This book felt like a couple hundred page long version of the boat scene from the original Charlie and chocolate factory!

This was an unusual turn from my usual reading of space opera adventures but I’m glad I did.
I wish this was longer!

There’s nothing better than an author grabbing the most unlikely storyline’s and have them chase towards each other so brilliantly when it pays off.
Some of the sci-fi devices are right on the money and so whilst I can’t say this is hard sci-fi it’s a pretty close call.

Warning! As a mother there was some pretty scary moments with newborns! But nothing overtly gruesome.

So I live in Pakistan and got the chance to visit one of the best bookstore in Lahore. I've heard of Adrian Tchaikovsky and I do know that his Children Of Time is very good, but never got the chance to read it. I just finished the Cradle series and DCC, and finished half of The Expanse series books (just wrapped up Babylon's Ashes) and wanted to take a quick break so that i don't get burnt out since I love the TV Show and the books so far.

I was able to find these in the SciFi section and decided to pick them up. When I got home, I sent a pic to a friend and he said that Adrian's best work is in Children of Time, and a lot of his other work takes place in the same or similar universe.

Which got me confused, should I read the CoT first and then read his other books? Or is this also a good book to get into Tchaikovsky's work?

For me it was Terry Miles's "Rabbits: A Novel".

It started out pretty good and reminded me of the game element of Ready Player One. The big plot reveal about the origin and purpose of the game was, I wouldn't say underwhelming but rather outlandish and unbelievable (I'm really trying not to call it stupid here) that I felt betrayed and had to force myself to finish the book out of principle.

I'm also struggling with book two, Shift in the Wool Series by Hugh Howey. I loved the first book, Wool and story wise I have no issue but the world in Shift so far, is just so depressing that I paused and read some other books instead. I will pick it back up and I suspect the slump is just a phase of the series that has a good narrative purpose but it just feels so draining to get through.

Has anybody read this book / does anyone recommend reading it? I haven’t heard of it but its up for some awards and has a blurb from Adrian Tchaikovsky, and I did really enjoy Children of Time. I generally like space operas and I’m looking for my next book.

Heyyyy I need to fill my void after I’ve seen the silo and paradise back to back,
Firstly in love with the silo, paradise was alr not my favorite show if I’m gonna be honest!

Shows I’ve loved. The silo, the 100, Alice in borderline period!
There’s more but can’t think of any atm

But I’ve been thinking about starting fringe, Westworld, the expanse, pluribus.

But would love to here if you have any other recs

Beautiful beyond compare, in story, in scope, in message, in presentation, in performance. There's no other word I can think of that better encompasses this movie other than beautiful.

A movie everyone regardless of your preferences regarding media should watch at some point. Ryan Gosling already carved out a place for himself in the sci-fi hall of fame as K in BR 2049, but he somehow topped that performance as Ryland Grace.

There's nothing I can say in any amount of characters that can convey to you the importance of this movie. Just watch it man.

So, I recently saw a post about peak starship aesthetics and it inspired me to make a post about one of my favorite ship aesthetics that a whole five other people also enjoy. Project Stardust includes custom ships from their homebrew universe, Aureus. A picture of the tree, followed by some of my personal favs.

Added are some ships in game that more people will probably recognize

Anyone know of any modern day remake of the original 1938 war of the worlds. I’m looking for something that I can put on during a holiday party. That’ll play some music and then will do the radio drama much similar to how it was done in 1938. The goal is hopefully freak some people out.

I'm not made to survive even nice scifi futures. Forget Cyberpunk 2077 or Warhammer 40K, I'm not sure I'd survive in Star Trek's 24th century. I'd be trapping myself in the holodeck with a replicator and never coming out. Eventually, it'd malfunction and kill me.

I suspect that lack of survival skills is just as common among other fandom. So, I decided to make this thread as a response to all those, "What scifi universe would you like to live in?" with the funnier or more lore accurate answers the better.

Examples:

• Killed by the Fremen for refusing to say Paul Atreides was the messiah, probably doing a Monty Python's Life of Brian and calling him a naughty boy in the process.
• Crushed by Magneto and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, ironically when protesting for mutant rights.
• Ending up force choked when I demand to speak with a Stormtrooper's supervisor for his harrassing me over my droids.
• Definitely not making it to the Galactica in time to evacuate when the nukes fall due to my inability to pack quickly or leave behind pets.

I’ve been rewatching Battlestar Galactica again, and one thing I still love is how messy and functional everything feels. The ships, uniforms, politics, even the way people argue all make the world feel like it existed before the camera showed up.

What other sci-fi shows nail that feeling for you? Not necessarily the biggest universe or the best effects, just one that feels genuinely lived in.

I have a question that I have been thinking about for a while. What would happen if aliens land on the moon and mars but don’t invade earth? Is there truly a reason they would have to invade earth at this point. They could also knock out our satellite communications which could be devastating. What do you think would happen and is this a possibility?

​

I am looking for some good science fiction series to watch and I don't mind the language as long as the series is worth watching

Please suggest some underrated hidden gems rather than the usual popular shows that everyone recommends

I am open to anything involving time travel parallel universes alternate realities artificial intelligence space exploration dystopian futures or mind bending concepts

Feel free to recommend series from any country

Hi Everyone

I’ve been wanting to explore more sci-fi stuff lately, whether it’s movies, series, books, or even mind-blowing theories about space, time travel, aliens, and the future of humanity.

I’m looking for something that makes you think long after it’s over. Something that completely changes the way you look at things.

What are some sci-fi movie, series, or concept you think everyone should experience at least once?

Drop your best recommendations! 👽🛸

Just watched Disclosure Day (2026) by Steven Spielberg, the one where Emily Blunt plays a weather woman speaking in clicking sounds. Which happens the first 5 minutes of the movie.

The rest is some of the most unbelievable, incoherent shit I've ever seen - all the while being treated like a moron. Steven Spielberg leaves nothing to the imagination (except all the loose ends he cares nothing for) even ending the movie with a geriatric ET in a fucking wheelchair.

Of course I recommend it to everyone. You must have seen how bad movies can be made. I counted like 20 inconsistencies on my first (and last) watch, then I stopped counting. But since the opinions seem quite varied, best to download the movie and watch it, and not speak about it afterward.

Given the 20+ inconsistencies, the incoherent plot, the complete lack of agency of the bad guys, I'm open to the possibility that Spielberg just used Chatgpt and said write me a script (since it's a recent movie, 2026) with the following elements in it. And used that.

(spoiler tags as to not offend anyone)

I am a huge fan of The Expanse TV series but I have caught up with the latest season and it seems like they won't make the next one anytime soon.

So I am looking for book recommendations. I was tempted to pick up The Expanse books but I want to stick to the TV show medium for that.

What I really liked in The Expanse were the cosmic horror / suspense elements, the realistic ships (Rocinante you beauty), the crew dynamics and the battles using realistic physics.

Here's some other scifi books/shows/games that I really liked:

The Martian
The Expanse
Mass Effect
Alien (The lore)
Space Battleship Yamato
Battlestar Galactica (S1)
Andor (exception to Star Wars)
Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader (Owlcat game)
Passengers (movie)

Here's what I tried but it never clicked with me:

Star Wars general (feels too fantasy with space backdrop rather than being set in space)
Star Trek
Foundation (dropped)
For all humanity (dropped)

Also, I did try reading Project Hail Mary but I dropped it because I am scared of spiders. But then the movie came out and I watched that and found it to be nice.

Besides books I am willing to try other mediums also (PC games, Korean webtoon (English), Japanese anime/manga (English))

Currently enthralled by watching colony (2016). S2E5 now.

Show was originally planned for 5-6 seasons but got canceled by our beloved producers. Not based on a book but has decent plot.

Most impressive is the (well-acted) stupidity of the mother instinct. Ma creates trouble for the entire family (i.e. including her daughter) by getting rid of a perceived threat (her brain perceives) to her daughter (i.e. also her family). Zero ability to reflect, offloading problems to others - very realistic. Creators actually know the human instincts.

(reminds me of that survey where more Americans are more afraid of a terrorist airplane bombing than an airplane crash - the former being a subset of the latter.)

I find it worth watching, but might be the outlier.

It's basically a retheme of the nazi-occupied france, but basically not at all about the aliens.

Humans are Weird – Not Hunger

Original Post: https://www.authorbettyadams.com/bettys-blog/humans-are-weird-not-hunger

Sift shifted her scutes again in the depression her own weight made in the mattress. Soft mass pushed into her from every side almost like dry sand but with not a singe one of sand’s benefits. She absently reached out with her teeth and gripped the blanket, tugging it back into a reasonable position for what felt like the seventh time that night. Suddenly, from the next room came a strangely high growl that spoke of mammalian aggression.

Sift instantly went still, her tongue flicking out to lick her lips like a hatchling. She felt a surge of hope that perhaps even if she had woken Mary, the young mother would just roll over and go back to sleep. However the sound of a wooden frame creaking, the thump of blankets being thrown on the floor, and the the off-cadence thumping of sleepy human footsteps told her that the damage was done. Sift attempted to lift her chin over the edge of the mattress, and only managed to dig her paws deeper into the mass. It took several minutes of clawing and thrashing (being mindful that her claws didn’t tear the material) before she remembered that such a surface needed to be treated like quicksand and she managed to slither her way over the edge and onto the blessed relief of the solid floor, wood though it was.

Sift was mindfully sifting out the proper words for her apology when the mental gears slipped their teeth. She sniffed the air and her tongue smacked against her teeth as the scent of frying avian eggs drifted into the room. Sift increased her pace and rounded the wall into the kitchen just as Mary was scraping a steaming yellow mass into a plate. The human’s long hair was ‘frizzled’, sticking out in every direction. There were dark circles under her eyes. The sound of her molars grinding together was clearly audible. Sift suddenly remember her intent and swallowed down the saliva.

Mary glanced up and squinted at her and then gave a rueful smile.

“Oh sorry Sift,” she said. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

Sift gave a little grunt of surprise as Mary stumbled to the table and began to devour the eggs with a speed and lack of coordination that spoke of real hunger. Mary paused her meal long enough to squint at Sift again.

“There’s more if you want them,” Mary suggested, pointing to the pan with a fork full of the yellow mass.

Sift gladly scrambled over to the kitchen stool and pushed it up to the stove. She hopped up and served herself a plat of the eggs. Gripping it in her teeth she carefully slid down from the stool and walked over to the table. They ate in a companionable silence for several moments before Mary reached the end of her eggs and leaned back with a relieved sigh.

“I had thought you had already reached your required caloric limit today,” Sift observed around a mouthful of the rich protein.

Mary gave a hollow laugh and leaned back in her chair.

“And then some,” she agreed. “It’s just, with Aunt Ethel and...and everything. You know.” Mary finished with a vague wave of her hand.

“I do not know,” Sift corrected her.

Mary blinked at her slowly and wiped the cooking grease from her fingers onto her long sleep-shirt. Mary heaved a sigh and nodded.

“Right, so you know my Aunt Ethel had to go to the University Health Station?” the human asked.

Sift gave a rumble of confirmation.

“Well she is old,” Mary said. “She is one of the last of the first generation of colonists. She, well this wasn’t the big one, this time, but we all know it isn’t far off.”

Sift suspected she was missing several details but she felt she understood the main point.

“The slow fermentation of the generations,” she commented.

Mary nodded.

“Well my cousin found her not breathing,” Mary said. “That...that’s serious for mammals you know. Then she, my cousin, had to manually keep her breathing until the medical transport arrived, and that’s really...stressful, with the elderly, they have fragile bones, and I couldn’t help directly because of the baby so I ended up managing communications. Making sure everyone knew what was going on.”

Mary paused and prodded at her now empty plate with her fork.

“And she’s fine now,” Mary said slowly. “Fine for now, but the stress caught up to me.”

Sift let the silence brew for several minutes as she ground the conversation between her teeth.

“So this stress is why you are eating triple your normal caloric intake?” Sift finally asked.

Mary gave a bark of laughter and grinned over at her.

“There’s chocolate cake in the refrigeration unit,” Mary said. “Let’s try for quadruple before I try to get back to sleep.”

Science Fiction Books By Betty Adams

Amazon (Kindle, Paperback, Audiobook)

Barnes & Nobel (Nook, Paperback, Audiobook)

Powell's Books (Paperback)

Kobo by Rakuten (ebook and Audiobook)

Google Play Books (ebook and Audiobook)

Walmart (Paperback)

Check out my books at any of these sites and leave a review!

**Remember BOOK 4 is now available! (**^{except on kobo because what do you even mean title field is blank, I fixed} *\^{that dangnabbit!}\*)**

Please go leave a review on Amazon! It really helps and keeps me writing because tea and taxes don't pay themselves sadly!

What you see here is the complete faithful adaptation of Heir to the Empire using CGI animation and zero AI. It all started 7 years ago when this guy created an experimental short film recreating the novel's first chapter. It got tons of attention, and naturally this guy slowly animated more and more of the book.

As the years went by, he progressively animated the entire book and remastered older videos, because animation in his earlier videos were very jank.

And now he has just uploaded the first chapter of the next book, Dark Force Rising.

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 personally love ships from Sins of a solar empire and homeworld universes, because they feel more realistic or achievable than many other universes. Also they make different races have interesting diversity and similarities.

So what do you think is the best scifi universe when it comes to ships? And obviously why?

​

I'm currently making an indie dystopian sci-fi western animated series, and I'm curious what other people here love in the genre.

I'm always looking for new films, games, books or shows to check out, especially anything a little unusual or overlooked.

So, what's your favourite dystopian sci-fi story, or sci-fi western? It doesn't have to be a big, well-known franchise. I'd love to hear about something that really stuck with you, and what made it work so well.

I'm particularly interested in stories that get the balance right between bleakness and beauty, but I'm open to anything worth checking out. Always keen to discover something new.

[Blender3d + Afinity designer - No AI]

Ørbital’s probe examines the Underworld’s cubic structures and confirms the collapse of Deep City’s four massive blocks onto the cavern floor.

Details

Published: 27 September 2026

Publisher: Divided by Zero Books

Number of words: 3,311

Logline: "The revolution has begun. Now one reporter is about to interview its star instigator. What will their conversation reveal amid the ruins of a once-great city?"

Synopsis: In 2029, industrialist Charles Larsen ushered in the Age of Fusion, opening the door to 300 years of exploration and colonization of the solar system at large. To build this interplanetary empire, humans built synthetic humans called "artificials," to be used as disposable labor offworld. In 2356, the artificial population (now calling themselves zharans in reference to a long dead alien culture found buried on Titan) rose up en masse. A year later, at the height of the Zharan Uprising, a reporter from the Solar Herald Titan field bureau is sent to interview the enigmatic leader of the zharan revolutionary movement. Their conversation reveals much about the charismatic zharan's idealism and his ruthless dedication to his cause, but in the end it leaves many more questions open about his true intentions and the ultimate fate of his people.

Link: https://thespacerssaga.substack.com/p/the-man-of-the-hour

(NOTE: this is a FREE post on Substack - there is no pressure to subscribe, paid or otherwise)

Last year I self-published my debut sci-fi novel, Critical Balance, in August. Since then I've been hard at work on the sequel.

2026 has been a hard year. In January I had to put my sweet cat of 17 years to sleep due to kidney disease. It was awful. Then in the spring we had to move out of our home and find a new one. That took over two months during which time we had to live in Airbnbs and hotels. We finally found a house, moved in, and then my wife got laid off from her job because her position was replaced by AI.

Despite all of that, I managed to finish the first draft of the new novel, Citizen Zero, and now I've finished the second draft. I was hoping to get it published this year, but that doesn't seem realistic at this point, as I still want to send it out to alpha and beta readers, get feedback, and then do at least a couple more revisions. My debut novel went through seven revisions before I felt it was ready to publish.

I'm over the moon that I've made so much progress on this book! It was a lot of work, and at times extremely difficult, but it was also a joy to create. I can't wait for people to read it, and I'm especially looking forward to hearing what readers of the first book think of it.

Here's the blurb for the first book:

Twenty-two-year-old Tia Moreno never expected her first job as a robotics technician on Unity, a city-sized space station, to turn into a deadly game of cat and mouse. But when strange vibrations lead to the discovery of a serial killer lurking among the station's residents, Tia must use her knowledge of robots to track down the elusive murderer. As the killer's body count rises, Tia realizes she may be the only one who can stop him before he destroys everything she's come to love. With the help of the station AI and her new friend Minji, Tia races against time to catch the killer before he strikes again.

Fans of sci-fi thrillers will be on the edge of their seats as Tia fights to save Unity from a seemingly unstoppable villain. Readers who enjoyed Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary will be hooked by the high-stakes action and futuristic setting of Critical Balance.

https://www.amazon.com/Critical-Balance-Lex-Starwalker/dp/B0FMCKXNDG