Updated April 21, 2025 Want to join me on facebook? Here is the link: https://www.facebook.com/ahmedkhanwrites/ Want to provide me feedback on any of stories or articles? Email me at khan.ahmeda@gmail.com. ARTICLES Gaia and the Art of Fighting Marine Oil Pollution - in "Ships and Soil" . Non-verbal Communication: Fact and Fiction - "Strange Horizon" (26 Feb. 2001 Two Solitudes: An Interview With James Alan Gardner - in "Absolute Write" (Aug. 2005) Philosophy of Monotheism - published in "Ambitions" . Lateral Thinking for Writers - "Visions" (2006) Smell of Time - in "Suddenly Lost in Words" (Oct. 2012) The Future of Futuristic Fiction - in "New Myths" (2016) Islamic Speculative Fiction: Past, Present and Future - in "Samjoko" (April, 2025) SHORT STORIES SCIENCE FICTION The Presonic Man - published in "Anotherealm", reprinted in "Antipodean", "GateW...
RITE OF PASSAGE by Alexei Panshin Timescape, 1982 I had high expectations of this book but it left me disappointed. The story is a first person account in the voice of a teenage girl living in a spaceship world that was akin to Heinlein's "Universe". Things wrong with the book: - Mia Havero, the main character, is annoying. - The world-building is inconsistent, illogical in several aspects. - The book seems padded in spite of it being only 239 pages long. However, there are 2 passages in the book that are brilliant. These passages are Mia's views on ethics, utilitarianism and stoicism. These short passages are better than whole theses on these philosophies. https://www.facebook.com/share/p/zAUjXn2wieEexcHt/?mibextid=oFDknk
BOOKSCAN #8 REVOLT IN 2100, by Robert Heinlein Baen Books (1986) This compilation consists of a novel, "If This Goes On...", and 2 novellas, "Coventry" and "Misfit". None of them is a major work though they form a part of Heinlein's Future History framework. The novel features a theocratic dictatorship in the US. Heinlein, realizing that this scenario might seem like an improbable scenario to some reader, provided a postscript - and part of that postscript is the reason why I include this book in my Bookscan series of blogs. And here it is: [With reference to] the idea that we could lose our freedom by succumbing to a wave of religious hysteria, I am sorry to say that I consider it possible. I hope that it is not probable. But there is latent deep strain of religious fanaticism in this, our culture; it is rooted in our history and it has broken out many times in the past. It is with us now; there has been a sharp rise in strongly evangelical sects in ...
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