Tag Archives: Science Fiction

April 2, 2026 · 1:00 am

A Review of Mendala

Title: Mendala

Author: Rudolph Kohn

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: July 13, 2023

Genres: Science Fiction

Length: About 8 pages.

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

A day in the life of a chronocourier, one of the few people who can travel through time without debilitating consequences. What the job lacks in security it makes up for in pay. Today’s mission is to go back in time and retrieve a single, fertile Dodo’s egg. Yet the path of timeslipping is a tricky one, and the effects of jumping into nearby timelines can be unpredictable, and dangerous.

Review:

How much trouble could one little egg be?

Dodos are one of those extinct species that I’m quite sorry I’ll never have the opportunity to meet, so this tale automatically caught my attention when I read the blurb. I wondered what the client wanted with one of these eggs and why they chose this species in particular out of all of the other options. It also seemed curious to me that only one egg was requested when one would need far more individuals than that if they were to, say, want to breed more dodos in the future. Wondering about these issues was always at the forefront of my mind as I read, and I would have happily checked out a much longer work on this topic if such a thing were available.

The world building in this story felt underdeveloped to me. I would have loved to learn more about how time travel worked in this universe as well as how the protagonist ended up in such a profession. These details were important due to a twist in the final scene that was revealed but never fully explained. So much time was spent explaining all of the precautions the protagonist took earlier on that the ending didn’t quite makes sense to me as a reader, especially given how little was explained about the mechanics of the missions. It could have been a genuine oversight on the main character’s part, of course, but I simply didn’t have enough information to say for certain due to how rushed the world building was earlier on. This is something I’m saying as a reader who was excited to read this short story and was hoping to give it a much higher rating.

With that being said, I did enjoy that last plot twist in and of itself. It left plenty of room for possible sequels if the author ever decides to write them, and it made me pause and wonder about everything I’d already learned about this universe and the chronocourier who went on this mission. These sorts of reactions are one of the reasons why I enjoy science fiction so much, so I was glad to have that opportunity. Yes, I know I’m being a bit vague here, but I think it’s better for other readers to discover that surprise for themselves.

Mendala was intriguing.

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Tagged as 2020s, Book Reviews, Rudolph Kohn, Science Fiction, Self-Published, Short Story

March 26, 2026 · 1:00 am

A Review of Refuge

Title: Refuge

Author: N.A. Ratnayake

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: October 29, 2025

Genres: Science Fiction

Length: 6 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 5 Stars

Blurb:

A weary traveler coming from Earth discovers a new form of consciousness on an alien world and finds hope despite climate change.

Content Warning: Brief references to climate change.

Review:

A better world is possible.

I review a lot of short stories, and this particular tale is an excellent example of why a few pages can be more than enough space to make a difference. The author placed memorable characters into a challenging environment and threw in a thought-provoking plot twist into less space that most storytellers would use to write the opening chapter of a full-length novel. Pulling this off is a skill that should be acknowledged and celebrated, and it has only deepened my resolve to see what else this author has written and hopefully review it in the near future.

Climate change is a common theme in this genre, of course, but it’s generally not approached from such a hopeful perspective. While I can’t go into much detail about how it affected the plot without sharing spoilers, I can say that I loved what this writer did to make this topic feel fresh again and I would have happily read a whole novel or series of short stories about this protagonist’s quest if such things existed. There were some interesting ideas being played around with here that, while they worked perfectly well as gentle nudges, would have also provided plenty of material for conflict and plot advancement had space allowed for deeper explorations of these possibilities.

Xenofiction is something that isn’t covered in modern science fiction as often as I’d prefer to see, so I looked forward to finding out what the non-human intelligence was like and how its thought processes might differ from the way you or I would approach the same conflict or conversation. Exactly who or what is featured here is something that other readers should discover for themselves, but what I can say is that this character was creatively written and genuinely felt like something that, while incredibly smart, had never been and will never be human.

Refuge was the perfect introduction to this universe, and it made me yearn for more.

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Tagged as 2020s, Book Reviews, N.A. Ratnayake, Science Fiction, Short Stories, Xenofiction

March 19, 2026 · 1:00 am

A Review of The Visitor

Book cover for The Visitor by Neil Shooter. Image on cover is a photo taken of a one-story ranch-style house after dusk. You can see the road bend in front of the house, some trees on the left, and the house itself sitting quietly, but all of this is shrouded in the darkness of night that obscures most details about any of them.

Title: The Visitor

Author: Neil Shooter

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: January 6, 2016

Genres: Science Fiction, LGBTQ+, Historical, Contemporary

Length: 11 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

On an ordinary blustery British night an extraordinary visitor comes, a time traveller, with a paradox. But time is relative.

Content Warning: References to alcoholism and mild homophobia.

Review:

How far would you go to correct the past?

The conversational structure of this short story kept my interest levels high. It takes effort to include necessary details about character and plot development while still making sure both characters are speaking to each other in ways that feel natural. Mr. Shooter did a good job balancing these needs while pushing the storyline forward with every reply. It felt like I truly was listening in on someone else’s conversation.

I had some trouble understanding the significance of the final scene due to how vague it was. While I have a theory about what it probably meant, I wasn’t sure if that was what the author was trying to convey or if I’d misunderstood something along the way. It would have been helpful to have a few more hints about what was happening and if my interpretation of it was the correct one (or one of the correct ones). This is something I’m saying as a reader who normally enjoys

It was also entertaining to see how Dean, the protagonist, explained how time travel works and why he decided to go back so many years. While I can’t share a lot of details about these aspects of the tale for spoiler reasons, they were reasonable and helped to answer several questions I had about how certain details were meant to fit together. It was also fun to get to know Dean a little better as his personality was a little bit of a mystery to me at first. Honestly, I would have made the same choice he did if such things were possible.

This was my first experience with this author’s work, and I will be coming back for more.

The Visitor was thought provoking.

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Tagged as 2010s, Book Reviews, Contemporary, Historical, LGBT, Neil Shooter, Science Fiction, Short Story, Time Travel

March 4, 2026 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Fictional Things I’m Glad Are NOT Real

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

This is once again going to be a science fiction, horror, and fantasy heavy list due to how much I’ve read in those genres.

1. Vampires

Stylized drawing of a Chinese dragon that doesn’t have limbs. It’s long, snake-like body curls around itself as it flicks out its tongue and looks annoyed. 2. Zombies

3. The Borg

4. Panem (The country set in North America in the Hunger Games series that forced children to fight for their lives in epic televised battles)

5. Being the Chosen One ™. Honestly, that sounds exhausting.

6. Aliens who show up on Earth ready to fight.

7. Having a One True Love ™. Falling in love can be an excellent thing, but the pressure of believing there’s only one person out there for you and you’d better not mess things up was intense when I was single.

8. Epic adventures. This, too, sounds exhausting. Let someone else go save the world while I hunker down for the rest of the winter.

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Tagged as Fantasy, Science Fiction, Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge

February 25, 2026 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Fictional Things I Wish Were Real

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

This list is going to be heavily influenced by Star Trek and other science fiction themes. Be prepared.

I wish these fictional things were real:

A photo of Earth taken from the moon. Earth is partially hidden in shadow and looks small against an endlessly inky black sky. The moon’s surface is a monotone of grey and light brown. 1) Successful Human Settlements

For example, groups of people living well on other planets or on the moons of other planets. I think our longterm chances of surviving as a species would be much higher if we had the technology to spread out in the galaxy or universe.

2) Replicators.

Imagine if we could have all of the food, medicine, medical equipments, and other necessary things for life available at the press of a button. So much human suffering could be eliminated. (I’ve already talked about the wonders of a Star Trek medical bay in a previous WWBC post, or I would have included it here as well).

3) Equality for All

My favourite types of science fiction to read and to watch are the ones that show humans solving problems that have nothing at all do with any form of prejudice based on ethnicity, race, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, disability, etc. because such a thing doesn’t really exist in their society anymore. If only they went into more detail about how that happened, because I’d love to see us figure it out in the current era.

4) Warp Drives

We’ll need them to travel to other solar systems!

5) Magic

I wish I really could flick a wand or perform a spell to fix many major problems.

6) Dragons

Is this at all practical? No. Do I still want them to exist in remote places on Earth where humans will hopefully leave them in peace anyway? Yes.

7) Bigfoot

A Review of Medium Error

Title: Medium Error

Author: Eyal Avissar

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: July 12, 2025

Genres: Science Fiction

Length: About 24 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

Medium Error is a haunting, lyrical descent into miscommunication between systems. A vessel from a post-human swarm is sent to infiltrate a worldform called HUM — Earth, or something like it. Its mission is seamless passage. But the host does not yield. It watches. It reflects. It responds.

Told in fragments, logs, classroom echoes, and philosophical fever dreams, Medium Error explores what happens when doctrine meets deviation — and when the medium pushes back. From collapsing swarm intelligences to substitute teachers and strange student diagrams, this story unfolds across both alien systems and the mundane brilliance of human learning.

Perfect for fans of Ted Chiang, Jeff VanderMeer, and readers who like their science fiction strange, recursive, and full of resonance.

Content Warning: A pandemic of sorts.

Review:

Anything is possible with the right preparations.

Xenofiction is one of my favourite subgenres of science fiction because of how interesting it is to explore conflict from non-human perspectives. The swarm in this tale was intelligent but obviously thought about things quite differently than a human would describe those same moments. While I don’t want to give away spoilers by sharing exactly what the swarm was or what their goal was when they discovered what they referred to as Worldform G44.21-HUM and what we’d call Earth, I can say that it was entertaining to read their logs and try to piece together what those first encounters were like from the human perspective.

I did find myself wishing for more clarification about what happened in the final scene. There were some tantalizing hints that not everything was going to plan, but they never quite gelled together for this reader. While I do have a theory about where things were headed and thought it was an interesting twist on the typical alien invasion story, the ending would have been stronger if a little more time was spent either confirming what I thought was going on or gently nudging the audience in the correct direction if my assumption turned out not to be the correct one.

There was an interesting perspective shift about halfway through that began to include what the human characters were up to as the invasion began. This was a good way to help explain some of the stuff that earlier sections were vague about, and I enjoyed exploring those moments from multiple points of view as I pondered over what I already knew about the aliens and what I thought they might do next. Yes, I know that I’m being vague in my review, but this truly is one of those things that are best left up to new readers to muddle over for themselves.

Medium Error was an intriguing introduction to this author’s work, and I hope to read more of it soon.

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Tagged as 2020s, Aliens, Book Reviews, Eyal Avissar, Science Fiction, Self-Published, Short Story, Xenofiction

January 22, 2026 · 1:00 am

A Review of What Do We Afford

Title: What Do We Afford

Author: Eyal Avissar

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: June 22, 2025

Genres: Science Fiction

Length: about 42 pages

Source: I receive a free copy from the author.

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

What do we afford—and what affords us? A button invites a press. A screen beckons a swipe. A silence, a gaze, a gesture—they all offer something. But what happens when the tools begin to want? When systems record our rhythms, adapt to our emotions, and wait for our hands like patient familiars? What Do We Afford is a speculative field manual of human and nonhuman use—told through eerie reports, dreamlike system logs, and the quiet mutiny of the everyday. A subway drips with spores that remember longing. A phone glows warm with affection training. A dog learns to speak regret. A therapist becomes a corridor. Written in fragments, forums, and false diagnostics, this book asks not only what we do with objects—but what they do with us. For readers of speculative fiction, poetic systems theory, and those who have ever wondered if the smart device on their nightstand dreams of being needed.

Content Warning:

Review:

Everything can be catalogued and understood under the right circumstances.

Figuring out who or what the narrator was made it impossible for me to stop reading this piece. While it didn’t otherwise come across as a mystery, this element of the plot certainly wasn’t easy to puzzle out due to the limited number of clues that were provided and how uninterested that individual was in explaining anything that it didn’t already understand. Other readers should come to their own conclusions about what the answer is to this riddle, but I certainly had a wonderful time organizing my own thoughts about it and testing my theories as new information was revealed.

There were times when I struggled to understand what the narrator was saying due to the differences between them and humans and other living beings. Their thought processes rarely if ever overlapped with how a person would explain the same event even when they were attempting to put things into terms that our species would understand. This was true even for something as simple as a cow deciding where to graze next or a small child trying to figure out how to get someone’s attention so she could have a snack, so the more complicated stuff sometimes made me frown and reread a passage.

With that being said, I must commend Mr. Avissar for writing a main character that was this unique. Had I encountered this tale under other circumstances and been told it was written by a sentient robot, alien, or other intelligent being that shared no human presuppositions about anything, I might have believed it to be the case. That speaks to how creative this piece was as well as how much effort the author put into imagining something that is all but completely outside of human understanding.

What Do We Afford would make an amazing film.

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Tagged as 2020s, Book Reviews, Eyal Avissar, Science Fiction, Self-Published, Short Story

January 8, 2026 · 1:00 am

A Review of Sunset

Title:Sunset Book cover for Sunset by P.B. Cannon. Image on cover shows a gorgeous orange and yellow sunset in the sky overhead a distant pine forest on an overcast day. The light appears to be dancing in the clouds almost because of how it gently touches everything.

Author: P.B. Cannon

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: September 3, 2022

Genres: Science Fiction, Mystery

Length: 25 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

Charlotte, North Carolina, is an area where earthquakes are uncommon, but one bright morning it is struck by one so vigorous that it forms deep crevasses in the ground, knocks out communications, and leaves the city in disarray. Can a bodyguard and the bodyguard’s two clients who were about to board a private plane along with a tag-a-long passenger, get to the bottom of why their trip to Columbia, South Carolina has been so disastrously interrupted? They don’t know, but having no choice because all air traffic has stalled, along with the three employees from the small airport that was handling their flight, they begin a journey to find out.

Content Warning: An earthquake.

Review:

Airports are no place for any funny business.

Some of my favorite scenes were the ones that explored the relationships between the main characters and how their experiences with the world differed from how many men see it. Science fiction hasn’t always done a good job at writing female characters or delving into the nuances of what it means to be part of a minority group, but this is thankfully changing with newer generations of authors in this genre who have the life experience and compassion to write such things.

I struggled with the abrupt ending of this short story. While some of the conflicts were resolved, other ones were still left up in the air by the time the final sentence was completed. I’m not the sort of reader who requires everything to be wrapped up neatly, but I did find myself wishing more had been explained in that final scene so that I could better understand what the characters might encounter next. There was still so much that could have been done with it.

The explanation for the earthquake was strong and memorable. Even though I can’t go into a lot of detail about it for plot twist reasons, the scientific principles behind it intrigued me and made me want to learn more about the subject. Other readers who have stronger backgrounds in science can share their own thoughts about how realistic it is, but I thought it was well done and possibly could be something that happens in real life. (Oh, if only I could write more about this topic in this paragraph!)

Sunset kept me guessing.

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Tagged as 2020s, Book Reviews, Hard Science Fiction, Mystery, P.B. Cannon, Science Fiction, Self-Published, Short Story

October 16, 2025 · 1:00 am

A Review of Horsefly

Title: Horsefly

Author: Mireille Gagné

Publisher: Coach House Books

Publication Date: May 20, 2025

Genres: Horror, Science Fiction, Contemporary, Historical

Length: 171 pages

Source: I borrowed it from the library.

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

A terrifying tale about the ways in which we try to dominate nature, and how nature will, inevitably, wreak retribution upon us.

In 1942, a young entomologist, Thomas, is sent to a remote island to work on biological weapons for the Allied military. The scientists live like prisoners while they look for the perfect carrier for anthrax among the island’s many insects.

In 2024, in the same region of Quebec, a heat wave unleashes swarms of horseflies while humans fall prey to strange flights of rage. Theodore is living a simple life, working double shifts and drinking to forget, when a horsefly bite stirs him from his apathy and he impulsively kidnaps from the nursing home his grandfather Emeril, whose dementia has him living in the past during the Grosse Ile biological weapons experiments.

The horsefly, meanwhile, knows a few secrets…

Content Warning: Horseflies, brief references to the damage these bugs do to a body when they bite you, an insect-born pandemic, and dementia.

Review:

Anger is only the first step.

Poetic is just about the last word I’d associate with horseflies, so it was a wonderful surprise to discover just how beautifully the horsefly in this story described their life. Kudos to the author for writing these scenes so descriptively and smoothly. I genuinely felt as if I were exploring the world through the perspective of a creature that, while highly intelligent and certainly not what a real horsefly would sound like if they could talk, also experienced life in a radically different way than how a human would describe those same events. This sort of storytelling takes talent, and it makes me want to read everything else Ms. Gagné has written or will write in the future.

It would have been helpful to have more action scenes. So much time was spent talking about the characters’ thoughts and feelings that I sometimes grew a little restless as I was reading. There was plenty of space to explore topics like what else the government did in response to this project once they realized it had some horrifying side effects or how the sickness that caused uncontrollable rage was affecting human society. Even a little more attention to such things would have made it easy for me to choose a five star rating.

Don’t let the horror tag scare you off if this isn’t a genre you typically read. The frights in this story were real but mostly happened off-screen or developed slowly in my imagination as I pieced together what happened on that remote island to make horseflies suddenly so dangerous. I thought that was a refreshing way to approach topics like pandemics and how messing around too much with the natural world can go terribly wrong. Many storytellers write these these tales from the perspectives of innocent people who suddenly must confront something they don’t understand instead of sharing the origins of these diseases from the perspectives of the people and the horseflies who created it or helped to spread it. When combined with the smooth writing style I complimented earlier, this made for a creative reading experience.

Horsefly was a thoughtful and deliciously scary piece of xenofiction.

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Tagged as 2020s, Book Reviews, Coach House Books, Contemporary, Historical, Horror, Mireille Gagné, Novels, Pandemic, Psychological Horror, Science Fiction, Xenofiction

August 7, 2025 · 1:00 am

A Review of The Core Directive

Title: The Core Directive

Author: Lyam Lockwood & Steven Nimocks

Publisher: Three Notch Publishing

Publication Date: January 11, 2025

Genres: Science Fiction

Length: 37 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

In a world where every action is monitored and every decision is calculated, compliance is the measure of success. His task is straightforward: ensure that the system’s core directive—absolute stability—is upheld. But when discrepancies in the data begin to surface and compliance ratings fluctuate unpredictably, he finds himself drawn into a deeper mystery. What is the true nature of the system he’s sworn to protect? And why does it feel like something—or someone—is watching him more closely than ever?

Content Warning:

Review:

Perfection is possible.

Writing this in the form of journal entries was a creative flourish that isn’t used as often as I think it should be these days, so kudos to the authors for approaching storytelling from this perspective. I was drawn into the question about what was really going on immediately and couldn’t wait to see which clues might be shared next. This wasn’t quite a traditional mystery, but it had elements of that genre that worked beautifully with a narrator who didn’t always know which pieces of information were going to be important in the future or that a human might interpret slightly – or even wildly – differently than they would

Additional world building would have made this an easier read for me. I struggled to understand some of the things the narrator was saying about how this society was set up due to how many euphemisms were used for what happened to people and computers when they were discovered to be flawed in unacceptable ways. While I do think I eventually figured it out, the confusion I felt in the beginning and middle interfered with my ability to enjoy the storyline because I wasn’t quite sure what was going on or which characters I should trust.

With that being said, I was intrigued by the narrator’s methodical approach to its tasks. The way it thought about the world – if, indeed, thoughts are the correct term to use for an intelligent computer – was so wildly different than how the average human would generally describe those same events that it was easy to forget this was fiction. I had glimpses of an intelligence that was nothing at all like my own, and I wanted to learn more.

The Core Directive was interesting.

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Tagged as 2020s, Book Reviews, Lyam Lockwood, Science Fiction, Self-Published, Short Story, Steven Nimocks, Three Notch Publishing

Tag Archives: Science Fiction

A Review of Mendala

A Review of Refuge

A Review of The Visitor

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Fictional Things I’m Glad Are NOT Real

Top Ten Tuesday: Fictional Things I Wish Were Real

A Review of Medium Error

A Review of What Do We Afford

A Review of Sunset

A Review of Horsefly

A Review of The Core Directive

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