Contains brainfog. I admire people who have a clear definition for what each number of stars means, but I give them out purely intuitively.
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By day Ogata Shingo, an elderly Tokyo businessman, is troubled by small failures of memory. …
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By day Ogata Shingo, an elderly Tokyo businessman, is troubled by small failures of memory. …
In post-war Japan, an aging man grapples ineffectually with the autumn of his life, the failure of his children's marriages, and his slightly inappropriate relationship with his daughter-in-law. Calmly mellow & unfocussed, much like old age might be.
@Sandra I read this as a child so young I remember very little of it. I feels like I should re-read them to regain a little access to that time.
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The Star Diaries is a series of short stories of the adventures of space traveller …
This started out as a bunch of gags that must've been fresh as heck back then but we've seen redone to death since. But as it went on it became very thought-provoking and nuanced. A treat. The twenty-first voyage was especially sublime.
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From sci-fi visionary and acclaimed author Annalee Newitz comes Automatic Noodle, a cozy near-future novella …
The shtick: intelligent robots traumatized by war, capitalism, and oppression struggle together to establish a noodle shop in war-torn, separatist San Francisco.
Other than thinking robots and tube delivery technology, the worldbuilding is a fever dream of the current moment despite being set in 2064: it's got crypto, LLMs, delivery apps, ghost kitchens, slang like "rizz". But it's unfair to take this aspect too seriously; it's not a hard sf novel trying to speculate about the future. At its heart, it's a comfy emotional novel about forming community around food in a ruined future.
It's fluffy, it's fun, it was something I needed right now.
jay
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A 'clinic for the past' offers a promising treatment for Alzheimer's sufferers: each floor reproduces …
The #SFFBookClub pick for October 2025
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“Oh what is stronger than a death? Two sisters singing with one breath.”
In the …
There was a time when grammar was wild—when it shifted shapes and unleashed new forms out of old. Grammar, like gramarye, like grimoire. What is magic but a change in the world? What is conjugation but a transformation, one thing into another? She runs; she ran; she will run again.
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In a future world racked by violence and environmental catastrophes, George Orr wakes up one …
A few aspects of the story will strike 21st century readers as quaint, naive, or dated. For example the reliance on hypnosis as a foolproof method of making people dream whatever you want them to dream. However, this is a minor quibble, and the overall story arc is truly haunting, thought-provoking, and unsettling. It's sweet and beautiful in places, too. No wonder it's a classic.
From one of Japan's most brilliant and sensitive contemporary novelists, this speculative fiction masterpiece envisions an Earth where humans are …
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In this an enthralling Filipino-inspired epic fantasy, a nun concealing a goddess-given gift is unwillingly …
I had a lot of fun tearing through this book. At first I felt like it was a bit too directly "colonised Philippines but with magic" to be interesting fantasy, but in the end Buba used the magical elements to really bring out the clash of two religions and cultures in a powerful, interesting way.
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“Generation ship novel in verse” - this is either going to be incredible or go down in flames, and I want to find out. #SFFBookClub
In this an enthralling Filipino-inspired epic fantasy, a nun concealing a goddess-given gift is unwillingly transformed into a lightning rod …
A Librarians-and-Necromancy Fantasy with Small Town Charm in a City of the Dead
The others …
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I finished this book a couple of weeks ago, but I keep remembering the part about how the author did not realize that Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrise Cullors was an artist. Ebonyjanice explains that so many of us become known for our activism--our role in interrupting white supremacy--that our actually work, our creative work becomes backgrounded: "We are being known for our resistance and not for our living."
She also goes on to quote her own tweet, "I just thought about the fact that I may never fully self-actualize because I do not know what it looks like to dream of my highest self outside of white supremacist systems. Which is to say, everything I create is created from resistance rather than from a place of just being."
"I wanted to consider what my highest imagination of myself revealed without white supremacy as the filter through which I create, …
I finished this book a couple of weeks ago, but I keep remembering the part about how the author did not realize that Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrise Cullors was an artist. Ebonyjanice explains that so many of us become known for our activism--our role in interrupting white supremacy--that our actually work, our creative work becomes backgrounded: "We are being known for our resistance and not for our living."
She also goes on to quote her own tweet, "I just thought about the fact that I may never fully self-actualize because I do not know what it looks like to dream of my highest self outside of white supremacist systems. Which is to say, everything I create is created from resistance rather than from a place of just being."
"I wanted to consider what my highest imagination of myself revealed without white supremacy as the filter through which I create, build and exist. I realized that in order for me to be able to get to the work my soul must have, I needed either a new vision or a clearer vision of how to do justice work that didn't cost me my body. This, intuitively, called me to dreaming as a deep, intentional part of my practice."
