolls” (1975), 4.5/5 (Very Good): Chaim Lewis works at a sex shop down below in the Undercity, one of many identical spheres, one mile in diameter, buried one thousand feet below the ground.  As Chaim finishes up his shift in the dingy shop, a group of visitors ask about his hook-ins and 21st century pornos. Eventually one of them asks him about his alien sex doll collection. And when he returns to the room with the dolls, he discovers they’ve all been unpacked and they imprint themselves on his mind! Cue a descent into the bizarre…

8.  Jack Williamson’s “Guinevere for Everybody” (1955), 4.5/5 (Very Good): An artificially created Guinevere stands “chained” in a “vending machine” tempting sleepy passengers in an airport with her plaintive calls. I did not know Williamson had this type of vision in him! The surprise of the year!

9. George H. Smith’s “The Last Days of L. A.” (1959), 4/5 (Good): A nameless character (“you”) wakes from a recurring dream: “the dream that has haunted the whole world since that day in 1945.” A dream of apocalyptic annihilation, in infinite variations. A narrative repetition takes form: Nuclear nightmare. The waking moment. The aimless quest for understanding. Communing with other lost souls. The retreat to the bottle. Fragments of the news suggest a world unraveling.

10. Theodore Sturgeon’s “The Stars Are the Styx” (1950), 4/5 (Good): The premise: Humans created Curbstone, an artificial satellite around Earth, to facilitate the ultimate scientific achievement–near instantaneous transportation across the galaxy. How? Individual spaceships, with a solitary crew person or couple, will be hurled out from Curbstone at various points across the space time continuum. The story revolves around the aging (and rotund) Senior Release Officer on Curbstone, who certifies, counsels, and guides the strange collection of humans who gather at the station willing to take such a risk.

11. Richard Matheson’s “Dance of the Dead” (1955), 4/5 (Good): In a drug and alcohol drenched near-future, a group of young adults take a break-neck road drip and stray from the path set out by parents and small town community. Manifesting the SPEED of the car, Matheson’s prose resonates with pulse and hum, snippets of song and signage, slang and youthful lust. It’s frantic. It’s zappy. It’s vibrant. Recommended for fans of the more linguistically experimental (and bleak) of 50s visions.

12. Jack Dann’s “Rags” (1973), 4/5 (Good): Joanna wanders the streets without seeing a single person. Everything she sees—from garbage cans to parked cars–seem in be various states of decay (“dented, rusted, and discolored”). She teaches herself a new way to walk to avoid the “invisible beings” that flit around her (6). She remembers a past sickness. Deaths in the family. She makes new rules of movement and perception as an act of preservation.  And suddenly she sees The Purple Cat.

13. Jack Dann’s “Fragmentary Blue” (variant title: “There are no Bannisters”) (1973), 4/5 (Good): he elderly dwell underground in large domed cities. It’s a commercial and media-inundated world — tiny machines grant “feeling” as you watch commercials. Professor Fleitman, who “could not rationalize having an orgasm over a cigarette advertisement,” presents a new idea to galvanize the elderly to Entertainment Committee. Rather than a feelie or a movie he wants to put on a circus.

14. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s “Wanderers and Travellers” (1963, trans. 1966), 4/5 (Good): Stanisław Ivanovich spends his days submerged in lakes and rivers tagging septopods, a new octopus-like species discovered on Earth. His daughter, Marsha, assists from above. When he emerges from a lake, Marsha is deep in conversation with Leonid Andreevich Gorbovsky, an astroarchaeologist implied to be on leave from an expedition. The two scientists–IIvanovich, with his eyes on earthly mystery, and Gorbovsky, untangling the traces of potential intelligences across the cosmos–and Marsha engage in a series of discussions about the nature of the universe.

15. John Wyndham’s “The Man From Beyond” (variant title: “The Man from Earth”) (1934), 3.5/5 (Good): Somewhere on the Venusian surface the Valley of Dur, with its amalgamation of gasses, traps unsuspecting denizens who wander into its depths. In the city of Takon, Venusians, six-limbed creatures with silvery hair, ogle the strange beasts extricated and caged and exhibited from the Valley. The child, transfixed by the man’s noises and scrawls, pushes his stylus and pad under the bars. And Morgan Gratz, stranded astronaut and self-confessed murderer, draws for the child the respective locations of their planets.

16. Katherine MacLean’s “Contagion” (1950), 3.5/5 (Good) is a contact with an alien planet tale that’s legitimately odd. A hunting party looking for specimens of alien life in order to dissect, sets off from the spaceship Explorer across an alien planet called Minos. Reasonably, the crew is obsessed with a minute medical analysis of flora and fauna. The hunting party encounters a majestically shaped human who spins a crazy tale of adaptation and disease. 

17. Cherry Wilder’s “The Ark of James Carlyle” (1974), 3.5/5 (Good): Carlyle spends his tour of duty in a hut with a wood platform on small landmass surrounded by an “oily purple sea” on an alien planet. A crisis hits — and he suddenly learns the reason for the singular trees that grow in the center of each island.

18. E. C. Tubb’s“Without Bugles” (1952), 3.5/5 (Good): A naive journalist struggles to confront her heroic idealism, regurgitated through the media, in her attempt to save the Mars colony afflicted with a futuristic case of the black lung.

19.  Frank K. Kelly’s “Famine on Mars” (1934), 3.5/5 (Good): President Herbert Hoover infamously proclaimed on the eve of the Great Depression that “given the chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, we shall soon with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation.” “Famine on Mars,” published five years into the Great Depression, evokes similar paradigmatic shifts between propagandistic proclamation and harsh reality. Kelly spins a nightmare account of a famine on Mars and a plan to save the starving legions.

20. Gerald Kersh’s “Whatever Happened to Corporal Cuckoo?” (1953), 3.5/5 (Good): Kersh imagines a literary version of himself returning to New York City from WWII interacting with a fantastical manifestation of a Wound Man on board the Cunard White Star liner Queen Mary. Corporal Cuckoo, the “Wound Man” in question, regals the narrator (Kersh) with the history of his scarred and mutilated form that mysteriously heals from every injury.

Reading Initiatives

I have continued, resurrected, and created new science fiction short story reading series over the course of the year. Most of the stories I’ve picked for the series are available in some fashion online via links to Internet Archive in each review. I’ve included installments from 2024 in each series below. Feel free to read along with me! And thanks for all the great conversation.

Galaxy Science Fiction Read-through (started 2025)

1. Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (October 1950)
2. Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (November 1950) 

Organized Labor and Unions in Science Fiction (started in 2024)

1. Mack Reynolds’ The Earth War (1964)
2. Zoë Fairbairns’ Benefits (1979)

The First Three Published Short Fictions by Female Authors (continued from 2021)

1. Cherry Wilder (1930-2002)

Translated Short Stories in Translation (with Rachel S. Cordasco) (started in 2024)

1. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s “Wanderers and Travellers” (1963, trans. 1966)
2.  Izumi Suzuki’s “Terminal Boredom” (1984, trans. by Daniel Joseph 2021)

The Media Landscape of the Future (started in 2022)

1. George H. Smith’s “In the Imagicon” (1966)
2. Izumi Suzuki’s “Terminal Boredom” (1984)
3. Jack Dann’s “Fragmentary Blue” (variant title: “There are no Bannisters”) (1973)

The Search for the Depressed Astronaut  (continued from 2020)

1. Philip K. Dick’s “Explorers We” (1959) 
2. James Tiptree, Jr.’s “Painwise” (1972)
3. E. C. Tubb’s “Without Bugles” (1952)
4. E. C. Tubb’s “Home is the Hero” (1952)
5. E. C. Tubb’s “Pistol Point” (1953)
6. John Wyndham’s “The Man From Beyond” (variant title: “The Man from Earth”) (1934)

Generation Ship Short Stories (continued from 2019)

1. George Hay’s Flight of the “Hesper” (1952)

Exploration Logs (continued from 2022)

1. Exploration Log 7: Interview with Jordan S. Carroll, author of Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (2024)
2. Exploration Log 8: Pat M. Kuras and Rob Schmieder’s “When It Changed: Lesbians, Gay Men, and Science Fiction Fandom” (1980)
3. Exploration Log 9: Three More Interviews with Clifford D. Simak (1904-1988)
4. Exploration Log 10: Interview with Jaroslav Olša, Jr., author of Dreaming of Autonomous Vehicles: Miloslav (Miles) J. Breuer: Czech-American Writer and the Birth of Science Fiction (2025)
5. Exploration Log 11: Interview with Chukwunonso Ezeiyoke, author of Nigerian Speculative Fiction: The Evolution (2025)

My Top 4 History Reads of 2025

A large portion of my history reading this year pushed my general interest in labor history and leftist politics backwards into the 19th century. Unusual for me I know! Often I write about what I can write about not what I plan on writing about. A brief caveat worth repeating: I’m a PhD-wielding historian and have a high tolerance for academic texts. That said, I’d classify everything in my list as on the approachable side of things if you know the broad strokes of American history.

1. Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp’s Setting Down the Sacred Past: African-American Race Histories (2010): This filled a complete hole in my knowledge. While I had encountered history-centric militant abolitionist texts written by black authors, I did not know how they fitted into the larger historiographic project of the era. As my PhD looked at universal histories in the medieval period, I’m a sucker for all kinds of histories of historiography! This is a good one.

2. Deborah Beckel’s Radical Reform: Interracial Politics in Post-Emancipation North Carolina (2011): I read this one for my research project on a black utopian author. Beckel’s brilliant monograph looks at the race and politics in North Carolina after the end of Reconstruction–a “fusion” government of Republicans and Populists managed to take power (temporarily) from the white supremacist Democratic status quo in the 1890s. Depressing. Fascinating. I’m waiting for an alt-history that uses the 1898 election in North Carolina as a jonbar hinge — hah!

3. Edward K. Spann’s Brotherly Tomorrows: Movements for A Cooperative Society in America (1989): While an older monograph, Spann’s work is a fantastic survey of the fascinating range of radical social idealism-inspired communities that proliferated across America. I’m obsessed by left-wing ideologies that permeate the rural world and movements for working-class utopianism. Spann will inspire you to track down newer monographs on the social movements he surveys.

4. Jordan S. Carroll’s Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (2025): Rightly won the Hugo! I interviewed Carroll in January. In the book, he examines the ways the alt-right uses classic science fiction imagery and authors to mainstream fascism and advocate for the overthrow of the state. This is a short monograph designed to encourage thought. Highly recommended.

Goals for 2026

1. Keep reading and writing.

2. Read more reviews by other bloggers.

3. Cover more SF in translation.

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

Wie großartig: Der #Carcosa - Verlag wird die deutsche Erstausgabe von Kim Stanley Robinsons "Green Earth"-Trilogie vor dem Erscheinen des jeweiligen Bandes frei im Netz zur Verfügung stellen:

"Grüne Erde hat ein dezidiert politisches Anliegen und möchte möglichst viele Menschen erreichen."

https://carcosa-verlag.de/gruene-erde/

Ich werde mir die Bücher natürlich trotzdem kaufen, allein schon um das zu unterstützen.

#Buch #Bookstodon #ScienceFiction #ClimateFiction #KimStanleyRobinson #Klimakrise

🔎 📗 ¿Qué opináis de la famosa novela de anticipación climática "El Ministerio del Futuro"? Aquí va mi detallado repaso a la misma, por si a alguien le interesa: https://casdeiro.info/textos/2025/11/11/el-ministerio-del-futuro-no-es-la-novela-que-necesitamos-version-extensa/
#ministryforthefuture #kimstanleyrobinson #cienciaficcion #CaosClimatico #ministeriodelfuturo

Aurora

https://library.hrmtc.com/2025/11/03/aurora/

#actionAdventure #book #ColoniesSpatialesRomansNouvellesEtc #ExplorationScienceFiction #fiction #HabileteSDeSurvieRomansNouvellesEtc #HardScienceFiction #InterplanetaryVoyages #InterplanetaryVoyagesFiction #kimStanleyRobinson #review #SciFiFantasy #ScienceFiction #ScienceFictionHardScienceFiction #ScienceFictionSpaceExploration #ScienceFictionSpaceOpera #spaceAndTime #SpaceAndTimeFiction #SpaceColonies #SpaceColoniesFiction #SpaceExploration #SpaceOperas #survival #SurvivalFiction #TPolyphilus #VoyagesInterplaneTairesRomansNouvellesEtc

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXLVI (Kim Stanley Robinson, Miriam Allen DeFord, Keith Laumer, and Jack Dann)

Which books/covers/authors intrigue you? Which have you read? Disliked? Enjoyed?

Finally acquired a new scanner!

1. The Memory of Whiteness, Kim Stanley Robinson (1985)

• Fred Gambino’s cover for the 1999 edition

From the back cover: “In the 33rd century humanity is scattered among the planets of the Solar System. Millions of lives depend on the revolutionary physics of Arthur Holywelkin; millions of hears are moved by the music created by the strange, eerie instrument he built in the last years of his life: the Orchestra. Johannes Wright is the Ninth–and youngest–Master of the Orchestra. But as he sets out on his first Grand Tour of the Solar System, unseen foes are at his heel, ready to reveal all but the meaning of their enmity. In confronting them, Wright must redefine the Universe–for himself and all humanity.”

Initial Thoughts: I should have a review of an early Kim Stanley Robinson novel up on the site soon. I have fond memories of reading Red Mars (1992) and Green Mars (1993)–and less fond memories of Blue Mars (1996)–as an older teen. The only Robinson work I’ve reviewed on the site is “Exploring Fossil Canyon” (1982). Unfortunately my cover of The Memory of Whiteness had a pernicious sticker that damaged the cover…

2. Greylorn, Keith Laumer (1968)

• Richard Powers’ cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “GREYLORN. Humanity’s last hope lay in one spaceship racing through the voids of the universe. The Red Tide had all but engulfed the Earth, and there was just enough time to find Omega, the planet that had long ago been colonized–and then had simply disappeared.

After four years in space, the ship felt the hand of calamity all at once. Its food stores were destroyed by a meteor crash. its crew was set to mutiny. And, worst of all, was the threatening alien ship, with its strange cargo of human bodies…”

Contents: “Greylorn” (1959), “The Night of the Trolls” (1963), “The Other Sky” (variant title: “The Further Sky”) (1964), and “The King of the City” (1961).

Initial Thoughts: I’ve only read Laumer’s (successful) attempt at a New Wave story — “In the Queue” (1970).

3. One Way and Other Stories, Miriam Allen deFord (2025).

• Uncredited cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “Miriam Allen deFord (1988-1975) was a feminist, a suffragette, birth control advocate, journalist, editor, winner of the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award, and author of science fiction, mystery, and true crime. Now, at long last, a collection of her science fiction short stories are back in print with One Way and Other Stories.

Mystery writer, Fortean, anti-fascist, feminist of the first generation, and science fiction trailblazers for five decades, Miriam Allen deFord masterfully weaves all of her facets into her stories, bringing a macabre, fantastic tone to her tales: Bradbury meets Hitchcock. She was already the grand dame of science fiction when the genre reached its second peak with the magazine boom of the early ’50s. Her work thus paced and led the way for SF’s Silver Age.

Miriam Allen deFord somehow slips under the radar when luminaries are listed. With luck, this volume will remedy this oversight.

~Gideon Marcus, editor of Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women.“

Contents: “Not Snow, Nor Rain” (1959), “Oh, Rats!” (1961), “One Way” (1955), “The Margenes” (1956), “The Akkra Case” (1962), “Time Out for Redheads” (1955), “Where the Phyh Pebbles Go” (1963), and “The Eel” (1958).

Initial Thoughts: It’s always nice to see a lesser-known classic author getting a collection of stories in print. The indie press Space Cowboy Books also published Jaroslav Olša, Jr.’s Dreaming of Autonomous Vehicles: Miloslav (Miles) J. Breuer: Czech-American Writer and the Birth of Science Fiction  (2025), which I featured earlier this year. I’ve enjoyed some of deFord’s work in the past–in particular her earlier work. You can snag a copy of Other Stories here. They include small reproductions of the original interior art.

4. Junction, Jack Dann (1981)

• Uncredited cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “GO TO HELL. The hundred-eyed bird monster told Ned Wheeler that his foreordained quest must begin in Hell–which lay just beyond the borders of Junction, the tumultuous, bawdy, pious town that knew damnation as a daily experience and salvation as a distant hope.

ned’s odyssey took him to a place stranger than Junction, stranger than Hell–the bizarre, unbelievable, dangerous city called New York.

Its learned scientists told him of incredible things, like the laws of cause and effect and the fact that they had ceased to operate. It was as if the entire world were living in a chaotic dream–perhaps Ned Wheeler’s dream…”

Initial Thoughts: I recently reviewed, and enjoyed, Dann’s Nebula-nominated novella “Junction” (1973). This is the fix-up novel version that also includes the short story “The Islands of Time” (1977). I’m a bit worried. I felt like the original novella version could have been trimmed and tightened. Not sure how a novelization will add to the metaphysical kaleidoscope that was the original. We shall see!

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

#1950s #1960s #1970s #1980s #bookReview #bookReviews2 #books #fiction #jackDann #keithLaumer #kimStanleyRobinson #miriamAllenDeford #paperbacks #sciFi #scienceFiction

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXLVI (Kim Stanley Robinson, Miriam Allen DeFord, Keith Laumer, and Jack Dann)

Which books/covers/authors intrigue you? Which have you read? Disliked? Enjoyed?

Finally acquired a new scanner!

1. The Memory of Whiteness, Kim Stanley Robinson (1985)

• Fred Gambino’s cover for the 1999 edition

From the back cover: “In the 33rd century humanity is scattered among the planets of the Solar System. Millions of lives depend on the revolutionary physics of Arthur Holywelkin; millions of hears are moved by the music created by the strange, eerie instrument he built in the last years of his life: the Orchestra. Johannes Wright is the Ninth–and youngest–Master of the Orchestra. But as he sets out on his first Grand Tour of the Solar System, unseen foes are at his heel, ready to reveal all but the meaning of their enmity. In confronting them, Wright must redefine the Universe–for himself and all humanity.”

Initial Thoughts: I should have a review of an early Kim Stanley Robinson novel up on the site soon. I have fond memories of reading Red Mars (1992) and Green Mars (1993)–and less fond memories of Blue Mars (1996)–as an older teen. The only Robinson work I’ve reviewed on the site is “Exploring Fossil Canyon” (1982). Unfortunately my cover of The Memory of Whiteness had a pernicious sticker that damaged the cover…

2. Greylorn, Keith Laumer (1968)

• Richard Powers’ cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “GREYLORN. Humanity’s last hope lay in one spaceship racing through the voids of the universe. The Red Tide had all but engulfed the Earth, and there was just enough time to find Omega, the planet that had long ago been colonized–and then had simply disappeared.

After four years in space, the ship felt the hand of calamity all at once. Its food stores were destroyed by a meteor crash. its crew was set to mutiny. And, worst of all, was the threatening alien ship, with its strange cargo of human bodies…”

Contents: “Greylorn” (1959), “The Night of the Trolls” (1963), “The Other Sky” (variant title: “The Further Sky”) (1964), and “The King of the City” (1961).

Initial Thoughts: I’ve only read Laumer’s (successful) attempt at a New Wave story — “In the Queue” (1970).

3. One Way and Other Stories, Miriam Allen deFord (2025).

• Uncredited cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “Miriam Allen deFord (1988-1975) was a feminist, a suffragette, birth control advocate, journalist, editor, winner of the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award, and author of science fiction, mystery, and true crime. Now, at long last, a collection of her science fiction short stories are back in print with One Way and Other Stories.

Mystery writer, Fortean, anti-fascist, feminist of the first generation, and science fiction trailblazers for five decades, Miriam Allen deFord masterfully weaves all of her facets into her stories, bringing a macabre, fantastic tone to her tales: Bradbury meets Hitchcock. She was already the grand dame of science fiction when the genre reached its second peak with the magazine boom of the early ’50s. Her work thus paced and led the way for SF’s Silver Age.

Miriam Allen deFord somehow slips under the radar when luminaries are listed. With luck, this volume will remedy this oversight.

~Gideon Marcus, editor of Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women.“

Contents: “Not Snow, Nor Rain” (1959), “Oh, Rats!” (1961), “One Way” (1955), “The Margenes” (1956), “The Akkra Case” (1962), “Time Out for Redheads” (1955), “Where the Phyh Pebbles Go” (1963), and “The Eel” (1958).

Initial Thoughts: It’s always nice to see a lesser-known classic author getting a collection of stories in print. The indie press Space Cowboy Books also published Jaroslav Olša, Jr.’s Dreaming of Autonomous Vehicles: Miloslav (Miles) J. Breuer: Czech-American Writer and the Birth of Science Fiction  (2025), which I featured earlier this year. I’ve enjoyed some of deFord’s work in the past–in particular her earlier work. You can snag a copy of Other Stories here. They include small reproductions of the original interior art.

4. Junction, Jack Dann (1981)

• Uncredited cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “GO TO HELL. The hundred-eyed bird monster told Ned Wheeler that his foreordained quest must begin in Hell–which lay just beyond the borders of Junction, the tumultuous, bawdy, pious town that knew damnation as a daily experience and salvation as a distant hope.

ned’s odyssey took him to a place stranger than Junction, stranger than Hell–the bizarre, unbelievable, dangerous city called New York.

Its learned scientists told him of incredible things, like the laws of cause and effect and the fact that they had ceased to operate. It was as if the entire world were living in a chaotic dream–perhaps Ned Wheeler’s dream…”

Initial Thoughts: I recently reviewed, and enjoyed, Dann’s Nebula-nominated novella “Junction” (1973). This is the fix-up novel version that also includes the short story “The Islands of Time” (1977). I’m a bit worried. I felt like the original novella version could have been trimmed and tightened. Not sure how a novelization will add to the metaphysical kaleidoscope that was the original. We shall see!

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

#1950s #1960s #1970s #1980s #bookReview #bookReviews2 #books #fiction #jackDann #keithLaumer #kimStanleyRobinson #miriamAllenDeford #paperbacks #sciFi #scienceFiction

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXLVI (Kim Stanley Robinson, Miriam Allen DeFord, Keith Laumer, and Jack Dann)

Which books/covers/authors intrigue you? Which have you read? Disliked? Enjoyed?

Finally acquired a new scanner!

1. The Memory of Whiteness, Kim Stanley Robinson (1985)

• Fred Gambino’s cover for the 1999 edition

From the back cover: “In the 33rd century humanity is scattered among the planets of the Solar System. Millions of lives depend on the revolutionary physics of Arthur Holywelkin; millions of hears are moved by the music created by the strange, eerie instrument he built in the last years of his life: the Orchestra. Johannes Wright is the Ninth–and youngest–Master of the Orchestra. But as he sets out on his first Grand Tour of the Solar System, unseen foes are at his heel, ready to reveal all but the meaning of their enmity. In confronting them, Wright must redefine the Universe–for himself and all humanity.”

Initial Thoughts: I should have a review of an early Kim Stanley Robinson novel up on the site soon. I have fond memories of reading Red Mars (1992) and Green Mars (1993)–and less fond memories of Blue Mars (1996)–as an older teen. The only Robinson work I’ve reviewed on the site is “Exploring Fossil Canyon” (1982). Unfortunately my cover of The Memory of Whiteness had a pernicious sticker that damaged the cover…

2. Greylorn, Keith Laumer (1968)

• Richard Powers’ cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “GREYLORN. Humanity’s last hope lay in one spaceship racing through the voids of the universe. The Red Tide had all but engulfed the Earth, and there was just enough time to find Omega, the planet that had long ago been colonized–and then had simply disappeared.

After four years in space, the ship felt the hand of calamity all at once. Its food stores were destroyed by a meteor crash. its crew was set to mutiny. And, worst of all, was the threatening alien ship, with its strange cargo of human bodies…”

Contents: “Greylorn” (1959), “The Night of the Trolls” (1963), “The Other Sky” (variant title: “The Further Sky”) (1964), and “The King of the City” (1961).

Initial Thoughts: I’ve only read Laumer’s (successful) attempt at a New Wave story — “In the Queue” (1970).

3. One Way and Other Stories, Miriam Allen deFord (2025).

• Uncredited cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “Miriam Allen deFord (1988-1975) was a feminist, a suffragette, birth control advocate, journalist, editor, winner of the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award, and author of science fiction, mystery, and true crime. Now, at long last, a collection of her science fiction short stories are back in print with One Way and Other Stories.

Mystery writer, Fortean, anti-fascist, feminist of the first generation, and science fiction trailblazers for five decades, Miriam Allen deFord masterfully weaves all of her facets into her stories, bringing a macabre, fantastic tone to her tales: Bradbury meets Hitchcock. She was already the grand dame of science fiction when the genre reached its second peak with the magazine boom of the early ’50s. Her work thus paced and led the way for SF’s Silver Age.

Miriam Allen deFord somehow slips under the radar when luminaries are listed. With luck, this volume will remedy this oversight.

~Gideon Marcus, editor of Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women.“

Contents: “Not Snow, Nor Rain” (1959), “Oh, Rats!” (1961), “One Way” (1955), “The Margenes” (1956), “The Akkra Case” (1962), “Time Out for Redheads” (1955), “Where the Phyh Pebbles Go” (1963), and “The Eel” (1958).

Initial Thoughts: It’s always nice to see a lesser-known classic author getting a collection of stories in print. The indie press Space Cowboy Books also published Jaroslav Olša, Jr.’s Dreaming of Autonomous Vehicles: Miloslav (Miles) J. Breuer: Czech-American Writer and the Birth of Science Fiction  (2025), which I featured earlier this year. I’ve enjoyed some of deFord’s work in the past–in particular her earlier work. You can snag a copy of Other Stories here. They include small reproductions of the original interior art.

4. Junction, Jack Dann (1981)

• Uncredited cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “GO TO HELL. The hundred-eyed bird monster told Ned Wheeler that his foreordained quest must begin in Hell–which lay just beyond the borders of Junction, the tumultuous, bawdy, pious town that knew damnation as a daily experience and salvation as a distant hope.

ned’s odyssey took him to a place stranger than Junction, stranger than Hell–the bizarre, unbelievable, dangerous city called New York.

Its learned scientists told him of incredible things, like the laws of cause and effect and the fact that they had ceased to operate. It was as if the entire world were living in a chaotic dream–perhaps Ned Wheeler’s dream…”

Initial Thoughts: I recently reviewed, and enjoyed, Dann’s Nebula-nominated novella “Junction” (1973). This is the fix-up novel version that also includes the short story “The Islands of Time” (1977). I’m a bit worried. I felt like the original novella version could have been trimmed and tightened. Not sure how a novelization will add to the metaphysical kaleidoscope that was the original. We shall see!

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

#1950s #1960s #1970s #1980s #bookReview #bookReviews2 #books #fiction #jackDann #keithLaumer #kimStanleyRobinson #miriamAllenDeford #paperbacks #sciFi #scienceFiction

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXLVI (Kim Stanley Robinson, Miriam Allen DeFord, Keith Laumer, and Jack Dann)

Which books/covers/authors intrigue you? Which have you read? Disliked? Enjoyed?

Finally acquired a new scanner!

1. The Memory of Whiteness, Kim Stanley Robinson (1985)

• Fred Gambino’s cover for the 1999 edition

From the back cover: “In the 33rd century humanity is scattered among the planets of the Solar System. Millions of lives depend on the revolutionary physics of Arthur Holywelkin; millions of hears are moved by the music created by the strange, eerie instrument he built in the last years of his life: the Orchestra. Johannes Wright is the Ninth–and youngest–Master of the Orchestra. But as he sets out on his first Grand Tour of the Solar System, unseen foes are at his heel, ready to reveal all but the meaning of their enmity. In confronting them, Wright must redefine the Universe–for himself and all humanity.”

Initial Thoughts: I should have a review of an early Kim Stanley Robinson novel up on the site soon. I have fond memories of reading Red Mars (1992) and Green Mars (1993)–and less fond memories of Blue Mars (1996)–as an older teen. The only Robinson work I’ve reviewed on the site is “Exploring Fossil Canyon” (1982). Unfortunately my cover of The Memory of Whiteness had a pernicious sticker that damaged the cover…

2. Greylorn, Keith Laumer (1968)

• Richard Powers’ cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “GREYLORN. Humanity’s last hope lay in one spaceship racing through the voids of the universe. The Red Tide had all but engulfed the Earth, and there was just enough time to find Omega, the planet that had long ago been colonized–and then had simply disappeared.

After four years in space, the ship felt the hand of calamity all at once. Its food stores were destroyed by a meteor crash. its crew was set to mutiny. And, worst of all, was the threatening alien ship, with its strange cargo of human bodies…”

Contents: “Greylorn” (1959), “The Night of the Trolls” (1963), “The Other Sky” (variant title: “The Further Sky”) (1964), and “The King of the City” (1961).

Initial Thoughts: I’ve only read Laumer’s (successful) attempt at a New Wave story — “In the Queue” (1970).

3. One Way and Other Stories, Miriam Allen deFord (2025).

• Uncredited cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “Miriam Allen deFord (1988-1975) was a feminist, a suffragette, birth control advocate, journalist, editor, winner of the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award, and author of science fiction, mystery, and true crime. Now, at long last, a collection of her science fiction short stories are back in print with One Way and Other Stories.

Mystery writer, Fortean, anti-fascist, feminist of the first generation, and science fiction trailblazers for five decades, Miriam Allen deFord masterfully weaves all of her facets into her stories, bringing a macabre, fantastic tone to her tales: Bradbury meets Hitchcock. She was already the grand dame of science fiction when the genre reached its second peak with the magazine boom of the early ’50s. Her work thus paced and led the way for SF’s Silver Age.

Miriam Allen deFord somehow slips under the radar when luminaries are listed. With luck, this volume will remedy this oversight.

~Gideon Marcus, editor of Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women.“

Contents: “Not Snow, Nor Rain” (1959), “Oh, Rats!” (1961), “One Way” (1955), “The Margenes” (1956), “The Akkra Case” (1962), “Time Out for Redheads” (1955), “Where the Phyh Pebbles Go” (1963), and “The Eel” (1958).

Initial Thoughts: It’s always nice to see a lesser-known classic author getting a collection of stories in print. The indie press Space Cowboy Books also published Jaroslav Olša, Jr.’s Dreaming of Autonomous Vehicles: Miloslav (Miles) J. Breuer: Czech-American Writer and the Birth of Science Fiction  (2025), which I featured earlier this year. I’ve enjoyed some of deFord’s work in the past–in particular her earlier work. You can snag a copy of Other Stories here. They include small reproductions of the original interior art.

4. Junction, Jack Dann (1981)

• Uncredited cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “GO TO HELL. The hundred-eyed bird monster told Ned Wheeler that his foreordained quest must begin in Hell–which lay just beyond the borders of Junction, the tumultuous, bawdy, pious town that knew damnation as a daily experience and salvation as a distant hope.

ned’s odyssey took him to a place stranger than Junction, stranger than Hell–the bizarre, unbelievable, dangerous city called New York.

Its learned scientists told him of incredible things, like the laws of cause and effect and the fact that they had ceased to operate. It was as if the entire world were living in a chaotic dream–perhaps Ned Wheeler’s dream…”

Initial Thoughts: I recently reviewed, and enjoyed, Dann’s Nebula-nominated novella “Junction” (1973). This is the fix-up novel version that also includes the short story “The Islands of Time” (1977). I’m a bit worried. I felt like the original novella version could have been trimmed and tightened. Not sure how a novelization will add to the metaphysical kaleidoscope that was the original. We shall see!

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

#1950s #1960s #1970s #1980s #bookReviews #JackDann #KeithLaumer #KimStanleyRobinson #MiriamAllenDeFord #paperbacks #sciFi #scienceFiction

Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXLVI (Kim Stanley Robinson, Miriam Allen DeFord, Keith Laumer, and Jack Dann)

Which books/covers/authors intrigue you? Which have you read? Disliked? Enjoyed?

Finally acquired a new scanner!

1. The Memory of Whiteness, Kim Stanley Robinson (1985)

• Fred Gambino’s cover for the 1999 edition

From the back cover: “In the 33rd century humanity is scattered among the planets of the Solar System. Millions of lives depend on the revolutionary physics of Arthur Holywelkin; millions of hears are moved by the music created by the strange, eerie instrument he built in the last years of his life: the Orchestra. Johannes Wright is the Ninth–and youngest–Master of the Orchestra. But as he sets out on his first Grand Tour of the Solar System, unseen foes are at his heel, ready to reveal all but the meaning of their enmity. In confronting them, Wright must redefine the Universe–for himself and all humanity.”

Initial Thoughts: I should have a review of an early Kim Stanley Robinson novel up on the site soon. I have fond memories of reading Red Mars (1992) and Green Mars (1993)–and less fond memories of Blue Mars (1996)–as an older teen. The only Robinson work I’ve reviewed on the site is “Exploring Fossil Canyon” (1982). Unfortunately my cover of The Memory of Whiteness had a pernicious sticker that damaged the cover…

2. Greylorn, Keith Laumer (1968)

• Richard Powers’ cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “GREYLORN. Humanity’s last hope lay in one spaceship racing through the voids of the universe. The Red Tide had all but engulfed the Earth, and there was just enough time to find Omega, the planet that had long ago been colonized–and then had simply disappeared.

After four years in space, the ship felt the hand of calamity all at once. Its food stores were destroyed by a meteor crash. its crew was set to mutiny. And, worst of all, was the threatening alien ship, with its strange cargo of human bodies…”

Contents: “Greylorn” (1959), “The Night of the Trolls” (1963), “The Other Sky” (variant title: “The Further Sky”) (1964), and “The King of the City” (1961).

Initial Thoughts: I’ve only read Laumer’s (successful) attempt at a New Wave story — “In the Queue” (1970).

3. One Way and Other Stories, Miriam Allen deFord (2025).

• Uncredited cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “Miriam Allen deFord (1988-1975) was a feminist, a suffragette, birth control advocate, journalist, editor, winner of the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award, and author of science fiction, mystery, and true crime. Now, at long last, a collection of her science fiction short stories are back in print with One Way and Other Stories.

Mystery writer, Fortean, anti-fascist, feminist of the first generation, and science fiction trailblazers for five decades, Miriam Allen deFord masterfully weaves all of her facets into her stories, bringing a macabre, fantastic tone to her tales: Bradbury meets Hitchcock. She was already the grand dame of science fiction when the genre reached its second peak with the magazine boom of the early ’50s. Her work thus paced and led the way for SF’s Silver Age.

Miriam Allen deFord somehow slips under the radar when luminaries are listed. With luck, this volume will remedy this oversight.

~Gideon Marcus, editor of Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women.“

Contents: “Not Snow, Nor Rain” (1959), “Oh, Rats!” (1961), “One Way” (1955), “The Margenes” (1956), “The Akkra Case” (1962), “Time Out for Redheads” (1955), “Where the Phyh Pebbles Go” (1963), and “The Eel” (1958).

Initial Thoughts: It’s always nice to see a lesser-known classic author getting a collection of stories in print. The indie press Space Cowboy Books also published Jaroslav Olša, Jr.’s Dreaming of Autonomous Vehicles: Miloslav (Miles) J. Breuer: Czech-American Writer and the Birth of Science Fiction  (2025), which I featured earlier this year. I’ve enjoyed some of deFord’s work in the past–in particular her earlier work. You can snag a copy of Other Stories here. They include small reproductions of the original interior art.

4. Junction, Jack Dann (1981)

• Uncredited cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “GO TO HELL. The hundred-eyed bird monster told Ned Wheeler that his foreordained quest must begin in Hell–which lay just beyond the borders of Junction, the tumultuous, bawdy, pious town that knew damnation as a daily experience and salvation as a distant hope.

ned’s odyssey took him to a place stranger than Junction, stranger than Hell–the bizarre, unbelievable, dangerous city called New York.

Its learned scientists told him of incredible things, like the laws of cause and effect and the fact that they had ceased to operate. It was as if the entire world were living in a chaotic dream–perhaps Ned Wheeler’s dream…”

Initial Thoughts: I recently reviewed, and enjoyed, Dann’s Nebula-nominated novella “Junction” (1973). This is the fix-up novel version that also includes the short story “The Islands of Time” (1977). I’m a bit worried. I felt like the original novella version could have been trimmed and tightened. Not sure how a novelization will add to the metaphysical kaleidoscope that was the original. We shall see!

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

#1950s #1960s #1970s #1980s #bookReview #bookReviews2 #books #fiction #jackDann #keithLaumer #kimStanleyRobinson #miriamAllenDeford #paperbacks #sciFi #scienceFiction

También, novelas proto-solarpunk como Los Desposeídos de la autora anarcofeminista Ursula K. #LeGuin, #Ecotopia de Ernest #Callenbach y El Ministerio del Futuro de #KimStanleyRobinson no pueden faltar en la estantería de cualquier activista con el optimismo necesario para querer salvar el mundo y el realismo necesario para poder hacerlo. #scifi #clifi

"New results in biology indicate that the #SciFi idea of the multi-generational starship, which is already the only realistic way for humans to cross interstellar distances, will not work, because any closed biological life-support system will be too small to function over the centuries required.
[…]
So at this point, it’s important to point out that the idea of humanity going to the stars is a fantasy and is not going to happen."

#KimStanleyRobinson interview: https://www.terrain.org/2016/interviews/kim-stanley-robinson/

#KSR

Hiroko said, “Net gain in beauty.”
Arkady said, “Net gain in freedom.”
And then they all stared at Ann. [...] and all she could do was point a shaking finger at them and say, “Mars. Mars. Mars.”
#KimStanleyRobinson, Green Mars.

MCZ_LEFT, Sol: 416
Credit: #NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/@65dBnoise

#Perseverance #Mars2020 #solarocks #Space #SciFi #KSR #GreenMars

In June 2024, Kim Stanley Robinson was invited to the University of Oxford at the Hertford College for the official launch of the "Oxford Ministry for the Future" (OMF), which hopes to amplify voices for a sustainable political economy of the future.

The inaugural event featured Kate Raworth (author of Doughnut Economics) and #KimStanleyRobinson alongside some very, very interesting panelists.

Here is that event:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8bzgzSr8RQ

#KSR #ClimateCrisis #politicalEconomy

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-04116-4

via @stevelieberart (Bluesky)

#KimStanleyRobinson #ClimateDiary #Science #CollectiveWork

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-04116-4

via @stevelieberart (Bluesky)

#KimStanleyRobinson #ClimateDiary #Science #CollectiveWork

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-04116-4

via @stevelieberart (Bluesky)

#KimStanleyRobinson #ClimateDiary #Science #CollectiveWork

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-04116-4

via @stevelieberart (Bluesky)

#KimStanleyRobinson #ClimateDiary #Science #CollectiveWork

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-04116-4

via @stevelieberart (Bluesky)

#KimStanleyRobinson #ClimateDiary #Science #CollectiveWork

@andrealuck
All right, it's all coming together piece by piece 😀

#KimStanleyRobinson's #MarsTrilogy map using your georeferenced images as overlays:

#QGIS #Mars #Solarocks #Space #SciFi

According to #TheStorygraph I've passed 20,000 pages read this year, now I've #FinishedReading this relatively early piece of #KimStanleyRobinson #SciFi . An interesting way to approach a utopian setting (Orange County CA after a global eco-revolution), focusing on human-level dramas (corruption in local politics, unrequited love, grief) rather than a grand threat to the utopia. #KSR #Bookstodon @bookstodon

Do you believe in #ClimateSolutions? You just might be a #solarpunk.

What started as an idea for a new approach to science fiction has evolved into a worldwide community.

"For practical inspiration, solarpunk looks to permaculture and Indigenous agriculture, sustainable architecture like Earthships and Arcosanti, as well as the maker movement and DIY culture. The future-focused inspiration has roots in the work of science fiction writers like Ursula K. Le Guin, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Octavia E. Butler, all of whom explore climate change, alternative economies, and equitable community in their work."

by Sarena Ulibarri Contributor
Apr 04, 2022

"There are people all over the world who believe a just and sustainable world is possible. Maybe you’re one of them. Oh, the details of how that world works will vary according to our individual priorities and values, not to mention the physical and political climate of where we live. But we share the same vision: a future in which we’ve tackled the environmental and social justice issues of our time in a way that brings humanity, nature, and technology into harmony. We dream of green, community-centered cities; of high-tech, ethical farms; of pollution-free skies and plastic-free oceans. We dream of a world of abundance and inclusion, with equitable resource distribution and flattened hierarchies. We know we can’t achieve this by following the same path we’ve been walking; we must work together to blaze a new and better trail.

"We are artists and writers and musicians. We are activists and community organizers and urban planners. We are architects and scientists and engineers. We are gardeners and gamers and makers.

[...]

"Though we sometimes disagree about what a solarpunk world looks like, we are united by our vision of a future based on hope. But 'hope' is a tricky concept. It can be a catalyst for action, or a crutch supporting denial. Hiding from horrid realities or deluding ourselves that everything will turn out OK is not the type of hope solarpunks embrace. We know that climate change is here, and we acknowledge how bad it could get. We accept that tough times lie ahead, and imagine ways of adapting to those challenges with resilience, compassion, and equity. We’re rethinking how we live our lives and how we organize our societies, trying to reshape our systems so they serve the needs of the many instead of the wants of the few. We’re rethinking our relationships with technology and with nature, searching for a sustainable balance between the two."

Read more:
https://grist.org/fix/climate-fiction/do-you-believe-in-climate-solutions-you-just-might-be-a-solarpunk/

#SolarPunkSunday #UrsulaKLeGuin #OctaviaButler #KimStanleyRobinson #TEK #ClimateChange #AlternativeEconomics #TimeDollar #TimeBanks #BuildingCommunity #EquitableCommunity #Resiliency #BuildingCommunity #AnotherWorldIsPossible

So, I read Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy when the books were first published (early 1990s). They were fascinating and I enjoyed them immensely so here I am re-reading but in the middle of the first book Red Mars, I’m already struggling!! Irritating characters, very very long chunks of science explainers - & the meandering nature of the whole thing.

What the hell? Does anyone else experience this….disappointment on re-reads?

#ScienceFiction #SciFi #MarsTrilogy #KimStanleyRobinson

Hoffnung am Ende der Welt

Die Welt drau­ßen ist mal wie­der ziem­lich am Ende. Zeit­ge­nös­si­sche Sci­ence Fic­tion reagiert dar­auf auf drei Arten: sie setzt sich ers­tens direkt damit aus­ein­an­der – da sind wir dann bei „Cli­Fi“, Cli­ma­te Fic­tion und Ver­wand­tem, sei es Kim Stan­ley Robin­son, sei es T.C. Boyle, sei es mit ande­rer Per­spek­ti­ve Neal Ste­phen­son. Oder bei Wer­ken, die ande­re Pro­ble­me, die wir gera­de haben, direkt lite­ra­risch ver­ar­bei­ten. Aus­gren­zung und Inklu­si­on beispielsweise. 

Die zwei­te Reak­ti­on ist Eska­pis­mus. Das muss nichts schlech­tes sein. Sci­ence Fic­tion lan­det dann bei­spiel­wei­se bei der neus­ten Form der Space Ope­ra. Einen sehr guten Über­blick dar­über, was da alles drun­ter passt, gibt Jona­than Stra­han in sei­ner gera­de erschie­ne­nen Antho­lo­gie New Adven­tures in Space Ope­ra. Mit Nor­man Spin­rad spricht er davon, dass es sich bei Space Ope­ra nach wie vor um „straight fan­ta­sy in sci­ence fic­tion drag“ han­delt. Das gilt auch für das, was in den 2020er Jah­ren pas­siert, nach dem Höhe­punkt der „new space ope­ra“. Nur dass die­se Tex­te diver­ser und mul­ti­per­spek­ti­vi­scher sind, und sich kri­ti­scher mit den Poli­ti­ken und Macht­ver­hält­nis­sen in den jeweils ima­gi­nier­ten Wel­ten aus­ein­an­der­set­zen, als dies davor der Fall war. 

Drit­tens, und damit sind wir beim The­ma die­ses Tex­tes, erschei­nen eine Viel­zahl von Geschich­ten und Büchern, die irgend­wo zwi­schen „cozy“, Hope­punk und Solar­punk ein­sor­tiert wer­den kön­nen. Obwohl es Über­schnei­dun­gen gibt, ist Solar­punk doch noch ein­mal etwas ande­res als Cli­ma­te Fic­tion, und ist „cozy“ SF&F nicht iden­tisch mit der 2020er-Fas­sung von Space Ope­ra. Wir kom­men gleich zu Defi­ni­tio­nen – hier sei aller­dings schon ein­mal gesagt, dass die­se Grenz­zie­hun­gen weni­ger hart sind, als sie manch­mal erschei­nen, und teil­wei­se noch im Ent­ste­hen befind­lich sind. Mir geht es vor allem dar­um, einen Blick auf etwas zu wer­fen, was ich als aktu­el­len Trend in Sci­ence Fic­tion (und ein­ge­schränkt: Fan­ta­sy) wahrnehme.

Cyberpunk und Globalisierung – vergangene Katastrophen

Dass die Welt ziem­lich am Ende ist – und dass Sci­ence Fic­tion dar­auf reagiert, ist nun aller­dings nicht ganz neu. Umwelt­ka­ta­stro­phen, das Ver­sa­gen der kapi­ta­lis­ti­schen Moder­ne und die Block­kon­fron­ta­ti­on im Kal­ten Krieg der 1970er Jah­re fin­den sich nicht nur bei Ursu­la Le Guin (ihre ambi­va­len­te Uto­pie The Dis­pos­s­es­sed fei­ert gera­de das 50. Jubi­lä­um), son­dern bei­spiels­wei­se auch in den Roma­nen von John Brun­ner. Stand on Zan­zi­bar ist von 1968, The Sheep Look Up von 1972 und The Shock­wa­ve Rider erschien 1975 – alle drei the­ma­ti­sie­ren damals und teil­wei­se heu­te zen­tra­le poli­ti­sche Fra­gen im Gewand der Sci­ence Fiction.

Am nächs­ten Tief­punkt, aus der No-Future-Stim­mung der 1980er Jah­re, erwächst Cyber­punk als eine lite­ra­ri­sche Bewe­gung. Wil­liam Gib­sons Neu­ro­man­cer als Arche­typ des Sub­gen­res erscheint 1984: eine düs­te­re, durch­di­gi­ta­li­sier­te Welt, in der über­mäch­ti­ge Kon­zer­ne auf der einen Sei­te und Hacker und Out­laws auf der Stra­ße auf der ande­ren Sei­te ste­hen. Das Label ist noch etwas älter. Bereits 1983 ver­öf­fent­licht Bruce Beth­ke eine Kurz­ge­schich­te unter dem Titel „Cyber­punk“.

Die von Bruce Ster­ling her­aus­ge­ge­be­ne zen­tra­le Antho­lo­gie Mir­ror­s­ha­des erblick­te 1986 das Licht der Welt. Im Vor­wort beschreibt Ster­ling die Autor:innen des Cyber­punk als Grup­pe, die im Aus­tausch unter­ein­an­der das Sub­gen­re erschaf­fen hat; den Nukle­us bil­de­ten – so Ster­ling – Gib­son, Rucker, Shi­ner, Shir­ley und er selbst. Er grenzt Cyber­punk von der Gegen­kul­tur der 1960er Jah­re ab. Die­se war „rural, roman­ti­ci­zed, anti-sci­ence, anti-tech“. Dem gegen­über setzt Cyber­punk sich mit der Tech­nik der 1980er Jah­re aus­ein­an­der. Ster­ling nennt als Bei­spie­le den Walk­man, den Per­so­nal­com­pu­ter, das trag­ba­re Tele­fon – Tech­nik, die nah am Kör­per ist, für die, mit Gib­son, die Stra­ße ihre eige­ne Ver­wen­dung fin­det, die gehackt wer­den kann und wei­ter zu Pro­the­sen und Gehirn-Inter­faces gedacht wer­den kann. Der lite­ra­ri­sche Zugriff auf die­se Tech­no­lo­gien ver­bin­det sich mit der nun eben nicht mehr tech­nik­feind­li­chen Gegen­kul­tur und Pop­kul­tur der 1980er Jah­re. Cyber­punk braucht eine glo­ba­li­sier­te Welt als Kulis­se und erkun­det deren Unterseite. 

Aber eigent­lich war Cyber­punk als Gen­re schon 1986 wie­der vor­bei. Alle zen­tra­len Autor:innen beweg­ten sich in unter­schied­li­che Rich­tun­gen davon. (Im Kon­text die­ses Arti­kels inter­es­sant dürf­te der nicht beson­ders erfolg­rei­che Ver­such von Ster­ling sein, 1998 mit dem Viri­di­an Design Move­ment eine Bewe­gung ins Leben zu rufen, die öko­lo­gi­sche Fra­gen und eine fort­schritt­li­che Hal­tung zu Tech­no­lo­gie zusam­men­denkt – 2008 been­det Ster­ling den Ver­such. Lite­ra­risch taucht die­se tech­no-öko­lo­gi­sche Hal­tung in sei­nen Büchern Hea­vy Wea­ther (1994), Holy Fire (1996) und ins­be­son­de­re Dis­trac­tion (1998) auf.) 

Cyber­punk ist tot, auch wenn die Ästhe­tik wei­ter­lebt. Tro­pen und Memes blei­ben. Cyber­punk ist im kul­tu­rel­len Gedächt­nis ver­an­kert, hat spä­tes­tens mit der Matrix-Film­se­rie den Sprung in den Main­stream geschafft und kann nicht nur refe­ren­ziert, son­dern gege­be­nen­falls auch neu belebt wer­den kann. Mir fällt dazu Aiki Miras Neon­grau von 2022 ein. Mira schafft hier ein Ham­burg, das so sehr 2020 schreit, wie Gib­sons Tokyo ein Tokyo von 1980 war. Miras Ham­burg nimmt das zen­tra­le Ele­ment des Cyber­punk – Unter­grund und Stra­ße, High­tech und vir­tu­el­le Wel­ten – und aktua­li­siert die­se für die Gegenwart.

Eine wei­te­re Hin­ter­las­sen­schaft der Cyber­punk-Bewe­gung ist das Suf­fix „-punk“, das viel­fäl­tig ver­wen­det wird. Zwi­schen Atom­punk, Die­sel­punk oder Bio­punk dürf­te aber „Steam­punk“ – eben­falls bereits in den 1980er Jah­ren als Ver­weis auf den Cyber­punk geprägt – das ein­zi­ge Label sein, dem bis dato eine umfang­rei­che­re Zahl an Wer­ken zuge­ord­net wer­den kann. 

Von Cyberpunk zu Solarpunk

Jetzt also Solar­punk, Hope­punk und irgend­wo dane­ben oder dazwi­schen cozy SF&F. Solar­punk betritt 2008 die Büh­ne, so beschreibt es jeden­falls der Ein­trag in der Ency­clo­pe­dia of Sci­ence Fic­tion – zunächst ein­mal nicht als lite­ra­ri­sches Gen­re, son­dern als Idee in einem Blog­post im Blog „Repu­blic of the Bees“. Als Auf­hän­ger wählt der Autor zum einen eine Pres­se­mit­tei­lung zu Con­tai­ner­schif­fen, die von Dra­chen (also dem Flug­ge­rät, nicht dem Fabel­we­sen) statt von Schiffs­schrau­ben ange­trie­ben wer­den, zum ande­ren das Gen­re des „Steam­punk“. Steam­punk beschreibt er als Lite­ra­tur, in der alter­na­ti­ve Zukünf­te erzählt wer­den, in denen nicht auf Öl, son­dern gut vik­to­ria­nisch auf Koh­le und Dampf gesetzt wird, und in die dann moder­ne Tech­no­lo­gien oder „modern, cyni­cal atti­tu­des towards govern­ment, capi­ta­lism, and tra­di­tio­nal mora­li­ty“ ein­ge­fügt wer­den. Solar­punk wird dem­entspre­chend als Lite­ra­tur defi­niert, in der – kon­tra­fak­tisch oder tat­säch­lich – sola­re Ener­gie­trä­ger an die Stel­le von Koh­le, Öl und Gas rücken. Gleich­zei­tig wird es dadurch not­wen­dig, alte Tech­no­lo­gien (hier: das Segel­schiff) in moder­nem Gewand neu zu den­ken (das wind­kraft­be­trie­be­ne Containerschiff). 

Der Blog­au­tor hofft, dass er – anders als beim Steam­punk – eines Tages tat­säch­lich in einer Solar­punk-Welt leben wird. Gleich­zei­tig weist er dar­auf hin – und gibt damit eine gewis­se Legi­ti­ma­ti­on für den „Punk“-Teil des Wor­tes – dass der Wan­del hin zu einer sol­chen Welt nicht ohne poli­ti­sche Kon­flik­te ablau­fen wird. Er ver­mu­tet, dass „some serious poli­ti­cal fights bet­ween the good citi­zens of the world and the cor­rupt forces who will ine­vi­ta­b­ly attempt to sabo­ta­ge the tran­si­ti­on for their own per­so­nal gain“ statt­fin­den wer­den oder erzählt wer­den müs­sen. Da wäre dann der Rück­be­zug zum „Stra­ße gegen Groß­kon­zern“ des Cyber­punk (und ver­mit­telt auch des Steam­punk). Und wäh­rend in dem kur­zen Blog­post zwar diver­se Tech­no­lo­gien benannt wer­den, klingt doch durch, dass eine Poli­tik einer refor­me­ri­schen öko­lo­gi­schen Moder­ni­sie­rung nicht genügt. Hier liegt mög­li­cher­wei­se auch eine Soll­bruch­stel­le zwi­schen Solar­punk und dem Teil von Cli­ma­te Fic­tion, die sich nicht auf die Beschrei­bung des Unter­gangs allei­ne fokus­siert, son­dern Lösun­gen anbie­ten möchte.

Als mög­li­ches lite­ra­ri­sches Bei­spiel für Solar­punk nennt der Blog­au­tor in der „Repu­blic of Bees“ Nor­man Spin­rads Songs from the Stars aus dem Jahr 1985, in dem – so jeden­falls die Beschrei­bun­gen, ich habe die­ses Buch selbst nicht gele­sen – eine post­apo­ka­lyp­ti­sche Zivi­li­sa­ti­on auf Mus­kel­kraft, Wind und Son­ne setzt. 

2008 ist also der Begriff Solar­punk in der Welt, und es kann damit ange­fan­gen wer­den, retro­spek­tiv einen Kanon zu schaf­fen. Neue Solar­punk-Lite­ra­tur gibt es zu die­sem Zeit­punkt noch nicht. Was sich aller­dings sehr schnell ent­wi­ckelt, ist eine Solar­punk-Ästhe­tik, die der dys­to­pi­schen Neon­welt des Cyber­punk Bil­der von sanf­ten Hügel­land­schaf­ten mit Wind­rä­dern, Solar­zel­len und Do-It-Yours­elf-Hüt­ten­dör­fer ent­ge­gen­setzt. Das ist der Hin­ter­grund, vor dem Geschich­ten erzählt wer­den kön­nen: vom Zusam­men­halt in Gemein­schaf­ten, vom gemein­sa­men Tun, vom erfolg­rei­chen Kampf und von den Kon­flik­ten inner­halb einer Solarpunk-Gesellschaft. 

Wäh­rend eine Rei­he von Büchern (auch Ernest Cal­len­bachs Eco­to­pia, 1975, Le Guins Always Coming Home, 1985, oder Kim Stan­ley Robin­sons Paci­fic Edge aus dem Jahr 1990) rück­bli­ckend in das jun­ge Gen­re ein­sor­tiert wer­den kön­nen, ent­ste­hen neu zunächst eine gan­ze Rei­he von Kurz­ge­schich­ten unter­schied­li­cher Qua­li­tät. Die Sam­mel­bän­de Solar­punk: his­tóri­as ecoló­gi­cas e fan­tá­sti­cas em um mun­do sus­ten­táv! (2013), her­aus­ge­ge­ben von Ger­son Lodi-Ribei­ro, Sunvault (2017), her­aus­ge­ge­ben von Phoe­be War­ner Bron­të und Chris­to­pher Wie­land, sowie Glass and Gar­dens: Solar­punk Sum­mers (2018) und Glass and Gar­dens: Solar­punk Win­ters (2020), bei­de von Sare­na Uli­bar­ri her­aus­ge­ge­ben, brin­gen eini­ge die­ser Geschich­ten zusam­men. Zudem gibt es eini­ge spe­zia­li­sier­te Zines, etwa das Solar­punk Maga­zi­ne oder die Web­site solarpunks.net/.

Den­noch bleibt Solar­punk ein Kno­ten­punkt eines sich noch fin­den­den Gen­res. Auch die Ency­clo­pe­dia of Sci­ence Fic­tion tut sich schwer mit einer Definition. 

Solarpunk’s gro­wing popu­la­ri­ty can be seen as an oppo­sing force to Cyber­punk, which typi­cal­ly por­trays dys­to­pian socie­ties in which tech­no­lo­gi­cal pro­gress has an inver­se cor­re­la­ti­on with living stan­dards, and the influence of mega-cor­po­ra­ti­ons has divi­ded com­mu­ni­ties and redu­ced the auto­no­my of indi­vi­du­als. […] Solar­punk, howe­ver, does not requi­re its aut­hors to depict the harnes­sing of solar power. While one typi­cal model for an sf sto­ry is to stretch con­tem­po­ra­ry pro­blems to night­ma­rish pro­por­ti­ons („if this goes on …“), Solar­punk advo­ca­tes for the oppo­si­te. It takes solu­ti­ons to radi­cal con­clu­si­ons, be they brea­king civi­liza­ti­on down into com­mu­nes, rest­ric­ting popu­la­ti­on growth (see Over­po­pu­la­ti­on), or buil­ding Dys­on Sphe­res. It is a rebel­li­on against a rebel­li­on, born out of dys­to­pia fatigue.

Eine recht umfang­rei­che – und trotz Offen­heit für ganz unter­schied­li­che Wege zu einer bes­se­ren Zukunft recht bekennt­nis­las­ti­ge – Eigen­de­fi­ni­ti­on mit 22 Punk­ten fin­det sich im A Solar­punk Mani­festo. „Punk“ heißt hier: gegen den Main­stream, für Rebel­li­on, Deko­lo­nia­li­sie­rung und Enthu­si­as­mus, Sci­ence Fic­tion wird als eine Form des Akti­vis­mus beschrie­ben und mög­li­che ästhe­ti­sche Aus­for­mun­gen (Ori­en­tie­rung­punk­te: 1800, Art Deco und Jugend­stil, ange­pass­te Tech­no­lo­gie und Stu­dio Ghi­b­li) dar­ge­legt. Die 22 Punk­te des Mani­festo umfas­sen auch Nach­hal­tig­keit, öko­lo­gi­sche Gerech­tig­keit, eine Ko-Exis­tenz von Spi­ri­tua­li­tät und Wis­sen­schaft, Suf­fi­zi­enz, die fuß­gän­ger­freund­li­che Stadt und die Wie­der­ver­wer­tung von alten Mate­ria­li­en. Zudem wird auf die Wech­sel­wir­kung zwi­schen Sci­ence Fic­tion und Poli­tik hingewiesen.

Wört­lich genom­men redu­ziert das Mani­festo Solar­punk auf ein didak­ti­sches Tool, um eine bestimm­te Vor­stel­lung einer opti­mis­ti­schen, von unten her gewach­se­nen öko­lo­gi­schen Zukunft zu ver­brei­ten. Gleich­zei­tig machen sich eini­ge Men­schen in die­sem Umfeld Sor­gen, dass ein Auf­grei­fen der Solar­punk-Ideen durch „den Main­stream“ zu einem „Green­wa­shing“ füh­ren könn­te. Also lie­ber kein Solar­punk-Block­bus­ter, kein über­all dis­ku­tier­ter Roman? 

Wie weit Sci­ence Fic­tion nach­hal­ti­ge Zukünf­te vor­an­brin­gen kann, war auch auf der World­con in Glas­gow The­ma. Neben diver­sen Panels zu Sus­taina­bi­li­ty und SF gab es meh­re­re, die sich kon­kret mit Solar­punk aus­ein­an­der­ge­setzt haben. Auch dort über­wog zumin­dest bei mir aber der Ein­druck, dass eini­ge Solar­punk ger­ne als Vehi­kel nut­zen wür­den, um eine ganz bestimm­te Vor­stel­lung einer öko­lo­gi­schen Zukunft pro­pa­gan­dis­tisch zu ver­brei­ten, wäh­rend ande­re dar­un­ter eher sowas wie „öko – aber in cool“ ver­stan­den, und auf eine bestimm­te Ästhe­tik setz­ten. Geht es dar­um, Hoff­nung zu ver­kau­fen oder dar­um, die Zukunft zu deko­lo­nia­li­sie­ren? Soll das herr­schen­de Nar­ra­tiv ver­än­dert wer­den, oder ist’s in der Nische unter Gleich­ge­sinn­ten auch ganz ange­nehm? Das sind Debat­ten, die ich aus poli­ti­schen Zusam­men­hän­gen ken­ne – und mög­li­cher­wei­se ist es eine poli­ti­sche Über­frach­tung, mit der sich Solar­punk gera­de selbst ein Bein stellt.

Inter­es­se an dem The­ma war und ist jeden­falls da, die Panels fan­den in vol­len Räu­men statt, und zumin­dest ein­zel­ne Aspek­te tauch­ten auch an ganz ande­ren Stel­len wie­der auf.

Cyber­punk war ein Begriff, der als Label für eine bestimm­tes Sub­gen­re ver­wen­det wur­de und erst danach zu einer ver­all­ge­mei­ner­ten und all­ge­mein refe­ren­zier­ba­ren Ästhe­tik wur­de. Gleich­zei­tig waren die trei­ben­den Kräf­te des Sub­gen­res lite­ra­risch inspi­riert (v.a. von der New Wave der 1960er Jah­re) und inter­es­siert dar­an, gute Geschich­ten zu schrei­ben – mit gemein­sa­men The­men, mit ähn­li­chen Moti­ven und Bil­dern, aber ohne Check­lis­te und ohne poli­ti­schen Überbau. 

Kein Manifest, aber dafür Anschlussfähigkeit: Cozy SF&F und Hopepunk

Mög­li­cher­wei­se ist Solar­punk zu eng gefasst. Auf der World­con kur­sier­te der Begriff „Hope­punk“ als Gegen­pol zu „Grim­dark“ in der Fan­ta­sy-Lite­ra­tur, als düs­te­ren, von Intri­gen durch­drun­ge­nen Wel­ten im Nie­der­gang; im Bereich der Sci­ence-Fic­tion passt „Dys­to­pie“ ver­mut­lich bes­ser, um ähn­li­ches zu beschrei­ben wie „Grim­dark“ in der Fan­ta­sy. „Hope­punk“ wur­de 2017 von Alex­an­dra Row­land geprägt. Und auch hier geht es eher um eine bestimm­te Ästhe­tik, um Nied­lich­keit und Hoff­nung, und zugleich ste­hen stär­ker noch als beim Solar­punk steht Gemein­schaft und Zusam­men­halt im Mit­tel­punkt. Ales­san­dra Reß bringt es bei TOR auf den Punkt, dass bei allen Bezug zu Bie­der­mei­er und Nied­lich­keit eben nicht Self-Care im Mit­tel­punkt steht, son­dern „viel­mehr ‚World­ca­re‘ – und die ist weit ent­fernt von Resi­gna­ti­on und Weltflucht.“

Wäh­rend es bei Solar­punk eine Bewe­gung, ein Mani­fest, viel­leicht auch meh­re­re, und eine star­ke prä­skrip­ti­ve poli­ti­sche Auf­la­dung gibt, scheint mir Hope­punk – trotz aller Ähn­lich­kei­ten – offe­ner gefasst zu sein. Es geht schlicht dar­um, Mensch­lich­keit in den Vor­der­grund der Geschich­ten zu stel­len – und zu zei­gen, dass und wie „taking action“ (im Sin­ne von „Punk“) mög­lich ist, um das hinzukriegen. 

Hier liegt dann wohl die Dif­fe­renz zu „cozy“, also Geschich­ten, die ohne Mord und Tot­schlag aus­kom­men, mög­li­cher­wei­se sogar ohne roman­ti­sche Kon­flik­te, und Wohl­fühl­ge­schich­ten erzäh­len. Auch sol­che Tex­te haben eine Funk­ti­on. Gera­de – Stich­wort: Space Ope­ra und Eska­pis­mus – in düs­te­ren Zei­ten sind Geschich­ten, in denen Pro­ble­me klein und Zukünf­te hoff­nungs­froh sind, eine wich­ti­ge Res­sour­ce. Ganz ohne Hand­lung kom­men die wenigs­ten Geschich­ten aus, auch cozy SF&F braucht Her­aus­for­de­run­gen und Kon­flik­te, um eine Geschich­te erzäh­len zu kön­nen. Aber die Welt muss nicht geret­tet werden.

Hope­punk dage­gen braucht ein „Wir“ und dann doch ein grö­ße­res, akti­vis­ti­sches Ziel, einen Kon­flikt, der über das Innen­le­ben einer Gemein­schaft hin­aus­geht, oder einen ent­spre­chen­den Gegen­spie­ler. Das wäre jeden­falls mein Ver­such, Row­lands Bemer­kun­gen zu „Punk“ in „Hope­punk“ ein­zu­ord­nen. Also: Sci­ence Fic­tion bzw. Fan­ta­sy, in denen eine mensch­li­che Hal­tung gewinnt – nicht weil sie per se bes­ser ist, son­dern weil sie aktiv gemein­sam gegen Wider­stän­de durch­ge­setzt wird, ohne zynisch zu werden.

Bei­de die­ses Jahr mit dem Hugo aus­ge­zeich­ne­ten Geschich­ten von Nao­mi Krit­zer („Bet­ter living through algo­rith­ms“ und „The year wit­hout suns­hi­ne“) wür­de ich in die­ses Feld einordnen.

Neben Becky Cham­bers – deren bei­den Monk-and-Robot-Novel­len wohl expli­zit als Solar­punk beauf­tragt wur­den, und deren Way­fa­rer-Serie irgend­wo zwi­schen cozy und Hope­punk liegt – fal­len mir eine gan­ze Rei­he neue­rer Roma­ne ein, die für mich in die­ses Spek­trum passen:

Cory Doc­to­rows Wal­ka­way (2018) in einem futu­ris­ti­sche­rem Set­ting, mehr noch sein The Lost Cau­se (2023) in einer Zukunft, die sich sehr nah anfühlt. Doc­to­row gelingt es hier her­vor­ra­gend – ähn­lich wie bei Krit­zer in „The year wit­hout suns­hi­ne“ – das Gefühl zu ver­mit­teln, das sich aus erfolg­rei­chem Akti­vis­mus und dadurch neu gefun­de­nem Zusam­men­halt ergibt. Mög­li­cher­wei­se ist die­ses Gefühl Essenz des­sen, was Hope­punk ausmacht.

Rut­han­na Emrys A Half-Built Gar­den (2022) spielt in den 2080er Jah­ren und ist einer­seits eine First-Cont­act-Geschich­te, ande­rer­seits aber eben auch ein sehr gut erzähl­tes Buch über Mensch­lich­keit, Hoff­nung und eine solar­pun­ki­ge Tech­no­lo­gie, die dies unter­stützt. (Und auch ihre Inns­mouth-Lega­cy-Serie – die Love­craft von der ande­ren Sei­te zeigt – könn­te in die Kate­go­rie Hope­punk fallen). 

L.X. Beckett erzählt in Game­ch­an­ger (2019) und Dealb­rea­k­er (2021) von einer Zukunft etwa eine Gene­ra­ti­on nach dem gro­ßen Zusam­men­bruch durch Kli­ma­kri­se etc. – ent­spre­chend ste­hen der Wie­der­auf­bau und die Erneue­rung öko­lo­gi­sche Kreis­läu­fe im Vor­der­grund. Die Bounce­back-Gene­ra­ti­on ver­kör­pert ent­spre­chen­de Wer­te, ist akti­vis­tisch und prosozial. 

Immer wie­der wer­den auch Ter­ry Prat­chetts Bücher als Bei­spie­le für Hope­punk genannt – gera­de für die Tif­fa­ny-Aching-Roma­ne fin­de ich das durch­aus nach­voll­zieh­bar. Hier sind wir dann aber erneut im Feld der retro­ak­ti­ven Gen­re-Zuschrei­bung – und auch Le Guins The Dis­pos­s­es­sed (1974) oder eini­ge der oben genann­ten Wer­ke von Kim Stan­ley Robin­son lie­ßen sich eben­falls gut nennen. 

Veränderte Narrative

Inso­fern mag das Bedürf­nis, nicht nur über düs­te­re Zukünf­te zu schrei­ben und War­nun­gen an die Wand zu malen, son­dern zu zei­gen, wie wich­tig Mensch­lich­keit, Empa­thie und gemein­schaft­li­ches Han­deln sind, um etwas zu errei­chen, kei­ne ganz neue Erschei­nung sein – mit oder ohne poli­ti­sche Pro­gram­ma­tik als Überbau. 

Den­noch lässt sich fest­stel­len, dass die­ser Aspekt von Sci­ence Fic­tion und Fan­ta­sy in den letz­ten Jah­ren wie­der stär­ker in der Vor­der­grund tritt. Wenn Sci­ence Fic­tion in die­sen Zei­ten mit Hil­fe nähe­rer und fer­ne­rer Zukünf­te erleb­bar macht, was mensch­li­che aus­macht, dann auch des­we­gen, weil die­se Hal­tung und ent­spre­chen­de Vor­bil­der heu­te drin­gend gebraucht werden.

Ob Sci­ence Fic­tion Poli­tik – oder min­des­tens die Wis­sen­schaft und die Tech­no­lo­gie­ent­wick­lung – beein­flusst, ist strit­tig. Poli­tik greift jedoch auf Bil­der und Ideen zurück, die da sind. Inso­fern spielt es eine Rol­le, wel­che Geschich­ten erzählt wer­den, und wel­che Ästhe­ti­ken prä­sent sind.

Cyber­punk hat es geschafft, eine düs­te­re Ästhe­tik im kol­lek­ti­ven Gedächt­nis zu ver­an­kern. Das ist des­we­gen gelun­gen, weil die­se Geschich­ten, weil die­se Ästhe­tik einen bestimm­ten Zeit­geist ange­spro­chen haben, ein Echo her­vor­ge­ru­fen haben. 

Ich möch­te glau­ben, dass wir in Zei­ten leben, in denen her­vor­ra­gen­de Hope­punk-Roma­ne mit ihrer sozi­al­psy­cho­lo­gi­schen Tie­fen­struk­tur (und von mir aus auch mit einer solar­pun­ki­gen Ästhe­tik) ein Bedürf­nis erfül­len und das Zeug dazu haben, zu kol­lek­ti­ven Anker­punk­ten zu wer­den. Viel­leicht ist das Gegen­stück zum Neu­ro­man­cer noch nicht geschrie­ben oder noch nicht über­setzt wor­den; viel­leicht ist es auch unnö­tig, auf den einen gro­ßen Roman zu set­zen. Ver­satz­stü­cke von Solar­punk und Hope­punk fin­den sich in vie­len Tex­ten, Bil­dern und auch in Seri­en und Fil­men, kur­sie­ren auf Tumb­lr und Insta­gram. Viel­leicht reicht das aus, um eine sol­che Ästhe­tik zu ver­an­kern. Zu hof­fen wäre es.

#aikiMira #alexandraRowland #beckyChambers #bruceSterling #coryDoctorow #cozySf #cyberpunk #ernestCallenbach #fantasy #grimdark #hopepunk #kapitalismus #kimStanleyRobinson #klimakrise #lxBeckett #naomiKritzer #normanSpinrad #politikUndSf #ruthannaEmrys #scienceFiction #sf #solarpunk #spaceOpera #steampunk #terryPratchett #ursulaKLeGuin #williamGibson #worldcon

https://wp.me/pMy5G-31p

20 books that have had an impact on who you are. One book a day for 20 days. No explanations, no reviews, just book covers (don't forget the alt text).

13/20

#20Books20Days #Bookstodon #Books #SciFi #RedMars #KimStanleyRobinson

Coyote, a stowaway on the spaceship Ares that brought the First Hundred to Mars, was a prominent figure of the underground resistance in #KimStanleyRobinson's #MarsTrilogy.

Here we see one of his hideouts, on the other side of the Neretva Vallis riverbank 🙃 🤣

#FreeAssociation

Processed MCZ_LEFT, FL: 110mm
looking NW (319°) from RMC 51.2390
Sol 1109, LMST: 11:47:39

Original: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020-raw-images/pub/ods/surface/sol/01109/ids/edr/browse/zcam/ZL0_1109_0765388746_706EBY_N0512390ZCAM09130_1100LMJ01.png
Credit: #NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/65dBnoise

#KSR #SciFi #Perseverance #Mars2020 #Solarocks #Space

I'm proud to present my #review of #kimStanleyRobinson 's #theMinistryForTheFuture : https://alxd.org/ministry-for-the-future-review.html#ministry-for-the-future-review

Be warned, it's a #longRead !

After three long years of struggling with the book and analyzing it I finally put my thoughts into a coherent blogpost. I never expected the Ministry to be #solarpunk , but I hoped that it will paint a future to look forward to.

#books #literature #climateFiction #climate #future #futurism #sustainability #blockchain #globalSouth #carbonCoin #parody

Imagine this isn't #Perseverance but something 10 times bigger and centuries later, and the operation isn't abrading a rock for science, but surface mining Mars for profit. Is that #SciFi? Or is it just the ugly future for Mars?

Processed, leveled, cropped FRONT_HAZCAM_LEFT_A
looking N (10°) from RMC 50.1618
Sol 1080, LMST: 12:50:23

Original: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020-raw-images/pub/ods/surface/sol/01080/ids/edr/browse/fcam/FLF_1080_0762818163_942ECM_N0501618FHAZ00215_04_090J01.png
Credit: #NASA/JPL-Caltech/65dBnoise

#AnnClayborn #KimStanleyRobinson #KSR #Mars2020 #Solarocks #Space

48 timer i Massachusetts-havet

Det har regnet meget på det sidste. Bevidstheden om en verden i forandring synes at strømme ned over én og op gennem fodsålerne. Det gjorde “48 timer i Massachusetts-havet” til en lidt deprimerende bog at læse, for hvis der er én ting, som går igen, så er det havene, der stiger og stiger og lader den gamle verden forsvinde.

“48 timer i Massachusetts-havet” er en antologi med 14 science fiction-noveller, som SFC har udgivet, og de er allerede på forsiden betegnet som klimafiktioner. Bag den forside gemmer sig en perlerække af navne, som Kim Stanley Robinson, Lavie Tidhar, Ken Liu og Pat Murphy – det alene burde være nok til at kaste sig over bogen. Men navne er ikke nok … og heldigvis er indholdet også godt.

Det er nærliggende at sammenligne antologien her (fra 2021) med Solarpunk, der udkom sidste år – faktisk er termen hopepunk også nævnt på bagsiden, så der er et ret tydeligt slægtskab. Denne spreder sig dog lidt mere i behandlingen af emnet – historierne foregår både før og efter katastrofen, og flere af dem tager også den mere teknologisk mindede tilgang, som var fraværende i Solarpunk. Men begge har en tendens til at se verden som noget, der fortsætter, på godt og ondt, også selv om det samfund, læseren kender, er gået under.

Men derudover er det nok uretfærdigt at sammenligne de to, for det er genreveteraner, der står for denne omgang.

“48 timer i Massachusetts-havet” hører til på listen over bøger, man skal have fat i, hvis man læser science fiction på dansk – og jeg kunne godt håbe, at den også havde på nogle klimafiktionslister, for det er spændende visioner og gode historier, der præsenteres.

Det er Niels Dalgaard og Lise Andreasen, der har udvalgt historierne, mens Dalgaard har oversat og leveret efterord.

#antologier #CamilleAlexa #CarrieVaughn #CatharynneMValente #DanielThron #JeanLouisTrudel #KimStanleyRobinson #Klima #LavieTidhar #MitchSullivan #NicoleFeldringer #PatMurphy #PaulDoherty #SamJMiller #scienceFiction #SeanWilliams

https://superkultur.dk/2024/02/15/48-timer-i-massachusetts-havet/

I've finished Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. I can see why it is regarded as a classic, but it is very dated (fax machines in the future!) and it goes on too long.
Here is my #Review https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/f09d15dd-bedf-41d5-89d9-15a6855b7cc1

#scifi #sciencefiction #RedMars #KimStanleyRobinson #books #bookstodon #classic

Wasn't there some talk a while ago about possibly turning #KimStanleyRobinson 's #MarsTrilogy into a tv series?

What's happening with that then? 'Cause I'd be all up in that business like a toddler wolfing chocolate pudding.

#SciFi #ScienceFiction

Rezension: »Das Ministerium für die Zukuft«
Nachdem ich schon mehrfach gehört hatte, dass man »Das Ministerium für die Zukunft« unbedingt lesen sollte, habe ich mir Kim Stanley Robinsons Roman nun auch endlich mal zu Gemüte geführt.

Und ich muss zugeben, dass es ein wirklich beeindruckender Roman ist, der einem zudem zu denken gibt. Sehr vie
https://lass-den-wookie-gewinnen.de/2023/12/07/rezension-das-ministerium-fuer-die-zukuft/
#Allgemein #Heyne #KimStanleyRobinson #Rezension

The Tyee: Astra Taylor: We Need Each Other, and Our Time Is Now https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2023/10/24/Astra-Taylor-We-Need-Each-Other/ #bcnews #TheTyee - via @[email protected] #ThePeople’sPlatform:TakingBackPowerandCultureintheDigitalAge #TheAgeofInsecurity:ComingTogetherasThingsFallApart #DemocracyMayNotExist,butWe’llMissItWhenIt’sGone #ExaminedLifedocumentary #TheMinistryfortheFuture #enclosureofthecommons #AuroraLevinsMorales #CharteroftheForest #HouseofAnansiPress #KimStanleyRobinson #CBCIdeas

The first (re)programming #podcast episode is out!

Listen to tech journalist #MartaPeirano and one of today’s most beloved sci-fi writers and a prominent exponent of climate fiction #KimStanleyRobinson discuss what does it take to change the future.

https://aksioma.org/podcast

#aksioma #tacticspractice #kons

The 10th edition of #tacticspractice in 2021 saw writer & tech journalist #MartaPeirano conduct a festival of conversations titled (re)programming: Strategies for Self-Renewal.

These discussions have now been adapted into a #podcast series. First episode airs tomorrow! 🤩

🎧 Tune in at https://aksioma.org/podcast

w/ #MartaPeirano #KimStanleyRobinson #BenjaminBratton #HollyJeanBuck #AnabJain #KateCrawford #JoanaMoll #AstraTaylor #EyalWeizman & special guests

#aksioma #podcast #kons

The 10th edition of #tacticspractice in 2021 saw writer & tech journalist #MartaPeirano conduct a festival of conversations titled (re)programming: Strategies for Self-Renewal.

These discussions have now been adapted into a #podcast series. First episode airs tomorrow! 🤩

🎧 Tune in at https://aksioma.org/podcast

w/ #MartaPeirano #KimStanleyRobinson #BenjaminBratton #HollyJeanBuck #AnabJain #KateCrawford #JoanaMoll #AstraTaylor #EyalWeizman & special guests

#aksioma #podcast #kons

The 10th edition of #tacticspractice in 2021 saw writer & tech journalist #MartaPeirano conduct a festival of conversations titled (re)programming: Strategies for Self-Renewal.

These discussions have now been adapted into a #podcast series. First episode airs tomorrow! 🤩

🎧 Tune in at https://aksioma.org/podcast

w/ #MartaPeirano #KimStanleyRobinson #BenjaminBratton #HollyJeanBuck #AnabJain #KateCrawford #JoanaMoll #AstraTaylor #EyalWeizman & special guests

#aksioma #podcast #kons

Robotter, skyggeskibe og spøgelsesmusik

Himmelskibet er nedlagt, men som sådan en nervøs refleks fortsætter jeg med at lave lister over ny fantastik på dansk. Og hvorfor så ikke, tænkte jeg, i det mindste udstille nogle af de nye værker, som havner i min personlige sky af potentielle læseoplevelser.

Derfor: nye udgivelser fra september (eller: som er optaget i Dansk Bogfortegnelse i september), der […]

#AlexanderWeinstein #AnYu #AnneEekhout #GyrðirElíasson #KimStanleyRobinson #LaurentBinet #MadsBrynnum #MargaretAtwood #MarianaEnriquez #RichardCorben #SalmanRushdie #SinusReuss

https://superkultur.dk/2023/10/03/robotter-skyggeskibe-og-spoegelsesmusik/

For #KimStanleyRobinson fans, and everybody else:

Astrodynamicist, professor and National Geographic Explorer Moriba Jah joins renowned science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson in a discussion about space environmentalism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI45y5Z3pBQ

For space fans:
Wanna see satellites and junk orbiting Earth right now, live?
Here is an online tool Moriba Jah developed:
https://wayfinder.privateer.com/

#SpaceEnvironment #KSR #Solarocks #Space

This may be a shot in the dark, but I might be writing an essay about the 7th generation social discount rate concept from #theministryforthefuture by #kimstanleyrobinson and I’m looking for interesting people to interview. Any recommendations? #intergenerationaljustice #climatechange #economics #discountrate #moralphilosophy

#InterestGraph - #Introduction

#Books: @[email protected]

#ScienceFiction #Fantasy #SolarPunk #Cyberpunk #Classics

#TerryPratchett #StanisławLem #UrsulaKLeGuin #NaomiNovik #AnnaleeNewitz #KatherineAddison
#SeananMcGuire #IainMBanks #TamsynMuir #SarahGailey #SarahReesBrennan #BeckyChambers #TKingfisher #MarthaWells #AlixEHarrow #CatValente #ArkadyMartine #WilliamGibson #BruceSterling #NKJemisin #AmalElMohtar #MaxGladstone #MurLafferty #KimStanleyRobinson #JamesSACorey #PeterWatts

#InterestGraph - #Introduction

#Books: @[email protected]

#ScienceFiction #Fantasy #SolarPunk #Cyberpunk #Classics

#TerryPratchett #StanisławLem #UrsulaKLeGuin #NaomiNovik #AnnaleeNewitz #KatherineAddison
#SeananMcGuire #IainMBanks #TamsynMuir #SarahGailey #SarahReesBrennan #BeckyChambers #TKingfisher #MarthaWells #AlixEHarrow #CatValente #ArkadyMartine #WilliamGibson #BruceSterling #NKJemisin #AmalElMohtar #MaxGladstone #MurLafferty #KimStanleyRobinson #JamesSACorey #PeterWatts