304 pages, Hardcover
Published September, 2025 by Titan Books
Full review and podcast interview on the way.
Thursday, August 6, 2026
Book Review: We Are Always Tender With Our Dead by Eric LaRocca
Book Review: The Fist of Memory by Wole Talabi
416 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication: October 27, 2026 by DAW
I don’t remember where I first heard of this book. As science fiction writers along the way Wole Talbi and I got connected on Facebook and Blue Sky. I have not read his first novel, Shigi and Brass Head of Obalufon, which he describes as an urban fantasy inspired by the Nigerian culture he grew up in. I know why I was interested, as I have had a long-standing affection for all things Nigerian SF, and not just Nnedi Okorafor, although she is fantastic; Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi was one of my absolute favorite reads of 2022.
Another Nigerian SF writer was welcome for sure. The Fist of Memory didn’t disappoint; the best way I think to describe it might be John Woo meets Arthur C. Clarke in Africa. It is certainly one of my favorite books I have read this year. A bullet opera that manages to combine a first contact story, noir, African cyberpunk, and hints of African magic.
The novel has storylines and elements that seem unconnected but weave together at the end. That said, the woman at the center of the story is Tope.
“Here's the thing about killing people; I don't like it, but I'm good at it.
That's why I'm perched on a dusty rooftop, ensconced in an electromagnetic reflection bubble, patiently waiting to kill reverend Dr. Clement Osagie.”
The novel opens in the point of view of this assassin, but after that Talabi intentionally breaks the rules, by telling the other chapters in third person. I admit this choice rattled me at first. Anyone who reads my reviews knows I am not a fan of first person. This was an interesting choice that I assume was made to signal the importance of Tope. I am sure we will talk about it during the interview for the podcast (coming soon)
She is involved in an excellent cat-and-mouse story with another assassin who works for a criminal boss/ witch doctor Baba. The story of a contract killing gone wrong is like a power chord that a portion of this novel is structured on.
At this point, you might be wondering when this becomes a SF novel…
“It is.” Daniel sighs. But maybe it's for the best. We don't have the luxury of curiosity or time period; whatever this object is, it is already within the orbit of Jupiter, and even if it keeps decelerating, which we can't be certain that it will, we don't know what its final velocity will be. Every minute we spend gathering data and debating our options reduces the chance of success even further. We may not know what it is, but we know it poses an existential threat.”
A South African Astronomer named Itumeleng has discovered an object coming from interstellar space toward earth. It is clearly a spacecraft, changing direction. Itumeleng doesn’t have to be convinced as the craft seems to be communicating with him and only him, at first through his dreams.
This Itumeleng storyline in the first few chapters it seems like a different story, but the threads come together. Once we get back into the Tope story the action picks up. We get some really interesting details about her employer Baba, and the politics of this future Nigeria when Tope appears to be hired by her target. Once she starts making choices there are consequences.
“This is trouble.
Heat rises behind my eyes. Reaching under my seat with my right hand to retrieve my Beretta, I see three men clamor out of the Mercedes. Their jerky, uncoordinated movements indicate intoxication. They are wearing crude handmade masks, and new, clean tactical body armor is obviously stolen like the classic cars.
Armed robbers.
The kind that park in the bushes with EM scramblers, smoking ganja, drinking ogooro, and chewing kola, waiting for motorists to waylay like trolls hiding under a bridge.”
The mix of African cyberpunk elements and the very Hong Kong film killer makes for a very interesting turn on the bullet opera. Tope being a woman, a fierce one creates some of the excellent dynamics.
“Man, woman, fish, or ugwa leaf, I don’t give a fuck what you are; you think you can come kill our oga like that abi?”
Eventually, Top and Itumeleng meet in the story, as you would expect; humanity tries to destroy the spacecraft, but as you can imagine, that doesn’t save the day.
“Yeah. Turns out panicking and firing shalligram was a waste of time. Or perhaps the attack prompted it to change plan. Either way, after that crazy maneuver, its deceleration rate dropped. Simulations now show a ninety-nine percent chance of gravitational capture.” She'd gone from frantic to angry to crying and back to frantic again.
“Itumeleng, I think it's very clear now this isn't some random object, or a missile hurled at us by a dangerous intelligence. That movement, the way it evaded shalligram, it's almost certainly a piloted alien craft. You know what this means, don't you?”
Well, I didn’t know what this meant because the third act came as a big shock. The third act is earned, and certainly enough happens in the closing chapters for an entire novel. The ending is also similar to a recent TV show (They couldn’t have known of each other).
The Fist of Memory is a fantastic career-defining sophomore novel. Wole Talabi has lived with this novel a long time and it feels like it. It is wonderfully thought-out. As a structure guy, I love how wonderfully plotted this feels. One of the best new releases I have read for sure.
-DA
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My new Novella Sim Cop and the Haunted City
Thursday, July 30, 2026
Book Review: Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It by Cory Doctorow
Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It
by Cory Doctorow
338 pages, Hardcover
Published October, 2025 by MCD
Short but thoughtful review on the way.
Book Review: TV 2000 Edited by Issac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, Charles G. Waugh
352 pages, Mass Market Paperback
Published January, 1982 by Fawcett Crest
Important commentary on the year 2000
*Will be expanded into a longer Amazing Stories column*
Lets head to the future. The faaaaar future of the year 2000 (Sing it in your best falsetto. This book was published the same year ET and Blade Runner came out, and it had an 18-year runway. My copy, has been on my shelf only about five years. The book is not an experiment to project what TV would look like in 2000, although that would have been a worthy experiment, and interesting in a different way.
Compiled in the early 80s by Issac Asimov, Charles G Waugh and master anthologist Martin Harry Greenberg, I am assuming grabby Asimov mostly lent his name and wrote the introduction, none the less this is an important collection. The stories range from the 50s when TV was barely a thing to the 60s and 70s. So as I read each story I found myself looking to the credits to figure out what year each piece was published.
Asimov opens the book with an essay, and the book is divided into two parts. The control of TV and the content. Asimov lays out the intention of the book with the quick essay, in some cases giving his thoughts on the stories he finds most important. He rightly points out that before the genre had a name Hugo Gernsbeck was writing about Television, even using the term, although Telephotes never happened.
The Asimov story is one of the better ones of his I have read from 1955. In this story, TV is not made by writers and directors but “Dreamers,” “Well, I don't know. Dreamers are hard to come by, I hear.”
“They are. They are. But your son Mr. Slutsky is not a dreamer yet. He might never be. $500 a year is a gamble for us. It's not a gamble for you. When he's finished school, it may turn out he's a dreamer, yet you've lost nothing. You've gained maybe $4000 altogether. If he is a dreamer, he'll make a nice living and you certainly haven't lost then.”
This reminded me of Ken Liu’s recent novel about AI and influencers called “All That We see or Seem.” This a cool idea.
Underrated writer William Tenn (pen name for Philip Klass – who mentored David Morrell, I believe) comments on advertising written in 1951. “History can be as dangerous as a traffic accident; it can happen to people. And 'cause even more damage. One fine day about the year 2208, say a bright cheerful and maybe too smart for his own good young man wakes up to find he's tripped over his cleverest idea and crashed into a brand new age.”
A way back when, early in the 1900s, people began listening to record players instead of trudging off to vaudeville theater through cold and wet. Later, in the radio era, most top-level executives were finding dictaphones more efficient than human stenographers and mechanical sorters better than an army of file clerks. At the peak of the television boom, every bride dreamed of owning a vocal axe kitchen someday that would exactly obey her most casual command to heat a roast for such and such a time and base it at such and such intervals.
With deluxe models, of course, came a set of flavor fix Rheostats which, among other talents, could mix salads according to the recipe of a famous chef slightly better than the chef could himself. Then along came all-purpose radar broadcast power; Television went three-dimensional and became tildar inexpensive enough so that every Eskimo could own a set and incidentally, the only industry where an actor might make a living.”
While this passage is super dated, there are several things I love about it. Tenn’s story The Jester is one of the most charming stories, very funny and written so early in the existence of TV.
The only story in the collection I had read before was the short but interesting piece “The Idea,” by Barry Malzberg. Maybe I am biased because I interviewed Barry twice, but this weird one caused me to re-read it twice, thinking what did I miss? Similar to reading R.C. Matheson’s Red. After reading it for a third time, I felt stupid. Howard pitches an educational TV, and with every person he pitches it to, the idea gets manipulated into a less truthful piece with the executive. Really smart story.
One of the predictive stories is Theodore Sturgeon’s “…and now the News.” It is about news overload; in a way predicts doomscrolling. Frank Herbert’s story is about how quick TV can spread information; wait till he hears about the internet.
Perhaps the best, most predictive story is Damon Knight’s 1976 story “I See You,” that slyly predicts more than TV but how neighbors spy on each other through social media. “The viewer is your babysitter, your television your telephone(the telephone lines are still up, but they are only used as signaling devices; when you know somebody wants to talk to you, you focus your viewer on him, your library your school. Before pub,erty you watch other people having sex but even your curiosity is easily satisfied after an older cousin initiates you at fourteen; you are much more interested in doing it yourself. The Co-op teacher monitors your studies, sometimes make suggestions, but more and more as you grow older leaves you leaves you to your own devices. You are intensely interested in African prehistory, in the European theater, and in the anti-civilization of Epsilon Eridani 4. Soon you will have to choose.”
It starts with watching neighbors but turns into watching everything.
TV 2000 is more of an artifact than it is a good anthology. There are a couple skippers for sure. Anyone interested in look at the back history of the genre. The way the genre predicted TV is fascinating, and with hindsight of all these years even more interesting still.
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Re-read Book Review: Bannerless by Carrie Vaughn
As a frequent user of the library, many of my favorite Science Fiction Books I have read that were written in the 21st century were taken out from the Library. I decided I needed to have these books in my collection and take a deeper look at them. At this time, I do not have an actual ranking, but I am working through them, and one that will be high on that list is Carrie Vaughn’s Philip K. Dick Award-winning novel Bannerless.
Around the time the sequel, The Wild Dead, came out, I interviewed Carrie, the very first interview for the Dickheads podcast. I have often pointed to this novel as easily pitchable for TV. Mare of Easttown meets The Road—a murder mystery show set against a society on the California coast trying to rebuild after climate collapse. Many elements make this a compelling story, but the many messages naturally woven into the story (without coming off preachy) are what make this novel special.
Bannerless has very unique elements, mainly the time and setting. A few generations after an economic and environmental collapse along the California coast. Memory of our technological society is fading as the generations pass. The only technologies the community isolated from the rest of the world include a few solar-powered emergency vehicles. The birth control implants carefully maintain ecological balance.
Our main character, Enid, lives in a seemingly utopian village known as Haven. Her aunt, who had recently died, was the last to remember the time before. Enid is an investigator, the closest thing these villages have to law enforcement. The villages operate from an almost anarchist ideal of mutual aid, so the investigators are not often needed. They are mostly called to settle disputes.
The most important law is the one that balances the ecology. On the surface, this may seem ideal or utopian. The right to reproduce is tightly restricted by an implant that all women are given. Why this falls on the women is one of the things that keeps Haven from being ideal. What comes of those ideals to me is the idea that the entire community is organized tightly around what it will take to keep a tight balance with nature.
Haven is not a reflection of our culture; it is a new and different thing. Families are structured beyond what we think of as a nuclear family, and once they can prove they can support a child, they are given a Banner to hang outside their house. That banner is the permission. One of the biggest crimes in this world is having a Bannerless child. You have to consider this society as reformed after ours collapsed due to an inability to balance with nature. It informs the way they make up their families and laws.
“…Kath always remembered exactly when her parents died, exactly the last time she spoke with her brother, and exactly when she herself left the old world behind. Right to the end, she’d been able to tell stories about her friends, the people who’d helped her and taken care of her, and spoken of where and how they died, from accident, disease, or simple old age. The world might not remember, but she would.”
That almost mythical memory of the world before haunts the people of the coast road, who see the existence of children the land cannot support as the crime that ended civilization. Is how they handle it right or wrong – there is no easy answer in this novel.
The Banner system is imperfect as Enid will learn when she investigates a death at a nearby village; she learns the dead man was a Bannerless child. Through a series of flashbacks that parallel, we see Enid travel to the post-California ruins, which might be LA or the Bay area, not sure which. Enid’s travel partner Dak is a guitar-playing busker, and in their travels to ruins they see a very different kind of survival. “ Lots of skinny children running around. Lots of children. It shocked Enid, and she looked for where the banners would hang, on a wall or a line or a pole, but there weren't any banners. No implants.”
This is not exactly a pro-choice society; women do not have control over their bodies, but Enid believed in the system as it is. Unlike religious moral control, this is a pragmatic ecological position that is meant to save the greater culture. In the ruins she saw children starving, resources spread thin.
“Did you think of anyone else?” Enid had asked the folk of this household. “Did you think of the next generation that’ll have to work this land and wonder why they’re getting half the yield they should? Or the ones who’ll starve when the land gives up because you”—she had pointed at them, with two stiff fingers—“couldn’t be bothered to take care of it?”
This is as on the nose as the message gets, but many excellent points are made throughout the novel. Everything is complicated, not simple. Bannerless sets up a rich environment for story, very unique. A story we can compare to others but it is like nothing else. The dynamics of the collapse and the society that rebuilds in this very special location provide complications for the mystery that express challenging ideas. No matter your political leanings, there is much to chew on.
“The worst storms were the ones that changed you. The ones you remembered not for how bad they objectively were, but for how much damage they did to your own world. Banners, planted in memory.”
This novel operates as a mystery, but it also challenges readers with complicated warnings. Are Banners ultimately the salvation of the people? You’ll have to read it and consider for yourself.
While very worthy of the Philip K Dick Award, the author's work that Bannerless reminds me more of in tone and subject matter is Ursula Leguin. While Vaughn has her own voice, I mean this with the utmost respect. The Coast Road is a post-end-of-the-world setting, and there is a fine tradition of novels like this set in California like this, from Le Guin's Always Coming Home, Gene O'Neil's Cal Wild books, and Kim Stanley Robinson's Three Californias trilogy. Bannerless is a strong entry in this sub-genre.
To me, it is one of the SF novels of this century so far, not just because it rewarded a second read, although my second time through was just as powerful.
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