The Future Fire editors’ blog has posted the table of contents for the upcoming anthology We See a Different Frontier, an anthology of colonialism-themed speculative fiction, edited by Djibril al-Ayad and Fabio Fernandes:

1. “The Arrangement of Their Parts” by Shweta Narayan
2. “Pancho Villa’s Flying Circus” by Ernest Hogan
3. “Them Ships” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
4. “Old Domes” by J.Y. Yang
5. “A Bridge of Words” by Dinesh Rao
6. “The Gambiarra Effect” by Fabio Fernandes *
7. “Droplet” by Rahul Kanakia
8. “Lotus” by Joyce Chng
9. “Dark Continents” by Lavie Tidhar
10. “A Heap of Broken Images” by Sunny Moraine
11. “Fleet” by Sandra McDonald
12. “Remembering Turinam” by Nalin A. Ratnayake
13. “Vector” by Benjanun Sriduangkaew
14. “I Stole the D.C.’s Eyeglass” by Sofia Samatar
15. “Forests of the Night” by Gabriel Murray
16. “What Really Happened in Ficandula” by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz

The book also includes a Preface by Aliette de Bodard, an Introduction by Fabio Fernandes and a Critical Afterword by Ekaterina Sedia.

[Do you have an idea for a future Mind Meld? Let us know!]

A lot of recent science fiction appears to take place on Earth, and only a minority of space-based science fiction taking place outside the solar system. Novels and stories involving travel to the stars and interstellar travel seems to be out-of-date or out-of-fashion, and even Hard SF treatments of interstellar travel seem as realistic as Star Wars.

We asked this week’s panelists:

Here’s what they said…

I think that like everything else, fads in science fiction run in cycles, and lately there’s been a big ol’ dystopian wave going on. But it’s not as if deep space science fiction, or SF featuring far-flung space civilizations isn’t still being written. Charlie Stross, Iain Banks, Dan Simmons, Greg Bear, Chris Moriarty, C.J. Cherryh–heck, I’ve written a couple of books dealing with far-flung space travel myself.

If you were to nudge the focus of the question over to whether near-future and near-earth SF has been getting more *awards* attention lately, I think you’d be more accurate.

But there are fads in criticism the same as everything else.

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[Do you have an idea for a future Mind Meld? Let us know!]

We’ve covered a lot of topics in our Mind Meld series, from books, to cover art and lots of stuff in between. But we haven’t touched on the topic of music. We attempt to fix that oversight with this week’s question. We asked our panelists:

Here’s what they said…

There’s a couple of science fiction soundtracks that I listen to constantly, and they’ve held up well over the years:

Battlestar Galactica: Seasons 1-4 (Original Television Soundtrack), Bear McCreary: When the show first came out, I loved the unconventional nature of how everything was set up, from the ship all the way to the music used. The soundtrack is a stunning one, and very different from what’s typical in science fiction.

Contagion: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, Cliff Martinez: This borders on the line between science fiction and thriller, but I’ll include it. I love Cliff’s music, and this entire soundtrack has an excellent opening theme, with a great sound throughout the rest of the album.
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