Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The fame, the wealth, the surveillance system in her body

Womb City by Tlotlo Tsamaase

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I started Womb City by Tlotlo Tsamaase sometime in early 2025. It took me until March 30, 2025 to read. Not because it was a bad book, necessarily,  but because it was a dense, hard read. There were a lot of descriptions of what was happening (even if it was just trying to get out of bed, let alone the technical parts), cultural references and even the way of speaking that was not what I was used to. The idea of a future where we […]

Stepping out of my comfort zone

Noor by Nnedi Okorafor

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My review for the Afrofuturism novel, Noor by Nnedi Okorafor AO is part human, part cybernetics. She is an example of how far we’ve allowed technology to become us and we it. We have allowed technology by this futuristic date, to control everything in our lives. Sure, we’ve harnessed clean wind and solar energy but at what price? “Big Corporation” owns everything. The media is controlled and with enough money, lies can be bought as truth. Therefore, in many ways, it is Now (with more […]

An Afrofuturist short story trio (part 1)

The Visit (Black Stars #1) by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The Black Pages (Black Stars #2) by Nnedi Okorafor

Clap Back (Black Stars #5) by Nalo Hopkinson

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I was struggling with my Goodreads reading goal until I came across this short story collection, Black Stars. This Amazon Original contains six afro-futurist novellas from Black authors. I’m only reviewing three since I had limited kindle unlimited borrows. I’m sure some of you can relate to this problem. 🙂 I started with Clap Back (Black Stars #5) by Nalo Hopkinson since I just finished her Sandman Universe book, House of Whispers. We enter the story with news headlines about a new haute couture line that […]

Super cool, innovative setting with so-so plot

Symbiosis by Nicky Drayden

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One thing is for certain–I can’t be faulted for consistency. I had thoughts on this novel, and went to go and see what I thought of the prior novel. Voila, they are almost identical: I think this was four stars for the world building and generalized atmosphere, and knocked down one star for the combination of Very Unsubtle Gender Commentary and lots of screaming/lashing out. In this second installment (concluding installment?), the world continues to be fascinating and novel. The atmosphere continues to be creepy […]

New treasures from Octavia Butler

Unexpected Stories by Octavia Butler

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Some days, the gods just smile on you. I was walking into Dreamhaven Bookstore in Minneapolis (and if you are in the area, check it out, one of the best places for Neil Gaiman/anime/science fiction stuff in the upper Midwest) when I saw an entire shelf devoted to the works of Ms. Butler. I had read Lillith’s Brood many years before and loved it but loaned out my copy and it was never returned. So I purchased a number of works and started with Unexpected […]

Who Can Truly Know Her When There Are No Others Of Her Kind?

The Deep by Rivers Solomon, Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, Jonathon Snipes

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Rivers Solomon’s The Deep is a beautiful and gut wrenching novella. At this current time, I don’t think I could have read it if I hadn’t listened to Daveed Diggs’ narration. Diggs and his fellow clppng’s William Hutson and Jonathon Snipes, hold author credits because the novella is based a song they wrote, commissioned by NPR’s This American Life for “We Are in the Future” an episode about Afrofuturism. Clppng’s song was an homage to Detroit’s Drexciya who imagined an underwater utopia created by the […]



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