you know how speed runners take advantage of glitches, how would the world react if we found FTL or something as a glitch in reality. I think I would get a chuckle out of that. Also would this be considered Sci Fi still?

Maybe not like someone intended a design, like there is something more foundational and reality is many layer built on top which allows potential for "glitches". I guess you would need extreme physics and thus will need to abuse black holes or something.

also is this idea already explored by other media?

A lot of my favorite writers don't really focus on scientific rigor or its details (Like William Gibson and Ted Chiang) and are more literary minded. And then there are stories like Clarke's 'A Meeting with Medusa' (It's excellent if you haven't read it) which are highly grounded but similarly don't make too much of an intellectual demand on the reader. However, when I think of what really distinguishes hard science fiction, I go back to my first Greg Egan book 'Schild's Ladder' where the author is writing with an uninhibited ambition to imagine things that are fundamentally new and doing so from a foundation of deep knowledge. While making the epistemic substance of this part of the core of the narrative.

So where are the best places to find fiction like that? My assumption would be somewhere like Asimov's but I'm not even that familiar with what's being published in the long-established giants, let alone up-and-coming magazines/websites. Bonus points too for links to any free online short stories that will give my brain a good workout.

There’s a wild story with a skin walker bug that takes the form of a kids dad. Definitely some dated stories but the majority of the stories I’ve read are fantastic and hold up to this day. I could compare this to a collection of Twilight Zone episodes in book form. Go check this bad boy out

Whenever I’m in Singapore, I always stop by Evernew Book Store for a bit of “book fishing.” The place is packed floor to ceiling, and you never know what you’ll find.

This time I got very lucky and came away with four books:

• The Butlerian Jihad
• The Machine Crusade
• Sisterhood of Dune
• Isaac Asimov: The Complete Stories, Volume 2

Not bad for one visit. Which one would you pick up first?

So I was listening to a 6 book series on youtube. The only title it gave was " they called us pirates. We prefer privateers"

The entire thing is about 60 hours. I had it downloaded from youtube as well. I was down to about 5 hours left. Today it has just vanished from my downloads and my watch history.

So I'm trying to find the title and/or Author.

The other starts with 3 guys on space garbage prison duty, Dax, a linguistics prof, Caine, an examine and mark a teen hacker.

They go to salvage an old satellite and turns out to be an old Alien spaceship that activates and whisky then across the the galaxy where they meet Orcs, ancient friends of humanity, who's planet and their species is being wiped out by a biological weapon in the form if giant bugs they call underneath.

Dax becomes the battle bonded of an Orc women​ who joins the crew. They're captured, experimented on by the bad guys, get kinda super soldered from the experiments and escape and the story continues.

The book is narrated but not by an A.I. voice. I think that should be enough info that if you've read it, you'll know. I really wanna hear those last 5 hours but I need at least a title or an author. Thanks in advance.

Once upon a time I found a book about a seemingly fantasy setting, with a "wizard" living in a tower, but he was actually a man stranded on this alien planet with access to advanced technology that looked like magic to the natives. I do not remember the title and I would appreciate your help

What is the very best sci-fi movie or show on Netflix right now? I need something new to watch because I’m heading on a 17-hour international flight and want something that will completely suck me in. It can be a series or a movie, as long as it’s genuinely worth watching. I’d prefer something that’s originally in English rather than dubbed, but if there’s an absolute must-see that’s dubbed, I’m totally open to it!

Hi everyone, I'm looking for any sort of material (mostly books, articles, etc.) about the genre of science-fiction itself, analyzing the influences, history, highs & lows, etc.

I've seen Trillion Year Spree being recommended a lot and that is the exact type of material I'm looking for.

Thank you in advance!

Hi there! does anybody remember a short story about a pair of men chating in a bar in orbit of a planet, and one casually tells the other that his father want to marry him to the daughter of a man that builds star systems, and his dad is a world builder himself. The man receiving the info is a religious person and finds the idea of people building stars and worlds very agraviating.

I red it around 1990 in an antology of sci fi shorts, but I'm sure it's much older. I would like to re-read it, if anyone one knows the title and/or the author, please tell.

As a kid, reading Midnight, for me, was a pretty transformational experience. I think I read it when I was 10 or 11, and even though I couldn’t fully comprehend the scope of what he built from an overall conceptual perspective, I was entranced by his ability to creat artificial worlds, godlike computers, body swapping, manufactured species, programmable reality, identity separated from flesh, and civilizations operating completely differently from what I knew and understood.

I just re-read it recently, and I gotta say that it totally holds up. Now I see and understand a lot more of the somewhat “unique” fetishization he threw in there with sexualization and the like, but it’s still a phenomenally engaging story about how we are coming close to living that way (soon-ish) today.

Any other books from that era that y’all could recommend? Weird, groundbreaking, more relevant today than ever? Looking for niche, not mainstream.

TL;DR Review: Instantly familiar yet utterly unique sci-fi. Riveting, compelling, and entirely unputdownable.

Full Review:

Whoooo boy, what a wild ride this one was!

From the beginning, the Decurion Empire instantly evokes the hostility, suspicion, and total control of both Nazi Germany and Cold War Russia. From Empire-wide propaganda to mysterious men in black coats showing up uninvited in your bedroom at midnight, from conversation topics that can get you disappeared forever to the Handmaid’s Tale-esque emphasis on producing offspring to feed to the Imperial war machine, this place is exactly as dark and twisted as you’d imagine from an Empire that refers to itself in third person as “the Fatherland”.

We’re introduced to fascinatingly disparate cast of characters:

- The wealthy wife of a prominent “Party” member who is desperate to find meaning in the wake of her husband’s mysterious accident (which I’m still not 100% sure isn’t going to turn out to be some kind of murder). What’s she to do with the vast fortune she’s inherited when she has no one to share it with? A chance encounter at a library sets her down the path to establishing her own sovereign nation in a world she will own and rule. The question is: can she actually survive long enough to make her newly discovered dream a reality.

- The hypersled racing prodigy who is harboring a secret that would bring down everything he’s worked hard for, and which has the potential to get him and everyone around him killed—or, worse, reprogrammed. Unwilling pawn as he may be in the beginning, his is one of the most fascinating of the journeys—and filled with some of the best scenes in the book. Think Formula One racing meets the pod races from Star Wars by way of your favorite Mario Kart tracks, and you’ve got an inkling of just how exhilarating (and potentially murderous) it is.

- The disgraced, alcoholic inspektor who wants nothing more than to remain wholly unnoticed. Alas, a simple murder case quickly spirals out of control and leads to him being unwittingly caught up in a tug-of-war between the Empire’s two most powerful secret forces (a horrifying and fascinating blend of the SS, CIA, and the KBG, with the only thing separating the two entities a nominal distinction in their job descriptions). His is the most “classic” story, and easily the most relatable. And it does a spectacular job of showing the seedy underbelly of the Empire and its ruthless practices.

Their three stories could not be more different, yet fate and circumstance (and very likely, men in black leather coats and gloves) conspire to bring them together in surprising ways in the effort to found a new democratic world.

And this is yet another place where The Infinite State truly shines. Like in Empire of the Wolf, the author finds a way to take something potentially dry and make it fascinating. At no point was I bored when Katherine and co. discussed the intricacies of colonizing and terraforming a new planet, building a city, establishing a system of governance, and all the other ought-to-be-tedious-but-made-interesting minutia that is required to create this fledgling nation.

I compare it to Safehold by David Weber (one of my all-time favorite sci-fi series), which did something similar (advancing through technological eras where this one broke down the basics of government and nation-building). I didn’t go into reading this book expecting to learn, yet here I sit, far more educated while also immensely entertained.

The Infinite State demands and commands attention. It’s riveting and entirely unputdownable. Get ready for a colorful cast of complex, well-conceived, and immensely interesting characters (particularly one, who is revealed way later into the book, and really dials up the “Damn, this is messed up!” of it all), a world that is instantly familiar yet so much darker than you’d expect, and a plot that is forever unpredictable and utterly enthralling.

Get ready for a sci-fi story unlike anything I’ve read, and brace yourself, because in true Richard Swan fashion, things are going to get DARK.