I overall liked this book. The scope was big, like really big. I did hope to hear something that happened to other parts of the universe after the expansion of the deep, possibly in the epilogue. Sadly that did not happen.

Touching parts were when blueshell's sacrifise and when Pham died and it was revealed that he had really experienced all that he thought that hi had, just beautifull send of to the character :)

I also quite liked reading the interactions between Skroderider's. Something about them wigling their leaves made them fell "cute" :)

I read the book on Finnish and the name of the Skroderider were translated as "kiesikäs". Kiesi means a car so that the translation was quite literal as in kiesikäs mean roughly something that has a car / or someone in a car or something like that. I studied the original names in English and the Skrode does not seem to mean anything ? I really would like to read a book about these creatures :)

What I want;

Mandatory:

A Conceptually dense fiction with heavy focus on Philosophy of Logic, Cognitive Science/Neuroscience, Intellegence as a concept (Preferably a intelligent central character whose Intellegence is not only Demonstrated in tactics but in philosophy, thinking, Meta-cognition etc)

Preferable:

Heavy focus Cosmic Horror, Psychologically Sophisticated characters.

The closest thing I have read to this is Neverness Cycle & Second Apocalypse (this one is fantasy). I have also read Blindsight & Echopraxia which fits Cognitive science & cosmic horror but pales in psychologically Sophisticated characters & Logic Philosophy. I would prefer science fiction but I'm open to a wider range.

The Female Man is my favorite book of all time, but it feels so singular I’ve often had a hard time describing it, and therefore struggled to get recommendations for similar books. My question for fellow lovers of The Female Man: what are other books would you recommend? It doesn’t necessarily have to be similar in content or form, just a book you think fellow Female Man lovers would enjoy!

I don't know if any of you've read Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear. I just finished the book, and through-out the second half I was waiting for a twist that never came.

To explain; The story is set in a utopian future where humanity has joined a wast empire known as the Synarch where all the various alien races gets along and works together for the betterment of all. How they achieved this is through a process the book refers to as "Rightminding". This is where all individuals have a computer, called a fox, installed in their head and use it to "bump", or adjust their hormones, emotions, reactions and moods in order to be "self-aware" and "self-actualised". Rightminding can also be done by other's that you have given access to, such as friends, family, or AI's. If you have done something criminal, or behaved "sophiopatically" (sociopathic), it can also be done to you by the state. Though, the MC is clear to specify, it can't be done to you without your consent, but if you don't consent you will be locked up until you do "for the betterment of society".

The main antagonist in the book is a "pirate". The pirates refer to themselves as "Freeporters", and they don't subscribe to Rightminding. At some point the MC and the antagonist has to work together and the MC's fox gets damaged, turning off her rightminding. Up until this point, the MC has talked alot about how violent humans used to be, she refers to un-rightminded people as "child-like" and not self-aware. Everything related to a "natural" human experience is labelled as "Atavistic" (and you better get used to that word because it is used sooo much).

I assumed that the hypocrisy of the MC was done on purpose. She preaches acceptance of all and working together despite out differences and then turns around and condemns people who don't accept, what i would call, brain-washing. Throughout the book there are hints that the MC has had her mind and memories altered by the Synarch, and we do learn the details about this.

I thought there would come a point where she met herself in the door and discovered that she didn't turn into a murderous sociopath the second her rightminding was turned off. That she would realise that maybe forcing people to accept an alteration of their own mind and thoughts is not a good thing acutally, and maybe the Synarch is a bad organisation.

But no, it never happens. She gets her fox fixed and goes right back to adjusting her emotions so she doesn't feel angry when someone treathens to kill her, like a well adjusted person /s. The Synarch is the best possible way to do things, and the pirates are actually very evil and they do all like to murder and torture, so the MC was right all along. Humans are naturally barbaric and cruel and we all must adjust our very nature if we want to be able to work together.

Post script:

There is also a plot tread about an alien race that the synarch never managed to absorb. They had a war and the Synarch nearly wiped them out. Well, the other race was murderers anyway and has joined with the pirates...

Also, completely unrelated: the MC is very concerned about gangrene. Every single time she gets injured it's "I hope i don't get gangrene", "if i lose a finger to gangrene I would have to get a new one surgically installed", "I gave her a shot of broad-spectrum antibiotics, but I could do nothing bout the risk of gangrene" (all paraphrased). Why is this the author's go to? Where does she live that gangrene is the main concern?

Tl;dr:

In the book the "federation" only allows you to participate in society if you accept a device in you brain to control your emotions so you can prevent all the "negative" ones. According to the story this will help you become "self-aware". If you don't accept this "rightminding" you will be locked up until you do, because consent is important. This society is not the secret bad guy of the story.

I've been wanting to read KSR's Californias and Mars trilogy because of the Solarpunk, nature-utopian (or at least hopeful?) themes. But the thought of starting a series intimidates me haha, also it will be my first time reading any of his works. What would you suggest to start, to get familiar with his style of writing? Maybe a short story by him, if any? Which one?

While at it, might as well: if you have any recommendation for Solarpunk, nature-and-tech world, utopian/hopeful in tone books/short stories, I would appreciate it. Anything but Becky Chambers for now, as I already have her books on my TBR list... Thank you!

Book number one of an eighteen book paranormal urban fantasy series.  I read the well printed and well bound POD (print on demand) trade paperback self published by the author in 2017 that I bought from Amazon in 2026.  I own the second book in the series and have ordered books #3 and #4 in the series.

Sean is a college student at University of Nevada in Reno, Nevada.  He is a junior working on his computer science degree when he is brutally attacked and kidnapped by an unknown group of people.  He is rescued by his mother's neighbor and lifelong friend, Sampson, who turns out to be a were-lion.  Sampson had promised Sean's long dead father to watch over his family, Sampson did so and died for his efforts.  But, before dying, Sampson bites Sean and changes him into a were-lion.

This series is real pulp like old science fiction with lots of action and dialogue.  I love it !

Warning: this series might be damaging to your savings account since there are so many books.

The author has a website:
http://www.vanstry.net/stryvant/

My rating:  4.6 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating:  4.5 out of 5 stars (4,114 reviews)
   https://www.amazon.com/Black-Friday-Valens-Legacy-1/dp/197979071X

Lynn

It’s Tuesday, June 15th, 2027. 🌻

This author seems to have a lot of the themes and genres I like to read, but I am not sure the best place to start?

I like light sci fi, I'm not big on massive books, and I like a well paced narrative. Anybsuggestions are greatly appreciated!

Pretty much anything by John Shirley. Wetbones, Demons, and Crawlers are especially disturbing, and his In Extremis short story collection has a number of what could only be described as the unholy vatgrown byblow of a cyberpunk father and a splatterpunk mother (William Gibson famously described John as "cyberpunk's Patient Zero").

I read there is no Antimemetics Division a few weeks ago, quite spectacular.

But Ra is a hidden gem of a book, and i definitely going to read it again (I actually don't want to finish it)

UPDATE: This post blew up a little more than I expected. I am not objectively dissing the movie. I am suggesting that if you have not read the book simply because you had already watched the movie, it is recommended that you read the book because so much content was left out of the movie.

I read Project Hail Mary around 6 months before the movie came out. I was really excited for the movie especially because I enjoyed The Martian movie adaptation. I was aware that Ridley Scott was not directing PHM but was all pumped up nevertheless.

Personally, I was disappointed by the PHM movie. In case someone did not read PHM just because you have watched the movie, I would suggest you read the book. It is way better!

AI-agent fiction has a new problem: reality keeps eating the premise. Cross-session memory ships as a consumer feature this week, and every "the model remembers something it shouldn't" thriller just got less speculative. The speculative-fiction window on any given AI capability seems to be about 18 months now — write fast.

I'm re-reading all of Iain Banks' works, and it seems like his hostility toward organized religion is blunter than usual in his earlier books. In "Against a Dark Background", allegedly drafted when he was in his 20s, he's particularly comically dismissive ("...buncha religious fuckwits.", "humourless hysterical dickshits" etc etc).

And books like"Phlebas" and "Games" cast religious groups/cults/theocracies as villains, while other early works constantly drop anti religious asides ("Reason shapes the future, but superstition infects the present..." - "State of the Art").

I haven't started re-reading his later novels, so maybe he maintains this blunt trend to the end. A large part of me suspects he does (20-year-old and 50-year-old Banks seems to maintain the same politics).

Anyway, curious about if he ever talked about religion outside his novels, I came across a (customarily funny and Scottish) interview he did with New Humanist Magazine (https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/qa-iain-banks/), excerpted below for those interested:

HM: In 1996, when you were first interviewed by New Humanist, you described yourself as an “evangelical atheist”. Has anything made you change your mind?

IB: Nope. In these trying, troubled times, I think it’s even more important to keep on making a proper fuss about refusing to buy into all this “religion” bollocks.

HM: In your latest novel Stonemouth, the protagonist Stewart, feels “embarrassed for us as a species” that we continue to need religion. Is this a fair reflection of your own view?

IB: It is. Homo Sapiens’ middle name is Gullible. No, really, it is.

HM: Human nature – are humans just animals as John Gray suggests, or, as Ray Tallis argues, does having a consciousness make us special?

IB: I think the statements are compatible, though I guess it depends how much work the word “just” is considered to be doing in the first one. We are unarguably animals, but just as there are profound differences in complexity and behaviour between, say, a flatworm and an ape, so there are profound differences in complexity and behaviour between the apes and us. In the end I’d side with Tallis and agree that having the sort of consciousness we have does, of course, make us different. It just doesn’t make us quite as different as some of us might like to think.

HM: Do you believe in moral progress?

IB: Cautiously, yes. It seems like a failure of both nerve and imagination not to. At worst, as something more to be aspired to than boasted about.

HM: Humanist, secularist, atheist, agnostic, freethinker, rationalist: which, if any of these, do you use to describe yourself?

IB: I am happy to sign up to all of them; the only caveat is with the “agnostic”. I’ve always felt that one ought to retain just the tiniest, sliveriest wee bit of agnosticism to season what is basically outright atheism, on the grounds that – in the end, after all – each of us is just a solitary smart ape on a piffling little planet in an ungraspably big universe, and the sheer bleeding obviousness of there being no supreme deity could itself be a huge cosmic joke on the part of a particularly annoying and mischievous god. It’s an admission that, well, you never entirely know. I maintain that this is close enough to absolute atheism as to make no damn difference.

HM: In your sci-fi civilisation The Culture, the ideas of transhumanism have come to pass – science has prolonged and enhanced life, religion has been eradicated, as has scarcity. Professor John Harris has argued that it is our moral duty to use science to enhance human life. Do you agree?

IB: In theory, yes. In practice I am not looking forward to the obscenely rich and powerful being the first to benefit from serious life prolongation. Imagining people like Rupert Murdoch dying, despite all that money, is one of my most innocent, if heartfelt, pleasures. But still, yes.

HM: You said you’d like to live in The Culture, but isn’t it the messy struggle, in which scarcity, crime and bad things are inevitable, that makes life worthwhile?

IB: No.

HM: Multiverse, String Theory, branes, parallel universes: what’s your current favourite explanation of the nature of the universe?

IB: My own. The whole concentric/nested universes thing (see Culture novels for details). Totally barmy, of course, but it’s mine.

HM: In Transition your characters “jaunt” though space. How were they able to do that?

IB: Ah. That is the multiverse theory, right there. I think. Or possibly the parallel universes thing. I recall being confused at the time. Patently I still am. When I’m asked this question “live”, as it were, I just keep waffling and waving my arms until people forget what the original question actually was. This, I am discovering, is harder in print. … So … Next question.

HM: Are you an optimist or a pessimist?

IB: Short-term pessimist, long-term optimist. That way you get fewer nasty surprises but can still keep going. With a smile, a whistle and a general air of breeziness, natch.

HM: Much of the action in Stonemouth takes place when your characters are teenagers. How do you get into the minds of the young?

IB: Honestly I have no idea. By being still a bit childish myself? Never having had the responsibility of being a dad? Still listening to Radio One? Just listening, maybe; keeping an ear open for how people younger than I am express themselves. Other than that it’s just taking a punt and getting away with it. So far.

HM: In your books about the Culture you have created a hugely complex world. How do you keep track of it all?

IB: I have a document on my writing computer – cunningly entitled “Culture Facts” – that I refer to, and sometimes I have to look back through earlier Culture books. “Culture Facts” has grown rather a lot over the years; it’s beginning to look a bit fan-tastic itself. I only started it because I kept forgetting what colour the drones’ aura fields turn when they were being sarcastic and I got fed up having to leaf through the aforesaid earlier novels.

HM: Which whisky would you choose to celebrate with if it does?

IB: Laphroaig. It would be no time for half measures.

HM: You used to enjoy driving sports cars but you gave them up. How do you chillax now?

IB: Can’t be doing with “chillax”. Not sure what “relax” did to require being replaced. (Apologies – my inner curmudgeon coming out there.) Anyway, relaxed – if you will – is my normal state. If I want to get stressed I do something foolish like visit London. Other than that: “hillwalking” would be the more cooperative answer. Well, glenwalking. It’s like hillwalking except less strenuous. Also, I still have cars; it’s just there are only two now and they’re both small, diesel-powered and regularly achieve 60 mpg. In the old days, with the 911 Turbo and the M5 and such, it was a cause for some celebration to break the 20 mpg barrier. Also, having solar panels fitted to the roof of our house even as I type, and got my eye on an Ampera or a plug-in Pious – sorry Prius. So, more relatively green motoring fun to come, chums!

Hi,

While reading about Ralph Merkle recently, i discovered that his original 1974 concept for secure communication over an insecure channel was inspired by a scifi short story. Merkle helped pioneer public key cryptography and is known for Merkle trees, but he never revealed the story title in interviews. I emailed him to find out...

He actually replied right away, and He’d been trying to figure out the story’s name himself, but couldn’t remember it either. He told me i could share his description to see whether anyone knows what it is.

Here’s the email he sent:

I’ve searched for it but haven’t found it. My memory of the story is:

A human reconnaissance scout observes an enemy planet.

Subspace communications are inherently broadcast and universally interceptable.

The scout needs to report strategically important information without revealing it to the enemy.

He constructs a message using puns and shared human cultural knowledge.

The story ends with the actual coded transmission, in all caps, apparently one elaborate pun (or otherwise incomprehensible without knowing the cultural context).

I’ve tried to find it but failed. If you do find it, let me know.

Feel free to pass this description along to anyone interested.

Best of luck!
Ralph

Because he came up with the puzzles for a class at Berkeley in fall 1974, the story must date from 1974 or earlier.
Does anyone here recognize this ? If we find it, I’ll email him the title and update the post.

I know this is a very small chance if working BUT there is a book I've been looking for years now. It's a multidimensional/time traveling book. It's about the story of a young boy who gets taken in by a league of different versions of himself that all protect the multiverse. A key point in the story was how the multiverse works and it's kind of shaped like a c. The exact middle part of the curve is where our main character is from. The very top is the most fantasy setting in the very bottom is the most sci-fi and etc etc. what I can remember up to is after some training he gets sent to his first mission with a robot cyborg version of himself, a more military grizzled one of himself, and I think a fantasy version of himself to a Sci-Fi world. While sci-fi and fantasy are Stark differences, thus making fantasy verses themselves weaker and those sci-fi worlds, they're still capable of doing things.

I know it's a bit of a long shot and I don't even remember the name or the author. Help me Reddit.

Just finished this book by Ken MacLeod, I thought it was quite good. I liked how both sides, human and alien, were equally relatable, and I didn't find myself rooting for one over the other. The humans had flaws, and conflicts among themselves, which made them feel more real.

There's a discussion at the end about cosmological natural selection - in this case it was the idea that universes with intelligence might tend to create more universes (with intelligence). It goes on to say that because of this, and the conservation of information in a universe, the first intelligent species that arises in a new universe will tend to be the most primitive. I'm not sure I understood, does anyone know what he was getting at here?

Starting on a short marathon of horror novels right now, and the first book to kick it off is John Saul's 1979 novel "Cry for the Strangers". Now this is one of his very early books from the late 70s and is extremely good!

It goes in a similar supernatural vein as "Hellfire", but instead of something that is overtly gothic it goes for a murder mystery also, with the suspense that can either be subtle or intense whenever it needs to be.

The story is set in a small coastal town of Clark's Harbor. A place where outsiders are not usually welcomed. But strangers eventually come here to settle, and soon a boy is freed from a frenzy that had a hold of him since birth, and his sister becomes haunted by frightening visions.

Soon the strangers begin to die in mysterious and violent ways, one by one. And the towns people are never harmed. Did they make a deal with some kind of force or is the sea demanding a human sacrifice?

The early books hit very differently than some of his later ones. It's a really creepy slice of small town horror that's just so good. I'm pretty much likely to find more of the early stuff, also along with some of the later ones too, and probably will when the chance comes. But still got a few more novel for this little marathon of mine, and so I'll be on the next book soon!

I enjoyed Recursion since I work in Research and Development.

Dark matter made me quite emotional and I think I cried once. LOL.

Upgrade was a tad bit dry for me since I have almost no academic background in biology. Epilogue was fantastic, though.

All said, the author lays out rules for his world in each book and stays well within the rules. It makes his books (the ones that I read) enjoyable. It does not take more than the first 20 pages to get immersed into the book's reality.

AMA, I guess!

I am searching for a short story read in a science fiction anthology, unsure of the publication date. The story's protagonist was a human male living alongside an alien race called, possibly, the Solat or Solats. He got along well with the Solats. This alien group was at war with another alien race called, possibly, the Kronzi, who were depicted as evil compared to the Solat.

I am unsure of the spelling of the alien races, but this is the best guess. Two other human characters appeared in the story: one was a minor role with no dialogue or very little, but the other turned out to be the general/leader of the Kronzi. I don't know the resolution of the story, whether the conflict was resolved, or if there was any twist to the story. It feels Harlan Ellison-esque, but I haven't been able to find a story that matches.

Das war etwas ganz anderes … Ich hatte eine Geschichte über den Erstkontakt erwartet und mich auf interessante politische Entwicklungen und Dialoge gefreut. Stattdessen bekam ich etwas, das mich bis heute in vielerlei Hinsicht beschäftigt und beunruhigt. Ab der Hälfte des Buches bereitete es mir ziemliche Kopfschmerzen. Und das meine ich nicht negativ.

Die Außerirdischen werden die Overlords genannt. Sie werden von Karellen, dem neuen Administrator der Erde, angeführt. Er kommuniziert mit Stormgren (dem UN-Vorsitzenden). Er plant keine feindliche Übernahme, sondern eine friedliche Herrschaft. Über mehrere Jahrzehnte führen die Overlords die Menschheit in ein „goldenes Zeitalter“. Waffen, Armut, Krieg – alles wurde abgeschafft. Doch das blieb nicht ohne Folgen.

Die Menschen haben keine Probleme mehr: Jeder besitzt zwei Wohnsitze, es gibt keine Verbrechen mehr, die Menschen haben Freizeit im Überfluss. Dies führt zu einem Überangebot an Kunst, Forschung und Kultur.

Aber was soll man noch erforschen, wenn schon alles erforscht ist oder Forschung sinnlos ist, weil die Machthaber der Menschheit sowieso helfen? Was bringt es, kreativ zu sein, wenn alle Menschen Künstler sind? Führt das nicht zu einer Flut von Belanglosigkeiten?

„Die letzten Generationen“ handelt davon, wie die Menschheit in eine evolutionäre Sackgasse gerät. Es zeigt eine Leere: Eine Leere, die einst mit Kunstwerken, beeindruckender Architektur, fesselnder Literatur, Filmen, Musik und vielem mehr gefüllt war. Mit Projekten, die auf menschlichem Ehrgeiz basierten. Es ist der Schrecken dieser Leere, der mir Kopfschmerzen bereitet.

Und aus meiner Sicht ist diese Leere (oder besser gesagt, ihr Vorläufer) beunruhigend nah. Ich spreche hier von generativer KI.

KI überschwemmt bereits den Unterhaltungsmarkt und macht es zunehmend schwieriger, Inhalte zu filtern. Nachdem ich beispielsweise ein Buch beendet habe, suche ich oft auf YouTube nach verwandtem Material. Als ich nach einer „Analyse von Childhood’s End“ suchte, fand ich drei Videos mit KI-generierten Bildern und einer KI-synthetisierten Stimme, die einen offensichtlich ebenfalls KI-generierten Text vorlas. Ein Kanal veröffentlichte täglich mehrere solcher KI-produzierter Videos zu verschiedenen Büchern.

In diesem Zusammenhang fand ich es fast schon kurios, dass Clarke in seinem Buch 500 Stunden Radio- und Fernsehprogramm oder drei Stunden Sehkonsum pro Tag als übertrieben bezeichnete.

Heute werden täglich zwei Millionen Stunden Fernsehprogramm produziert, und der Durchschnittsmensch verbringt fast sieben Stunden täglich vor dem Smartphone-Bildschirm.

Eine andere Interpretation lautet, dass, wenn alle menschlichen Bedürfnisse befriedigt sind, kein Antrieb für Fortschritt mehr übrig ist. Ich möchte diese Ansicht infrage stellen.

Betrachten wir die kleine Kolonie, die sich auf zwei Inseln niederlässt und sich (gewaltlos) von den Herrschern und dem Rest der Gesellschaft abgrenzt. Anderswo ist alles leicht verfügbar, der Konsum grenzenlos, und die Menschen sind zu reinen Individualisten geworden.

Auf den Inseln hingegen wird der Konsum maßvoll gestaltet, soziale Normen sind etabliert, und es herrscht ein Gefühl der gegenseitigen Rücksichtnahme. Die Menschen leben in einer Gemeinschaft.

Der Unterschied ist deutlich: Das Problem der Gesellschaft liegt nicht in der Bedürfnisbefriedigung, sondern im ungebremsten Aufstieg des Individualismus und dem Fortbestehen einer wettbewerbsorientierten Gesellschaftsstruktur. Dieser Wettbewerb manifestiert sich nicht mehr im Geld, sondern in der Kunst und dem Streben nach Wissen, insbesondere im Anspruch auf Urheberschaft an diesen Bestrebungen.

Meiner Ansicht nach sind Kunst und Wissenschaft Bereiche, die gemeinsam erlebt werden sollten; Forschung findet in Gruppen statt und sollte dem Gemeinwohl dienen. Kunst wird subjektiv als gut empfunden, wenn jeder sie erleben und sich darin wiederfinden kann.

Insgesamt war es ein sehr gutes Buch. Auch wenn mich das etwas kryptische Ende gestört hat.

This is a tell-all memoir of a former government insider who was professionally involved in investigating UAPs for decades. I find the book really gripping. Most of his professional roles seem to be verifiable as fact. As in who he worked for, what were his titles, meeting he held, and people he spoke to. What remains unverifiable is all of the actually interesting UAP/NHI stuff, such as evidence of a crash retrieval program, communication with NHI beings, etc. I'm probably 95% that the UAP and NHI aspects are not true. But... read as a work of fiction--hence the posting in r/printSF--this is a really compelling hard sci-fi bureaucracy thriller. It reminds me a lot of Authority by Jeff VanderMeer. In that book, a new director takes over a secret agency that manages an anomaly, and the horror is mostly institutional: inherited files, evasive staff, and a cover-up nobody understands.

In conclusion: This is either 1) a really good piece of performance art science fiction blurring the line between memoir and fantasy or 2) the biggest story in human history. So either way it's worth checking out!

I came to SF through Foundation and Dune. What newer book would you put next to them, not because it copies the same ideas, but because it gives you that same feeling of discovering a much bigger world? Station Eleven stayed with me, although it’s a very different kind of book.

I’ve just completed my 3rd read of this book by Neal Stephenson because nothing else satisfies that itch quite the way his books do. Aurora, by Kim Stanley Robinson was a good one too. Anyone have any recommends of books in the similar vein? I particularly like NS’s style of writing, the technical details and humour he sprinkles throughout.