I need some new science fiction to read, who has some suggestions? I don't like military sci-fi. For reference, my favorite series is the Expanse, I also enjoyed Scalzi's Collapsing Empire, I love Robert Charles Wilson's books. I mostly enjoy space operas and unique stories about technology, for example I really liked the recent book Mountain in the Sea about AI and intelligent octopus. Suggestions from the awesome Bookstodon community? @bookstodon#Bookstodon#Scifi#ScienceFiction
@Jennifer@bhalpin@bookstodon seconding the Vorkosigan series. The tone in the books swings a LOT with some very dark stuff in it and then lighthearted comedy but I loved the series. Agree with starting with “The Warriors Apprentice”
10 authors, of whose books I've read at least five:
Ursula Le Guin
Kim Stanley Robinson
Octavia Butler
N. K. Jemisin
Becky Chambers
Iain M. Banks
Martha Wells
M. R. Carey
Lois McMaster Bujold
Vonda McIntyre
10 authors, of whose books I've read at least five:
Terry Pratchett
Brandon Sanderson
Neil Gaiman
Piers Anthony
Brian K. Vaughan
Warren Ellis
Garth Ennis
Kieron Gillen
Bryan Lee O'Malley
Matt Fraction
Gosh that was harder than I thought it would be. I felt like using #GraphicNovels might be cheating but I guess I don't read a ton of longer series otherwise.
@kbob I had the global shapes in mind: main part, propellers / fans at the sides, two "legs" / "arms" with guns, and the lens. The rest of the shapes and details were conceived as I went along.
Why do sci-fi artists design aerodynamic spaceships like mother ships that are never going to land? Aerodynamics really doesn't matter a whole lot in space.
Also, why would these ships need a discernable top and bottom? There is no real up or down for most of your interstellar travel.
@JeremyMallin@nyrath one of the things I hope The Expanse inspires is more ships that use thrust as the direction of "down" and more consideration of where plating is actually needed.
Theory: aerodynamic-appearing is strongly correlated with "visually attractive".
It's visual language for "we can spend money on excitingly curved hull plates and unnecessary fairings, etc., just so we don't have to look at a starship that looks like a boiler factory had a terrible accident when attempting to mate with a steamroller".
(Which in turn is symbolic language for "we are rich and have a high culture, unlike you primitive savages from beyond the Marches".)
Each of Emma Newman's Planetfall quartet explores a different aspect of the same overarching story of religious driven intergalactic migration. In Atlas Alone (2019), the fourth story centres on an elite gamer & their attempt to uncover & then take revenge for a crime against humanity. To say much more would ruin the plot for you, but as with the others, this is great, fascinating sci-fi, which has a great payoff at the end.
What thing is being denounced? Specifically, and exactly, what is being denounced?
Are you conflating the Bible with Christianity? The twain shall never meet.
More than half of the Bible was written and in circulation 900-1500 years before the existence of Christianity.
If you read the Bible without Christian blinders on, it is plain that the Bible condemns Christianity and all other religions as idolatry. Rather the Bible authors call men to worship God in spirit and truth without regard to a priesthood or place.
This dramatization shows a recorded event from the Bible demonstrating what Jesus taught about the end of religion:
@SFRuminations My wife fielded a customer complaint from Harlan Ellison (actually, he was mad because he was getting junk mail from the company she worked at) and charmed him so hard he sent her an autographed copy of Again Dangerous Visions.
@jhavok Yeah, I have no interest in interacting with most authors to be honest. Ellison and SIlverberg have both stopped by my site and gotten angry at people in the comments.. I dunno... Interacting with authors isn't really my thing. James E. Gunn (before his passing) and Alan Dean Foster (him especially) interact very kindly in the comment section.
This isn't a novel, but there's a kids picture book called "We Are All Me" by Jordon Crane that explains this in simple poetry at a level that understandable to both children and adults.
@FullyAutomatedRPG Great, thank you! I take anything. I like the point about the interconnectedness of all life.
I'm a little surprised that the idea hasn't been worked on umpteen times in art.
Intriguing analysis of Asimov’s Foundation trilogy and its central flaw.
From M. Keith Booker’s Monsters, Mushroom Clouds, and the Cold War: American Science Fiction and the Roots of Postmodernism, 1946-1964 (2001) #scifi#sciencefiction#Marxism#history
“In short, Asimov, via Seldon, seems unable to envision any real historical change: one reason why Seldon can presumably predict the future is that people in the future are no different from people in the present. Indeed, the one time Seldon’s predictions fail is when the Mule, whose mind does work differently, comes along…
…Ultimately, then, Asimov’s psychohistory is neither an extension of Marxism to greater scientific validity, per Wollheim, nor reversion to the vulgar Marxism of the 1930s, per Elkins. It is, instead, a simplistic, essentially ahistorical mod that has nevertheless been influenced by grand historical meta narratives of the sort proposed by Marx…
@AnthonyBaker
In that case: happy reading!
Even though I have already read these, I am a bit jealous of you: you're going to experience that wonderful feeling of being blown away by an excellent book for the first time. And that four times in a row!🤩🤩🤩🤩
(It's always a bit tricky to say something like that - different folks have different tastes. But somehow I think you will agree. Still, do let us know what you think, ok?)
@waarismijnhoofd For things I enjoy, definitely check out the site. These are just birthday posts and as I do them year after year after year, I change up the art, etc. and it does not reflect my personal tastes.
@SFRuminations I’ve always wanted a good rendering of what it would be like to stand on #LarryNiven’s #ringworld’s surface. No artist’s impression or 3D #render I have been able to find has given me the experience I want; the ones that try to be physically accurate always seem to be rendered from a few thousand k’s above the surface. I want ground level, both in a lower flat-ish area and from a normal mountain. I want to see the horizon tilting up in the spinward and, er, widdershins directions, and the wall mountains to the sides. I want to see this from near the middle and nearer an edge. Surely these days this is possible!
@whybird@SFRuminations I read somewhere that an accurate rendition would be unimpressive because of the sheer scale. Your landscape would appear flat as far as you could see, and the “arch” in the sky would be a dim, pencil-thin line.
@nyrath@iamgerardthomas There's definitely a really big hump to get over with Blender. Compared to a lot of other design programmes, it seems very unintuitive at first. Once that bridge is crossed though, the basics come pretty fast.