Category: Sci-fi

Nunivak Snowflakes — Alastair Reynolds

By 5t4n5

Nunivak Snowflakes -- Alastair ReynoldsYou’ll find this in the anthology, Deep Navigation.

Messages from the future found inside fish falling from the sky landing in front of the person the message was meant for.

Basically, someone from the future is being naughty and messing with the past in an indigenous community in Alaska.

Other than The Big Hello, of which i have no idea when published, this is Alastair’s first published story.   So it’s very early Alastair Reynolds, so don’t be expecting Revelation Space or anything like it.

But it’s a reasonable, quirky, little read that’ll keep you happily ensconced in you favourite reading pit for a while.

Alastair’s Page

#scifi #alastairreynolds

The Big Hello — Alastair Reynolds

By 5t4n5

The Big Hello -- Alastair ReynoldsIt’s listed on Wikipedia without a date, but it’s first in the queue of Alastair’s uncollected short fiction, and it is The Big Hello, afterall, so you may as well read it first if you’re reading all of Alastair’s books: me thinks.

You’ll have to hunt around the internet for this, it was originally published in German translation in a convention program.   But, like most rare things, it’s well worth a bit of a hunt around.

Basically, it’s a greeting from the rest of the galaxy informing us stupid Homo sapiens of a bit of etiquette, manners and how to go about things outside of out little insular bubble.   But, let’s be honest, we all know people like Musk & Co. are going to ignore everything Alastair says and totally fuck it up for the rest of us.

Alastair’s Page

#scifi #alastairreynolds

The Girl who Leapt Through Time — Yasutaka Tsutsui

By 5t4n5

The Girl who Leapt Through Time -- Yasutaka TsutsuiThere’s two short stories in this book and i’ll review each of them separately below.

The Girl who Leapt Through Time

A short while ago i read The Maid, which was my first trip into the writing of Yasutaka, and i thoroughly enjoyed it: so much that i decided to collect every book of his i could find and read them in published order.   And so i began with The Girl who Leapt Through Time from 1967.

What doesn’t get a mention when approaching this book is that it’s a children’s book, i would perhaps place it around 11-12 year old level, so that’s something to bear in mind if you do decide to read it.

So it’s very simple writing and a rather simple story about some children having a bit of a crazy time with time travel and teleportation.   I felt the best thing about this was it’s simplicity in it’s writing because as an adult you don’t have to think about anything and can just breeze along with the story itself, and it’s quite a good little story.

So yeah, i’m more than happy to have come back to Yasutaka’s earliest book that’s so far been translated into English.   Definitely worth a read if you’re a fan of his writing, or if you just want a quick and easy read of some temporal sci-fi.

The Stuff that Nightmares Are Made of

This is quite a different story to the previous one.   Once again, it’s another children’s book, but this time dealing with the theme of repressed trauma manifesting as unexplained fears.

Although it’s a book for children, i do feel that there’s a few things for most adults to learn here as well, especially parents, whose words and actions can create all kinds of unintended consequences for children.

And that’s me done with this book.   The Maid was next in the original publishing time line of Yasutaka’s translated books, but i already read that, so next up will be Paprika, which i hope to get around to reading some time soon as i’m really enjoying Yasutaka’s writing.

Yasutaka’s Page

#japan #scifi #yasutakatsutsui

Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences — Ursula K. Le Guin

By 5t4n5

Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences -- Ursula K. Le Guin

Come Into Animal Presence – 1961 •• poem by Denise Levertov
Buffalo Gals, Won’t You Come Out Tonight – 1987 •• novelette by Ursula K. Le Guin
Three Rock Poems – 1987 •• essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
Flints – 1987 •• poem by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Basalt – 1987 •• poem by Ursula K. Le Guin
Mount St. Helens/Omphalos – 1975 •• poem by Ursula K. Le Guin
“The Wife’s Story” and “Mazes” – 1987 •• essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
Mazes – 1975
The Wife’s Story – 1982
Five Vegetable Poems – 1987 •• essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
Torrey Pines Reserve – 1980 •• poem by Ursula K. Le Guin
Lewis and Clark and After – 1987 •• poem by Ursula K. Le Guin
West Texas – 1987 •• poem by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Crown of Laurel – 1987 •• poem by Ursula K. Le Guin
Xmas Over – 1984 •• poem by Ursula K. Le Guin
“The Direction of the Road” and “Vaster Than Empires and More Slow” – 1987 •• essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
Direction of the Road – 1973
Vaster Than Empires and More Slow – 1971 •• Hainish
Seven Bird and Beast Poems – 1987 •• essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
What is Going on in the Oaks Around the Barn – 1987 •• poem by Ursula K. Le Guin
For Ted – 1975 •• poem by Ursula K. Le Guin
Found Poem – 1987 •• poem by Ursula K. Le Guin
Totem – 1981 •• poem by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Man Eater – 1987 •• poem by Ursula K. Le Guin
Winter Downs – 1981 •• poem by Ursula K. Le Guin
Sleeping Out – 1987 •• poem by Ursula K. Le Guin
“The White Donkey” and “Horse Camp” – 1987 •• essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
The White Donkey – 1980
Horse Camp – 1986
Four Cat Poems – 1987 •• essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
Black Leonard in Negative Space – 1987 •• poem by Ursula K. Le Guin
Tabby Lorenzo – 1987 •• poem by Ursula K. Le Guin
A Conversation with a Silence – 1987 •• poem by Ursula K. Le Guin
For Leonard, Darko, and Burton Watson – 1987 •• poem by Ursula K. Le Guin
“Schrödinger’s Cat” and “The Author of the Acacia Seeds” – 1987 •• essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
Schrödinger’s Cat – 1974
“The Author of the Acacia Seeds” and Other Extracts from the Journal of the Association of Therolinguistics – 1974 •• short story by Ursula K. Le Guin (variant of The Author of the Acacia Seeds and Other Extracts from the Journal of the Association of Therolinguistics)
“May’s Lion” – 1987 •• essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
May’s Lion – 1983 •• short story by Ursula K. Le Guin
Rilke’s “Eighth Duino Elegy” and “She Unnames Them” – 1987 •• essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Eighth Elegy – 1987 •• poem by Rainer Maria Rilke (trans. of Die achte Elegie 1922)
She Unnames Them – 1985

Ursula’s Page

#scifi #ursulakleguin

The Wind’s Twelve Quarters — Ursula K. Le Guin

By 5t4n5

The Wind's Twelve Quarters -- Ursula K. Le Guin

Standalones

April in Paris – 1962
The Masters – 1963
Darkness Box – 1963
Nine Lives – 1969
A Trip to the Head – 1970
Things – 1970
The Good Trip – 1970
Direction of the Road – 1973
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas – 1973
The Field of Vision – 1973
The Stars Below – 1974

Hainish

Semley’s Necklace – 1964
Winter’s King – 1969
Vaster than Empires and More Slow – 1971
The Day Before the Revolution – 1974

Earthsea

The Word of Unbinding – 1964
The Rule of Names – 1964

Ursula’s Page

#scifi #ursulakleguin

The Unreal and the Real — Ursula K. Le Guin

By 5t4n5

The Unreal and the Real -- Ursula K. Le Guin

Nine Lives – 1969
Direction of the Road – 1973
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas – 1973
The Author of the Acacia Seeds and Other Extracts from the Journal of the Association of Therolinguistics – 1974
Mazes – 1975
The Water Is Wide – 1976
Gwilan’s Harp – 1977
The White Donkey – 1980
The Wife’s Story – 1982
Small Change – 1982
Sur – 1982
The Ascent of the North Face – 1983
May’s Lion – 1983
She Unnames Them – 1985
Horse Camp – 1986
Buffalo Gals, Won’t You Come Out Tonight – 1987
Half Past Four – 1987
Hand, Cup, Shell – 1989
Texts •• non-genre – 1990
Sleepwalkers – 1991
The First Contact with the Gorgonids – 1992
The Poacher – 1993
Ether, OR – 1995
The Lost Children – 1996
The Silence of the Asonu – 1998
The Fliers of Gy – 2000
The Wild Girls – 2002
Jar of Water – 2016

Hainish

Semley’s Necklace – 1964
The Shobies’ Story – 1990
The Matter of Seggri – 1994
Solitude – 1994

Yeowe and Werel

Betrayals – 1994

Earthsea

The Rule of Names – 1964

Orsinia

Imaginary Countries – 1973
Brothers and Sisters – 1976
A Week in the Country – 1976
The Diary of the Rose – 1976
Unlocking the Air – 1990

Ursula’s Page

#fantasy #scifi #ursulakleguin

Made to Order: Robots and Revolution — Anthology

By 5t4n5

Made to Order: Robots and Revolution -- AnthologyAll stories copyright 2020.

Selection and Introduction — Jonathan Strahan
A Glossary of Radicalization — Brooke Bolander
Dancing with Death — John Chu
Brother Rifle — Daryl Gregory
Sonnie’s Union — Peter F. Hamilton
The Endless — Saad Z Hossain
An Elephant Never Forgets — Rich Larson
Idols — Ken Liu
Sin Eater — Ian R. MacLeod
The Translator — Annalee Newitz
The Hurt Pattern — Tochi Onyebuchi
Chiaroscuro in Red — Suzanne Palmer
Bigger Fish — Sarah Pinsker
A Guide for Working Breeds — Vina Jie-Min Prasad
Polished Performance — Alastair Reynolds
Fairy Tales for Robots — Sofia Samatar
Test 4 Echo — Peter Watts.

#scifi #peterfhamilton #kenliu #alastairreynolds