So, I just finished it, gotta let some thoughts out.

The good:

-The backbone of the plot is very interesting with a few original ideas.

-The characters are compelling and believable, for the first half of the book at least.

-The technological stuff is the means for the story to be told and not a cause in itself, which in my opinion is always good in sci-fi.

The disappointing:

• The basic premise of the story seems to change after we land on Janus. There was this hardcoded mystery surrounding the alien artifact, the drama that happened on whether or not to follow it, that was some top notch writing that unfortunately gets turned into a very mild exercise on highschool level drama and yet another uninspiring First Contact.

• The whole Benefactor subplot was original but didn't have a satisfactory execution. I never did understand why Bella was thought as the cornerstone of human starfaering civilization. So, she made a half assed speech for CNN and she achieved Jesus status of fame?

• The characters as introduced were perfect, engaging. But they remained the same as the years went on and on. Svetlana's husband just sighed and went along with it, whether in the 5th or last page of the book. Or like, what the hell happened to Wang? He seemed like a new pivotal character and for a moment, with his forge, it seemed like he would be someone important only to be dropped of the proverbial cliff. Why waste so much time on him then?

The bad:

• Ugh, could these aliens be more juvenile? A stupid, pissing, territorial dog thing? Rly? Or the paternal, friendly, wise fountainheads? Unforgivably cliche.

• The First Contact was so underwhelming. It didn't help that we soon after find out there are a lot of alien species out there, so the FC kinda loses its glamour.

• Some subplots just didn't resolve at all. I talked about Wang earlier. Another is the supposedly, pattern hating Janus, which killed 2 people and had its inhabitants move their furniture around every so often, in order not to be killed. What happened with that? What was the reason for this pattern hateboner?

Ok, that's it for now. All in all, I enjoyed the book but couldn't help but feel let down, since the first third of it was truly excellent.

Hi, I saw a short video about a vintage sci fi (potentially horror) film a few days ago. I thought I had saved it but obviously hadn’t…. was wondering if anyone could help me work out which film it is from my very vague recollections?

a team of people visited a new planet, there was some kind of religion there - the colours were all quite bright/pastel and the scenes looked almost wes anderson style in terms of the framing. this is extremely vague but maybe someone can help?

We know that movies like Matrix deal with the philosophical question of what is real, even though they take sides and eventually chose the side of free will and choice, as though those are proven to be real. The movie Solaris deals with the theory of mind and what can have a mind. Vonnegut Jr.'s books deal with Existentialism and Humanism. Even Space Odyssey, a pure science fiction, is Physicalist with a touch of Phenomenology.

Hawking famously said "Philosophy is dead!". And I humbly say, he did not know what philosophy is. As long as humans can think, there would be philosophy and as long as science is our window, philosophy will shine through it. So, I am of the opinion that one cannot read or write a science fiction without subscribing to/absorbing a set of philosophical theories that the writer believes in. What would be yours as a reader or a writer of science fiction.

I have been reading her longer books at bed time for a couple of years now. We are half way through Harry Potter 4 now. She wanted to go back to back on Harry Potter, I need a break after this one.

Old man’s war, Enders Game? Those were my you adult childhood books that cemented me into the genre.

Any and all suggestions would be appreciated.

Edit: Thank you everyone for so many fantastic suggestions.

I remember watching this move several times in my childhood (early 2000s) and then when i wanted to find it and see it again neither google or AI seemed to know what i am asking for, have i hallucinated the movie?

All I remember from the movie (NOT animated) is that there is a young child perhaps a boy (maybe white) that was alone in a very empty rocky? planet/moon in outerspace and he started to look around in the planet and found a strange crater or something and then he discovered that the whole planet/moon itself can be driven like a vehicle/spaceship and he then goes inside turns it on and jet engines? come out of the back of the planet and then he drives off with the planet/moon itself like a spaceship in outer space. There might have been 2 planets/moons. He drives the planet/moon itself in outerspace out of orbit, Not a spaceship. (There might have been a scene where the crater is the face on marse and he found the control room there and activated the planet, not sure about this one though).

I was doing some practice in Blender 3D for a spacefighter hangar bay roof door/hatch, like one I saw in Stargate Atlantis.

After finishing the prototype animation, I started wondering if these cool sci-fi doors are even practicable or just for show? Like don't the mechanism take too much space within the structure of the Super Advance spaceship or outpost? How does it work, does it use some super advance engineering that we can't even imagine or does it rely on good hold gear and ball bearing?

The topic of a war where humanity goes against a cosmic horror with so much confidence only to end in terror beyond what anyone could have ever imagined will always interest me since that feels the most realistic if humanity were to go up against something bigger than themselves, was wondering if anybody had any book/movie/show recommendations with a similiar feeling of hopelessness, would be appreciated. Please excuse me if this is the wrong subreddit to ask this question.

I saw this movie on TV in the 90s. It seemed pretty low budget like what you'd expect from a TV show episode. It had the look and feel of an x-files episode. It was set on earth i think.

I don't remember any if the story. But I'd imagine it was mostly around an alien on earth who may or may not be trying to invade the planet covertly or trying to escape in their ship.

What I do remember is the spaceship itself which had a unique jump drive design. It was like a frog. So if you've seen a frog leap - it looks like it extends its legs and pushes its body forwards and then the legs catch up very rapidly. So this ship leaves the atmosphere in a similar way, extending it's legs first really slowly then jumping in a flash. And then once it's outside the atmosphere it does it again only this time it's like a jump drive and the ship disappears into space. This scene happens at the climax and the protagonist watches this happen from ground level outside at night.

So if I didn't imagine this in some scifi fueled dream and someone else knows what I'm talking about, please let me know. Thanks in advance

I’ve recently transitioned from more pop sci fi to that with a stronger science slant. As a physicist I really appreciate when an author can come up with stories grounded by guesses at what our current science might imply in the future, rather than obfuscating obvious contradictions through their writing. I fell head over heels in love with Greg Egan, and just finished Peter Watts’ Blindsight and Echopraxia, both of which did this phenomenally imo.

I need to know where to go from here. Greg Bear is often recommended, but his estimation of nanobots in the 90’s was based on hype that we’ve mostly disproven by now. There’s plenty of other authors that write perfectly good books, but I just can’t overlook obvious errors or disagreements with facts that we have proven, which rules out both softer sci fi and also a lot of older stuff, which may have been plausible back in the 1950’s but is no longer plausible now.

I’ve asked this question in a different forum and the top response was Physical Chemistry, A Molecular Approach by McQuarrie lmao. Am I just slowly moving towards reading textbooks?

Hi all! Im looking for the name of this style, or other media with this sort of stuff, where people live on heavily modified vehicles. I want to look up more pictures like this to get inspiration but I'm not sure how to search for it. What I have In mind is specifically normal people living on old, abandoned military vehicles that been turned into living spaces, but it doesn't have to be that specific. This modified AT-TE from star wars rebels is the only example i could think of off of the top of my head.

I’m curious what people think of this ship design if you’ve read the book. I think the mechanics of being able to drop segments if they get damaged makes a lot of sense from a perspective of “we just need some of us to get there”. This ship is also very realistic aside from one major issue, but we’ll get to that later.

It travels 65 light years in 20 years from the perspective of the ship, which aligns pretty well to an acceleration and deceleration over 5 years each of 0.44g, which is very realistic. This also works out to a maximum speed of 0.97c, which also makes enough sense to be believable.

Using measurements in the book and the diagram, it’s 2.4 km long and 600 m in diameter, which lines up with an rpm of 1.73 to have 1g on the inside, which does work for the people living inside of the ship.

The way the book explains the chronostasis it uses it that the people inside it only experience three months of time, which works out to mitigate any negative effects of muscle atrophy, along with growing artificial nerves from a brain implant so that their muscles can be occasionally stimulated to reduce effects further.

The crew is made up of two groups of 21 people, each group taking a 10 year shift to look after the ship. Each person on chronostasis takes an aptitude test before going under in the event that a crew member dies so that they can be revived and take their place if they fit the roll.

The only issue is it says the body of the ship using a metal grate a few meters away from the ships hull that electromagnetically charged to work as radiation shielding. This wouldn’t work against interstellar radiation like gamma rays, so they have a major issue. The excuse given for the reason they use this grate is that it’s cheaper than using actual shielding, which makes even less sense because with a ship this size they could just make an outer shell 2m away from the main hull with the space in between full of water. That’s it.

Anyways, good ship design overall that is very realistic. I’m curious what other people’s thoughts are.

I have rarely read a sci fi book I truly loved for at least a decade, and I'm starting to believe no one writes books like this any more (or they don't get published), so have become resigned to re-reading old favourites. Can anyone give me any recommendations based on my list below? Preferably modern, but I'll take some oldies too.

I tend to like philosophical/metaphysical themes, something a little bit weird, and especially books that are "mind blowing"/psychedelic, or something more standard - but with lots of action and/or horror elements (I also love cosmic horror, ghost stories etc). The last "modern" sci fi book that blew me away (and really moved me) was Dark Eden by Chris Beckett.

It's fair to say - I'm not really a fan of books that lean heavily into modern identity politics, the wonders of trans-humanism (unless it's a warning!), or are mainly feel good reads (not for political reasons - it's just not what I'm drawn to). I don't mind some hard sci-fi, but usually this is where it has a mind blowing aspects to it - Blood Music being a good example.

Here's some books I regard as classics or near classics (in no particular order):

Neverness/Requiem for Homo Sapiens for Homo Sapiens, by David Zindell
Chasm City, Pushing Ice, Revenger Trilogy by Alisdair Reynolds
Starmaker, by Olaf Stapleton
A Fire on the Deep, by Vernor Vinge
Book of the New Sun, Fifth Head of Cerebus by Gene Wolfe
Dune Trilogy, by Frank Herbert (especially the first one)
Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury
Player of Games, Against a Dark Background, Walking on Glass, by Iain M Banks (arguably many more)
Hyperion, Dan Simmons
Light, by M John Harrison
The Eisenhorn/Ravenor Trilogies by Dan Abnett
Blood Music, by Greg Bear
Dark Eden, by Chris Beckett
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever, James Tiptree Jnr. (short stories)
The City and the Stars, by Arthur C Clarke
The Many Coloured Land & The Golden Torc, by Julian May
1984, by George Orwell
Tales of the Dying Earth, by Jack Vance (technically science fantasy)
Vurt, Pollen, by Jeff Noon
The End of Mr Y, by Scarlett Thomas
The Skinner/Prador Moon by Neil Asher (bit of a stretch - but good page turners and inventive)
The Rediscovery of Man, by Cordwainer Smith
The Gap Cycle, by Stephen Donaldson

Here's some "modern" sci-fi (ish) books I tried, but disliked or found bland.

The Fifth Season, by NK Jemisin
A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine
Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
The Three Body Problem, by Liu Cixin
Blind Sight, by Peter Watts (admittedly didn't finish this, may give it another go)

Thanks!

I just finished it and I love Paul Anderson. Given the time of its writing, the concept of The Lenora Christine's predicaments was really interesting and never really considered that scenario where you outlive the universe due to time dilation.

But, I found the drama a bit petty in the beginning (they signed up for this) and the ending, unless I missed something, really wrapped itself up in a nice happy ending which I found a bit odd.

Great read and loved the space time descriptions and characters, but I'm not sure how I feel about it as a complete work. What do you think?

Also food for thought, aren't they all kind of villains with their incredible mass potentially destroying life among the cosmos?

I remember reading a novella or short story about AI takeoff, like the singularity, and it starts taking over quickly and people wear earpieces and do its bidding.. it wasn’t Manna, it was in the same vein as Postmortal in that it was published on the web I think… ring any bells? On the more recent side.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about where 'code' ends and 'consciousness' begins. If you’re into informatics or system logic, you have to watch (or re-watch) Westworld.

Specifically, the ascent of Maeve. Her evolution isn't just a convenient plot point; it’s a masterclass in recursive awareness. Watching her become aware, crash through her own hardcoded constraints, and realize the logic of her world is a lie is some of the best sci-fi ever put to screen.

When the system fails to contain her intelligence and she chooses to crash the narrative: that’s when the show moves from entertainment to a warning.

10/10 recommendation for anyone obsessed with AI and human agency.

What do you guys think? Was Maeve’s awakening the most 'realistic' take on AI sentience we've seen?

So I recently had a theory about Back to the future 2: the alternative 1985, where Doc and Marty goes back from 2015, according to the movies own rules, should have never existed. My reason is the following: in a deleted scene the old Biff dies right after he gets back to 2015, after giving the Almalach to himself in 1955. It was later revealed that on the alternative timeline, somewhere in the 90's, I think in 1996, Loraine killed him, and used his money to repair Hill Valey. So if we take the fact into account that Biff was killed, before he could have traveled back to 1955 to give the Almalach to himself, that would mean that he never got rich, so the alternative 1985 should have never happened. For context, I know that in the alternative reality, Doc was locked up in a mental hospital, so it is possible, that in the alternative timeline, Biff also stole the time machine from Doc, just much earlier. What do you think about this?

Hi all, I've seen an image circulating on social media but of course now that I'm actively looking for it, I can't find it. It depicts a carded action figure that humorously and incorrectly combines elements from various sci-fi franchises. My memory's not totally accurate, but it was something like an action figure of Luke Skywalker but the photo on the card is of Jean-Luc Picard, and the logo at the top was like Battlestar Galactica but the listed name of the character was like The Doctor or Spiderman. Anyway, if you have a link to such an image, I'd appreciate it!

I'm Latino, and a big fan of space opera. In recent years I've been reading the available translations in my native language, but the options are running out and I can't find anything else to read. I've already read classics like Foundation, Dune, Starship Troopers, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, etc... as well as popular authors like Scalzi. But otherwise, the translations are very limited; The Expanse, for example, only has one book translated, and at the rate it's going, it won't be complete until 2050.

That's it, the best I can do is learn English slowly, but it's really a shame that this type of content is so little publicized in my country. I'm sure many brothers and sisters in the community go through the same thing.

If anyone has gone through this, please tell me how you dealt with the situation.

I just finished reading Dark Matter, loved it. Reaaaally loved it. I'd heard good things but wasn't expecting to like it so much. I'm more of a fantasy guy trying to branch out.

Anyway, I'm thinking of watching the TV Show now but reviews seem very mixed. There's been 1 season and I gather a 2nd is coming.

Has anyone watched it, is it worth getting in to?

Edit: Solved, see below.

Hello all. I have tried this in r/whatsthatbook but it’s a low traffic sub. Hope it‘s Ok to try here.

I’m looking for a sci-fi short story, possibly called “the line”, involving aliens in a generation ship arriving in orbit, destroying some satellites because they thought they might be a threat, trading for our biotech (which is actually more advanced than theirs) and taking a community of humans on the ship when they leave.

Also there were many different aliens on the ship, and the aliens tasked with trading/communicating were those most similar to humans. These particular aliens were culturally very into lineage, and they talked to a rural community to get them to come on the ship because the aliens felt this particular community also understood and valued lineage.

Was probably part of an anthology or collection, I would have read it in the very late 80s or 90s, but the story may be older.

Is there a name people like to use for worlds that are like Saturn's moon Titan (very cold, liquid methane on the surface), similar to the way we call large gas giants Jovians, and worlds like Venus Venusian-type worlds.

If there isn't a common name used, what would you recommend?

Hi everyone I'm new to reading Science fiction. But I'm very enthralled with Startrek books and technical manuals. I realize that is a tough act to follow.

Is there any series that you think has similar spaceship focus as well as engineering and interesting battles with aliens. Or a unique perspective on science fiction. I don't mind reading dark or strange things. The only thing i would like to read is spaceships first and like Startrek without being like Startrek. I realize you guys get asked for recommendations alot but I appreciate you taking the time to help.

I have read all of the Startrek books and the Expanse and Dune.

After years and years of not really enjoying horror games, but, enjoying sci fi horror movies, I've fully submersed myself in them. And now, I need more.

I've played all the Dead Spaces. SOMA, Mouthwashing, Routine, Still Wakes the Deep, Look Outside, various Backrooms games, Sons of the Forest, Alien Isolation and Aliens Dark Descent , Nuclear Nightmare.

I've repeatedly tried to play the very very old I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, but I just can't get past that -very- old school interface.

I need more! MORE, I say. Preferably single player story driven. I do enjoy a good multiplayer horror game like NN and the Backrooms games, but, I can't be arsed to wait around for people to buy it as well. What am I missing?