Maybe "normal" isn't the correct word to use here. But I was thinking about the TV show "Defiance" the other day, and I realized that I haven't read or watched much sci-fi which has this type of father/daughter relationship. They have a lot of problems and conflict, but they do genuinely care for each other and there's no weird power dynamics or abuse.

What's some sci-fi that you like that have a similar dynamic?

It’s taken me about 6 months to finish this whole journey, from the wild ride of Hyperion to the perfect ending of Rise of Endymion and this series blew me the fuck away.

It’s rare you find books that you love absolutely everything. The prose, the pace, the characters, the world, the motivations, and especially the ending. Hyperion had it all for me. It’s such a bittersweet moment closing out a series like that and I can’t say enough how great I think that ending is. To close out everyone’s stories, not rush it, answer all the questions that were asked throughout the books, all while making it so soft and delicate is such a welcomed experience.

If anyone has any recommendations for anything similar to this please send them my way because I have a big hole to fill now!

I'm looking for books or other fiction with a focus on AI (or other machine beings) that have fundamentally different ways of perceiving and processing. I don't want to forget that I'm reading about something inhuman and inorganic, I want it to be alien. The senses, the way it forms thoughts, everything. I want it to be hard to relate to its brand of sapience. But not in a "viewing it from a distance" way, I want to get up close and personal with the weird computer consciousness.

Hope this makes sense. I'd love any suggestions and ideas!

Just finished all the books published so far, and I’m absolutely floored - how is it so good? The world building, the characters, the pacing, the action, the wittiness. Is there prior art, apart from DnD lore, it built upon? Is it just Matt Dinniman being a total badass? What the fuck, it’s amazing.

What’s your favorite character from the books? I think it’s Uzi Jesus for me (“dad dammit!”)

I love the Aquatics from Star Trek Enterprise and always felt like there were not enough aquatic species in scifi. There also the Greys from the GURPS role playing game, they were aquatic and used their psychic powers to manipulate coral for their technology.

Anyway any good books or hell audio dramas with something like that?

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.

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.

A good while ago, propably about 10 years, I came across this very remarkable blog that was about reviewing largely "weird fiction" and it kind of blew my mind. Then I sadly got busy with life and lost that link, only later to recurrently think back and be "damn, what was that blog??"

Every review hinted at some highly imaginative setting, stretching the very limits of the imagination. It seemed like there was this whole very under appreciated underground scene of authors doing highly advanced stuff, yet I had never heard about any of this elsewhere.

Anybody know what I am kind of talking about, and has some ressources to clue me in and find some of this stuff?

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.

By conscious robots I mean any robot that can talk or act in an autonomous way, or to simply put it, a robot that can communicate just like humans do. I'm not sure, but maybe this could be seen as something merely speculative/fantasy back in the 1900s (think of Asimov's I, Robot or Star Wars' R2D2) but now it is kind of reality: LLMs appear to communicate like humans do (even though it can be true they just predict words instead of actually think consciously, though I'm not really sure).

So my question is: at this point, does it makes sense to write fiction about conscious robots or anything LLM-AI-ish now that LLMs already exist?

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.

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

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.

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

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?

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.

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 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! 👽🛸

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?

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.

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