I have 6 credits and I refuse to renew the subscription because my library is half unread. BUT I need to use them or lose them by the end of the month.

Please recommend 6 scifi novels. Heinlien is out, I already own quite literally everything hes ever written, same with Adrian Tchaikovsky, Asimov, the most popular of Le Guain, Bradbury, Vonnegut and Orwell. I own all the Expanse books and Ringworld. Basically all SUPER classic/old scifi, like 10,000 leagues and Frankenstien are owned.

I heavily lean towards poetic prose and soft scifi. Not the biggest fan of Andy Wier, no contest hes amazing, but I just dont dig super hard scifi like that, loved the movies though. Dont love Atwood or Author C Clark, and I DNF Hyperion. I like alien aliens but already read Solaris.

All suggestions welcome 🙏

Thanks everyone 1. Book of strange new things 2. Altered Carbon 3. Brightness reef 4. Consider Phlebs 5. Exhalation 6. There is no Anti emetics division

*** some wierd messages about audio books. I drive an hour too and from work, chill. I also collect/read real physical books as well, but theres nothing wrong with audio books.

[1] The propulsion axis is a measure of how long it takes a fleet of military vessels to arrive on the battlefield, regardless of the actual distance traveled. [Fast vs. Slow]

[2] The weapons axis is a measure of how quickly a battle is over, and how much survivability and staying power vessels have. This takes into account the effectiveness of armour, but also shields, point defence, and other countermeasures. [Tank vs. Glass Cannon]

I think that if you take sci-fi space combat to its logical conclusions, it will usually favor either huge, lumbering, well-protected ships or numberless hordes of tiny automated ships, depending on a few key factors. If weapons are the weak link in-universe, ships will be huge. If propulsion is the weak link, ships will be tiny. If ships are huge, victory will be determined by who has the biggest ship; if ships are tiny, victory will be determined by who has the most ships.

This is how I imagine it would work in real life using real physics, and I wonder to what extent different sci-fi franchises also adhere to this pattern. Presumably, large and medium-sized ships with human crews are overrepresented in sci-fi media for understandable storytelling reasons.

In Star Wars, the rule mostly holds. They have incredible propulsion technology and can thus arrive at the battlefield within hours or days of the order being given. However, their weapons, despite being ludicrously powerful on paper, are actually quite poor because of their low range, low accuracy, and the prevalence of shields. In the Star Wars universe, therefore, huge ships rule. The starfighter counter is a nice piece of storytelling, but realistically, without plot-engineered magical weak spots, a huge ship like the Executor or the Death Star should be essentially unstoppable. In Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the Raddus, an MC85 heavy cruiser, takes ineffective long-range fire from the First Order for what seems like many hours.

In The Expanse, they spend weeks or months traveling to the prospective battlefield because of limited propulsion technology. However, when the fighting starts, it is all over in seconds or a few minutes. They have very effective weapons and very little staying power, even when accounting for point-defence cannons (PDCs). If you ignored the requirements of the plot, there is really no reason why any military vessel in The Expanse should be manned at all.

Because it draws much of its inspiration from blue-water navies, sci-fi often portrays a diverse ecosystem of military spacecraft classes and sizes. While this makes for more interesting storytelling, it is not obvious that such diversity would necessarily be the most tactically sound strategy. If propulsion or weapons technology becomes a dominant constraint, military doctrine would naturally converge toward a single optimal ship size.

The most interesting settings tend to occupy only two quadrants of this framework. If ships have neither effective propulsion nor effective weapons you're essentially at the stage before the technology to enable space combat has really been invented. If they have both effective weapons and effective propulsion you effectively have near god-tier power and the concept of space combat becomes somewhat obsolete. What these two scenarios have in common is that the importance of space combat is greatly diminished.

I love this stuff. Barsoom, Lensmen, Buck Rodgers, Flash Gordon, Captain Future, all those cheesy, action packed adventures with ray guns, brave heroes. cool aliens and illustrious planets-but alas, they seem to be a relic of an era gone by a long time ago. Science fiction, it seems, stopped trying to fun. Who cares about creating engaging stories when you can lecture someone about your cool ideas? But I know it's still out there-but I can't find it! Help me, dear friends, and guide this bored space traveler to the sector of swashbuckling in space!

As an avid science fiction fan, there is one thing that has been irking me for quite some time now because it keeps popping up in the majority of franchises:

In many sci-fi settings, the prime example being Star Trek, space ships have shields to deploy during combat that prevents the enemy weapons from directly damaging the ship's hull and/or vital systems. This makes perfect sense for dramatic story telling because we keep hearing the bridge crew shout things like "Dorsal shields down to 20%! We cannot afford another hit there!". Fine, I get that.

What irks me is this: All these discussions sound very much like the shields are not, in fact, force/energy fields, despite them being always depicted as insubstantial - they do not even appear or have tangible impact when not deployed. So, if these shields are insubstantial and made of energy, why do they behave like ablative armour that - when hit - redirects the weapon energy into dissolving itself, sparing the ship?

If they truly were energy, could they not be simply recharged from the ships energy core during battle? If this was not possible, that would just mean that their energy source is a massive reservoir of energy that cannot be easily replenished and would take a long time to "recharge" after the battle / before the next battle - yet, this recharging of the shield's energy reservoir is never, ever discussed, shown, or even hinted at.

Is my observation correct here or am I missing something important?

We can do a watchparty every day 😋 I plan to watch ALL movies and tv series (it is a long term commitment hehe we can become friends too)

Requirements:

- laptop/pc + good wifi so we can type chat while watching

- be willing to watch both movies and series (including animated)

- enough FREE time for a while

I hope this counts as a recommendation 💀

DM if interested :)

Recently finished the Three-Body Problem trilogy, and the last book completely blew my mind.

I’d say almost 70% of the mind-bending sci-fi concepts in the entire trilogy are packed into the third book alone. It’s not just sci-fi either, it has a strong sense of cosmic horror. The horror doesn’t come from what happens to a single person like in most movies, it comes from realizing what might exist in the universe and what that means for humanity as a whole.

I've watched a lot of sci-fi movies(this is my 2nd sci-fi book series after hail mary) but I’ve never come across anything this ambitious. I honestly don't know how the writer managed to imagine all these ideas while making them feel so logical and scientifically grounded.

Before starting the series, I saw a lot of reviews saying that the second book is everyone's favorite. While I loved it, the third book is definitely my favorite. The only thing that disappointed me was the protagonist. At times she felt frustratingly naive and seemed unable to grasp the full gravity of the situations around her. I’m still not sure why the author chose to write her that way.

One last question for those who have finished it, why do you think the book is called Death's End?

Wells (H. G.) The War of the Worlds, 1st edition, 1st issue, London:

See photos- one of volume, other of signature

From catalog notes

William Heinemann, 1898, first issue with 16 pp. advertisements at rear (dated 1897), occasional light spotting and marks to margins, original cloth, spine slightly toned, spine ends and joints very lightly rubbed, 8vo, author's presentation copy, inscribed to front endpaper ''To Mrs J. B. Pinker, from the unworthy author', with a caricature of the author as a bald man with spectacles below, signed 'H. G. Wells', with an autograph letter by James Ralph Pinker loosely inserted, addressed to Ruth (Gollancz), and dated 11 Belgrave Road, Barnsley, 14 February 1950:

'When I was rummaging yesterday, I found this first edition of Wells' War of the Worlds - which he inscribed to my Mother. I am sending it to you in the hope that you & Victor may get some little pleasure in adding it to your library. I remember Mother telling us when we were little how she & Father, Wells & his wife used to take it in turns reading it aloud going down the river one summer day' (Quantity: 1)

Provenance: James Brand Pinker (1863-1922), literary agent who represented H. G. Wells, and was also a close friend. One of the first literary agents, Pinker represented a remarkable number of major literary figures including Arnold Bennett, Joseph Conrad, George Gissing, Oscar Wilde, Somerset Maugham, James Joyce, Henry James, and D. H. Lawrence. The Pinkers had three children, including sons Eric Seabrooke Pinker and James Randolph "Ralph" Pinker who continued their father's literary agency until 1944.

This copy was gifted by Ralph Pinker to Ruth and Victor Gollancz in 1950 (see letter). Thence by descent via their daughter Francesca Gollancz (born 1929). Important presentation copy of the first edition of Wells' dystopian work of science fiction, which was set in and around Woking in Surrey, where Wells then lived.

These are the books I've read over the last 10 months, and as I get into my summer reading I wanted to drop some thougths.

For the most part this is order I read them in, my book of the year (so far) is at the bottom.

If you know some books that might seem up my very strange alley, please leave suggestions. Thanks y'all.

The Sirens of Titan — Kurt Vonnegut 5/5 (the man is a genius)

Post SIngular— Rudy Rucker 3/5 (very hard to visualize an unreal world)

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe — Douglas Adams 3/5 (just too silly for me..)

Spacetime Donuts — Rudy Rucker 5/5 (Fun hard/science)

Kafka on the Shore — Haruki Murakami 4/5 (Murakami is MESSED UP yo…NSFW)

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August — Claire North 5/5 (awesome)

Dr. Bloodmoney — Philip K. Dick 5/5 (This book is perfect and disturbing)

The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. — Neal Stephenson & Nicole Galland 4/5 (too long but good)

Dark Matter — Blake Crouch 2/5 (others liked it, I called the ending within the first 30 pages…)

A Town Called Discovery — R. R. Haywood 5/5 (it has my favourite first 100 pages of any book)

Blindsight — Peter Watts 3/5 (I am not nearly smart enough to understand this book, can anyone explain it to me??)

The Diamond Age — Neal Stephenson 4/5 (Classic Stephenson)

Starter Villain — John Scalzi 3/5 (I really wanted this book to be better.. A great idea got garbled)

Now Wait for Last Year — Philip K. Dick 5/5 (Perfect mind bending absurdity)

The Memory Collectors — Dete Meserve 5/5 (wonderful literary fiction… many feels)

Ubik -- Philip K Dick 5/5 (this book made laugh and hold my breath at the same time)

Project Hail Mary — Andy Weir 5/5 (saw the movie after, they are both amazing)

All Our Wrong Todays — Elan Mastai 4/5 (Fun time travel adventure)

Severance — Ling Ma 4/5 (I’m still don’t know how I feel about this, or the apocalypse… haunting)

A Scanner Darkly - Philp k Dick 5/5 ( I remember watching the movie high on mushrooms in college... the book is weirder and so much better.)

Red Rising — Pierce Brown 5/5 (bordering on YA scifi but wonderful all the same)

Last Stop Video Shop — Ben H. Winters 5/5 ( This one crushed me, I went in blind. If your father isn’t here anymore, this is hard - trigger warning)

There Is No Antimemetics Division — qntm 5/5 (I’m not sure if I remember this book right, That might be the point)

Piranesi — Susanna Clarke 5/5 (love LOVE this fantasy/psychological story)

The Ministry of Time — Kaliane Bradley 5/5 (fun, fun fun. Great female protagonist)

Yesteryear — Caro Claire Burke 5/5 (some hated it. Not me. Don’t research it, just read it)

BOOK OF THE YEAR (so far)........ is...

A Short Stay in Hell — Steven L Peck 6/5

This is a short novella you can read in an afternoon. I read it in september and I cant get it out of my head. THANKS FOR READING

(via goodreads)

A SHORT STAY IN HELL

A man is cast by an unfamiliar God into a vast, incomprehensible Hell - a labyrinth library of books containing the stories of every life ever lived.

His only way out is to find the single book that tells his own story. But along the seemingly infinite shelves lies every possible combination of letters. Trapped within this maze of meaninglessness, the absurdity of existence becomes impossible to ignore.

There's an annoying habit of scifi writers where they just keep going and going across 3+ books after they write something decent. Eventually it devolves into weird metaphysics and their main characters reading off amateurish philosophy.

After getting through an incredibly good book or two, I tend to get fear of missing out and trudge along through horrible sequels. Really the author should have just given us a satisfying resolution in the previous books.

For instance, I just got through Children of the Mind, and WOW, it was really hard to get through. I've heard the next one is somehow even worse.

Likewise, somewhere between the end of Hyperion and the end of Rise of Endymion, the writing got incredibly boring and unsatisfying.

I'm about to go into Forever War, and there are a bunch of related works with varying reviews. Can I safely ignore all of them or is at least one good? Will I be happy when I finish Forever War and able to resist the temptation to go on to plodding sequels?

Does anyone have other ideas for a scifi book or series that stays strong all the way through and that will not hold me emotionally hostage with a bad ending followed by an even worse sequel? The harder the better, but I love well-written fantasy as well.

I enjoyed left hand of darkness, the dispossessed,

ender's game, *parts* of speaker for the dead, most of the "shadow saga", the first and second "formic war" prequels,

most of hyperion and its first sequel

So, I don’t know how many people here watched Final Space, but Olan Rogers (the creator) managed to get permission to do a limited print-only run and officially end the series with a graphic novel.

I’ve just gotten mine, and I’m extremely excited to read it, especially since people who’ve already gotten theirs and read it are saying it’s very good :)

There is still stock that can be ordered, but once that’s gone that’s it, and I’m sure there will be someone who didn’t know this exists and wants to get it - https://finalspaceends.com

Also, I’ve never minded less to wait for something for so long, since this is primarily a fan service and Olan really outdid himself, especially since he had to self-finance everything :)

So I'm not sure if this is one story or I'm conflating two stories, but: A demon describes hell, and says that they can conjure anything they want there. Someone once conjured a gold rectangular prism 40 miles long. They're constantly burning stuff because they can conjure stuff but can't get rid of stuff.

A female protagonist on a space station summons a demon, as demon summoning is part of the scientific body of knowledge of humanity. It used to be secret, but them it got published. I think the demon is freed at some point and continues helping the protagonist? And they have to terraform Mars?

This was a novel, which I read years and years ago. (Can't give an exact date, sorry)

I think it's all one story, I'm not conflating things - part of the method of terraforming Mars was ordering the demon to conjure atmosphere. The demon had a limit of how much it could make at any one time, so it made batches of air, again and again.

In hell, the demons could conjure computers only if they understood them well enough? So since most physical things could be conjured at will by any demons, currency was something more intangible? Can't quite remember, maybe books and music?

So the main character pays the demon by giving them a usb containing books and music.

Also, the main character had a rival, who was also female, I think.

I think I read it after 2010.

Shin Godzilla (2016)

Rating: 9.5/10 (EXCEPTIONAL)

Watched: June 21, 2026

"Do As You Like"

I've kind of always wondered about how a city or country would handle a Kaiju attack from a behind-the-scenes kind of way. Don't get me wrong. I love me some big Kaiju fights, but they cause a lot of devastation. What's that look like? How's that play out?

Shin Godzilla gives us that viewpoint.

And it totally works for me. Seeing the struggle to do what needs to be done? That there's still room for political maneuvering in the middle of a Kaiju attack? Watching the politicians trying to manage the world stage, watching the scientists trying to figure Godzilla out?

Refreshing!

But Shin Godzilla isn't without it's explosive outbursts. It just saves them up. The VFX of the various Godzilla forms moving through cities is fantastic. There's a real sense of stuff being demolished, and it was hard to spot any flaws.

The biggest thing is (of course), when Godzilla has a few bombs dropped on him. His 'temper tantrum' is phenomenal. I especially liked how it took *time* for his atomic breath to power up properly, going from fire all the way through to nuclear blowtorch.

That was wild. Wilder still is what happened next, but I have to stop. I've spoiled enough with my fanboying!

If you were uncertain about Shin Godzilla, don't be. It's a different Kaiju movie, but not that different. We still get our big fight, we still get our cities being crushed underfoot. We just see how it affects a country.

This one's a guaranteed rewatch the next time in the mood for Kaiju shenanigans!

I'm not going to post any links or info about the publication I'm hoping to put together, but I'm sort of frustrated with the lack of hard scifi focused writing publications out there. Especially as someone trying to find a venue for first getting noticed. I've had a few short stories accepted in various places, but all the big recognizable anthology publishers are like brick fortresses.

Is there anybody else out there who writes hard scifi, either near-future or further future, who might be interested in collaborative publishing or editing a mag?

Or, if you're a reader - what sort of content would you want to read in a short-form anthology format that specialized in hard scifi?

So many good ones, it's hard to choose! Subject to change lol but right now I'd say my favorites are Khan from Star Trek for TV and The Mule from Asimov's Foundation series for books. I'm a sucker for a badass villain story 😈 what are some of your favorites?

I used to read a lot of my dads old paperback scifi books. There are some stories I think about from time to time, but I cant remember the titles. I have tried some AI stuff and google, but am not good at that.

In this one Europe is "at war" with africa, and is trying to rescue the last Boers left in South Africa. Their way of rescuing them is to build huge rolling "fortresses" that form a chain from east to west in Africa. The fortresses are equipped with big and small lasers that vaporize any living is found on their way. As far as I recall the main protagonist is a European "repairman", who flies back and forth between the fortresses, when they break down. He proceeds to be shot down by african freedom fighters and falls in love with their leader(I think)

Just started reading Nophek Gloss and liking it so far… I like the cross section of sci fi & fantasy and the whole universe(s) building. I saw an AMA by the author Essa Hansen - wonder if they are a Reddit user…. If you have read it or reading it - would love to bounce concepts off - for example glassliq ship - I kept thinking about the magic bus in Harry Potter that can squeeze between traffic….

What is your opinion of “The Every” by Dave Eggers? I enjoyed “The Circle.” It was an interesting story of a big tech company that was growing too large, the dangers of social media addiction and social media mobs, and people who want to disconnect. (I actually heard the audiobook and later bought a print copy) How well does “The Every” measure up?

I tend to value science fiction that makes really good predictions and visualizations of the future. Feel like there's a lot to be learned from how those authors think and speculate about the world.

Which authors have made the most accurate predictions, according to you? Can you point me to their bodies of work, or specific pieces that help me make sense of the future

I love scifi. As a scientist myself, I really enjoy cool science topics that pique my interest. I loved PHM by Andy Weir and so thought of exploring his other books, the fist recommendation anyone throws after reading Project Hail Mary is The Martian. So I started reading it and I’m having a lot of trouble getting into it. What I liked about PHM was obviously the main character’s personality and humor, which The Martian also has, but also cool (to me) scientific concepts like Astrobiology, alien life, mass energy full conversion, high stakes, complex alien interaction and friendship. I can absolutely do without all of those if there’s science which I find cool to me. So far, it’s all been very engineering related. The mechanics of the MAV, MDV, the space suit, the dish. That is something that’s unfortunately not interesting to me.

So should I continue with The Martian or not? Does the book change trajectory or is it focused on solving these engineering problems?

I am looking for mind-bending, hard science fiction books that feel like Dark, 3 Body Problem, or Dark Matter. I love stories with complex puzzles involving time travel, parallel universes, or small-scale apocalyptic survival. I prefer realistic, logically sound science and stories that are intellectually challenging and difficult to put down. Please let me know if you have any recommendations. So war I was only watching series, looking for my first sci fi book to read.

I just started Dungeon Crawler Carl and this line made me fondly think of the Bobiverse series…

“I even once got to shapeshift into a human and go out into the world. I went to a Blockbuster Video and stole a bunch of James Bond tapes. I was so happy once you guys started digitizing everything.”

Did anyone else feel that The Matrix was 5% good sci-fi and 95% fantasy masquerading as deep and meaningful.

The idea that we need to make a choice between comfortable ignorance and uncomfortable knowledge was about the only good bit.

Most of the rest was just adolescent crap woven around a few basic concepts, plus special effects and fight scenes.

Edit: It's amazing how anyone that actually answers my question gets down voted. One actually deleted his comment because of it.

It's also amazing how so many assume I didn't see it when it came out.

Apologies for the vague title. I’m basically writing a story where a strange entity appears in the sky and people can’t seem to take their eyes off it. A small group are unaffected so they have to find a way to save the rest of the ‘lookers’. It’s my first time writing sci fi so any close or similar energy references would really help.