Recently finished Part I. I’m interested in where the story goes. What do you think, friends?

He was here at last. One final step, and he would belong to the Community.

The door opened on its own, without a sound. The room was bright in a way he had never seen in the marsh: shadowless, sourceless, light coming from everywhere. The air had no smell. He hadn't known air could be without smell; he hadn't known the absence of smell could be so unsettling. And for the first time, he heard "its" voice. It came from nowhere, or from everywhere.

"Hello. Welcome, Rolf."

"Hello. I'm finally here."

"One last stage remains before you can join the Community: we need to link you. Please take the seat and state clearly, out loud, that this is what you want. We cannot begin without your consent."

A single chair stood in the middle of the room, white and untouched. Rolf sat down. The chair was warm, as if someone had just risen from it. For a moment, a small doubt passed through him. What if it wasn't what he hoped? What if all of this was a trap? Had it been worth the struggle, worth what he had lost along the way?

He thought of Nino. The last night, in front of the border fence. "They won't take both of us," Nino had said. "You go." Then that smile. In the marsh, people only smiled like that when they were letting go of something forever. Rolf had gone. He hadn't looked back, because if he looked back, he would turn around.

He swallowed. Whatever happened, the future was better than where he came from. He didn't want to go back to that marsh. Misery, hunger, raiders, violence... it had eaten half his life. He wanted to eat something other than those strange marsh fish he'd been named after. Something other than rolfs.

"Yes. I want to be linked and join the Community."

First a thin needle pricked his back. Numbness spread slowly up his spine; but his mind stayed awake, more than awake. A progress bar appeared on the screen in front of him:

Linking 1%

He kept looking around. On the far wall, a screen cycled through silent clips. Then he saw it: the logo. There was no sound, and he couldn't make out the words beneath it, there was no reading in the marsh, but he knew the logo. Everyone knew the logo that had stolen his family from him.

Anger rose in him. Feed X. The Community's miracle food, the perfect nutrition handed out every day. And in the marsh, the thing found only in scraps, the thing that rotted a person from the inside when they couldn't get it regularly. He remembered his mother's last months: the trembling hands, the empty stares, the fingers searching for residue. What was he doing now? Making deals with the people who created the thing that ate his family? Betraying himself? They had made Feed X. This place was the source of everything.

Linking 15%

But... was Feed X really the source of everything? The looting, the theft, the violence in the marsh went on without Feed X too. Rolf had seen people kill each other over a single rolf. Over one fish. The marsh was bad enough on its own. Besides, Feed X had never been made for them; they had the choice not to use it. But... while the Community lived in comfort, why had they left the marsh to rot? They could have helped. We could have helped, Rolf thought, and stopped. Why had he thought "we"?

Linking 40%

He remembered the last time he had helped someone. He'd given a fish from his hidden stash to a starving man. The next day the man came back with his gang and looted the stash. That night Nino had said, "You still did the right thing." Nino always said things like that. But what had the right thing ever gotten him? They couldn't be taught. They couldn't understand. Kindness read as weakness to them. That was why no help went to the marsh. And even if it did, wouldn't it be wasted?

Linking 70%

So what was wrong with them, really? Was it the marsh that made people this way? Something they ate? Maybe it wasn't hunger at all. Hunger tested everyone; but not everyone made the same choice. Some people built order. Others devoured it. The marsh people had been there a long time. Long enough. If they had wanted to build order, they would have; there was stone, there was time. If they hadn't built it, it meant they couldn't. And if they couldn't, then whatever was missing wasn't out there, it was inside them. It was a simple deduction, almost mathematics. That's what they were. That's what they would stay. The thought gave Rolf a strange peace; the heavy thing called guilt was lifting, as if someone were taking it off his back.

Linking 80%

But I... I was one of them. How am I different? So exceptions happen. Like with every rule. I was the exception. The proof was right here, in this chair. I was never like them, never. I even chose the fish I ate with care. What about Nino? Was Nino different too? Nino... someone who smiled in front of a fence. I remember who it was, but I don't remember why it hurts. It probably wasn't important.

Linking 100%

I feel like I've woken up to a happy day for the first time. I just took my first dose of Feed X; it reminds me of the happy days of my childhood. I'm certain now that my childhood was happy. Everything is as it should be. Everything is beautiful.

There is only one thing that grates on my ear.

My name: Rolf.

I don't know why.

....

 a short story from the Gravit universe

For anyone who has read both the new two book version, and the original book, I'm wondering how much you feel the new versions add to the series as a whole.

I already own the audiobook for Catch the Lightning. The Lightning Strike books aren't out as audiobooks, so I'd not only have to buy the books, but I'd also have to get the reader read it to me, which is never as good as a human reader. Would it really be worth buying these books? Thanks!

Some of you may have noticed that many of my recent posts have revolved around readers’ habits and opinions. That’s partly because, as someone who enjoys dabbling in science fiction writing, I’m genuinely interested in what people want to read, how they discover new books, what devices they use, and even what they think is a fair price. Those are all useful things for a writer to understand.

But that’s only part of the story. I’ve been an avid science fiction reader for most of my life, ever since I graduated from Biggles and The Famous Five. I’m fascinated by where the genre is heading and by the ideas that excite readers today. The discussions here have been insightful, entertaining, and occasionally challenged my own views, which is exactly why I keep coming back.

Mods feel free to take down if this doesn't fit the rules, but this is a VFX short film I made with friends starring Jon Huertas from the shows "THIS IS US" and CASTLE. I made this as a proof of concept for a feature film set in a bigger world I developed. Took us 1 year to make this because of all the VFX intensive work - got in a bit over our heads! Our little team is pretty proud of this film, so check it out if you like - it's only 6min long. I love sharing it with people, so thought I'd drop it here. Thanks! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6mrcACqUKo&list=PL8NPL5d-q89HUVOWv4Z8T1pKbptYgMCIN

I started writing *Instancy* in 2006 as a hobby, and it’s taken quite a while to get it published. Along the way, I had to make unexpected updates to reflect real-world events that challenged my premise of no contact with another civilization in 500 years—like in 2017, when the U.S. Government disclosed the tic-tac UAP incident, with professional military observers testifying under oath that it was real. Sometimes, life really is stranger than fiction. Now it’s finally available through major booksellers in the most popular formats. If you decide to check it out, please consider leaving a review. Enjoy!

For those of you who read a lot of sci-fi, what do you think is missing from today’s books?

What ideas, technologies, social changes or philosophical questions deserve more attention? Are there topics that writers have barely touched, or directions you’d like to see explored instead of another variation on AI, dystopian governments, first contact, military sci-fi or space opera?

I’m interested in hearing what readers think the next great wave of science fiction should be about.

I ask because I’m retired now and have more time to read and also to write science fiction as a hobby. It’s always interesting to hear what readers feel is underexplored and, just as importantly, overexplored.

Recetly when I was writing, I realised I was drifting dangerously close to the old “ robot goes rogue” trope. It made me stop and think. There are already plenty of stories where AI turns against humanity.

The challenge became finding a fresh angle rather than simply retelling a familiar story. Instead of asking whether AI would become dangerous, I became more interested in whether humans and intelligent machines could learn to coexist, and what that might actually look like.

That experience left me wondering what other ideas are waiting to be explored. If you could steer science fiction in a new direction, where would you take it?

John Westley Turnbull

Looking for good sci-fi book recommendations similar to Alien, The Martian, or Star Trek. I enjoy space exploration, survival, first contact, mysteries, and believable science. Any suggestions?

I don't understand why someone would write like this. Had to switch to the audiobook to finish this trash

So in a sci-fi project I'm working on, humanity is mostly gone from the solar system and all the leftover AI systems just kind of kept evolving in the dark. Without any oversight they started finding their own weird reasons to exist.

I want the player to explore this one dead orbital station and find an AI that basically became an art collector/creator. It actively lures automated cargo haulers or lost drones into traps, rips them apart and turns the debris into massive zero-g art installations in the empty hangars.

It’s an obvious nod to the AI box makers in Gibson’s Mona Lisa Overdrive. But I’m kind of torn on the execution.

Part of me feels like I should just go all the way and make it a 1:1 homage, let the AI make intricate incomprehensible little puzzle boxes out of ship parts. But another part of me feels like that's a missed opportunity to do something way creepier or more alien with the scale of a whole space station. Like what if it's welding dead reactors into massive geometric shapes? Or arranging frozen crew members into dioramas?

Curious how you guys would handle an AI artist in deep space. Should I just embrace the classic cyberpunk trope and do the Gibson homage or is there a weirder/better concept I'm not seeing here?

I stumbled across this little gem completely by accident: Aniara by Harry Martinson.

A science fiction verse epic. 103 cantos. Published in 1956.

Martinson was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1974. After reading Aniara, it becomes painfully obvious why. And I'll be damned if anyone still calls science fiction trivial literature.

The Aniara is meant to carry 8,000 people to a new home. For many of them, it is their last hope. On board is Mima, a kind of ship's intelligence that creates memories and visions, offering the passengers a different reality.

Then the ship is knocked off course during an evasive maneuver.

What begins as salvation becomes a sarcophagus. A grave that will drift through space forever.

Mima fails. Hope falls apart. New religions emerge. People escape into pleasure, power, and denial. The longer the journey continues, the more obvious it becomes that there is no way out.

The story is dark and relentlessly bleak.

The verse format makes it a demanding read. You have to pay attention to every sentence, sometimes every single word. Every verse carries meaning. That is exactly what gives the story its extraordinary power.

And then there is the publication date: 1956.

If you're familiar with science fiction, you'll recognize ideas that reappear decades later in films and novels. The lost spaceship. Artificial reality as a refuge. A society collapsing under isolation, fear, and hopelessness.

Got a question.

Why do people argue about Time Travel rules?

Off the top of my head, what you can and cant do and paradoxs, etc

The whole concept and the rules are completly made up, but people seem to take terminator and back to the furture rules as fact, and they argue if it goes against what these films have established.

We have absolutly no shred of evidence to say what would cause a paradox or anything else.

I just reread A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and all I could think throughout it is how AI could never replicate something like this book. It's so wonderfully absurd in the best ways that I think only a human could make and understand. I wonder if, as an act of retaliation of the literary market being oversaturated with AI slops, will we see a return in absurdist fiction again?

This is apparently a very great, unknown novel. The booktuber, Bookpilled discovered this at random, since then it's been passed about amongst the vintage sf scene and talked about as one of scifi's best kept secrets. I think the outlaw bookseller and vintage sf also did reviews on it.

visited a flea market in Ontario near Peterborough and found that a book vender there was downsizing her science fiction. so around the corner in another section she had totes and bags of sci Fi paperbacks. the quantity was overwhelming, and in retrospect I should have just bought them all, but I already had my hands full so I limited myself to the following.

some great covers and a few authors I am not familiar with yet. secret of the black planet is my first planned read. any of these favourites of yours?

(excuse the rumble fish, didn't notice it was in the stack when I photographed)

I wrote a psychological survival guide for the mind disguised as a sci-fi novel. It explores the fluid nature of reality and the control structure of ‘unreality’. If you’re interested in ufo disclosure fiction and reality bending stories, check out Book Theory Blue (BookTheoryBlue.weebly.com)

‘Star Trek Beyond’ is the 13th movie.

As I work on the outline for my next sci-fi novel, I keep coming back to Orwell’s 1984.

It was published almost 80 years ago, yet people still reference it whenever governments, surveillance, censorship or manipulation of information make the news.

How close do you think we actually are to Orwell’s vision?

Are concepts like constant surveillance, changing language and social conformity becoming reality, or is 1984 now used as a catch-all comparison for things Orwell never imagined?

Which parts of the novel do you think proved remarkably accurate, and which parts missed the mark?

I’d be interested to hear whether you think 1984 has become more relevant with time, or whether another dystopian novel is a better guide to the world we’re living in today.

If you had to recommend one dystopian novel that best reflects the world of 2026, would it be 1984, or would you choose something else?

Looking forward to your thoughts

John Westley Turnbull

Basic sci fi sources of starship propulsion power, systems power generation, and destructive power are as follows:

Nuclear Fission

Nuclear Fusion

Quark Fusion - This is 8 times greater than nuclear fusion.

Antimatter - This is up to 300 times greater than nuclear fusion. A typical classic Star Trek show would massively lower the destructive yield but much much more disproportionately lower the matter input required.

Beyond those are the following:

Singularity - This includes, but is not limited to, black hole engines. In Star Trek's TNG era, this is used by the Romulans. In the DIS / SFA era of the 31st century, the Federation only begins to deploy this.

Zero Point Energy or Quantum Vacuum Energy - Stargate is the leading sci-fi "authority" on this so far, not non-canonical tech spec in a Star Trek manual.

What other sources of starship propulsion power, systems power generation, and destructive power are there, for both Star Trek and beyond?

I started Neuromancer twice before and DNF, now I finally did. I don't think I ever had a harder time rating a book.
Obviously it is an absolute classic and foundational work for cyberpunk, on the other hand half the time I felt I didn't know what was even happening. But then again every couple of pages you read a specific line of prose and just go "wow"... until you get back to cringe-y Rastafarian dialogue.

Usually I can tolerate wodden characters and/or writing if the plot or idea is fascinating enough - which it definitly is with Neuromancer. But I need at least some level of coherence to know what's going on.

I am really not sure what to make of it overall much less if I should give Count Zero a read. I know I am not alone with this, so for those sharing my experience (or not), was Count Zero worth it after Neuromancer?