Science Fiction

I tore through The Faith of Beasts by JSAC, really loving the new universe they've developed. Very much looking forward to rereading TMoG, Livesuit and TFoB very soon and the show being developed.

I'm reading book 4, Children of Strife by Tchaikovsky and enjoying it thoroughly. AT has been my favorite contemporary author for the last few years based on how wide-ranging and prolific he is. I discovered AT by reading The Final Architecture series, which is still my favorite series by him. Honorable mention is his Dogs of War series, also amazing.

Last year I discovered China Mieville by reading Embassytown, the mindfuck storytelling and intelligent prose blew me away. That book still haunts me and twists my brain almost a year after reading it. I've never had a book that still makes me think and feel strange months after finishing it. Perdido Street Station was also amazing, super fun and original steampunk world. Very much looking forward reading the next two in that series and digesting more of his catalogue, I think he's my new favorite.

Also recently read The Prefect by Alaistar Reynolds, set in the Revelation Space universe and it's also fantastic, really good stuff. Stoked to finish the series.

As far DNF I was surprised I couldn't push through The Algerbraist by Iain Banks, I got bogged down in Jupiter just couldn't keep at it.

I just finished reading the third book, so I thought I'd put my notes on the three of them together.

Rosewater

• No few sentences of summary are going to do this book justice. It takes place in near future Nigeria. Some decades prior, complex alien life has landed (impacted) on earth; now there’s an alien dome in Nigeria, and a town has grown around it. The main character, Kaaro, is one of the “sensitives" that have become more prevalent - people who can access and interact with the thoughts of others. He’s not a great guy, initially using his abilities to steal, later getting pulled into a secret government organization. The story is told through three different timelines, which are creatively woven together. I really enjoyed the new ideas and interesting storytelling of this book. Will read the sequel.

The Rosewater Insurrection

• Book two of the Wormwood trilogy. Kaaro from the first book is an instrumental character, but Aminat is now central. The first woman who has become more alien plant than human has been identified, and Aminat is tasked with finding and studying her. Mayor Jack Jacques declares independence of the city, and there is war between humans, but Wormwood is also at war. As with the first book, there’s a lot going on, but this one is a little more linear. Very good and enjoyable.

The Rosewater Redemption

• This one has a grander scope and scale, with most of the characters from the prior books engaged in one thing or another. In the aftermath of the war of the prior book, the town is healing, but things may be much worse than they seem. I really enjoyed the whole series, and this final book creates a pretty satisfying conclusion. The new ideas and interesting storytelling that I commented on regarding the first book continue through the trilogy.

A short story about communicating with the past, Rube Goldberg society, and the end of it all.

Hard science fiction.

A detective is investigating the drowning death of a man and his small child. The catch is that they appear to have drowned in the middle of their high-rise apartment in Chicago. I very much enjoyed the way this story unfolds. It seems like it's going to be a murder mystery at first, but we learn and surmise much of the details fairly early on. Instead, there are other questions we want answered, and those are revealed skillfully. The book has a lot to say about racism, family, friendship, and justice. Some of the very end seemed a bit rushed, but overall it kept me turning pages and was satisfying from start to finish.

In s3e17, Gaius Baltar demonstrates his original Aerilon accent to Chief. It's a gravelly "back of the throat" accent that sounds a lot like Mark Sheppard. Next episode we meet Baltar's lawyer, played by...Mark Sheppard. His law career is obviously on Caprica, but are the accents just coincidence? Is Lampkin faking it because he read the book? He doesn't strike me as a manual labor-type, but his story could be similar.

Thy light is an eminence unto thee

And thou art upheld by the pillars of thy strength.

Thy power is a foundation for the worlds:

They are builded thereon as upon a lofty rock

Whereto no enemy hath access.

Thou puttest forth thy rays, and they hold the sky

As in the hollow of an immense hand.

Thou erectest thy light as four walls

And a roof with many beams and pillars.

Thy flame is a stronghold based as a mountain:

Its bastions are tall, and firm like stone.

The worlds are bound with the ropes of thy will,

Like steeds are they stayed and constrained

By the reins of invisible lightnings.

With bands that are stouter than iron manifold,

And stronger than the cords of the gulfs,

Thou withholdest them from the brink

Of outward and perilous deeps,

Lest they perish in the desolations of the night,

Or be stricken of strange suns;

Lest they be caught in the pitfalls of the abyss,

Or fall into the furnace of Arcturus.

Thy law is as a shore unto them,

And they are restrained thereby as the sea.

Thou art food and drink to the worlds:

Yea, by the sustenance are they sustained,

That they falter not upon the road of space

Whose goal is Hercules.

When thy pillars of force are withdrawn,

And the walls of thy light fall inward,

And thy head is covered with the Shadow,

The worlds shall wander as men bewildered

In the wasteness void of life and barren.

Athirst and unfed shall they be

When the springs of thy strength are dust

And thy fields of light are black with dearth.

They shall perish from the ways

That thou showest no longer,

And emptiness shall close above them.

Image: Clement Lindley – read more about him here.

Some excerpts here:

https://write.as/agndjsmt55yr13p3.md

Have u read her books? I am right now & im absolutely amazed, so i contacted her agent: i wanna interview her for my small SF blog:

https://sfss.space/

If u love her & have good questions to ask her, please answer in the comments.

This book is FANTASTIC!

It’s 2067, and the Graves family has transformed Mars from lifeless rock into a chaotic patchwork of settlements—and everybody wants a piece.

Enter Hunter Graves: handsome, ambitious, and with spectacularly bad timing. He shows up at the United Nations base just as an emergency evacuation sends everyone scurrying for safety. Except he’s left behind. Uh oh.

Also stranded: Cleo, a sharp-tongued stowaway with no intention of dying today, and even less patience for overconfident trust fund boys. But the enemy of your enemy might just help you survive, so here we are.

Turns out the evacuation was just a cover for the mercenaries who came next, and they plan to blow up the base—and every trace of their crime—in eight hours.

Now, Hunter and Cleo have one shot to stop the explosion, escape alive, and deal with the inconvenient fact that they’re falling for each other.

The clock is ticking.

A short story I wrote.

I know it is Medium, but there should be no paywall.

I have too much time on my hands lately. I have decided to challenge myself and try to write something every day. I like writing essays, but sometimes I also enjoy science fiction stories. If it is alright with this community, I will post those stories here.

Dear mods: Not sure if this counts as self-promotion. If it does please remove it ASAP, or tell me and I will do so myself.

I have too much time on my hands lately. I have decided to challenge myself and try to write something every day. I like writing essays, but sometimes I also enjoy science fiction stories. If it is alright with this community, I will post those stories here.

This is a first contact diegetic document. Talks about deep time, mega engineering, and existentialism.

Dear mods: Not sure if this counts as self-promotion. If it does please remove it ASAP, or tell me and I will do so myself.

Every short description I come up with for this book sounds horrible, so that will have to be: The book follows Marty Hench, a 67-year-old forensic accountant. Add to that that it barely qualifies as SF, taking place ever so slightly in the future from when it was written, and not dealing with any technologies that don't actually exist. All that being said, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It's kind of a technological thriller. The characters in it, even the minor ones, all seem very three dimensional, and even though some of them are very bad, overall it's full of compassion and integrity. One thing that feels worthy of mention: Doctorow takes the time at the end to sew up all the loose ends and give all the significant characters a visit, unlike so many books I've read recently that end somewhat abruptly with unanswered questions. Big thumbs up.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/historyphotos/p/1994442/man-with-his-custom-made-bus-cobbled-together-from-a-soviet-helicopter-and-military-tru

Man with his custom-made bus, cobbled together from a Soviet helicopter and military truck, Afghanistan, late 1980s

I just finished reading Parable of The Sower, and while it's probably one of the greatest books I've ever read, most of the book is focused on survival in a world where every random homeless person and drug user wants to kill the protagonist (you can tell it was written shortly after the crack epidemic and when there was a lot of panic about crime). It was strange that most of the book was just about survival. The protagonist knew they must build something new, but they never quite got to that point in the book.

There doesn't seem to be much aspirational speculative fiction where people start building something better after a collapse of society and speculates how that may be done or how the new society may function.

The only fiction I can think of off the top of my head that covers a little bit about rebuilding society is the movie The Postman that I watched when I was a kid (I don't remember if it was good or not). Perhaps Parable of the Talents actually does start covering the building of a better society? (But I read an excerpt, and it looks like it's going to be, very presciently, about a murderous christian nationalist movement that wants to "make America great again"). I know there's stuff like Star Trek, but that's mostly set long after the rebuild; it doesn't cover in-depth how they got to that point (AFAIK).

Happy April 7, 2026!

This is a free-to-read e-Book that deserves to be better known.

The setting is a near-future dystopia. It is written from the point-of-view of an "artificial", a disembodied PDA (personal digital assistant) who has to earn its CPU time. Did you know that reboots are painful and disorienting? Good thing people wear masks with cameras. It is a criminal offense not to transmit your stream in public.

The world is on the brink of collapse because of climate change and waves of viruses like mySARS. I know what you're thinking now, but no: this book was published around 2012. Climate change wasn't even a news topic when I first read it. And anyway, this is just the setting. The plot is about surviving in a surveillance city-state, and the inner struggles of an artificial being.

Later books have more action-packed fights for technology and power inside and outside of the city, while some of the more nerdy elements are dropped (like keeping track of the PID that is running the artificial).