Results: J.J.S. Boyce

So what happens after first contact?

Second Contacts

BY J.J.S. Boyce

So what happens after first contact? Leaving aside War of the Worlds scenarios where one race is completely destroyed, after the initial shock, what’s it like five or fifty years into a universe where we know we’re not alone? Human history provides several possible outcomes, ranging from genocide to colonization to occupation to friendship and political alliance to the innocuous missionary outposts or even lone, Marco Polo-like figure, venturing into the unknown.

Visionary writers of Gretna, Manitoba

A.E. van Vogt’s Clane of Linn

BY J.J.S. Boyce

A.E. van Vogt is surely the most famous literary figure in the English science fiction world to come out of the tiny community of Gretna, Manitoba, populated primarily by German-speaking Mennonites during his childhood. Of course this is a comical understatement for a writer spoken of in the same breath as the Big Three of Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov, and sometimes wedged, retroactively into the number one or number two spot.

A golden book from the dark age of Cambodia

THE KING’S LAST SONG by Geoff Ryman

BY J.J.S. Boyce

I’m not quite of the correct age to deeply understand the struggles of modern Cambodia. The violence and anguish are perhaps still of too recent a vintage to be revisited by popular culture. But I also missed it when it was recent news. By the time the war-weary country began to realize something approaching peace, I was on the cusp of young adulthood. I began to attain a nascent awareness of world events only after the Khmer Rouge was a fading nightmare.

With dual narratives set in both contemporary and 12th-century Cambodia, The King’s Last Song allows me the opportunity to fill that gap.