Book number two 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 books #3 and #4 in the series. BTW, the author's real name is John Van Stry.

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 just before his 21st birthday. 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.

Sean finds out that his father was an alchemist and was working on a alchemy to free the Lycans from the Magic Users. Which is why the Magic Users had Sean's father murdered. And now the Magic Users are trying to murder Sean and his friends sine they think that Sean will continue his father's work.

"WARNING: “Perfect Strangers” contains explicit sexuality, nudity, violence, bad language, attempted murder, actual murder, self-defense, pro-active self-defense, destruction of private property, vandalism, breaking and entering, tantric magic, polyamory, mayhem, gratuitous sex and violence, littering, breaking speed limits, a used car dealer, one Plymouth hemi, and some poor guy who just wants to earn a paycheck as a cashier."

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

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

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

My rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars (3,283 reviews)
https://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Strangers-Valens-Legacy-2/dp/1979799490

Lynn

I just finished The Three Body Problem and I’m mystified how it won the Hugo. It’s not even close to the quality of other winners like Dune and Hyperion.

I knew the characterization would be weak going into it, but the ideas “explored” didn’t make up for it at all. I thought the author would try to explain stuff like the complexity of the three body problem, nanomaterials, computing, etc so laypeople could understand them better, but he didn’t really try. Just seemed like he threw in half baked concepts he thought sounded cool.

It also felt like it was written without an editor. The main character’s wife and child show up for a few pages and then never again. The 3body gameplay was boring and a clunky way to give background about Trisolaris. There was a long backstory about how a math prodigy figured out solutions to the three body problem and it didn’t seem to have any affect on the rest of the book. None of the storylines felt like they had any stakes and the pacing was terrible.

I could keep going, but I’m just disappointed. I was excited about reading translated sci-fi. I wanted to like it and I gave it a chance. If it hadn’t won an award, at best it’s a mildly entertaining book and I can somewhat understand its popularity. But Hugo winners should be held to a higher standard and it is bad in comparison. I’m tempted to read some of the runners up that year to see if any are better, but I won’t be reading the rest of the trilogy.

Are there any good sci fi books/stories where robots exist, have sentience, have already gained equal rights with humans/other biological sentients, and everyone pretty much treats them equally?

I've read 2 Van Vogt recently, but they don't seem easy to find. Do people know a good source for the old stuff?

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 :)

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

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!

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.

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)

Book number fourteen of a twenty-one book science fiction and paranormal fantasy series. There is also an eleven book follow on series and many other books related to the The Kurtherian Gambit Universe, over 200 books in total. I read the well printed and well bound POD (print on demand) trade paperback self published by the author in 2016 that I bought new on Amazon in 2026. I have the next two books in the series and will read them soon. The related series are listed at:
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?46598

The series is a cross between science fiction and paranormal fantasy. A thousand plus years ago, an alien space ship crash landed in the Baltics. A man, Michael, found the space ship, went inside, and was forever changed into the first vampire using alien nanocytes. However, there were werewolves and werebears already existing on Earth and they still exist but they are very rare.

Michael has sired vampires and they have sired vampires. But only one of the vampire "children" is a daywalker like Michael. And Michael enforces strict rules among the vampires and the weres, no blood drinking, no letting humans know of them, etc. Violators of Michael's rules face swift termination.

But it has been thousand years since Michael was changed and he now sleeps for years at a time. Michael's helpers found a young woman named Bethany Anne working for the USA government who is dying of a rare blood disease. Michael took her to the alien space ship to become the second first generation vampire on Earth.

It has been three years since Bethany Anne's huge workforce moved totally to space stations and the Moon. Her 500,000 people are swiftly moving ahead with incredibly advanced AI and space access technology. Bethany's people are building space ships and space stations with gravitic drives in them that all of the governments of Earth want to buy or steal.

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 at:
https://lmbpn.com/

My rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars (3,530 reviews)
https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Cross-This-Kurtherian-Gambit/dp/1642020524

Lynn

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!

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 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?

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!

C. J. Cherryh is clearly a very smart woman, and it's always nice reading something intelligently written. After the first couple of chapters I convinced myself this was going to go in a "word for world is forest" direction, and be a screed against colonialism, but it turned out to be something much more interesting and nuanced than that. While I loved her nuance, and her prose for that matter, I ultimately ended up finding this a tedious read. I had briefly looked at the reddit threads covering the book and had seen people comment on the inner dialog and introspection going too far, and the pace being off. I didn't notice until about 1/2 through, or even 2/3, but then I started to agree. I was hoping the pace was going to pick up, but it seems it slowed down! And of course, being part of a trilogy, there was no satisfying ending.

I definitely like C. J. Cherryh, but I'm thinking this must not be her best book. You think I should continue with this trilogy or read something like Cuckoo's Egg instead?

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 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!