The science fiction genre has evolved over time, influenced by authors like H.G. Wells.

The genre has been shaped by social and cultural events, and reflected ideologies like capitalism and communism.

Science fiction addresses issues like nuclear power, racism, and ecological crises, and disseminates scientific knowledge and culture.

The genre has become more diverse, with women and people of color making significant contributions.

African futurism, a growing science fiction subgenre, often features post-apocalyptic themes reflecting present-day fears.

The genre has become more global, with authors like Chinese science fiction writer Cixin Liu winning international awards.

Authors like Nnedi Okorafor, Margaret Atwood, and Octavia E. Butler are influential in science fiction, exploring issues of oppression, resistance, and social justice.

Their writing styles have inspired a new generation and redefined the genre.

The Speculative Fiction Project fosters collaboration between authors and scientists from diverse backgrounds, resulting in several published anthologies.

Speculative fiction can be a powerful tool for social change and solving real-world problems.

The science fiction genre is becoming more interdisciplinary, with authors and researchers collaborating to explore new ideas.

The genre is shaping cultural conversations on social justice, equity, and sustainability through contributions from diverse authors.

New authors and works have introduced the genre to new audiences and contributed to its evolution, such as Du Jian's "World Science Fiction".

The next generation of science fiction writers is being influenced by authors like Nnedi Okorafor, Margaret Atwood, and Octavia E. Butler, who promote diversity and inclusion.

The science fiction genre has evolved over time, influenced by authors like H.G. Wells.

Title:

Content: 60 Sci-Fi Books That All Science Fiction Fans Must Read

Are you looking for a new science fiction book to read? Looking to fill up your reading list with journeys to strange new worlds and fast-paced science fiction adventures? You're in luck because we've compiled a list of the best sci-fi books.

Whether you're looking to dive into the great sci-fi classics you missed out on or you're looking to delve into brand new tales from up-and-coming indie authors, you're sure to find something that will spark creativity and excitement for you. Science fiction and fantasy novels provide us with allegories, cautionary tales, and deep dives into the human condition told through the lens of the fantastical and the cutting-edge.

The Best Sci-Fi Origins Books

Where did it all begin? Read these early tales with impossible futures, fascinating creatures, time travel, and alien invasion!

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein brought us the iconic monster made by Victor Frankenstein. Considered the first true science fiction novel of the modern era, it would foreshadow genetic tinkering stories of the future.

The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish (also called The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing-World)

Considered to be the first science fiction work, in the 17th century, Duchess of Newcastle Margaret Cavendish wrote of a utopian world.

Ozma of Oz by L. Frank Baum

The third Oz book by L. Frank Baum features Tik-Tok, the wind-up clockwork man Dorothy Gale encounters in the Land of Ev. Tik-Tok is basically one of the first robots in literature. Other wacky features in Ozma of Oz include a sand-sailing boat and lunch pail tree.

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

A 19th century classic by Wells, depicting time travel and inspiring science fiction tales for over a century.

The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

The book would go on to inspire a radio program that terrified people into thinking Martians were actually invading Earth. Wells would kickstart first contact stories and alien invasion at the same time, offering up a cautionary tale that touches sci-fi to this day.

The Best Sci-Fi Space Epics Books

Transport yourself across the universe with these pillars of world-building in science fiction, all of which are either now adapted for TV or film or soon will be.

Dune by Frank Herbert

Frank Herbert’s Dune is considered a masterwork of world-building and family intrigue, inspiring other famous series and their respective houses. In the first book, Paul Atreides encounters the resident free people of the planet Arrakis (Dune), the Fremen, and achieves a destiny of messianic proportions. Dune recently graced the big screen in a new adaptation by Denis Villeneuve.

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

Nnedi Okorafor's Binti novella series begins with Binti, a Hugo-award-winning Africanfuturistic science fiction horror story published by Tor.com. Binti is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the most exalted institution of higher learning in the galaxy. She faces the choice to accept the offer and give up her place in her family so that she can travel among the stars. Hulu has ordered a pilot for Binti.

Foundation by Isaac Asimov

The beginning of the Foundation series reveals the “psychohistory” developed by mathematician Harry Seldon. Seldon would establish a new empire called Foundation to preserve the culture from societal collapse. Foundation debuted as a TV show on Apple TV in 2021.

Embers of War by Gareth L. Powell

Gareth L. Powell's award-winning trilogy Embers of War follows the war-weary crew of the sentient spaceship Trouble Dog, who after becoming disgusted by her role in war joins the House of Reclamation. Trouble Dog and her captain Sal Konstanz are sent on a rescue mission, which intersects a mission to find missing poet Ona Sundak. The galaxy teeters on the brink of another war, just as an alien presence makes itself known, altering the course of things to come. Now under development for TV.

Rendezvous with Rama by Sir Arthur C. Clarke

A strange spacecraft enters the solar system, and humanity investigates. The secrets within the enormous craft, called Rama, reveal the heritage of an advanced alien civilization. Rendezvous with Rama is in development for a film adaptation with Denis Villeneuve at the helm.

The Best Hard Sci-Fi Books

If you like your science fiction taut with the edginess of battle and the implication of future wars, you must add these books to your collection!

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

This classic military sci-fi epic details the tragic effects of time dilation on a group of soldiers fighting a seemingly endless war.

Ringworld by Larry Niven

Set in the 29th century, Louis Wu and his companions explore a vast, Earth-orbit-sized, constructed world. Their adventures uncover the alien civilization that built it.

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

First set with the backdrop of China’s cultural revolution, this new epic involves secret scientific experiments, alien invasion, challenging moral dilemmas, and impressive world-building.

Old Man’s War by John Scalzi

A man in his 70s is recruited as a soldier in the Colonial Defense Force, and altered physically in unexpected ways. Strong on character development, this kickstarts the Old Man’s War Series.

Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein

This classic military sci-fi tale follows Johnny Rico and military recruits who become involved in a battle between humans and aliens nicknamed Arachnids or “Bugs.”

If you love Starship Troopers, check out our review of the wisdom of Grand Admiral Thrawn – Michael

The Best Sci-Fi Robot Stories

The future of robots is here and is complex and necessary reading in these sci-fi tales.

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov’s intriguing work introduced the laws of robotics that all robots must adhere to work alongside humans.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

The first novel in the Murderbot Diaries, All Systems Red, follows a cyborg that goes by the name Murderbot contends with self-awareness in the corporate-dominated future.

Cinder by Marissa Meyer

The beginning of the Lunar Chronicles series is a retelling of Cinderella from the point of view of a cyborg.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick

Famed for its eventual big-screen adaptation, Blade Runner, this novel recounts a future in which highly realistic artificial fugitives are on the run from bounty hunter Rick Deckard.

The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia

Mattie is an automaton in this steampunk and urban fantasy novel involving gargoyles, Mechanics, and Alchemists.

The Best Sci-Fi Mars Stories

Our neighbor, the red planet Mars, beckons to us. What would it be like to walk on the shifting red sands of Mars? Find out in these Martian classics.

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury’s mesmerizing prose introduces us to a Mars full of exotic possibility, soon plundered by humanity’s arrival.

Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

The first in the Mars Trilogy, Red Mars, involves the colonization and terraforming of Mars and the conflicting moral questions that result.

The Martian by Andy Weir

Astronaut Mark Watney is left behind on a Mars mission and must draw upon his skills and ingenuity in order to survive.

Mars by Ben Bova

Navajo geologist Jamie Waterman joins the first expedition of scientists exploring Mars. The grounded approach Bova takes to all the interaction, politics, and bureaucracy help achieve a plausible future story.

Red Rising by Pierce Brown

The first book in the Red Rising Trilogy envisions a future of planetary colonization in which caste systems abound. Darrow must fight against this system of overlords.

The Best Sci-Fi Fantasy Books

Fly high with dragons, roam lands on epic quests, and learn the hearts of true heroes in the fantasy masterpieces.

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien

J.R.R. Tolkien’s magnum opus spans three books, opening up a fantastically detailed and wholly invented universe in Middle Earth that was hinted at in The Hobbit. Considered the ultimate work of fantasy, The Lord of the Rings brings myth, allegory, poetry, song, war, and melancholy to heights of realism and wonder.

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

The first novel in The Earthsea Cycle tells the tale of the wizard Ged, and his journey to redeem his reckless past.

A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R.R. Martin

Beginning with A Game of Thrones, Martin’s elaborate, dark fantasy series covers land in which seasons last decades, and a terrible force from the north threatens to bring an icy apocalypse to an area filled with rulers jockeying to take the Iron Throne.

The Dragonriders of Pern Series by Anne McCaffrey

This remarkable series takes place in the world of Pern, where people telepathically bond with dragons. Dragonflight is the first in the series.

The Fifth Season: The Broken Earth, Book 1 by N.K Jemisin

The Fifth Season marks the first book of the award-winning The Broken Earth trilogy. Set against civilization’s collapse and natural disaster, Essun endures great personal tragedy in her quest to rescue her daughter.

The Best Sci-Fi Dystopian & Apocalyptic Books

Set in a nightmare future, these dystopian and apocalyptic legends will keep you up at night.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

In a totalitarian future America, handmade Offred is forced to bear children to men of a ruling class. The tale follows her harrowing life in a bleak future, and the attempt to escape and bring down the subjugating class to restore rights.

The Stand by Stephen King

A deadly pathogen escapes a military installation, rapidly spreading and bringing civilization essentially to an end. A group of survivors makes its way to a form of a promised land while battling a malevolent group seeking domination.

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

In the near future breakdown of the society of Los Angeles, empathic teenager Lauren believes in a better future entailing traveling to other planets. Lauren gathers followers to her belief as she makes her way north.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Set in the Great Lakes region of America, a group of nomadic creatives picks up the pieces after the fall of civilization due to pandemic flu. Station Eleven has been adapted for HBO Max.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The first book in the Hunger Games Trilogy follows the immense challenges that Katniss Everdeen faces in the post-apocalyptic version of America called Panem. She takes her sister’s place in the government-sponsored Hunger Games to compete for survival in a no-holds-barred and deadly competition.

The Best Sci-Fi Near Futures Books

The future is here, or nearly so, in these ground-breaking novels set close to our present day.

Contact by Carl Sagan

Scientist Ellie Arroway detects a potential extraterrestrial signal from space, which appears to instruct humanity in how to build a machine. She faces self-doubt amid scrutiny to uncover the mysteries of the discovery.

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

This cautionary tale about genetic engineering in which scientists make living, cloned dinosaurs for an amusement park. Mayhem ensues.

2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke

Mysterious monoliths appear across many worlds, seeding life with intelligence. Following the discovery of one such monolith on the moon, Dr. Bowman and a team of scientists investigate the signal it sends to Saturn’s moon Iapetus. The onboard AI begins exhibiting dangerous behavior during the journey.

Flashforward by Robert J. Sawyer

A physics experiment creates an unintended consequence of everyone on earth losing consciousness for two minutes. Each person sees a “flash forward” decades in the future while they are unconscious. The resulting accidents and visions challenge everyone’s ideas of free will.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

In dystopian 2044, impoverished Wade Watts navigates through the virtual reality world of the OASIS, seeking to reverse his fortune.

The Best Sci-Fi Books for Younger Readers

Take adventures through time and space, no matter your age!

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

The Murry children and Calvin O’Keefe crosses universes and space-time to try to find their missing father. Their tale is a mind-bending adventure of good vs. evil.

His Dark Materials Trilogy (The Golden Compass/The Subtle Knife/The Amber Spyglass) by Philip Pullman

The Golden Compass/Northern Lights begins this sweeping saga of two children, one born in a parallel universe, one born in our own. In Lyra’s world, people’s souls exist in animal form, called daemons. Her father and mother represent warring factions determined to control all universes. Filled with talking animals, witches, airships, and strange creatures, His Dark Materials packs an emotional punch.

The Apothecary Series by Maile Meloy

Set in the 1950s, The Apothecary starts this highly entertaining, thrilling adventure series in which American Janie Scott meets Benjamin Burrows, the son of an apothecary. After Benjamin’s father is kidnapped, the teenagers uncover a terrifying plot that could result in humanity’s end. They use potions with magical effects to try and stop the impending doom.

The Serpent's Secret (Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond #1) by Sayantani DasGupta

The first of the Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond series, book one begins with Kiranmala discovering her parents are missing, and there is a demon in her kitchen! Two princes recruited her and sent to another dimension, where she must battle the Serpent King and the Rakkhoshi Queen to rescue her parents and save the Earth.

The Wild Robot by Peter Brown

This delightful middle-grade novel recounts a discarded robot named Roz and her search for love and acceptance.

The Best Sci-Fi Ponderous Books

These mind-bending sci-fi novels will have you thinking for a long time afterward.

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein

Raised on Mars, Valentine Michael Smith returns to Earth and tries to fit in. His unusual upbringing makes him seem superhuman, but he attempts to help his Earth kin understand things from a different perspective.

The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester

Set in the 24th century when telepaths (“Espers”) are common, and police are telepathic as well. Ben Reich tries to evade the telepathic police for a murder he wants to commit. The story opens up the moral issues of using telepathy, regulated mostly by a guild, but raises concerns about the exclusion of telepaths who run astray as well as psychological intrigue.

Solaris by Stanislaw Lem

Solaris follows humans’ failed attempts to communicate with extraterrestrial intelligence. The sentient planet tests the researchers with their memories and emotions.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

A story spanning time and space and connections between various characters, Cloud Atlas explores the theme of fate with a mind-bending narrative.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

This classic tale follows the journey of Genly Ai on his mission to the planet Gethen. The ambisexual Gethenians present challenges and growth for Ai.

The Best Sci-Fi Cyberpunk Books

If you dream of the future lit by neon, shadowed by noir, and fueled with intrigue, these seminal cyberpunk novels are for you!

Neuromancer by William Gibson

In the first novel of the Sprawl Trilogy, hacker Henry Case is hired to help an AI take over the global network called The Matrix.

All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders

A modern cyberpunk tale is weaving together magic and science, with wit and feeling.

Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan

Set in the 25th century, humans have spread through the galaxy and can be preserved after death via cortical stacks, then essentially regenerated or “re-sleeved” into another body. Takeshi Kovacs stumbles upon a vast conspiracy after his latest “sleeve.”

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

This early entry into cyberpunk sci-fi follows teleporter Gully Foyle, an outcast considered dangerous.

Synners by Pat Cadigan

The synthesizers, or Synners, are people who can turn mental images into products for consumption. The story is told via various characters’ viewpoints.

The Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books by Indie Authors

Discover the latest sci-fi and fantasy stories, while supporting independent authors!

Mindful Things by Mya Duong

Nineteen-year-old Lauren begins to experience visions and uncovers the fact her deceased parents were witches. A madman hungry for power pursues her, and she must embrace her magical heritage to try to stop him.

The Infinite by John W. Akers

The inventor Pax works on a secret project that can revolutionize human cognition. His plans are derailed by a computer virus that could end civilization, so Pax is forced to choose how he can help humanity survive.

Threadwalkers by Joanna Volavka

Miranda Woodward undergoes a discordant series of events following her father’s death. This is a young adult time travel tale.

Resonance by Jennifer Greenhall

In Book One of the Resonance Series, Sophia Walsh uses her psionic abilities for good but finds herself the next target of a killer.

Heliopause: The Questrison Saga®: Book One by J. Dianne Dotson

Heliopause by J. Dianne Dotson kickstarts The Questrison Saga®, a four-book series science fiction and fantasy series. In Heliopause, a mystery at the edge of the solar system reveals a galactic menace. A galactic natural disaster unfolds, aiding the monster in the void. Human Forster and human-looking, ageless Galla-Deia team up with telepaths, galactic mages, aliens, and androids to face the greatest threat to all life in the galaxy. Full of diverse characters and exotic worlds, found and made families, heartbreak, and whimsy, this space opera recalls Star WarsDoctor Who, and Game of Thrones.

At Your Money Geek, we are huge fans of the science fiction genre, everything from military science fiction to novels about space travel, parallel worlds, and fantasy novels. We are always looking for new books to read and exciting sci-fi writers to profile, let us know in the comments what authors you are currently enjoying.

This post was produced and syndicated by Wealth of Geeks.

| Website | + posts

J. Dianne Dotson dreamed up other worlds and their characters as a child in the 1980s in East Tennessee. She formed her own neighborhood astronomy club before age 10, to educate her friends about the universe. In addition to writing stories, she drew and painted her characters, designed their outrageous space fashions, and created travel guides and glossaries for the worlds she invented.

As an adult, Dianne earned a degree in ecology and evolutionary biology, and spent several years working in research. She published Heliopause: The Questrison Saga®: Book One (2018) and its sequels Ephemeris: The Questrison Saga®: Book Two (2019), Accretion: The Questrison Saga®: Book Three (2020) and her last novel in the saga, Luminiferous: The Questrison Saga®: Book Four (2021).

Dianne is also a science writer, content writer and manager, short story writer, watercolorist, and illustrator. She lives with her family.

The genre has been shaped by social and cultural events, and reflected ideologies like capitalism and communism.

Title:

Content: Overcoming The Noble Lie: Great Narratives & Compelling Futures

From New Dawn Special Issue Vol 15 No 6 (Dec 2021)

If the last two years taught us anything, it’s that humanity is now at its most critical inflection point. We stand at the precipice of a major turning in western civilisation – the culmination of a millennium of human development, seminal events, knowledge, and culture.

It is undeniable, yet not at all clear, the direction we are headed, or what the future holds, and who will be around to see it come to fruition. We are not seers or prophets and cannot peer into the future, but we can read the signposts of the past and present.

We have a wealth of shared experience and a vast living memory – a collective consciousness updated and added to every day. If we search humanity’s archive, we find answers to many of these questions. Those answers have always been available, gleaned from understanding ourselves, our journey as a family, and the human race.

French novelist Alphonse Karr famously coined the saying, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose,” or, the more things change, the more they are the same.

Yes, we have been here before.

Let’s step back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries – a time of upheavals and period of great turbulence on many human fronts – politically, spiritually, and technologically. The western world was in the midst of an existential crisis as secularisation brought with it two disruptive forces to the traditional order of knowledge and influence: the rise of the intellectual and mass media.

It is perhaps no coincidence that the world finds itself in a very similar impasse approximately a century later, with many of the same conditions present today, only on a much more pervasive level.

The parallels between then and now are astonishing. This should not be viewed as ‘history repeating itself’ but rather as a more intense interlude of what had already come to pass – only this time events are unfolding at much greater speed, propelled by advances in communication technology on a global scale inconceivable to previous generations. Such changes were equally profound in 1900, as were the transformations that took place across society.

As the 20th century approached, theology was supplanted by evolutionary science. An ascendant Darwinian authority presided over existential questions like “Who are we?” and “What is man’s purpose?”

Undoubtedly, this was a tumultuous time, intellectually and spiritually, with acrimony leading to heated exchanges between clergy and scientists, even leading to violent confrontations. But, with its newfound status, it was inevitable the secular power of Darwinian science would colonise the political and social sciences before giving rise to the sordid science of curative breeding known as eugenics.

Recent history leaves no doubt that if left unrestrained by morals and ethics, wanton destruction and incredible suffering are wrought in the name of science and progress. These forces of modernity materialise in today’s advances in genetic engineering that have brought us back to that point once again: humanity faces the dilemma of resisting game-changing advances of technology and innovation or surrendering to it and prostrating at the altar of science and progress.

We are an entire century into a fully secularised society in the West. Today’s tech gurus, vaccinologists, and public health officials now occupy positions of prestige and command the reverence once reserved for pontiffs, philosophers, and poet laureates. The divine mysteries have given way to the ‘divine’ algorithm, and timeless sublime prose to the transience of the latest epidemiological model – from Gandhi to Gates, Whitman to Whitty, in just a few generations. How else could a man like Dr Anthony Fauci, an 80-year-old career gatekeeper for the transnational pharmaceutical cartel, still occupy the US government’s highest-paid job, and recently voted People Magazine’s “sexiest man alive”? Albert Camus once said, “Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.” Indeed, if not for the wave of mass hysteria and fear that swept over the world in February 2020, few would even know of Dr Fauci, let alone revere him as a demigod. On one level, we may be deluded into believing that today’s gaudy exhibitionists are mere frivolities of pure media spectacle, but behind the facade of political celebrity is an unforgiving ideology called technocracy.

You will often hear the trope that “more people have been killed over religion than anything else.” If only it were true. The 20th century serves as a potent reminder of the misleading nature of that statement, for no other century witnessed the sheer brutality and crimes against humanity on an industrial scale perpetrated in the name of various despotic interpretations of some variant of social Darwinism or political science, reaching levels of totalitarianism never seen before in human history. There are too many examples: WWI, WWII, Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Maoist China, Cambodia, Vietnam, Central America, Afghanistan, and Iraq, to name only a few. In almost every instance, the preservation of secular dogma took precedence over the lives and souls of humans who were unfortunate enough to be caught in the crossfire of ‘progress’. Fascism, socialism, communism, neoliberal capitalism – each would justify collateral damage as a means to achieving the goal of transformation or the formulation of a new order.

In the 21st century, the forces that inherited the mantle of power – the dynastic families and special interests – are preparing the next act in this worldly saga.

The Grand Narrative

So often it’s been said that in war, history is written by the victors, who impose what is known as the ‘living memory’ of a nation or people, chronicling a shared experience, generally of collective sacrifice undertaken for the greater good, and paying tribute to the martyrs along the way. These become the narratives that post-war orders and worldviews are built upon, a central pillar around which the reorganisation of society and economies occurs. Without marshalling the “narrative,” a ruling establishment cannot lead and steer society in its direction of choice.

What happens in the absence of a bona fide world war? Can elites still construct an equally compelling living memory which the people can rally around?

Grand narrative management is precisely what Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum (WEF) has been attempting from the onset of the ‘global pandemic’ crisis. In 2021, the WEF announced its “Great Narrative” initiative, although evidence for this project can be traced much further back through a number of their documents and website presentations.

To create the requisite living memory, Schwab and the WEF replaced the usual military war piece with the new war on microbes. “The pandemic has revealed the acute need to focus on the future and long-term health of our societies,” said the globalist luminary.

While the rhetoric sounds innocuous, everything we’ve witnessed over the last 24 months proves beyond any doubt that their hyper-centralised ‘public health’ planning has little to do with the health of the individual and more about how the individual can be more effectively managed to serve the collective, that in turn is to be administered by the new technocracy. The WEF is merely the latest avatar for this elitist ideology whose primary goal is always to meet the ruling oligarchy’s financial and consolidation goals and objectives. This was true 100 years ago as it is today.

Just as with the global financial crash in 2008, when elites privatised their profits and socialised their losses through gargantuan government bailouts, so too will elites seek to consolidate their baronial individual asset wealth portfolios and privileged asset classes while demanding infinite self-sacrifice for everyone else – all for the greater good, of course. It is also about managing expectations, as the WEF states:

“The Great Narrative Meeting [in November 2021] is a linchpin of the Great Narrative initiative, a collaborative effort of the world’s leading thinkers to fashion longer-term perspectives and co-create a narrative that can help guide the creation of a more resilient, inclusive and sustainable vision for our collective future.”

You might be asking: what is their endgame? Put simply, every new world order needs a financial reset, and in the WEF’s Great Reset, the plan is to intentionally overinflate and collapse the current fiat money system, reimagined and replaced by a new globalised economic system backed by a new superficial asset class under the guise of the “financialisation of nature.”

That plan gained a significant foothold in October 2021 when the Rockefeller Foundation and the New York Stock Exchange announced the creation of a new asset class that will effectively monetise the natural world as well as the processes underpinning all life. All in the name of “sustainability.” The lifeblood of this system will be a new Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) which will be fully programmable, meaning that the currency issuer can stipulate how the digital money is spent.

This is the highest form of social engineering conceivable and can become the payment mechanism for Universal Basic Income, allowing the government issuer power over what you are allowed to purchase. It could limit your transactions to green spending and ‘carbon-neutral’ activities. It’s also a system designed to eliminate upward mobility unless you gain promotion through the political economy.

It could lead to the ultimate victory of the technocracy. However, its Achilles heel might be that it seeks to remake the world in such a short space of time, presumably so these masters of the universe can marvel at their ‘remarkable achievements’ in this lifetime – the ultimate act of hubris by these self-anointed stewards of the planet.

When the technocracy movement first emerged in the early 20th century, contemporary thinkers raised the alarm that pseudo-intellectualism and the mechanised worldview augured an eventual collapse of western civilisation. The timeframe wasn’t clear, only that it was inevitable. In his historical literary work, The Decline of the West (1928), Oswald Spengler described the event horizon that eventually consumes all major cultures, and which generally have a limited lifespan of roughly one thousand years. He examined eight major civilisations as examples: the Babylonians, Egyptians, Chinese, Indian, Greco-Roman, Mayan-Aztec, Arabian, and European-Western. He envisioned the West being consumed by its intellectual vortex:

Today we live so cowed under the bombardment of this intellectual artillery, the media, that hardly anyone can attain to the inward detachment that is required for a clear view of the monstrous drama. The will-to-power operating under a pure democratic disguise has finished off its masterpiece so well that the object’s sense of freedom is actually flattered by the most thorough-going enslavement that has ever existed.

Now realise what is at stake. The unconstrained vision of Davos elites may become the final revolution within a larger civilisational cycle. The Covid-19 pseudo-pandemic would be one of the catalysing events in this process, followed by global cyberwar, and then finally ending in something more outrageous like a nuclear conflagration before ushering in a New World Order.

Such a protracted multi-phased upheaval would mark the end of the main features of modern western civilisation: the post-Westphalian nation-state, the era of enlightenment and rational thought, self-governing democracy and republican forms of government. The world would move into what Zbigniew Brzezinski called a Technetronic Era. Compared to the 20th century, this would more resemble a centralised command and control economy and a highly automated society. In terms of individual rights, it would look like a neo-feudal dark age.

This cycle was discussed by American writers William Strauss and Neil Howe in their book The Fourth Turning (1997), which illustrated how the development of Anglo-American society is a feature of a much larger centuries-old cycle. Or, as Italian commentator Federico Dezzanidescribes it, “like a snake biting its own tail over the span of a century, Anglo-American societies are born, grow, mature and die, only to rise again and begin a new cycle.”

The Noble Lie

In the end, it all comes back to Malthus – Malthusianism – which is ultimately the ideological standard hoisted by the likes of Schwab, Bill Gates, Stanley Johnson, Prince Charles, and globalist outfits like the Trilateral Commission. These elites believe that the people must bear the brunt of this epic existential predicament of an overcrowded planet in a state of terminal decline due to man and his industrial exploits, which is said to be driving anthropogenic global warming to the point where Earth will be uninhabitable. To save humanity from itself, we must be forced to accept that there are too many of us, so we play their globalist game of musical chairs. We know what they mean, but they won’t state their intentions openly, not yet anyway. Only it’s not true.

In Plato’s Republic, in the dialogue of the myth of the metals (social castes), Socrates explains that to maintain order and social continuity, the ruling class must act under the aegis of “the noble lie.” This is based on the belief that from time to time, the ruling class must feed the general populace an ennobling fiction to maintain order and continuity. The noble lie is noble because it benefits the soul of the person who believes it. From an elite’s perspective, this is done for their own good and that they might feel better about their station in life.

If you think about our living memory, or what happened in the West over the last half-century, it’s been a continuum of such lies, although hardly noble: the assassination of JFK, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, Saddam’s WMDs, 19 Arab hijackers on 9/11, spreading freedom and democracy in Afghanistan, overpopulation, climate chaos, Trump-Russian collusion, Covid-19, the Great Reset, and soon it will be the coming war on China. Each epic yarn spun with the help of a 24/7 mainstream and social media barrage of propaganda and misinformation. By brainwashing the population incessantly, the establishment creates the illusion of a ‘bottom-up consensus’, so much so that the people believe they’ve collectively arrived at a grassroots consensus.

Drifting out noble lies in the 21st century has become a pretty efficient process with the consensus enforced by digital dragnet: dare oppose any noble liedeployed by the globalist caste for your own good to ‘reimagine’ and reorganise socio-economic systems, and you’re treated the same as a blasphemer in medieval times – silenced, excommunicated, banished from view, and no longer permitted to speak in the public commons. Deplatformed, depersoned, cancelled.

At the same time, however, a very real great awakening is also taking hold with a rising level of political and conscious awareness much broader and wide-ranging than anything before in human history. This is a consequence of the same global panopticon wielded against the people by the elites. Such awareness is the prerequisite to ultimate liberation, or as philosopher G.I. Gurdjieff once said, “If you wish to get out of prison, the first thing you must do is realise that you are in prison. If you think you are free, you can’t escape.”

Which brings us back to the philosophical and existential question: why are we here? What is the purpose of humans on this planet? Darwinian genetic science says we are here to promulgate our genes and advance the species. On a fundamental level, this is what makes us human. But the new green technocracy says this is no longer possible, and we must embrace a higher truth – a new altruism imbued in the Great Reset doctrine.

The irony is that collectively speaking, humanity might not survive this new ‘empty planet’ initiative. Elite technocrats will contend that only a planned society modelled after Huxley’s vision of a technocracy organised by functional castes and selective breeding in vitro can save the planet from the alleged existential menace of human consumption and climate change.

Whose compelling future is this? Is this not the ‘scientific dictatorship’ that H.G. Wells foresaw, with a global government run by an elite committee of scientists and technocrats who hold the reins of power over every aspect of life and dictate how society is organised and run minute to minute? This is unconstrained totalitarianism. Under such a system, the individual will have no agency, no conscience, and eventually no soul.

The last 250 years have been an extraordinary progression from monarchies to democratic nations, in which the state eventually assumed a god-like status. It set the stage for what is heading towards us now: the advent of globalist transhumanism and a one-world unified state.

Far from being its crowning victory, this crescendo of technocracy and the perversion of ‘progress’ exposes how materialism and the scientific priesthood cannot satisfactorily answer the fundamental questions we’ve asked since time immemorial, those eternal questions and divine mysteries pursued by monks, sages, and sannyasi. The forces of modernity cannot resolve this predicament, so people are left searching for something more grounded – where through the natural world they may also know the supernatural. Once again, people reach for religion and spirituality to find meaning and purpose, including (and not surprising as one may think) the younger generation.

We should be under no illusion about the challenges lying before us. But even beyond an awareness of what you face, you need to have a vision of a world you wish to live in. Elites have always been adept at occupying the minds of the people with propaganda, and the latest war or catastrophe, so we never settle long enough to formulate our vision of a compelling future. Instead, our vision is mired in a never-ending procession of reactive emotions, leaving us vulnerable to the power of suggestion – and a ‘compelling future’ is instead continually served up to us by our rulers. They create the problem (a noble lie) that elicits our reaction before they present us with a solution to which there is usually no alternative.

Make no mistake: the great and the good in Davos are busy designing your ‘compelling future’, and if no other counter-narrative is offered, they will decide your future for you. It’s that simple.

Qui tacet consentit. Translated: your silence is your consent.

There is still much work to be done, but the work is never done. Throughout time, this has always been the case. The more things change, the more they are the same.

This article was published in New Dawn Special Issue Vol 15 No 6.
If you appreciate this article, please consider a contribution to help maintain this website.

Footnotes

1. Albert Camus (1963), quote from “Carnets: 1935-1942”
2. Wall Street’s New Asset Class Will Put Natural World ‘Up for Sale’, childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/wall-street-new-york-stock-exchange-natural-asset-company
3. Federico Dezzani, www.geopolitica.ru/en/article/covid-destruction-institutions-and-beyond
4. What is a Noble Lie?, kenyonreview.org/2007/02/what-is-a-noble-lie/

© New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
For our reproduction notice, click here.

About the Author

Author Patrick Henningsen is the founder and editor of the news and analysis website 21st Century Wire, and is an independent foreign and political affairs analyst for RT International. He is also the host of the SUNDAY WIRE radio program which airs live every Sunday on the Alternate Current Radio Network. Learn more about this author at: www.patrickhenningsen.com

Author Archive Page

Science fiction addresses issues like nuclear power, racism, and ecological crises, and disseminates scientific knowledge and culture.

Title:

Content: Science Fiction and Politics in Literature and the Arts (Symposium, Toulouse)

Science Fiction and Politics in Literature and the Arts

The aim of this symposium run by the LLA-Créatis laboratory at the University of Toulouse Jean-Jaurès is to develop open thinking about “political” questions, in the broad sense of the term, that science fiction narratives allow. Different types of stories can be considered, in different literary genres or in cinema, video series and comics. It can be studied and interrogated from a historical, political and social perspective by involving, where appropriate, the possible contributions of different analyzes (anthropology, semiotics, feminist studies, postcolonial studies, etc.) Diversity of perspectives and questions raised by gender.

The entire twentieth-century period produced works in San Francisco that were marked by ideologies such as capitalism and its “communist” counterpart, but also by threats associated with civilian and/or military nuclear power, religious-related abuses, racism, minority liberation struggles, and pollution. , etc. These perceptions persisted, but in the period from the last 20 years of the 20th century to the first 20 years of the 21st century, other concerns were voiced: ecological pesticides, the climate crisis, demographic crises, resource depletion, or the danger. The scientific and technical potential (transhumanism, “artificial intelligence”, etc.) is being carried away.

The link to the realities of the times (as in the collection “Le Passager Clandestin / Dyschroniques”) can of course depend on one or more authors, take into account a work or compare several (especially in the case of short stories and short films). The broader perspective will consist in considering the basic ideologies, either in relation to the literary prizes awarded, or in relation to the works themselves, the semantics of these presenting themselves from the outset sometimes as criticism, sometimes as propaganda, the two being able to be combined according to modalities that tend to be ironic, Satirical, disruptive, etc.

See also  The number of dengue fever cases is on the rise

In any case, it would be a matter of highlighting the “exploratory potential” in these works, of identifying the “problematic tools” and of making the ideas put forward in fictional form productive from the point of view of political theory. (Y Rambhala).

Of course, it is advisable to include works belonging to different geographical and linguistic fields so that the panorama of this search is sufficiently realistic.

Provisional schedule of courses (date adjustments possible)

Oct 20, 2-4 PM / Nov 17, 2-4 PM / Dec 15, 2-4 PM / Jan 19, 2-4 PM / Feb 9, 2-4 PM / Mar 15, 2-4 PM / May 31 , 2-4 p.m

Contribution proposals must be sent Before October 1, 2023 To the following addresses: frederics[email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Title:

Content: The novel is a cure for scientific infiltration.
Novelist art of the last three decades of the twentieth century and the beginning of the present century is perhaps one of the most important tools for the dissemination of scientific knowledge and making it part of the general culture, as it has significantly reduced the gap between the scientific fiction and scientific applications in the field, through interesting stories and interesting characters.
Scientists can reach a wider audience and simplify complex ideas, which contributes to the promotion of scientific awareness and inspiration among readers; the integration of science with literature is not just an intellectual luxury, but a necessity for effective communication between scientists and society, especially as physical discoveries have become more confusing and fascinating than the most imaginative scientific novels.
When we read according to preconceived expectations, we marginalize the element of surprise with all its uncalculated potential, which may lead us to wonder and pleasure.
The use of the novel in the dissemination of science is not a new innovation, as literary stories throughout the ages have been an effective means of transmitting knowledge and values. Every sober novel must be a medium of knowledge, and therefore it undoubtedly requires a writer passionate about knowledge to touch a chord in the heart and mind of the reader. To achieve this, the reader must be engaged in learning.
But in modern times, with the increasing complexity of scientific theories and technology as a means of dealing with epistemological lava, epistemological narratives are no longer just lavish, but an urgent need and a simplistic tool that allows audiences to understand this knowledge more deeply.
To think of scientific novels as mere science fiction involves a great deal of predilection and prejudice, and I think it is more correct to describe them as an epistemological novel that satisfies in a fictional framework, and this can be seen by examining the dramatic and attractive survey that marked most of them.
With the proliferation of international novels and their drinkers, selective reading was inevitable; after all, we wouldn ’ t be able to read every recent edition.
Here comes the subjective approach; some are satisfied with the translator into Arabic, because there is no way for him to read another language, some read novels based on previous compliments of prominent critics and known for the excellence of their literary industry, others follow novels for their popularity and popularity, and there are readers who follow certain names for their knowledge of the creativity in their novels, and I think myself of the latter category. Although I sometimes tend to take the opinion of the first category, I think that when we read according to preconceived expectations, we marginalize the element of surprise with all its uncalculated potential, which may cause us to wonder and enjoy.
In Alice in Quantum Country, Robert Gilmar takes the reader on a journey through the world of quantum mechanics, in ways that draw the reader into the depths of this mysterious and complex field.
Gilmar uses a simple narrative style, with illustrations and famous experiences
I follow the work of Dan Brown and José Rodríguez dos Santos with great passion, and I make sure that I do not miss any of their work, and I think it is a wonderful experience that their novels and the works of other novelists who have taken it upon themselves to convey scientific ideas and concepts to a wide audience in an interesting and easy to understand way, especially by making them freely available to readers on the Internet. A large number of readers are paying to read it, and to see the most distinctive and unusual scientific investigations of our time.
By this I mean “particle physics ”, which is one of the most prominent sciences of the modern era, led by the Center for Nuclear Research in Switzerland (CERN), and the unprecedented revolution of communication, informatics and electronic applications, nano-engineering, and the science of industrially created materials; as well as“ quantum mechanics ”, which led to a revolutionary turn in science, thought and philosophy.
These are some of the most exciting and complex fields of science.
Thanks to their storytelling style, writers have been able to present these topics in a way that non-specialist readers can understand and enjoy, and keep up with the explosive stream of information generated daily; in Alice in Quantum Land, Robert Gilmar takes the reader on a journey through the world of quantum mechanics, in ways that draw the reader to the depths of this mysterious and complex field.
Through illustrative examples and famous experiments, such as the double-slit experiment and the Schrödinger cat experiment, Gilmar explains how qubits and quantum entanglement can be the foundations of new quantum computing, simplifying complex scientific concepts and making them accessible to everyone.
Dan Brown introduces elements of particle physics and electronic engineering into his novels, as shown in The Lost Symbol and The Origin.
It mixes scientific facts with literary fiction, creating interesting worlds.
The book is not just a theoretical exposition, it is a fictional journey into the quantum world, involving chapters with dramatic titles that rob the passionate reader: Into Quantum Land, Heisenberg Bank, Institute of Mechanics, Copenhagen School, Fermi-Boz Academy, Virtual Reality, Atoms in the Empty, Rutherford Castle, Particle Concert Masquerade, and the City of Experimental Physics Games.
Quantum Alice is similar to the Alice created by the novelist Lewis Carroll (who had an in-depth experience in mathematics).
It is a novel whose protagonists are electrons, neutrons, protons, photons, and quarks.
Alice goes to the Quantum Country — an entirely new version of Wonderland, smaller than an atom — and each landmark she frequents there illustrates a different aspect of quantum theory; there Alice encounters a number of extraordinary characters, through which she learns the uncertainty principle, wave functions, Pauli principle, and other concepts. Baffling, with a new intake that makes them all easy to absorb.
Along the same lines, Dan Brown introduces elements of particle physics and electronic engineering into his novels, as shown in The Lost Symbol and The Origin.
Braun blends scientific facts and literary fiction to create interesting worlds that help readers explore these fields without feeling overwhelmed; in Angels and Demons, Braun offers particle physics in an exciting way, tackling the story of antimatter smuggling, which prompts the reader to dive into this complex field of science, in an interesting narrative that highlights the challenges and adventures associated with this science.
José Rodríguez dos Santos, a Portuguese journalist and novelist, combines his journalistic and novelist skills to provide stories that delve into science in an exciting storytelling style, though he elaborates on scientific knowledge more than Dan Brown does.
In his novel The Mystical Hand, Dos Santos addresses the subject of biological evolution and astrophysics, mixing scientific facts with fiction, dissecting scientific concepts in a way that the average reader can understand, without losing the element of suspense and excitement in his plots.
I feel very grateful for this type of novel and its authors as much as I am for scientists and their discoveries, and I hope that it will be more popular in our Arab societies, whether by specialists in the scientific field or others, as a space for fun and learning.
In his novel The Gods of the Universe, Dos Santos explores topics such as the Big Bang and string theory, presenting them in the context of an exciting story.
Thanks to his journalistic background, Dos Santos has the ability to simplify scientific concepts, presenting them in a curious way.
What science fiction novelists do in their series is try to shift one ’ s mind from the superficial, fragile, transitory levels of thought to the higher horizons, which may seem invisible or intangible to many; understanding the basics is the foundation of every sober science, the necessary first step to contribute to intellectual and societal advancement, and not to dwell in the corners of indifference away from the scientific revolutions around us.
I feel very grateful for this type of novel and its authors as much as I am for scientists and their discoveries, and I hope that it will be more popular in our Arab societies, whether by scientific professionals or others, as a space for fun and learning, to turn on the disrupted senses, and to take a look at the worlds around us.
The views expressed in the article do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.

What concepts does Ishiguro's literary science fiction novel bring up?

What concepts does Ishiguro's literary science fiction novel bring up?

The genre has become more diverse, with women and people of color making significant contributions.

Title:

Content: Science Fiction: Chinese Female Writers | Culture | DW | 21.10.2023
1.
Inhalt
2.
Navigation
3.
Weitere Inhalte
4.
Metanavigation
5.
Suche
6.
Choose from 30 Languages
Advertisement
Cultural warp and weft
Science fiction: the rise of Chinese women writers
While the space for feminist expression in China has shrunk further over the past decade, there ’ s good news from this week ’ s World Science Fiction Conference in Chengdu: Chinese female writers are thriving in the science fiction world, making them one of the most striking trends in the genre.
The rise of Chinese female writers in science fiction has become one of the most striking trends in the genre, according to participants at this week's World Science Fiction Conference in Chengdu.
The World Science Fiction Conference, the world ’ s oldest and most influential science fiction event, was held in China for the first time this year and attracted a large number of local fans, both male and female.
China remains a relatively socially conservative country, and under President Xi Jinping, the space for feminist expression has narrowed further over the past decade.
But author and editor Regina Kanyu Wang, who was nominated for two prestigious Hugo Awards at the World Science Fiction Conference this year, said the number of women writers in science fiction has soared in recent years.
She said more and more women are now realizing that "it's not just nerdy, nerdy science-fiction novels like Liu Cixin [author of the three-body series] that can be published, or can be considered science fiction." Liu Cixin is great, and we all like him.
But there's a lot more to it than Liu Cixin's style. "
The good news, says Wang, is that once women start to become writers, they don ’ t feel they ’ re being treated unequally.
The market and readers need a new perspective, she said.
The 81st World Science Fiction Conference will be held in Chengdu from October 18 to 22.
"Now, many Chinese female science fiction writers focus on issues that women face that men may not feel," Zhou Danxue, a literary scholar at XJCC Liverpool University, told AFP. "These writers can reflect unique female experiences in their own way."
Wang said that in the past two years, four anthologies of Chinese fantasy novels written only by female or non-binary authors have been published, which is a major breakthrough.
There wasn ’ t even an all-female science fiction writer ’ s portfolio before that.
Before the 1990s, there were very few female science fiction writers.
An article in the collection "The Way Spring Comes", which Wang Kanyu participated in compiling, pointed out that the Internet is a training base for women and queer talents.
Author Ni Xueting explained that the widespread use of the Internet “not only brought a new sense of community to people, but also … removed many barriers to writing based on industry and social stereotypes, especially for non-male writers. ”
Chen Qiufan, one of China ’ s leading science fiction writers, told AFP that the genre had traditionally not received special attention and was seen as “written and read by boys. ”
He said there was now a "wider and more diverse audience", estimating that his readers were split equally between men and women.
Chinese women writers begin to make their mark in science fiction
Monet, a 21-year-old woman who visited the science fiction convention on Friday, said she sometimes felt isolated among her own fan base.
“It ’ s hard to share my interests with people who don ’ t understand me.
They ask, "Why does a girl like science fiction?"
She is optimistic about these changes in attitude, pointing out that there are a lot of interested primary and secondary school students at the conference site.
“I think interest in Chinese science fiction has to be nurtured from an early age, ” she says.“ We didn ’ t have that opportunity when we were young … I really envy them, to be honest. ”
(AFP)
© 2023 Deutsche Welle Copyright Notice: All content in this article is protected by copyright law and may not be used without special permission from Deutsche Welle.
Any misconduct will lead to recovery and criminal prosecution.

Title:

Content: Swords & Spaceships

8 Excellent Genre-Bending Sci-Fi Tales To Take You to the Next Frontier

This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Lyndsie Manusos

Senior Contributor

Lyndsie Manusos’s fiction has appeared in PANK, SmokeLong Quarterly, and other publications. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has worked in web production and content management. When she’s not nesting among her books and rough drafts, she’s chasing the baby while the dog watches in confused amusement. She lives with her family in a suburb of Indianapolis.

Prophet by Sin Blaché and Helen Macdonald, published by Grove Atlantic

The must-read queer sci-fi thriller of the summer! In a world just one perilous step from our own, an unlikely pair sets out on the most dangerous and otherwordly mission of their lives. When a diner suddenly appears in a remote field, Adam and Rao are confronted with the most devastating weapon they have ever seen: Prophet. No one knows who created it, or why, but this spooky substance is bringing happy memories to life, then stifling people with their own joy. Despite their troubled past, the two are drawn closer than ever to defend what they hold most dear.

As I said in my 2022 science fiction subgenre primer, the genre of science fiction is expanding. Like our universe, it is expanding quickly, redefined with every story, be it short or long-form. And beneath the large umbrella of science fiction, subgenres are added and redefined. All in all, there are endless ways to tell a science fiction story (don’t let any old guard tell you different).

And then — subgenres aside — there is genre-bending science fiction. There is science fiction that centers horror and science fiction that is fabulist and weird. There’s science fantasy, as well as science fiction romance. There’s science fiction that is nearly unclassifiable, a mixture of so many things, or even all the things. I’ve mentioned in my Book Riot oeuvre that genre-bending of any shape or size is my kind of work. When writers are bold and brave in their genre weaving, that’s when the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention. That’s when I rub my hands together and think, “oh, this is going to be good.”

Genre-bending science fiction doesn’t have to be confined to the novel form, either. Short fiction science fiction is in a golden age right now. Check out the latest finalists and winners for the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus awards, and I promise you will find mindblowing, genre-bending, exceptional work.

Below I will showcase eight tremendous genre-bending science fiction tales, ranging from short stories to novels, and everything in between. I believe I’ve mentioned at least one in a previous post from last year, but you’ll notice the genre coverage is different. Ergo, these stories are genre-bending.

In any case, I hope you’ll enjoy these stories as much as I do.

Genre-Bending Science Fiction: Novels & Novellas

Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor

Fatima had a past before she became known as Sankofa. Before those around her called her the adopted daughter of the Angel of Death. With a mere glance, an entire town could fall. But before that, the world was different.

So much of what Okorafor writes is genre-bending science fiction (the Binti trilogy!). This novella begins in an almost fantasy-horror like fashion: Sankofa walking, leaving fear and horror in her wake. But as the story unfolds, it becomes this all-encompassing tale of African futurism, how the world shapes us, and then how we might reshape the world.

Hexwood by Diana Wynne Jones

One of the things I love about including this book is seeing this title on Goodreads and reading all the genres it’s described as. Hint: it’s like all the genres. Fantasy, science fiction, time travel, magic, dragons, robots, portals, you name it, Hexwood probably has it. And clearly, none of this should surprise you coming from the legendary Diana Wynne Jones.

The tale follows Ann Stavely as she watches people disappear through the farm’s gate. She meets a sorcerer, and time begins to move differently in the woods nearby. Little does she know that far beyond Earth, Controller Borasus receives word that an ancient machine has been awakened.

I mean, clearly, genre-bending at its finest.

Escape Velocity by Victor Manibo

I love how Victor Manibo is always able to craft the perfect mystery within his brilliant science fiction worlds. Manibo is a master at showing Earth just around corner, especially if we keep on our current trajectory. Picture a world of hyper-capitalism, a luxury liner — Space Habitat Altaire —and a ruthless world of amassing “points” in order for the chance to start a new life on Mars.

Now, add a decadent mystery of whodunit with a sprinkle of who’s willing to do anything to get what they want: Ava wants to find out who murdered her brother; Laz wants to win Ava’s heart; Sloane wants to collect secrets as his family’s wealth declines; Henry will do whatever it takes to get to Mars.

And all this is set during a class reunion on a luxury space liner, with twists and turns you won’t see coming. Get your science fiction Knives Out fix with this one.

Borne by Jeff VanderMeer

I still think about this book. I still think about Borne and that giant bear, Mord. This book is solidly science fiction, but it’s also just fucking weird. That’s honestly the best way to describe it, too, which is why I love it so much. It’s post-apocalyptic, and it manages to be both epic and extremely intimate.

Rachel is trying to survive in a world that wants to kill her at every turn. Then she finds Borne, an amorphous creature, in the fur of a Godzilla-sized bear named Mord. Rachel cannot bring herself, nor allow her lover Wick, to destroy Borne. Borne reminds her of better times and better places, and an attachment grows between them. This book is personal as well as out of this world. It’s weird fiction at its finest. It’s science fiction at its most profound.

Genre-Bending Science Fiction: Short Form

This list includes short fiction, though that ranges in word count. Below you’ll find tales that are short stories or novelettes.

Foxfire, Foxfire” by Yoon Ha Lee from Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Let me begin by saying that the publication of this story is in a highly respected (and one of my personal favorites) genre magazine called Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Its mission: to publish the very best in “literary adventure fantasy.” And yet, this story also has beautifully crafted science fiction elements.

This novelette follows Baekdo, a magical, shapeshifting fox who is able to speak to gods. Baekdo is set on becoming human, which requires him to kill — and devour the liver of — 100 humans. Baekdo has no qualms about coming to his 100th kill, but things don’t go as planned. Baekdo’s 100th victim is the pilot of a Cataphract, a giant battle mech. Baekdo swears on the tiger-sages that he will keep his oath with the pilot, Jong, and finish her mission. It’s an intimate, magical tale while also being epic in scope. Truly, a genre-bending masterpiece.

The Gondoliers” by Karen Russell from Orange World and Other Stories

Karen Russell is a masterful genre-bending writer. I fell in love with Russell’s work over ten years ago, with her first collection St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. Like Kelly Link, Russell was vital in redefining, for me at least, what fiction, especially literary fiction, can do. “The Gondoliers” is a wonderful example of this.

It follows Janelle Picarro, a.k.a Blister, in a post-apocalyptic world where parts of Florida have fully submerged underwater and is now called New Florida. Blister is a gondolier, ferrying people across the waters. Blister and her sisters use echolocation to communicate and steer. There is a little bit of everything in this story, and you won’t be the same when you reach the end.

Memories of Memories Lost” by Mahmud El Sayed from khōréō

khōréō is one of my favorite speculative fiction magazines. “In Memories of Memories Lost,” El Sayed crafts a devastatingly personal short story of memory, loss, and sacrifice.

After aliens take over Earth, humans must pay a “memory tax” to their cosmic invaders. The story follows Ahmed, who chooses, for his tax, to give a large family memory in the form of a heirloom. In doing so, he can assure the comfort of his father, who suffers from dementia. It’s a story of complex relationships and love. It’s a story that begs hard questions of ourselves, our souls, and our loved ones: What if we could give traumatic memories away? Would we regret the loss?

The Dizzy Room” by Kristina Ten from Nightmare Magazine

Look, I know I’ve mentioned this story before, and it’s because the story is that good. Published in the renowned horror magazine Nightmare, this story is about a video game, but it’s also a horror story about memory and language. There are images and a multitude of sensory details that will haunt me forever.

This is science fiction horror at its best, with a mounting dread that will have you tempted to lean back while also leaning forward, closer to the page, admittedly desperate to hear the sounds of the game itself beckoning you. I am not at all surprised that this story is a finalist for the 2023 Shirley Jackson Awards.

Find Genre-Bending Stories Everywhere

Every genre has trailblazers, writers who take a genre and build upon it, question and criticize it, and remold it into something new. These are the writers I seek out again and again to dissect and study these genres, rediscovering them and also falling in love with them all over again. They are out there now, and their stories are waiting.

If you’re interested in more genre-bending work, check out these other Book Riot gems:

What is considered a major breakthrough in science fiction publication?

What is considered a major breakthrough in science fiction publication?

African futurism, a growing science fiction subgenre, often features post-apocalyptic themes reflecting present-day fears.

The genre has become more global, with authors like Chinese science fiction writer Cixin Liu winning international awards.

Authors like Nnedi Okorafor, Margaret Atwood, and Octavia E. Butler are influential in science fiction, exploring issues of oppression, resistance, and social justice.

Who wrote "Binti," a Hugo-award-winning African futuristic science fiction horror story?

Their writing styles have inspired a new generation and redefined the genre.

Title:

Content: ×
Cookies help us deliver our Services. By using our Services, you agree to our use of cookies. Learn More.

Nnedi Okorafor's Akata Witch Books Are The Next Great Fantasy Series That Should Be On Hollywood's Radar

If you're not yet familiar with the Nebula, World Fantasy, and two-time Hugo Award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor, you soon will be.

In 2020, The Hollywood Reporter announced that Michael Ellenberg's Media Res would bring the author's critically-acclaimed "Binti" trilogy to the small screen for Hulu, with a script co-written by Okorafor and the Emmy-nominated Stacy Osei-Kuffour (of "Watchmen"). Meanwhile, over on HBO, another award-winning writer, George R.R. Martin, is in the process of developing Okorafor's renowned novel, "Who Fears Death." What's more, Martin is far from the only big name attached to the project: Marvel alum Tessa Thompson will serve as an executive producer, while Aïda Mashaka Croal (of "Jessica Jones" and "Luke Cage") is signed on as showrunner.

Though release dates have yet to be announced, it's safe to say the next few years will introduce an even wider audience on to the work of Okorafor, whose genre-bending stories consistently defy strict categorization, with works ranging from her 2019 memoir to the Hugo Award-nominated comic book "Black Panther: Long Live the King." Yet while Hollywood is clearly, and rightfully, aware of Okorafor's diverse catalog of groundbreaking work, they've yet to scoop up her "Nsibidi Scripts Series" — comprised, for now, of 2011's "Akata Witch," 2017's "Akata Warrior," and 2022's "Akata Woman" — a narrative whose themes have only grown in relevance, urgency, and necessity with each passing year.

It's not just the relevance of the "Nsibidi Scripts Series" that makes them ripe for mainstream adaptation, however. Each book does something only the rarest of stories manage to fully achieve — but that any work of art must, by definition, aspire to achieve. That is, they leave their reader forever changed.

What is the Nsibidi Scripts Series?

Before we dive into why Hollwood should turn its attention to the "Nsibidi Scripts Series," it must be said that the paramount motive for adapting the YA narrative is, simply, that it's just damn good storytelling.

In "Akata Witch," we meet the tale's central protagonist, Sunny Nwazue, and accompany her on a bewildering, empowering, dangerous, frightening, and fulfilling journey of self-discovery. Immediately, we learn that Sunny's background and appearance confuses her peers. As Sunny tells us, "I'm Nigerian by blood, American by birth, and Nigerian again because I live here. I have West African features, like my mother, but while the rest of my family is dark brown [...] I'm albino."

It isn't just Sunny's appearance and dual cultural identity that makes her an outcast: there are other seeming contradictions. She's an athletic and extremely intelligent young girl in a world that frequently discourages or underestimates both her brain and her brawn; she's a Leopard Person living in a world of Lambs (more on that in a moment); and, as a "free agent" (that is, a Leopard with Lamb parents), she's a rarity twice over.

As in all of Okorafor's work, Leopard People resist a simple, straightforward explanation. They possess secret knowledge and skills, including the ability to engage with, manipulate, and combat juju. They can access places, concepts, and whole worlds that Lambs (the non-mystically gifted) cannot, and while the term for such magical individuals differs across the world, the notion of "Leopard Person" is specifically West African. With the help of mentors and her newfound friends — the bold and defiant Chichi, the mysterious, impulsive (and like Sunny, Nigerian-American) Sasha, and the sensible Orlu — Sunny discovers what it means to be a Leopard, and she faces off against forces with apocalyptic intent.

Akata Witch is far more than the Nigerian Harry Potter

Amazon's "Akata Witch" description labels it "The Nigerian Harry Potter," an association both inaccurate and inadequate. In a Tin House interview, Okorafor addressed this: "I understand the inclination to think like that, but that way of thinking will prevent you from ever really seeing beyond what you're familiar with."

Frustrated by the reductive effect the correlation was having on the understanding of her work, Okorafor stressed she was writing in an entirely different genre from J.K. Rowling by giving that genre a name: Africanjujuism, telling Publishers Weekly, "I felt that a lot of my work, including the 'Nsibidi Script series,' was being read through a Western lens. People [...] weren't understanding that a lot of the mystical things happening in these books were real [mythology]."

West African culture is embedded deeply into the "Akata Witch" books, which pull from actual cosmologies and traditions — e.g., masquerades, secret societies, and deities like Ekwensu, Ogbuide, and Udide — of also real peoples such as the Igbo, the Efik, and, yes, the Leopard People. While Okorafor's universe grows increasingly fantastical, the realness of its Nigerian setting is significant. Both the serious and playful aspects are based on real-world Nigerian traditions (see: pepper soup vs juju-infused, tainted pepper soup). To suggest that juju is simply "the 'African' term" for magic, or Leopard People "the 'African' term" for wizards and witches, suggests all fairytales are about tiny blonde winged women with an odd dependence on a guy named Peter. And if a story has nothing new to teach us, what's the point?

We're emphasizing this, because what Okorafor intentionally refuses to do in the novels is — with regard to its need for an adaptation — almost as important as what she triumphantly succeeds at.

Akata Witch's narrative trusts you to learn, experience, and grow

To fully appreciate the "Nsibidi Script Series," a Western reader — or, if an adaptation ever happens, future viewer — must get comfortable admitting and even embracing how little they know. From "Akata Witch" onwards, you'll stumble across words you've never seen and can't immediately pronounce, concepts you might struggle to understand, traditions you've never heard of, as well as flora, fauna, and terrain that you'll have to look up in order to know whether or not it's real.

What makes this even more exciting is that Okorafor does something all-too-rare in mainstream storytelling: she trusts you. She expects you to manage it all, and to grow and learn along with her protagonist the entire time. When she plays with stereotypes, Okorafor trusts you to get it. When she introduces a concept, like Leopard People having a human face and a spirit face (their mystical identity, which is not of this world) she makes no attempt to squeeze it into Western terminology. And when things like sexism, bigotry, corruption, or senseless murder occur, they occur as they do in the real world.

Okorafor saves the vast majority of her metaphors for the intangible and ideological. She doesn't couch things many of her readers confront on a daily basis in tried-and-true YA tropes like ghouls or monsters. The books' very titles, in fact, trust you to embrace an uncomfortable reckoning. As she explained on The New Yorker's radio hour, "[Akata is] a derogatory term for Black Americans, but that also includes Nigerian Americans as well. This is a word that I have grown up hearing and being called and grappling with and yelling about."

Nnedi Okorafor's work defies any efforts to simplify it

In The Los Angeles' Review's report on "Akata Woman," reviewer Deborah Williams writes, "Okorafor's trilogy — and this third book in particular — wants to teach us how to read: how to read outside of an Anglo European context."

Crucially, the mystical object at the heart of "Akata Woman" isn't a grail, sword, or diary, but a ghazal, and as Williams points out, Sunny's education in Nsibidi script is in direct conversation with both the 7th century form of Arabic verse, and the author's work as a whole. Indeed, as Okorafor has explained (via Brittle Paper), "Nsibidi is a secret and often mystical ideographic writing system created in what is now called southeastern Nigeria [...] It is truly deeply only West African."

Sunny's Nsibidi journey in Book 3 of the series is, as Williams writes, "A version of what happens when we read a ghazal [...] Ghazals are written in couplets, each of which ends with the same word or phrase. Depending on the context of the specific couplet, the repeating phrase shifts in meaning — we must learn to hold all these meanings in mind, simultaneously, as we read." And so, a Nsibidi book (as depicted in the "Akata Witch" novels) is constantly shifting in meaning, even shifting from one genre to the next — like Okorafor's own writing, which can be anything from fantasy, to horror, to speculative fiction, to Africanfuturism, to Africanjujuism, to all of these things at once.

Sunny must hold all those meanings — as well as all her various identities — in mind, simultaneously, in order to fully realize herself and embrace her power. And Okorafor's books aren't just teaching us the value of knowledge. She's training us to comprehend multiple — and conflicting — concepts, meanings, and worldviews simultaneously.

Sunny's story deserves the widespread attention an adaptation would give it

This is why "Akata Witch" and its sequels deserve the attention a mainstream TV or movie adaptation would bring: these books have a lot to give. Because despite the myopic nature of the internet, with its echo chambers and constant lines drawn in the sand, the world itself is a vast, complex, conflicting and conflicted place. There aren't singular "right" answers. There are complex, conflicting and conflicted ideologies, worldviews, and people. Most of us will only ever understand the tiniest sliver of it.

Among the many things Sunny teaches us (by learning them herself) in the series, the following lessons are deeply relevant: There are no zero-sum games. No group is a monolith. No identity is whole, singular, and easy to define. But when we refuse to accept that nuance and complexity, we'll suffer (as so many Lambs do) due our own willful ignorance.

Unfortunately, over the past several years (and particularly, though not exclusively, in the United States) that ignorance has only grown in its willfulness, as groups across the country conspire to pass it on to the next generation. Halfway through 2023, nearly 900 books have been banned in U.S. schools. As PEN America reports, such bans are intently aimed at books featuring discussions of racism, LBTQ+ characters, and LGBTQ+ themes. Meanwhile, politicians — with the support of fearful parents, in the guise of preserving "America" — are making it illegal to teach any reality that might conflict with what (white) children already "know."

In contrast, in "Akata Warrior," it's no accident that Sunny — in order to defeat a djinn, and redeem and free the trapped Ogwu, a descendant of Udide, and her many spider children — must "remember" a tragic, violent event that happened long before her birth.

The Akata Witch books elevate knowledge and learning as a (literal) currency

This sequence in "Akata Warrior" is a tense and terrifying moment for Sunny, and after her triumph over the djinn, and her memory of her ancestral and spirit past, it's written that, "Her muscles felt sore and her head ached. But she felt good. She felt strong. The memory of Ogwu's failure and curse was vivid in her head." Ogwu was part of a team, Sunny "remembers," who failed to stop the Enola Gay from dropping the bomb on Hiroshima.

Sunny's confrontation with the djinn is not the first time, and it won't be the last, that she must past through uncertainty, confusion, fear, and pain in order to gain knowledge. Okorafor's "Nsibidi Scripts Series" is overflowing with valuable lessons for young people (and adults) from all walks of life who happen to be living in this day and age. For instance: for Leopard People, what Lamb society sees as their flaws are in fact the very source of the power. For example, the dyslexic Orlu can undo juju, while Sunny's albinism allows her to "glide" freely between our world and the wilderness — that is, the spirit world, which exists all around us, but that only Leopard People can access, and only someone like Sunny can move through without temporarily dying.

And there are, of course, lessons about friendship, sacrifice, teamwork, self-discovery and self-acceptance, as well as a strong commentary on war, capitalism, and the destruction of the natural world. But it's the series' emphasis on learning, and on knowledge and wisdom as the most valuable possession in the world — the only way to obtain currency in the Leopard world is by learning something new — that makes its adaptation not only desirable, but downright urgent.

A Nsibidi Scripts adaptation is exactly what we need right now

Early on in "Akata Warrior," Sunny — who's been traumatically separated from her spirit face, Anyanwu — enters the fearsome Nimm Village on a quest for the ghazal. There, she must speak to Chichi's estranged auntie, aka Abeng Nimm, aka She Who Lives in a Tree. Okorafor's writing, here, elevates the central theme of these books:

"[Sunny] was almost there, and she had just one moment to process two things [...] She smashed through the huge tungwa and glided right into the tree. [...] She could feel the tree's flesh biting and pulling at her as she passed through it as nothing but spirit. She kept going. She didn't know how long she burrowed, and more than once the fear of getting stuck inside the solid flesh of a tree crossed her mind [...] When she tumbled onto the smooth surface of the tree's wooden floor, she was Anyanwu and Anyanwu was her. They moved together and they felt confident in their motion. The rays of sunshine that glowed from her spirit face lit the entire room."

Anyanwu isn't just a clever name Okorafor gave to Sunny's spirit face. In Igbo, it means "eye of the sun," but Anyanwu is also recognized as a solar deity, and a manifestation of the supreme creator, Chukwu. The truth can hurt, and the process of learning can indeed be uncomfortable — even painful. But it is, as both the candle-loving Sunny and the reader learn early in Book 1, the only way out of the dark. And at a time when so many are determined to keep themselves and their children in that darkness, an adaptation of Sunny's journey would serve as a powerful and necessary light source.

The Speculative Fiction Project fosters collaboration between authors and scientists from diverse backgrounds, resulting in several published anthologies.

Title:

Content: Dartmouth Speculative Fiction Project considers next steps for the genre

The project brings together authors and Dartmouth professors to collaborate on new speculative fiction work rooted in scientific research on campus.

by Sophie Chadha | 53 minutes ago

From April 13 to 16, speculative fiction authors from around the country came to Hanover to participate in the Dartmouth Speculative Fiction Project, a series of events which included interdisciplinary activities between visiting authors and Dartmouth faculty, as well as readings and panel discussions open to the public. The project aimed to foster collaboration between authors and Dartmouth faculty – with a focus on designing stories rooted in scientific research – and addressed the present and future of the speculative fiction genre.

The project was co-organized by engineering professor Solomon Diamond, English professor Rebecca Clark, the Design Initiative at Dartmouth program manager Paula Olson, Hugo award-winning speculative fiction editor Liz Gorinsky and author and former visiting film and media studies professor Sharang Biswas Th’13.

According to Hugo and Nebula awards finalist Nibedita Sen, speculative fiction is a general term that provokes valuable questions.

“The term ‘speculative fiction’ … works as an umbrella term: It is fiction which imagines things that do not currently exist, things that may come into being through science or through magic,” Sen said. “It could be advancement, or it could be, ‘What if we went backwards? What if we stepped to the side?’ It could be a different dimension, a different timestream.”

In a Q&A panel on April 15, some authors touched on the exchange of knowledge that occurs between scientific researchers and speculative fiction writers. Author K.M. Szpara said he believes the future of speculative fiction will become increasingly interdisciplinary and collaborative.

Nebula award-winning author Sam J. Miller  said we should reframe one stereotype about fiction — that it is dismissive of reality’s problems — and instead view its creation of a world without societal problems as proof of the possibility that our society could exist without them.

“It is as simple as, ‘ … And then the housing crisis is over … And then all the people standing in the way of progress are gone.’” Miller said.

Calvin George ’24, who attended the Q&A, said he was intrigued by Miller’s concept of speculative fiction as a tool for social change.

“It was really interesting to hear from these authors [about] how imagining worlds where a huge problem like climate change is gone can actually help us solve those problems by giving us a sense of hope that they are not absolute or inevitable,” George said.

Sen said she views fiction as an important lens through which we can better understand the reality of our problems.

“A lot of people view escapism as a form of writing that is less than, but I don't believe in that. Like Tolkien said: Is it not a prisoner's duty to try to escape? Fiction is the spoonful of sugar that helps the truth go down,” Sen said.

Sen said this belief manifested in her own writing following the results of the 2016 presidential election, when she pivoted into the realm of horror as a form of catharsis.

“[In 2016,] people like me were being viewed as monsters, so I decided, ‘Well, I will show you what a monster really is,’” Sen said.

Looking to the future of speculative fiction, teacher, linguist and author Rob Cameron points to the genre’s growth over the past few decades from a niche, isolated faction of enthusiasts to a universal mode of entertainment.

“With the popularization of science fiction through film, especially Marvel, ‘geek culture’ has become much more expansive — you do not have to be a geek to enjoy it,” Cameron said. “At the same time, authors’ expectations of their readers have changed with these new mediums: Are people really going to sit down and read this book? This kind of thinking sparks novel ideas like ‘choose your own adventure’ narratives, comic books, video games and more.”

According to Biswas, the Speculative Fiction Project came to life when pitched the idea of centering speculative fiction around scholarship at Dartmouth to Diamond. When selecting the authors for the panel, Biswas shared that the organizers primarily aimed to represent diversity in both background and writing experience.

“If you’re claiming to do a project that looks at the future of humanity, you need to represent diverse perspectives,” he said.

Biswas added that if the project were to happen again, he hopes it can bring together an even more diverse group of people with more funding.

“In the future, with better channels of funding, we hope to have more geographic diversity and be able to bring in international authors,” Biswas said.

The Speculative Fiction Project will continue as authors workshop their stories with their research partners. These works of fiction will be presented at a Dartmouth symposium in June and will subsequently be synthesized into an anthology in Lightspeed Magazine next year.

According to Clark, students will be invited to submit their own stories and up to four of them will be chosen and featured in the professional collection.

Speculative fiction can be a powerful tool for social change and solving real-world problems.

The science fiction genre is becoming more interdisciplinary, with authors and researchers collaborating to explore new ideas.

The genre is shaping cultural conversations on social justice, equity, and sustainability through contributions from diverse authors.

Title:

Content: Solarpunk – a worldview that imagines hopeful futures of social justice, planet-friendly technologies, decentralisation and harmony – has come quite a long way since its first appearance in an online article in 2008. Today this genre of science fiction is being explored by multiple authors, poets, academics and critics all across the world. The ultimate goal of these stories and the associated politics is to imagine and work towards a future of coexistence, which acknowledges our kinship and interdependence with all beings big and small, as an alternative to wandering about a zombie apocalypse or sinking in dystopian gloominess.

After the publication of the much-acclaimed anthology Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures, the editors decided to publish another anthology focusing on creatures, the more-than-human allies who would live with and among us in a possible future. The editors, Christoph Rupprecht, Deborah Cleland, Melissa Ingaruca Moreno, Norie Tamura, Rajat Chaudhuri and Sarena Ulibarri have collectively brought this second offering, a second anthology titled Solarpunk Creatures, three years after the first.

A multispecies imagination

Explaining the rationale for this collection of stories, the editors write in their introduction, “Where Multispecies Cities sought to broaden the spotlight and highlight the multitude of actors on the stage, Solarpunk Creatures introduces a whole new cast of more-than-human protagonists: organic and digital, alien and fantastic, tiny and boundlessly large.” These creatures are not only restricted to animals and plants but also include AI who take the role of the main protagonist in some of these engaging tales. “The AI characters that made it into the anthology are gentle and loveable – not disturbing and often a malevolent presence that is unsettling the role and value of artists around the globe,” explains the introduction. In these stories, AI creatures do not try to destroy or dominate humankind but often are companions and co-participants in humanity’s engagement with a hopeful and sustainable futures.

Christoph Rupprecht, Deborah Cleland, Melissa Ingaruca Moreno, Norie Tamura and Rajat Chaudhuri have efficiently and strategically framed the “Introduction” by referring to other critics and writers who have discussed multispecies communities such as Robin Wall Kimmerer’s memorable Braiding Sweetgrass. It would also not miss the careful reader’s notice that the team of editors, true to the sense of community harboured by Solarpunk, represent far-flung regions of the world and that the book also includes at least two stories written by collectives. The editors have also provided tasting samples of the stories in the anthology which will intrigue and draw the readers to explore the book.

“Multispecies imagination can heal us from our chronic isolation from nature,” the editors write. The lucid introduction, which will interest academics and genre-readers alike, ends with this possibility of healing, it says, “breath-taking encounters and a sense of wonder, await not only among the stars, but at the end of every one of the countless threads connecting us to the world and its inhabitants.”

Indian writers

Apart from writers from advanced industrialised countries, this anthology, like the one before it, has also featured stories from the Asia-Pacific region among which we have three stories by Indian writers, Priya Sarukkai Chabria, Rimi B Chatterjee, and Tashan Mehta. Casting its net wide this anthology has managed to portray multifarious perspectives, problems and ideas of people spread out across the globe, weaving them together into thought-provoking tales.

Tashan Mehta’s “Leaf Whispers, Ocean Song” is a beautiful tale about the influence of Opi, a deep sea creature on the life of humans when it arrives on the coastline of Goa. Opi is showcased as a humongous yet loveable creature who somewhat transforms the lives of humans. Here, this alien creature does not come from the sky but from the ocean and as soon as it reaches the shore, Opi is perceived differently by different people. While the local fishermen call it “a visiting God from the sea”, marine biologists, conservationists and researchers wish to study and understand this creature. On the other hand, the linguists in the story, Jen and Lu are interested in studying Opi’s language and Jem soon admits that the speech of this creature is “too vast. Its sound, scent, song, feeling, thought – just everything…” The presence and effect of this creature are beyond human understanding because Opi somehow seems to unite animals like dogs, crabs and starfish – something unimaginable to humans. This story, rejecting anthropocentric beliefs, reiterates the fact that humans are just a tiny part of the wide unknown world around us. This is best conveyed by Jen when she says, “…[Opi] is a reminder of how insignificant we are, of how life plays out in a magnitude we cannot imagine.”

From a sea creature, we move on to a comet in Priya Sarukkai Chabria’s story “Flyby”. Comet Izumi is the protagonist of this memorable tale which blends poetic language with a capacious imagination, to portray the dynamics of non-human beings which are boundlessly large. Chabria writes, “Unlike planets, beautiful and rounded as melons, with moons circling and circling them, comets are loners, each speaking a unique language of elliptical orbit and ellipses from sight. Pilgrims of the universe, they plunge in and out of the neat orbital paths of the planets, streaking their immense fiery tails over unknown skies”

Readers can also visualise the future of the Earth through the eyes of Comet Izumi, “A series of climatic changes has altered Earth’s topography; begun by Capitalocene greed in the brief human geological epoch…Earth’s invisible armour that protects life, the radiation shield is temporarily ripped.” Though the story may seem to showcase destruction in the beginning, it gradually takes a soothing turn towards hope and most importantly, towards the importance of sound which has the power to regenerate life. The author has beautifully blended the wisdom of ancient texts in this unique solarpunk narrative which will definitely help us think far beyond our limited human and planetary sphere of being.

After Mehta’s sea creature and Chhabria’s comet, we travel to the land of our four-legged friends, in Rimi B Chatterjee’s “Hopdog” which is reminiscent of her “Arfabad” in the previous volume. The story begins with “Dog number 834” who is rescued from a dogfighting ring where “her masters would watch as she and her competitors tore the prey to shred and wolfed down whatever they could snatch from each other’s jaws.” Dog number 834 is finally rescued from a place that smelt of fear, trouble and death by the survivors of Zigsa’s Nest, referring back to Chatterjee’s “Arfabad”. Arfabad is a land inhabited by dogs and everything is dog-sized there, which is where the central character, Zigsa had created a survivarium where dogs could be protected.

The dog of the present story, after trials and tribulations, arrives in this gentler, kinder place of love and happiness. Here, “…for the first time since she could remember, Peaches was sharing space with other breathing creatures that manifestly did not want to kill her.” But can she continue to live there and be protected from all dangers lurking outside? You have to read the story to find out.

AI and other friends

Apart from these engaging and thought-provoking stories by the three Indian writers, Solarpunk Creatures includes a wealth of tales from other parts of the world. “An Inconvenient Unicorn” by Geraldine Briony Hunt is a Solarpunk fantasy set in a distant corner of Arcadia where nothing had grown in the last twenty years due to war: “It was not the sort of war where soldiers take up arms and march against one another, but a war waged in peoples’ kitchens, local pubs and schoolyards.” This land had faced a lot of adversities until a magical creature, a unicorn arrives to rejuvenate the land, bless it with harmony and greenery. “An Inconvenient Unicorn” evokes hope, telling us the importance of preserving the wild and being wary about the false dreams of ecomodernism.

Lyndsey Croal’s “Hunting for Rain”, is written from the perspective of a robotic dog who hunts for rain in a world affected by drought. This AI-guided creature has the ability to geolocate an area even before it begins to rain, hence it can signal people to head for those areas. Here, a robot has not been projected as something alien, industrial or dangerous, instead, it behaves like kin, fulfilling the common responsibility of sustaining life by pointing out where it will rain. When it finally begins to pour, the drought-stricken people give credit to this mechanised dog by patting its head and scratching behind its ears and it absorbs all the love from its beloved humans and wags its mechanical tail. This beautiful tale gives us hope that AI and robots can also be kin and can join with us in more-than-human connections of life-giving, reciprocal care.

Another story, “The Business of Bees” by Andrew Knighton is simple, funny, and memorable. Told from the perspective of the cat, Luna, who is frustrated about the fact that her human hosts don’t seem to notice some weirdness about the bees. Luna gets so curious that she leaves home to find out what the bees are up to. This will definitely be a memorable journey for the curious cat.

This is a necessary collection for a time in the planet’s history when shifts in collective imagination are the need of the hour. In these times of climate doom, growing inequity and injustice, books like Solarpunk Creatures help us think and imagine differently, beyond our insular selves, together and in community with others, human and non-human, visible, invisible or fathomless.

Sayantani Sengupta is a PhD student at St Xavier’s University, Kolkata. She is researching Solarpunk literature and movement.

Solarpunk Creatures, edited by Christoph Rupprecht, Deborah Cleland, Rajat Chaudhuri, Sarena Ulibarri, Melissa Ingaruca Moreno, Norie Tamura, World Weaver Press.

Title:

Content: 'Snowpiercer' star Daveed Diggs says it's 'frustrating' when sci-fi stories lack diversity: 'That implies that you can't imagine a future with people of color'

  • "Snowpiercer" star Daveed Diggs told Insider that it's "frustrating" when sci-fi stories lack diversity.
  • Diggs said that it implies "you can't imagine a future with people of color."
  • Diggs added that "Snowpiercer" tries to make the future reflect what the world looks like now.

"Snowpiercer" star Daveed Diggs told Insider that it's "frustrating" when sci-fi movies and TV shows lack diversity.

Diggs, best known for his role in the original Broadway cast for the "Hamilton" musical, stars in the dystopian thriller about the last of human civilization living on a fast-moving train after Earth becomes a frozen wasteland. One of the aspects that make the series stand out is the fact that the characters are racially and geographically diverse.

Diggs, who plays the lead character Layton, told Insider that he hoped more sci-fi movies and TV shows embrace diversity in regards to their cast.

"The frustrating thing when our science fiction lacks diversity is that that implies that you can't imagine a future with people of color and that's super frustrating no matter who it is who's writing the show," Diggs said. "Because that also implies that you don't see them in your present or see us in your present."

He continued: "One of the things I do like about this show is that we try to make the world of the future also reflect our contemporary world."

In 2014, a study by book publisher Lee & Low Books found that in the top 100 domestic grossing films in the sci-fi and fantasy genre, only 8 had a person of color as their lead character. In six of those eight movies, the protagonist was Will Smith.

In recent years, major sci-fi franchises, such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Star Wars, and the CW's Arrowverse, have started to include better racial diversity, as well as diversity in other areas.

Diggs also told Insider that the series reflects the contemporary world with its underlying themes for season three.

"Season three asked us to look at the inherent flaws in a bunch of political systems," Diggs explained. "We live in a world in which, in the last few years, we've been witnessed to a fair amount of authoritarian regimes popping up in places that we thought were solidly committed to democracy and that happens on 'Snowpiercer.'"

He added: "The big political question this year is how useful is a broken democracy and what are you willing to do to fix it? And what does it mean to fix it?"

The third season of "Snowpiercer airs Mondays at 9 p.m. ET on TNT.

Sign up for notifications from Insider! Stay up to date with what you want to know.
Subscribe to push notifications

Keep reading

Title:

Content: Become a member and get exclusive access to articles, contests and more!
Start Your Free Trial

Literary Spotlight: Solarpunk Magazine

Optimistic speculative fiction – plus poetry and nonfiction – is welcomed with open arms at this bimonthly magazine.

Add to Favorites
Advertisement

The word “solarpunk” refers to a genre of speculative fiction informed by equity, community, optimism, and – frequently – the natural world; think Frank Herbert’s Dune and Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. Solarpunk Magazine is a bimonthly publication featuring idealistic short stories, poetry, nonfiction, and art. As editors write on the magazine’s website, “the time has never been more urgent for an explosion of utopian stories to light a path forward out of the darkness into which humanity has dug itself.”

This is a magazine about hope, informed by its subtitle: “Demand utopia.” Here, you’ll find stories about blimps powered by chlorophyllectrics (“Tillandsia” by Josie Kallo, Issue #2) and harmonious settlements rich with plant life (“The Last of the Mbahuku Tribe” by Oyedotun Damilola, Issue #1). You’ll also find nonfiction pieces, including “Utopianism: An Interview with Kim Stanley Robinson.”

Justine Norton-Kertson is co-editor-in-chief, along with Brianna Castagnozzi. Norton-Kertson enjoys poetry that captures the aesthetic of solarpunk in a lyrical way and explores themes “like radical hope and harmony between technology and nature.” They prefer fiction populated by characters compelling enough to fall in love with. “A solarpunk aesthetic is important too, but that’s the packaging for the juice, which is the characters and thematic threads,” Norton-Kertson explains.

Tone, editorial content

Editors at Solarpunk look for pieces that depict cooperative, sustainable communities and futuristic technologies that work in conjunction with nature. They’re passionate about work that dismantles the cultures of white supremacy and patriarchy and depicts a more balanced sharing of wealth.

The July 2022 issue is a celebration of speculative fiction written and edited by BIPOC creators. The issue includes Jeremy Nelson’s “Sweet Water from Salt,” a story that Castagnozzi says captured readers’ imaginations. “The main character is fleeing corporate seizure and a wicked thunderstorm on his late parents’ boat, all while attempting to preserve its precious cargo: bees and beehives,” she explains. “[The plot] joins heritage, inheritance, rebellion, and entomology in one fantastic survivalist story.”

Norton-Kertson points to Brazilian author Renan Bernardo’s story “Look to the Sky, My Love” (Issue #1) as the type of piece the editors like to publish. In one scene, the protagonist waits in line with another character at a party. Bernardo writes:

While we waited in line, Alana told me how thirty percent of all party-generated energy in Quadrilha da Perpétua came from the feet stomping on the ground, all the frisking and rhythm translated into energy and dignity for all the surrounding communities. And she told me how it could reach seventy percent if the party itself was able to trim its energy expenditure, and how so many possibilities could come from that.

“The story does an excellent job of capturing the spirit of hope and optimism, particularly with its theme of the power of celebration, that are the hallmarks of solarpunk,” Norton-Kertson explains. “As well, it illustrates the futuristic, art nouveau, clean energy aesthetic of the solarpunk genre.”

Advertisement

Contributors

Past contributors include poets Gabriela Avelino, Vanessa Jae, and Marisca Pichette; fiction authors include Otancia Noel, Sarena Ulibarri, and Endria Isa Richardson.

Elizabeth Sutterlin has published in the magazine – a nonfiction piece titled “Solarpunk and She-Ra: How Netflix’s She-Ra Reboot Invites us to Imagine a High-Tech, Just, and Sustainable Future” (Issue #3). Nina Munteanu’s “Why Eco-Fiction Will Change the World – from CliFi to Solarpunk” appears in Issue #1, as does Lindsay Jane’s “Helping Your Garden Transition with Climate Change.”

Castagnozzi is eager to publish T.R. Siebert’s poem “Choice” in the November 2022 issue, devoted to lunarpunk (think solarpunk but more spiritual and introspective). In it, the poet describes a decision faced by the narrator. “They may join their sisters in a beautifully monstrous transformation and live powerfully in the ocean, or they may continue to live as a human,” Castagnozzi explains. “The imagery of the starlit seas fits well with our visions of lunarpunk, as does the narrator’s sense of agency.”

Norton-Kertson notes that Solarpunk looks forward to publishing the magazine’s first solarpunk story for middle-grade readers, written by J. Dianne Dotson, in 2023. “It’s a really sweet story that leans on into the lunarpunk aesthetic and takes place in a utopian world,” they say.

Advice for potential contributors

Check Solarpunk’s website for upcoming themes; Issue #5 (deadline Sept. 13) focuses on solarpunk labor, while Issue #6 (deadline Nov. 8) focuses on lunarpunk. The magazine hosts a monthly microfiction contest with a monetary prize for the best story of 250 words or fewer, adhering to that month’s theme. (Check the website regularly for an updated list of contest themes.)

Advertisement

Editors would love to see more creative nonfiction submissions related to solarpunk themes and the fight against fossil fuels. They’re not interested in academic pieces full of jargon or political rants. “For fiction and poetry,” Castagnozzi says, “emphasize joyful, hopeful, or otherwise positive endings.”

They’re committed to publishing pieces by marginalized writers; they encourage potential contributors to identify themselves in a cover letter as BIPOC, LGBTQIA, neurodivergent, or disabled, for example. “We love to amplify voices from marginalized communities that are most impacted by climate change and other global problems,” Norton-Kertson writes on the magazine’s website. “In fact, it’s one of the key characteristics of solarpunk.”

Solarpunk Magazine at a glance

“An online publication imagining a better world through optimistic speculative literature.”

Reading periods: See website for reading periods and themes.

Length: Prose up to 7,500 words; poems up to five pages.

Genres: Fiction, nonfiction, poetry.

Submission format: Through Moksha.

Payment: Yes.

Contact: Co-editors Justine Norton-Kertson and Brianna Castagnozzi at [email protected],
solarpunkmagazine.com

Melissa Hart is the author, most recently, of the novel Daisy Woodworm Changes the World. melissahart.com

Advertisement

New authors and works have introduced the genre to new audiences and contributed to its evolution, such as Du Jian's "World Science Fiction".

Title:

Content: Supplement
Sunday literature.
Culture
Sunday Literature: Tu Chien's Years, Huang Hua and Long Memories: A Review of Books by Tu Chien
He died, and there was a great book about him, and a great book about him.
Born in Hong Kong on February 19, 1935 (also known as February 19, 1934), Du Chin studied at Lingnan Primary School and St. Stephen's College in Hong Kong. He graduated from the Chinese Department of Sun Yat-sen University.
Du has been engaged in the editorial and translation work of newspapers and periodicals for 30 years. He has edited the monthly book “Open Volume ” and“ Readers ’ Friends ”. He is the author of “New Trends in Asian, African and Latin Literature ” (1976),“ Contemporary Foreign Writers and Works ” (1980), “The Night Voyage of the Book Sea ” (2 volumes, 1980, 1984),“ World Science Fiction ” (1992). He also translated several science fiction novels, including The Story of a Detective (1994), The Story of a Detective (2019), The Story of Three Generations (2014), Long Memories: The Eyes of a Teacher and Friends (2015), and translated several science fiction novels.
Du moved to Canada in his later years and died on July 23, 2022.
From Afro-Asian to Contemporary Foreign Literature
I have "Asian, African and Latin Literature New Trend", published by Hong Kong Wanyuan Book Company, this book from the left side, introduced the Asian, African and Latin literature, and it is rare to write a relatively mild, not too much ideological discourse.
From the illustrations in the book, Du Chen should have seen a number of foreign books before writing this book, including book reviews such as "Achebe's Novel Creation" and "Du Bois's Will", which discuss the more famous black writers, and scroll down a "text prison of a novel - this novel exposes the corruption of the police", from 1974 Nelson Marra The award-winning novel “The Bodyguard, ” and its associated spate of arrests, describes the repression of freedom of speech and the press by the Uruguayan police, as well as the repression of the literary and artistic world.
The incident has faded from the memory of ordinary literary readers, but Du Jian recorded it with a book review and became a page of literary history.
Towards the end of the 1970s, the tendency of the dogmatic left gradually faded, and Du Jian ’ s reading range became wider. Contemporary Foreign Writers and Works was published by the Hong Kong Ocean Arts and Culture Society, and its chapters were published in the magazine Ocean Arts and Culture.
Du introduced Graham Greene, John Cheever, Colette, Bertolt Brecht, Isak Dinesen, Nadine Gordimer, Ryuichiro Tanizaki and Ryuosuke Okawa, eight 20th-century writers who not only came out of the confines of Afro-Asian literature. As soon as the book is in hand, readers can enjoy the work from the two texts of the commentary and the translation. In “Contemporary Foreign Writers and Works, ” Du Jian chose to translate Ryuichiro Tanizaki ’ s“ tattoo ” and Ryuosuke Okawa ’ s “bamboo forest ”, both of which are popular and popular.
The South African female writer Gaudimet, introduced by Du Jian in the late 1970s, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991.
Book Sea Night Flight
"Book Sea Night Voyage" two episodes published by Beijing Sanlian, when there were many prints in mainland China, naturally has a certain influence, these two books seem to have opened a window for long-closed mainland readers.
Some of the book ’ s reviews have been found in The New Trend of Asian, African and Latin Literature and Contemporary Foreign Writers and Works. The book is mainly a collection of book reviews written by Du Jian in his spare time between 1974 and 1978.
As for "Book Sea Night Voyage II", the content is equally extensive, there is no less than, the second set of the epilogue, Du gradually explained his own ten years as a day of three paragraphs on the reading method:
"I read there is no shortcut, and will not" speed reading ", using a stupid way, the old man actually read the book, there is no other way.
I divide the time into three sections every day, to work a section, do work concentrate on other, the other section is translation and writing, people engaged in writing in Hong Kong, every day have to be a "reptile", write thousands of words, earn some manuscript money to earn a living, is the so-called book is only for the straw.
Only in the evening, I have my own time, from eight o'clock to two o'clock at night, I use to read the books I like to read, write what I like to write, these five or six hours are my most precious, but also I can control a period of reading and writing time. 」
In the second part of the book, Du Jian pointed out that the title of the book was Yan Qingshu (pen name Tang, author of "Jinling Spring Dream") in the illness, Du Jian wrote this book to commemorate the death of his friend Yan Qingshu.
Tang Tao wrote the preface to The Book of the Sea and Night Voyage II. At a glance, when he saw that the book was written by Zhang Dai (Zi Zongzi) and Ah Ying's The Book of the Night Voyage, Tang Tao, a veteran scholar of books, wrote:
"The Book of the Sea of Night Voyage, the Night Voyage Collection, and the Night Voyage Ship have a common meaning, suggesting that the author began his life of reading and writing at a time of silence and complete silence."
The first three books deal with this.
However, Zhang Zongzi has his own experience and opinions, which deserve our attention.
He said that the world is the most difficult to deal with, except for the night boat.
Yu Yao custom, the children of later generations, all do not read, after 20 years of learning as a handicraft, so the hundred works of acrobatics, occasionally have questions, such as "Yingzhou 18 bachelor, Yuntai 28 generals", one by one registration, the answer is like a "two-legged bookcase".
This kind of question and answer is often carried out in the night sailing ship. "Tang Tao also mentioned the funny story of a monk and a man in Chang Dai's" The Night Voyage Ship ", so let's not record it, and if you are interested, it is not difficult to find it.
Science fiction and detective fiction
In the 1990s, two volumes of The World Science Fiction Literary Landscape, published by the Modern Education Research Society and published by the Hong Kong Triumvirate of Detective Reasoning Novels, were the first books Du Jian wrote for young students to read.
According to Li Weicai in the book preface, the article in the "World Science Fiction Literary World" came from 1987 to 1988, and Du Jian was the "Strange Book Talk" column of the "Commercial Daily".
Watching H.G. Wells ’ s “The War of the Worlds ” and“ The Invisible Man, ” as well as Jules Verne ’ s works, Du recalls, was captivated by science fiction.
"World Science Fiction Literary Grand View" divides science fiction into four eras of creation, development, gold and innovation. The originator is "Frankenstein" author Mary Shelley (Mary Shelley), followed by Verne and Wales, and the development era has Huxley (Aldous Huxley) and George Orwell. Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein and Frank Herbert, author of Dune, the era of innovation is even more grand, including Kurt Vonnegut, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, and Ballard. J. G. Ballard is one of ten.
Ni Kuang's novels are highly readable because of their dramatic plot arrangements and vivid writing.
"World Science Fiction Literary Grand View" does not have esoteric nomenclature and academic discourse, but takes characters as a special chapter, and introduces the contents of representative works, which are all-encompassing, and is both a brief history of science fiction and a good primer for teenagers.
"Detective Reasoning Novel Talk" has an additional edition of "Detective Story", according to the reprint preface, Du Jian pursues "reading no forbidden area", since childhood likes adventure novels and detective novels, he also pointed out that Qian Zhongshu, Yang, Qian Yuan's family of three are fans of reasoning fiction.
"Detective Reasoning Novel Talk" from the beginning of the conversation between Allan Poe and Holmes, also mentioned Charlie Chan, Fu Manchu, James Bond three novel characters; Japanese reasoning fiction also accounted for a considerable amount of space, the additional edition of "Detective Story" added "Little Roosevelt's" First Lady Detective Case "," The Cat Detective Case "female writer Lilian Brown", style change New materials were added to the four articles of Keigo Higashino and the New Trend of Reasoning Novels and the Past and Present of Chinese Detective Reasoning Novels.
Aged yellow flowers
In his later years, Du left behind two books, one is a memoir, "Years of Yellow Flowers: The Search of Three Generations", and the other is a collection of essays, "Long Face Memories: The Eyes of Teachers and Friends."
From the childhood of the beacon fire (1935 – 1946), experienced the ideal pursuit of studying in mainland China, the anti-rightist struggle, and the storm of the Cultural Revolution. After 20 years in mainland China, he returned to Hong Kong and lived in Hong Kong for another 20 years.
Due to the serious illness of his mother, Tu Chin returned to Hong Kong with the President of the Xinhua News Agency, Mr Leung Wai-lin, and then came to Hong Kong with a one-way permit to accompany his father, Dr Li Song, to work in a pharmacy.
In the past 20 years in mainland China, many books can not be seen, so once in Hong Kong, they constantly buy books to read.
Du Jian bought a collection of poems by Kahlil Gibran and translated some of the novels, but he wanted to kill time and practice writing. Moreover, "In the past few years, the pollution caused by the language of the Cultural Revolution in China, when I opened the newspaper, I saw all the big stories and false stories and official words, and it was best to clean the scum of my own language and words. I was able to learn his writing skills and practice my own Chinese writing, so I started translating Gibberlain ’ s novels. ”
He does not want to hide in the willow.
Du Jian went to the "New Evening News" to see the work, Rover asked Du Jian to translate a draft to see, Du Jian reluctantly to his own translation of the novel and the introduction of Ji Boren's short article to Rover.
The next day, Du Jian opened the "New Evening News" and found that his article introducing Gilbert was published in the newspaper.
As a result, Du turned to work at the newspaper office, because the newspaper was short of people, so he worked in the supplement of the newspaper.
He changed his name to Dujuan, meaning Dujuan Dujuan, to "Dujuan Dujuan".
My handwritten collection of Kiberon's novels, a small book by Daguang Publishing House in 1975, is a collection of translations from Du Jian's that year.
Du Jian said in "The Golden Flower of Time" that Zhang Huai, editor of Daguang Publishing House, is his acquaintance and has published several books for him, including "Life and Death", "People at the bottom", "New District Governor", "Golden City of Blood", etc. These books are not easy to find nowadays.
Teacher 's Eyes
In the preface to the book "I Know Du Zhen", the subtitle of "The Yellow Flower of Time", Lan Zhen points out that "The Yellow Flower of Time" "tells the story of the three generations of his family (grandfather Pan Ta Wei, father Li Song and Li Wenjian) who followed the truth and participated in the democratic revolution." His father was a little older, and his father was a little older, and his father was a little older, and he was a little older, and he was a little older.
It is divided into two parts: the first part is "Teacher's Letters", which, as the name suggests, are reminiscent of teachers and friends, including Lun, Chen Ti, Wu Chi-min, Lu Fu, Yen Ching-shu, Fan Yong, An Tzu Chieh, Kang Chun-fang, Li Liang-min, Xiao Qian Qian, Xu Xu, Lin Nien-tong, Huang Kuo-chih, Ma Kuo-chuan, and Qian. In the second half of the book, "Looking Back on History," Du Chien writes about the old stories of Liao An-hsiang, Pan Chu, Huang Leng-kuan, Pan Ta-wei, and Chen Lu-kui.
There are a number of overlaps between the "Love of the Teacher" and the "Yellow Flower of the Year". "From scratch" is a macroscopic view, and "Love of the Teacher" is even a micro-close-up. Du Jian writes old prose with the pen of a novelist. It is better to be lively and friendly, and everyone is alive. — Remembering my grandfather, Pan Ta-wei ” is a particularly detailed and wonderful article. Pan Ta-wei was influenced by Sun Yat-sen ’ s ideas and joined the Xingzhong Society. Later, Pan Ta-wei became the organizer of the Southern Section of the League.
The most famous story of Pan Ta-wei is the collection of the remains of the 72 martyrs of Huang Hua-gang. This passage is told by Du Chien through the words of his mother-in-law, Chen Wei-chang. When Chen Wei-chang died, Du Chien was very young. It was impossible to record his mother-in-law ’ s words. In other words, Du Chien used a small pen. The story of his father is told in the book of Revelation, and the story of his father is told in the book of Revelation.
Author: Wu Chi-min, editor of Readers ’ Liangyou Monthly (1984-1988, 45 issues), Science and Science Fiction Series (1990, 4 volumes) and Readers ’ Liangyou Library (10 volumes), Zhao Jiabi, Liang Yusheng, Hsu Ting-ming, Dong Ding-shan, Hsiao Chien, Ku Tsang-wu, Huang Ji-shih, Chen Hui-yang and Du Chien-chun.
Combining "The Yellow Flower of the Year" and "The Memory of the Long Face", now imagining Du Jian's career of writing books, translating books, and compiling books is bound to feel wonderful.
by Vincent Cheng
Art • Liu Ruoji
Editors • Chu Chien-hsun
Email • literature @ mingpao.com
fb: http: / / www.facebook.com / SundayMingpao
Previous / Next News

The next generation of science fiction writers is being influenced by authors like Nnedi Okorafor, Margaret Atwood, and Octavia E. Butler, who promote diversity and inclusion.

Who wrote "Binti," a Hugo-award-winning African futuristic science fiction horror story?