Looks like they were all purchased by a group science fiction fans, so hopefully things turn out well.

As a lover of The Expanse, I recently picked up The Mercy of Gods by James S.A. Corey and ended up binging it in a day while waiting for work. Spoilers ahead.

The book is set on a world inhabited by two competing forms of life: carbon-based organisms introduced by humans around 4,000 years ago, and the native crystalline lifeforms. Just as a team of scientists makes a genetic breakthrough—enabling these very different life forms to coexist—they detect a gravity anomaly that functions as an “Outside Context Problem.”

Now, as a newly subjugated species, the scientists must prove to their new overlords that humanity still has something to offer to the vast, interconnected web of civilizations that make up the alien polity.

As a soft science fiction space opera, I really enjoyed the book. The Carryx, with their striking orange-and-blue morality, are fascinating, and humanity’s attempts to "humanize" them predictably fall flat. I do wish it had been longer—the 400 pages flew by—and the “

Neal Asher has a new book out called Dark Diamond. The dedication page in it is quite frankly pretty horrifying.

Five years ago, I watched the two Falcon Heavy side boosters come into land at Cape Canaveral Space Force Base. Honestly, it was like something in a game animation and seemingly too perfect to be believable. Others, I've seen landing on drone ships with names taken from lain M. Banks' Culture books. Just recently, I saw a huge booster for the Starship come down to be caught between two metal arms - y'know, they caught something the size of a skyscraper like a dropping stick - and that was an astounding feat of engineering. But these are not in isolation, since SpaceX, as of last month, has launched over a hundred rockets in 2024.

Meanwhile, the guy who brought this about, the guy who is aiming to make humanity multi-planetary by putting us on Mars, has a few other projects on the go, like building electric cars, burrowing tunnels under cities, putting up a satellite in

Stolen from Reddit, with all credit and thanks going to u/dgeiser13 for collecting these.

Best Novelette

• “The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video” by Thomas Ha
• “By Salt, By Sea, By Light of Stars” by Premee Mohamed
• “The Four Sisters Overlooking the Sea” by Naomi Kritzer
• “Lake of Souls” by Ann Leckie in Lake of Souls
• “Loneliness Universe” by Eugenia Triantafyllou
• “Signs of Life” by Sarah Pinsker

Best Short Story

• [“Five Views of the Planet Tartarus” by Rachael K. Jones](https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/five-views-of-the-p

Holy heck what a slog. It's 90% incomprehensible 1940s pop culture references, nonsense poetry, and word salad. Then, BLAM, the rest is brilliantly hilarious and fantastically written. (Extremely graphic depiction of coprophilia aside.)

It seems like every time I'm about to put the book down for good, Pynchon throws me a bone and massively entertains. I'm 40% of the way through, and I've almost given up a half dozen times. I am at least starting to maybe glean a little bit of the plot out of the jumble. A little bit. I really hope it becomes a little more clear at some point because it's a little discouraging.

Has anyone here made it through? Worth it? Did you understand what was going on?

What a book!

I have to read more Zelazny after this. I was struck by two things in particular: The surprising playful quality of the prose. He has little vignettes dispersed among the main narrative, and it gave me the sense that Zelazny was having a lot of fun while writing this book. It was kind of refreshing after reading so many other self-seriously, rigidly constructed novels. It gave me a feeling similar to the ones I experience when I listen to some experimental music, where the process is not treated as a mere necessary evil on the way to the finish product.

The second thing was struck a chord was the ending. I liked how it was all show and no tell, which I wasn't expecting. It was kind of creepy, and very intense. I wasn't expecting such a visceral end to a book which, until then, had been rather laid back.

Now that I've finished it, I feel like it was very dense, thematically. I suspect I will revisit it and gleam many meanings which I missed this time.

I would like to open the thread

I'm new to scifi books, and books in general. (only got into reading 3 years ago) I've read dune, the dispossessed , a fire upon the deep and the stars my destination. I'm currently reading the left hand of darkness . What should i read next? Suggest me some of your must-reads.

I'm gonna review the book and also I have a couple of questions about the ending. I liked the book and rate it 4.5 out of 5 stars.

In this book, the galaxy is divided into 4 zones based on the intelligence of the creatures that live and the level of technology that works in each zone.

A group of scientists from straumli realm go to the outermost zone, the transcend and accidentally awaken an ancient power that wreaks havoc in the galaxy. A family of four escape with the countermeasure to the tines world in the lower beyond the zone before transcend. The tines world is inhabited by dog like creatures that work in packs of 4-6. A group of dogs is considered an individual and a single dog is considered a member. The parents are killed and the kids are trapped along with the countermeasure.

A rescue team consisting of humans as well as aliens is traveling to the tines world to retrieve the countermeasure and rescue the kids.

what really happend at the end? What

I've read a lot of Becky Chambers over the years, and am particularly fond of "Record of a Spaceborn Few" in which almost nothing happens, but you get a good slice of life in a speculative civilization and environment. Any recs that scratch this itch?

My available reading time fell off a cliff earlier this year and I haven't had much of a chance to keep up with new work. What really stood out to you this year?

Books, novellas, short fiction - anything goes, I'd love to hear about your favorites

Peter Watts' Blindsight should be no stranger to anyone on PrintSF. On our Reddit incarnation, it was recommended in just about every thread asking for recommendations. It was sometimes even a suitable recommendation.

Echopraxia is its much-less-well-known sequel, and it's the Art Garfunkel to Blindsight's Paul Simon. It's definitely not as well thought out or comprehensible, but it still does its own thing pretty well, and is a great complement to the other. Though, it might not quite stand on its own so well.

Watts has changed the setting from near space to, well, nevermind, we're back in space. There are some bits early on that are on Earth, and I thought those were quite promising. There's some great world building - and it really is a fascinating near-future Earth that he's thought up - but, well, a chapter in and we're thrust back into space aboard another spaceship with a whacky crew of post-human misfits.

Which is fine. Blindsight proved he's quite adept at writing

For me, best of 2023 was Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow. A retirement-age forensic accountant traveling around in an ex-rock star bus from Walmart parking lot to next gourmet dining location does a job for a billionaire and suddenly ends up in a surprising amount of hot water over it. Hijinks ensue.

Runner-up goes to Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman. This is some bleak, bleak humor. Instead of carbon credits, Beauman posits extinction credits. Got a big strip mining operation coming up that will kill off a couple species? Better buy some extinction credits to cover their death! (And remember, it takes more credits to cover for a dead intelligent species, so factor that in!) Next extinction candidate: the Venomous Lumpsucker, but don't make it extinct until you've got all your paperwork done. Researcher and extinction credit manager for a mining company end up in a desperate chase around the planet trying to ascertain if the last of the Lumpsuckers are truly gone or not, and we

Mass Effect, Star Trek, similar stuff, without the giant franchise money machine. To consume like popcorn.

One of my favourites is Spiral Wars by Joel Sheppard.

Hey everybody! Sorry I missed last weekend was busy with work. Again this is voting for the book to discuss at the end of October. I'll post the runner up from last month and otherwise post your selection. Don't forget that we will be discussing Winter World by A.G. Riddle at the end of the month / next weekend!

Looks like "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" wins by default! Since engagement is dropping off here I might defer to the !sciencefiction@lemmy.world book club.

First discussion thread for the book club. This is for August's book Player of Games by Iain Banks.

Upcoming events: September ~15th: Voting for October's book September 30th: Discussion Thread on Winter World by A.G. Riddle

What sci-fi books are missing something that seems obvious to us today (and is somewhat central to the story / setting)?

My first thought was Dune with the ban on thinking machines. If you asked just about anyone today they would say the far future would involve computers everywhere. But Frank Herbert wrote Dune in 1965 when computers were huge, specialized machines and we hadn't even landed on the moon yet. And he saw a future where not only computers became ubiquitous but we're then rejected.

So what books jump out as missing something that we would find inconceivable today?