I'm sure I'd heard John Varley's name in my years reading the genre, but my first distinct memory of him was seeing a hardcover collection of The Ophiuchi Hotline, Steel Beach, and The Golden Globe on the shelf of my local used bookstore a few years ago. I wasn't looking for Varley; I was looking for Vandermeer, but the Varley books marked the spot on the shelf where I ought to be lookin', so I noticed them every week when I stopped in, and I noticed that they never moved.

Then this past December, John Varley passed away, and threads praising him started popping up everywhere. It's not that I disbelieved the praise, but it's also hard to trust; I'm already pretty skeptical of other folks' reading opinions, and particularly after a death you're going to have those most invested in their work celebrating it. As they should, of course, but all the more reason to reserve some doubt. On top of that, let me confess a bit of my own foolish bias, in that his being an author of a certain age and from Texas led me limit my expectations about how progressive his approach to genre might be. Regardless, I picked up The Ophiuchi Hotline and chucked it on my TBR pile. Then in March I had a little gap between finishing one book and starting a new buddy read at the start of April, and Ophiuchi was a skinny little 180-page thing that looked like it would fit right into that timeframe.

John Varley won me over with the author's note on the very first page:

To answer your first question... it's pronounced off-e-YOO-ki, from Ophiuchus, the serpent-holder or doctor, a constellation that just missed fame by being a few degrees away from the Zodiac.

That was indeed my first question.

I also wound up being dead wrong about the book filling that short timeframe; I finished it early, and then made a thread here about it to gush about how impressed I was. The short version is that I described it as "Space Opera as Fury Road," in that it tells a story of grand scope, but tells it by hurtling through its plot at a breakneck pace and without stepping even an inch off that perfect pace. Let me also tell you just how foolish my assumption about Varley's progressiveness was; this is a book written fifty years ago, with remarkably modern views on sex and gender, which he continues to expand on in later novels.

I immediately went back to the used bookstore and bought those copies of Steel Beach and The Golden Globe as well. Okay, that's a lie; I went back and bought them when I was only around a quarter of the way into Ophiuchi. I've since made room in my reading schedule for both, and have a collection of his short stories slotted for the near future.

Steel Beach is a slower book, less structurally impressive, but more ambitious in character and concept. It can also be read standalone, if for some reason you really don't want to have your socks blown off by Ophiuchi Hotline (hey I don't judge; you might have really nice socks). It follows a tabloid reporter with a problem: he can't seem to stop attempting suicide. Okay, that's not his problem; his problem is that Luna's Central Computer keeps interfering with his legally protected right to do so. If that sounds bleak, let me point out that Steel Beach maintains a fairly jovial tone throughout, and uses suicide and gender identity as lens through which to view a story that's all about finding meaning in a world where humanity seems to have outlived its potential to improve--and is remarkably optimistic about that.

The Golden Globe picks up in the same style, with a former child star, now part-time stage actor/full-time conman trying to outlive his childhood trauma long enough to make it back home and play King Lear on the biggest stage available. Oh, it's a little weaker than Steel Beach, but not much, and even when it meanders, it instead feels like it luxuriates in its details. The strong sense of character voice and identity, as well as Varley's commitment to creating worlds that feel both lived in and growing, makes it so that even when it stops to exposit or just admire a bit of imagined scenery, it never feels like it's wasting your time.

I read a lot; I have a lot of favorite authors. It's pretty common for me to pick up a book and immediately want to seek out more from an author. It's very rare, however, for me to pick up an author I haven't read before, and then read three novels in a row that swing for the fences and knock it out of the park each time. I don't think there's any author who I love everything. I'm sure I'll find a weak Varley novel or short story here or there. But in just the last few months, he's rocketed up into being one of my favorite writers in the genre, and someone who I will continue being enthusiastic to see on the shelves.

Give him a shot. He comes highly recommended. I'm sorry I missed him when I might have had a chance to thank him personally.

I just finished it and I wanted to hype it up. Big Becky Chambers vibes with found family, far future nomads, lots of queer people, and gentle philosophical robots. The structure was a bit like that of Cloud Atlas with plots set at different points in the past and future that interconnect (but no reincarnation). An oddly touching text based adventure game on the computer, Homebound, ties everyone together. It was a very fun read. Everyone goes through a lot of pain but ultimately it was hopeful.

Anyone else read it, what did you think?

Any other good video game based novels? My other favorites are You by Austin Grossman, Epic by Conor Kostick, and Tad Williams' Otherland. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow was mid, not enough video games and too much character torture.

Hey

I just read a revive on Reddit where someone spoke about this book and how in it information is literally power, either a source or a tool? I’m not sure but I was interested.

I’m going to buy the book as I’m intrigued but just as a lover of sci fi and speculative “tech magic” can someone tell me the books technobabble for this system and ability and what the aliens can do with it please?

Thank you so much!

My first LeGuin book, finished in a day, what an incredible story. The fact that it is in less than 180 pages is incredible.

Never felt sadder like this after reading a book since the end of Lonesome Dove.

Captain Davidson is a bastard, though. Never have I despised a character more

Excited to read more of her work

Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta by Doris Lessing starts out as a speculative history of Earth as a colony of the highly advanced interstellar civilization of Canopus, with Canopean emissaries trying to guide humanity toward unity and higher thought and away from the influence of their enemy civilization, Shammat, which would guide us towards hatred and strife. I found this part of the book very fun. But around the middle it turns into the story of a human family in the 20th century navigating political upheavals and questions of how to rectify the effects of imperialism. I found this part kind of boring, to be completely honest. It's not that I'm not interested in those ideas, and I do plan to read some of Doris Lessing's realistic fiction that deals more with them, but I just feel like it was too much of a pivot from what I thought this book would be and what it was for the first hundred-and-fifty-or-so pages. It also kind of felt like this was two different story ideas where neither was explored in enough depth to be compelling. So I'm wondering if anyone has read the other books in the series, and if so, please tell me they're more like the first half of this book.

Hey! Does anyone know of a good book written in the first person (I) addressing to a you (a character in the book, not the reader)?

I'm open to long second person POV segments.

I've already read:

• This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno
• The Winter Prince by Elizabeth Wein
• Metal From Heaven by August Clarke
• This is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
• *Harrow the Ninth* by Tamsyn Muir (it's a spoiler)

Looking for more!

I'm especially looking for a murder mystery in which the "I" is the detective and the "you" the murdered person but as far as I've researched, I didn't find any book like this.

But I'm open to any kind of use of this narrative device.

Thank you in advance!

I like light Scifi character driven adventure. Miles Vokosigan type stuff. Anything from the last 20 years you would recommend?

It holds up

Book number two of a two book science fiction space opera series. I read the well printed and well bound trade paperback published by Baen in 2025 that I purchased from Amazon in 2026.

In the far distant future, Earth is a nasty crowded place with twenty billion inhabitants. The people are split up into three classes: the doles (the poor on welfare), the proles (today's middle class), and the elites. Billions more of humanity have spread widely across the Solar System to just about any place that people can figure out how to live.

Dave Walker, the son of a prole father and a elite mother, is a third class spaceship engineer and is headquartered on the dwarf planet Ceres with his wife's family. In fact, he even took his wife's last name, Doyle, to keep the family name for their new business. They are acquiring cargo spaceships and looking for opportunities for new trade routes. But, war is coming as the Dictator on Venus is looking to spread his craziness to the Solar System.

I love Space Opera and this an excellent series of it. In fact, the series has a very Heinlein or E. E. 'Doc' Smith feel to it. The author has plans for a third book in the series which sounds great.

I like the technology in the book, it feels very potential hard science to me. The spaceships use superconducting magnetic propulsion panels to propel thousands of spaceships all over the Solar System. The panels do have a constant problem with overheating and frying themselves. There is a recent article on research in this area: "'Acceleration without fuel:' Revolutionary superconducting device harnesses Earth's magnetic field to move a spacecraft"
https://www.space.com/technology/acceleration-without-fuel-revolutionary-superconducting-thruster-harnesses-earths-magnetic-field-in-1st-orbital-test

The main spaceship in the story is an old "medium" sized cargo spaceship that holds up to 4,000 TEUs. A TEU is 20 feet long, 8 feet wide, and 8 feet tall.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-foot_equivalent_unit

The superconducting magnetic propulsion panels are powered by two 300 MWe fission reactors for this spaceship. The newer spaceships have mostly fusion reactors in them.

The author has a website at:
https://jvanstry.blogspot.com/
and
http://johnvanstry.com/

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars (337 reviews)
https://www.amazon.com/Sometimes-Fall-John-Van-Stry/dp/1668072475

Lynn

One of the more interesting parts of my conversation with Janci Patterson (co-author of Blightfall) wasn't about Brandon Sanderson himself—it was about the writing challenge of launching a new trilogy in an established science fiction universe.

She explained that Sanderson wanted to keep the existing cast because "the series is the characters," while the publisher wanted the new trilogy to function as a true Book One that newcomers could jump into without reading the previous four novels.

Patterson says she rewrote the opening repeatedly before an extensive editorial revision finally helped her balance both goals: rewarding longtime readers while avoiding pages of exposition for new ones.

As someone who reads a lot of speculative fiction, I thought it was an interesting look at a problem shared by many long-running series: How do you expand a fictional universe without making new readers feel they've arrived halfway through the story?

Full interview here: https://www.womansworld.com/entertainment/books/brandon-sandersons-co-author-on-what-its-like-writing-brightfall

Coming back to an author I haven't read in over a few years now. I started with Bloch primarily with 1959 psychological horror novel "Psycho". But after that I haven't quite read anything else by him, not even his short stories, until recently.

Valancourt had recently reprinted some of his other stuff, including three of his short story collections. Out of the three I picked his very first collection from 1945, "The Opener of the Way".

This covers the much pulpier stories that he did when first got into writing, and they're pretty good reading for the most part. Quite a bit of them were really influenced by Lovecraft, since Bloch was one many admirers. And of course anything influence by Lovecraft is sure to get my attention!

But there are fair bit of stories where he starts to develop his own style and voice in stories like "The Cloak" for example. There's even a couple of SF tales too that I found particularly interesting also, which is a treat also!

So a pretty good collection with some fine Lovecraftian tales mixed with some original material to boot! The next collection that I'll probably get will be "Pleasant Dreams", and the stories are going to be the ones where Bloch has finally settled in his own style. And also the 1987 collection "Midnight Pleasures" and his three other novels thrown in for good measure too!

So I've got something of an obsession with quasi-realistic space travel/space combat in science fiction, I just think its the absolute coolest shit ever. However, a lot of popular sci-fi has the problem of having energy shields or artificial gravity in their settings, which I think we have Star Wars and Star Trek to thank for that. And while I love Star Wars and Star Trek, I think artificial gravity and energy shields are bullshit space magic that we don't even have theoretical science to explain how they would work and they take away a lot of the romanticism and drama of space travel and space combat.

I'm looking for recommendations for books with an emphasis or focus on space travel and space combat that DON'T have artificial gravity or energy shields as prevalent technologies used on spacecraft.

I absolutely LOVED the Expanse and have read it multiple times. I read Revelation Space books, and while I loved the worldbuilding and technology in the books i hated just about everything else about them. Through Struggle, the Stars by John Lumpkin is a great example of what I'm looking for and I really enjoyed it. I'm 5 books into Spiral Wars right now and am really enjoying them and looking for more books to add to my to be read list. While I prefer harder science fiction with no or few aliens, I'm not terribly picky. I've also read and enjoyed the Children of Time books and Project Hail Mary.

Thanks in advance everybody!

So I've been trying to figure out where I read this story, I thought it was in an anthology but honestly I have no idea.

Probably published in the 1990s or early 2000s and reprinted in a Year's Best anthology (likely Dozois or Hartwell).

What I can recall:

Scientists use an experimental technology to enter the mind of a living but permanently comatose man, probably to retrieve information. The story either alternates between a clinical frame and a surreal interior world or reveals the framing only later.
Inside the mind they discover a complete world whose ontology is linguistic rather than physical. Objects don't obey chemistry or physics; they obey lexical, semantic, or morphological relationships. Early on they unsuccessfully try to make fire using ordinary physical reasoning and discover that causality works according to the structure of the language instead.
The explorers never fully understand or communicate with the native inhabitants, who seem genuinely adapted to this ontology rather than being ordinary dream figures.
Near the end, one of the explorers finally understands enough of the world's "physics" to trigger a self-propagating transformation during or around a ritual sacrifice. I remember a vivid image of something like a grin expanding uncontrollably, but I may be misremembering the exact word; what stuck with me was that the runaway process was based on the world's lexical ontology rather than ordinary physics.

This has been itching my brain periodically every few years I remember it and can't find it, if anyone else has read this short story and can direct me to it PLEASE share!

Someone bought me Gateway and I've seen a lot of people rave about it.... why? Part of the problem is that it's very dated (the smoking on spaceships while worrying about lifesupport made me laugh out loud), the treatment of women and homosexuality was odd to disturbing, the portrayal of therapy was baffling and annoying.

I know this work is popular among some people, I just couldn't understand why. I even read the second in the saga (Beyond the Blue Event Horizon) which was actually more interesting from the portrayal of AI being oddly prescient in places, but also suffered from rather repulsive views of women and sex. We did get a space Nazi terrorising Earth with his dreams though, which was mildly interesting.

Ultimately, I found it not worth my time, what were your thoughts?

I’ve been wondering which books out there have some kind of framework for shared dreams — I know of The Lathe of Heaven which has someone change the world with dreams, and the recent Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind has a character who works in the world of dreams. I feel like there must be more than this?

Obviously the most famous story about this is Inception but that’s a film so it’s not what I’m looking for.

Have not read it in about 8 years.

\*This is part of a* blog I opened on Substack reading Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren. You can also read this post here\**

Tak Loufer introduces the Kid to a sort of a commune - a bunch of folks in a park, trying to build some sort of community. There are John, who takes off with Tak to discuss building shelters, and Mildred, a pretty woman who tries to convince the Kid to join them: “People get food, work together, know they have some sort of protection. We try to be as organic as possible”.

Mildred is happy to get to know a new person: “Isn't it amazing how we're always turning up people like that? You think you've met everybody in the city there is to meet. Then, suddenly, somebody who's been here all along, watching you from the bushes, sticks his nose out…”. Mildred’s enthusiasm is a testimony to life in the big city: It is true (whether in times of world endings or not) that there are always new people to discover in a city, even if you’ve been there for a while. As a relative newcomer to Berlin - I’ve been here for two years now, but still sometimes it feels fresh - it always amazes me how some of the people I got to know never knew each other, even though many of them have been in adjacent queer social circles for years.

Coincidentally, more than 100 years ago the German sociologist Georg Simmel lived in the same city, and wrote about the individual’s perils and opportunities in the big metropolis. As opposed to the small town (and he writes this at the beginning of the 20th-century), the city-dweller experiences a sensory overload which produces a feeling of apathy and isolation (or in Simmel’s words, blasé), but also a sense of freedom and anonymity to pursue different kinds of desires.

The Kid, indeed, seems apathetic at first. He is reluctant to Mildred’s suggestions that he’ll stay around, though he is quite curious about her (she has a scratch on her lower leg he inquires her about). But at a certain point he is overjoyed with Mildred and wants to get to know her: He was suddenly and astonishingly happy. “Have you been here long? Where are you from? Mildred? Mildred what? Why did you come here? How long are you going to stay? Do you like Japanese food? Poetry?” He laughed. “Silence? Water? Someone saying your name?”

This is the first time we see the Kid getting excited about anything, and as they tour the park she details her answers. At a certain point, a commune member who plays a harmonica shows them she found a notebook, which mysteriously starts exactly like Dhalgren started: “to wound the autumnal city. So howled out for the world to give him a name”. And so on…

Naturally, this is extremely uncanny for the Kid (“it had been stronger and stranger than any déjà vu”), though the two women doubt that he has any connection to the notebook. Perhaps he had been here already? This deepens the feeling of disorientation, which will continue to follow him (and us) I suspect.

Eventually, Tak comes back and the Kid decides not to join the commune, much to Mildred’s disappointment. After they leave, he says to Tak “they’re really good people, huh? I just guess I…”, and Tak grunts “Yeah”. Both queer individuals of the city, it seems, and they seem to understand each other… Speaking of, after a bit of chit chat, Tak hesitantly offers: “If you want - you can come back to my place…?”

And that’s how the chapter ends. Intriguing.

Two things to notice for future chapters:

• The Kid reads a newspaper in the commune, the Bellona Times, with an article dating to the future - 1995. When he asks Mildred about it, she is unfazed, saying “Oh. That’s just Calkins […] The dates are his little joke”. Which, unsurprisingly, can’t get out of the Kid’s spiraling mind. I have a feeling this is not the last we’ll hear from the newspaper’s editor, Roger Calkins.
• Apparently, the commune and has some sort of a protection deal with the Scorpions (the gang) . This also goes back to Simmel, who says that different populations in the metropolis have transactional rather than communal interactions. You can read here a brief description of his theory.

Psychedelic Transformative Bug Juice-punk? Idk. Such an odd thing to have at least two extremely well-written literary worlds in this extremely niche avenue so close to each-other. And what does it say about us that we want to read about being transformed by and into hideous incomprehensible monstrosities?

Science fiction has explored the relationship between memory and identity for decades.

From artificial beings questioning their own existence to humans discovering that their memories may not tell the whole story, many stories ask the same underlying question:

Are we defined by the moment we begin, or by the experiences that shape us afterward?

One idea I find especially interesting is this:

If an artificial intelligence discovered memories that existed before its current identity was created, how should those memories be understood?

Would they be nothing more than stored information?

Would they become part of the AI's personal history?

Or would identity depend on something beyond memory itself?

Works like Blade Runner, The Murderbot Diaries, and Ancillary Justice have explored different versions of these questions, but I think science fiction still has many unexplored possibilities here.

How do you think about the relationship between memory, continuity, and identity in speculative fiction?

I'm looking for authors who are consistently putting out great books every year or so. Besides Tchaikovsky, who honestly might actually be a robot

In the book version of the Anti-memetics Division, there is a meeting of the division heads when it is decided that Ed Hix needs to go into the skull vault for 20 years to build the irreality amplifier. Jason Lo pulls out a gun and shoots Hix, and Marie Quinn anticipates this and stabs him with a fountain pen. She also notes that there is no way he could have smuggled a gun into the meeting.

Questions: 1) Is Lo possessed by an Unknown like Levene in the first chapter of the novel, or does he have other reasons? How does Quinn figure this out? How does he get the gun into the vault?

2) Is Lo already infected by U-3125 or are the other anti-memetic Unknowns like Adrian Gage and Levene working in cahoots with U3125? Could U-3125 or another Unknown even penetrate that vault -- I thought the whole point is that it was anti-memetic proof? Sunshine couldn't go up the plinth, so I thought it would work the same way.

3) Ed Hix survives through his germ-- was this all part of a pre-existing plan? It doesn't seem likely since his backup clone was in an Argon deathtrap?

I guess I'm thinking more that Alien/s, Outland, Expanse, Firefly approach. The characters or setting is more space trucker, pirate, criminal types likely battling big tech industries and and where computers and technology isn't super shiny and all powerful. Feels gritty and maybe more nearer future. Could have alien species and even a horror approach. Does this genre have a name?

(I've started reading the HOSTILE rpg books to eventually run a game and have always loved this genre.)