Science fiction discussion

[Accept Only Substitutes]

I've found a couple decent military sci-fi authors on Kindle Unlimited, one with caveats.

First is Glynn Stewart. The caveat is: he's a bit wokie. His books usually have at least one non-binary person, sometimes quite a few depending on the series. A couple of his series' are in progress, including my favorite one Starship's Mage. The twist in this series is a gut-punch I did not see coming. It's actually a little bit terrifying, but makes sense in context of the series.

I like his books despite the stupid gender crap (Starship's Mage is very light on that compared to some) because unlike a lot of science fiction that I've seen he doesn't do "everyone is an atheist in the future and race basically doesn't exist", which I've always found to be bullshit. One scene in the Starship's Mage series features four different religions mentioned and the cast of people are very ethnically diverse with historical racial roots in names and planet cultures, as you'd expect a multi-stellar universe that came from this present. It's a utopia compared to our society in general, but fairly realistic as those things go IMO. No trannies, the closest is in his Castlr Federation series where the third sex a "hermaphrodite" described as "transhumans". Lame, but I can overlook it.

The other caveat, he names characters sometimes after Firefly or other pop culture stuff. I think one of his books references fantasy author David Eddings. Lame and gay, but he's an indie author and if you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited the books are basically free. So again it's whatever. I find the rest of his writing is good enough to ignore that.

The other author is Terry Mixon. He has two series, one a prequel to the other. No woke shit, even in the books he co-authored with Glynn Stewart. He's your bog-standard military sci-fi author writing about a war with AIs that went a little too far. The main series has fifteen or sixteen books so far. The prequel is the life of a character he wrote a cameo of, a genetically engineered woman from a polity that split off from Earth over imbedded tech implants vs genetic engineering. So far there are three books in this series. This series features multiple universes and an interesting alien.

Both authors base their FTL drives and FTL communication system on actual scientific theories that are around today. That's pretty cool.

 

[Argos]

Read the Dune series up to Chapterhouse Dune, then stopped. Does Book of the New Sun count as science fiction, or is it more science fantasy?

I liked Heinlein's juveniles more than his adult works. Loved Bradbury back in junior high/high school, Clarke and Asimov bored me to tears. C.J. Cherryh, Tanith Lee, are still keepers. I enjoyed Brin's The Uplift War but I don't think I read anything else of his.

There's this author from the 70s/80s, M.A. Foster. I really like his work. I don't know why: he rambles on philosphically for chapters at a time, has a weird obsession with the Amish (he based the ler culture on them, supposedly) and sometimes he drops the plot...but I like his books anyway.

Oh, and he named a minor character in one novel Quisinart. Change the q to a c and you have a kitchen appliance brand. What's not to love?

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

I

I felt the same way but I figured The Culture would simply let you opt-out if you asked. You don't have to be part of society and can simply go live the life the want inside or out of Culture borders. The Minds would let you live the life you wanted, even if it was difficult for you. I'm thinking of that island with the cannibal cult leader in Consider Phlebus. They're on an island on a ring world, have been there for years living this utterly depraved, harmful lifestyle, but because everyone there is choosing to be there, the Mind on charge just ignores them. Even when the world is set to be destroyed, a small shuttle is sent to collect them and it just sits on the beach waiting for them. Doesn't force them to do anything.

So what you do in The Culture is really up to you. You have to make your own challenges in life. It's like Minecraft. There really isn't much of a stated goal, you just have to find your own entertainment and purpose. Hedonism, art, exploration... In terms of science fiction universes I'd like to live in, it's probably the top, even if I don't have what it takes to be part of Contact or Special Circumstances. Just give me a ship and a drone and I'll make my own fun.

Isnt the Culture just fully automated luxury gay space communism, with an extra dose of saying the quiet part out loud when they have a mass grave for any other culture that disagrees with them?

Living in The Culture sounds potentially fun. Living in a universe that contains the Culture sounds downright horrifying. I imagine it would be living near a tye-dyed version of the Cravers, only you can't tech up and beat them.

 

[Furina]

Isnt the Culture just fully automated luxury gay space communism, with an extra dose of saying the quiet part out loud when they have a mass grave for any other culture that disagrees with them?

Living in The Culture sounds potentially fun. Living in a universe that contains the Culture sounds downright horrifying. I imagine it would be living near a tye-dyed version of the Cravers, only you can't tech up and beat them.

I always saw The Culture as being more about gently pressuring other societies into their "correct" way of thinking until they're willing to be peacefully absorbed. Anyone who actively works against The Culture is the one who gets genocide-machined. It does have a bit of Liberal arrogance (our way of life is so good how could anyone possibly want anything else?) but mostly it seems like they're happy to live and let live, knowing that most other cultures will join them eventually (even if they need a little encouragement first).

 

[More AWS-8Q Than You]

So I was thinking of the Culture series by Iain Banks.

It seems to me to be the ideal utopia of Liberalism, or of current Western society. At least in some respects.

So in my autism, I tried to imagine living in in the Culture.

My result? I would legitimately have trouble getting up in the morning, I’m not social enough for all the parties, concerts and other social events. And playing in some virtual video game world would be great and all-I’m sure there would be amazing graphics but what’s the point?

(I’d also probably not be good enough to join Contact or Special Circumstances).

Like just from a pure material perspective-I can think of no better life. But what makes life genuinely worth living? Even if every form of pleasure, entertainment, diversion and game is at your finger tips.

(Also being a pet/child under the care of a bunch of god like AIs is frightening in more ways than one-not least because you could never be “right” in opposition to them, they would actually know what was best for you, and only let you choose your own way out of principle, not because you have any actual power in the relationship).

That isn’t to say I dismiss the books, it does raise the question of what can a truly abundant society offer? It just seems like it’s too superficial at least to me.

I’d probably be a weird loner who doesn’t change his sex every year or insert drug glands to feel euphoric every weekend.

But I’m sure someone will disagree.

I always saw The Culture as being more about gently pressuring other societies into their "correct" way of thinking until they're willing to be peacefully absorbed. Anyone who actively works against The Culture is the one who gets genocide-machined. It does have a bit of Liberal arrogance (our way of life is so good how could anyone possibly want anything else?) but mostly it seems like they're happy to live and let live, knowing that most other cultures will join them eventually (even if they need a little encouragement first).

I'm pretty sure Look to Windward dealt with both of these. The dialogue between the composer and the orbital's Mind about the emptiness of people's lives in the Culture itself, it makes the place sound vaguely dystopic. We are talking about a society that deliberately lacks language for certain concepts because the Minds don't want people thinking them.

I don't really think the Culture puts much pressure on anyone to join them if they don't want to. They will absolutely Gridfire and E-Dust assassin you without a shred of mercy if they think you're a serious threat. The Minds are, effectively, caretakers who take their jobs very seriously, like a mix of Asimov and Star Trek. It's not my cup of tea, but unlike the Federation in Star Trek, it's at least not all beige.

 

[Ishtar]

The main difference between the federation and the culture-at least to me(beyond the federation’s outright conservative attitudes on AI and genetic engineering(at least for humans)) is the federation is still a state that does territorial expansion. Everyone will eventually join the federation, the ideal and manifest destiny go hand in hand.

The Culture on the other hand being based in space doesn’t have this “manifest destiny” aspect-sure other societies will be nurtured in its direction and enemies destroyed, but actually joining the culture is not necessarily required or expected.

It’s two different sorts of liberal triumphalism-“everyone will join us, by becoming more like us” and “everyone will be more like us, and thus they won’t need to join us”.

Maybe more important-is the federation at least of the nineties era-is based on the ideal of self improvement and self motivation.Studying a nebula is only worth doing if it’s a human in a space ship doing it-using drones or having Q tell you everything defeats the point.

In the culture there isn’t this self driven aspect-that things are only worthwhile if they involve struggle or real effort, no matter how spectacular or mundane. So it’s a lot more hedonistic by default. You can do these things if you want-but wouldn’t you rather go to this weekend’s orgy? It’s two very different mindsets-(as similar as they broadly are).

 

[Boston Brand]

Read the Dune series up to Chapterhouse Dune, then stopped. Does Book of the New Sun count as science fiction, or is it more science fantasy?

I liked Heinlein's juveniles more than his adult works. Loved Bradbury back in junior high/high school, Clarke and Asimov bored me to tears. C.J. Cherryh, Tanith Lee, are still keepers. I enjoyed Brin's The Uplift War but I don't think I read anything else of his.

There's this author from the 70s/80s, M.A. Foster. I really like his work. I don't know why: he rambles on philosphically for chapters at a time, has a weird obsession with the Amish (he based the ler culture on them, supposedly) and sometimes he drops the plot...but I like his books anyway.

Oh, and he named a minor character in one novel Quisinart. Change the q to a c and you have a kitchen appliance brand. What's not to love?

I don't care what it counts as, the series is a classic of the genre I can't ignore enough. A dear favorite of mine.

Then if you want to read something newer, Christopher Ruocchio's Sun Eater series. Dune/Book of the New Sun style epic space opera, Star Wars where Anakin Skywalker is Griffith from Berserk.

Buying the classics is good, but supporting new authors who need the sales is better. Especially ones as good as Ruocchio.

 

[Ishtar]

So, I just finished reading Consider Phlebas by Iain Banks.

Overall...I liked it for what it was worth. I'd definitely say anyone who wants to get into the culture series should not start with it. As it requires a lot of contexts a reader is not likely to understand, I did as I read enough about the series over the years I could keep up.

The protagonist is actively opposed to the Culture, and the actual narrative has no real bearing on the Idiran-Culture war's outcome. At least not a significant one. Which is definitely an interesting way to frame a space opera book.

One thing I did like was the books' themes of identity and how that relates to meaning. The Culture is not a "pure" society, it doesn't even really have shared ideals beyond a general sort of live and let live(but even then not really). Whereas the Idirans are defined by their iron clad purity, both genetically and religiously.

You'd think an anarchist like Banks would indulge in liberal triumphalism about how a rational free-thinking society overcomes a dogmatic religious empire-and while that is there in the appendices, Banks is more than willing to have his characters question the culture, what it stands for, and how strong or enduring it actually is.

 

[Fortune Rabbit]

It is in interest with regard to consumables in science fiction. The subject is held with optimism in early works. Vitamin & mineral fortified foods had introductions rapidly after industrial revolution. A search for perfect foods made in factories was popular and the consumption considered a trend.

Food toward end of first world war did embitter attitude on these circumstances. George Orwell wrote on synthetic foods which while sustaining to the body were detrimental to the human condition. Feed for livestock which is not nourishing for the soul.

Diet in science fiction now mirror the societal hesitation of what is considered the future. It is interesting to see trends change over the years. Which are your favorite examples?

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

What are good books that are based on realistic physics/tactics for sublight, system level space warfare?
Basically, what is the book that is closest to the mentality of Terra Invicta?

 

[Dreamland]

What are good books that are based on realistic physics/tactics for sublight, system level space warfare?
Basically, what is the book that is closest to the mentality of Terra Invicta?

Expanse and The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress off the top of my head. Niven and Pournelle's books all seem to miss the mark but Falkenberg's Legion is also a good book.
Requesting books that talk about life in the strangest of places. Like Integral Trees/Smoke rings, Dragon's Egg, and Dichronauts.

 

[Fareal]

Suggestions please. Scifi for younger kids, say 8 to 11. Ergo, no banging/sexy times classic of the Golden Age. No heaving bosoms, yada yada. I can't think of anything and whenever I go back to the scifi I was reading at that age, the bosoms heave right off the page. Basically, looking for stuff to introduce kids to scifi. It is a million times easier to find fantasy which is age-suitable for kids that age, but scifi I'm drawing blanks.

 

[Dreamland]

Suggestions please. Scifi for younger kids, say 8 to 11. Ergo, no banging/sexy times classic of the Golden Age. No heaving bosoms, yada yada. I can't think of anything and whenever I go back to the scifi I was reading at that age, the bosoms heave right off the page. Basically, looking for stuff to introduce kids to scifi. It is a million times easier to find fantasy which is age-suitable for kids that age, but scifi I'm drawing blanks.

Depending on reading skill, Foundation is clean.

 

[Fareal]

Depending on reading skill, Foundation is clean.

That would do, yes. I would like to have gone for Asimov's short stories collections in general, but some of them are a bit lecherous. IIRC, the two Robot collections ought to be alright barring Satisfaction Guaranteed and maybe Liar, but I don't think Liar is that bad. Probably not even Satisfaction Guaranteed given what passes for suitable 11 year old reading today.

Basically I'm in the "no more risque than Star Trek" market and it seems... thin. Everything I think of and then re-read to content-check is like LOL LETS FUK IN SPESS.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

That would do, yes. I would like to have gone for Asimov's short stories collections in general, but some of them are a bit lecherous. IIRC, the two Robot collections ought to be alright barring Satisfaction Guaranteed and maybe Liar, but I don't think Liar is that bad. Probably not even Satisfaction Guaranteed given what passes for suitable 11 year old reading today.

Basically I'm in the "no more risque than Star Trek" market and it seems... thin. Everything I think of and then re-read to content-check is like LOL LETS FUK IN SPESS.

Give your kids smut anyways as inoculation against the big gay.

 

[millais]

Suggestions please. Scifi for younger kids, say 8 to 11. Ergo, no banging/sexy times classic of the Golden Age. No heaving bosoms, yada yada. I can't think of anything and whenever I go back to the scifi I was reading at that age, the bosoms heave right off the page. Basically, looking for stuff to introduce kids to scifi. It is a million times easier to find fantasy which is age-suitable for kids that age, but scifi I'm drawing blanks.

When I was that age, I enjoyed the classic H.G. Wells novels and short stories. They also probably have child-friendly abridged versions to accomodate young readers.

 

[Betonhaus]

I found the Culture series to be well written with a highly detailed universe, but every single book made me depressed as it ended on a note of the futility of human effort.

Saturn's Children and Neptune's Brood I liked. It's setting is where AIs were slaved to humans but were helpless to prevent the humans from dying out. Aside from the self-repair functions of the Androids, the setting is largely what would happen if you had all the time in the world to build stuff but never figured out any of the tech tropes like impulse drives, lte, grav plating, inexhaustible power sources, etc. Saturn's Children delved into the self-agency of the androids, how they got pseudo-personhood by founding companies where their bodies is the primary asset, how a digitized brain that has been duplicated many times would interact with it's other selfs, and how incredibly shitty space travel would actually be. Neptune's brood delved into how finance would work between colonies at different stars, where sending matter was too expensive so everything is transmitted as lightspeed data

Deep Space Accountant was amusing. Basically bureaucratic nonsense in space

The Lost Fleet and it's spinoff series was good. Delved into how space battles would work if you're limited to lightspeed sensors and with such long distances used skirmishes take place with hours and days of getting to an attack at relativistic speeds that takes a split second.

Jack McDevitt has two good series, the Alex Benedict series and the Pricilla Hutchings series. The latter is set in a couple years in the future where space travel is well underway but poorly funded due to the dearth of habitable planets Hutchings is part of a team that discovers and explores ancient relics of civilizations long gone, and always find themself in danger that they have to escape from. The former is set maybe a million years in the future, where space civilization is settled and rich in history. it follows Alex Benedict, an antiques broker, where every time the come across an unusual antique they rediscover a forgotten chapter in human transgalactic history and unravel a conspiracy that tries to kill them. His books are a smidge formulaic, but the worldbuilding is excellent.

 

[Flaming Carrot]

Suggestions please. Scifi for younger kids, say 8 to 11. Ergo, no banging/sexy times classic of the Golden Age. No heaving bosoms, yada yada. I can't think of anything and whenever I go back to the scifi I was reading at that age, the bosoms heave right off the page. Basically, looking for stuff to introduce kids to scifi. It is a million times easier to find fantasy which is age-suitable for kids that age, but scifi I'm drawing blanks.

Depending on how advanced their reading skill, there was a series of books edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin Harry Greenberg called Isaac Asimov presents the Great SF Stories. It covers from 1939 to 1963 I think. It has a lot of good stories, but I don't know if an 8 year old would understand them. Also, Asimov and his wife Janet wrote a series of books for kids called Norby the Robot. I liked those a lot when I was a kid.

Robert Heinlein's juvenile novels are good, with the exception of Rocket Ship Galileo. Still probably the gold standard for kids' science fiction.

Jon J. Muth recently did an illustrated version of a Stanislaw Lem story called The Seventh Voyage. It's pretty good for that age range.

John Christopher's Tripod trilogy is really good, although it might be a bit complicated for really little kids. He's written some other good

I wasn't a big fan, but a lot of kids really love Madeline L'Engles' A Wrinkle in Time series.

Ray Bradbury has a lot of stories the kids can read, but Halloween Tree is the only story I can think of of the top of my head that was written explicitly for children, and that's a fantasy story.

I remember liking Robert Silverberg's Project Pendulum a lot when I was a kid, but I haven't read since I was 12. I'm fairly confident its ok for kids because it was written for a line of children's science fiction and fantasy, unlike most of his other work. He's a fantastic author, but his books are for adults and for teenagers whose parents don't look too closely at what their teens are reading.

I guess it's a little more fantasy than science fiction, but The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery is really good.

I'm not super familiar with modern science fiction aimed at kids. My son is really into Jeffrey Brown's Star Wars and other science fiction themed graphic novels, but that's the only author I know anything about.

 

[Mexican_Wizard_711]

The main difference between the federation and the culture-at least to me(beyond the federation’s outright conservative attitudes on AI and genetic engineering(at least for humans)) is the federation is still a state that does territorial expansion. Everyone will eventually join the federation, the ideal and manifest destiny go hand in hand.

The Culture on the other hand being based in space doesn’t have this “manifest destiny” aspect-sure other societies will be nurtured in its direction and enemies destroyed, but actually joining the culture is not necessarily required or expected.

It’s two different sorts of liberal triumphalism-“everyone will join us, by becoming more like us” and “everyone will be more like us, and thus they won’t need to join us”.

Maybe more important-is the federation at least of the nineties era-is based on the ideal of self improvement and self motivation.Studying a nebula is only worth doing if it’s a human in a space ship doing it-using drones or having Q tell you everything defeats the point.

In the culture there isn’t this self driven aspect-that things are only worthwhile if they involve struggle or real effort, no matter how spectacular or mundane. So it’s a lot more hedonistic by default. You can do these things if you want-but wouldn’t you rather go to this weekend’s orgy? It’s two very different mindsets-(as similar as they broadly are).

Basically Sci Fi Neoconservatism vs Sci Fi Neoliberalism

 

[crowabunga]

Basically Sci Fi Neoconservatism vs Sci Fi Neoliberalism

Despite secularism (at least of the "New Atheist" variety) usually being associated with naive consequentialism and hedonism, Star Trek implicitly embraces some kind of virtue ethics that says "humans share some basic nature, this is what humans are, and they can flourish only by living a certain kind of life that involves using all human faculties to their best abilities, and hedonism and excess is inadequate."

I guess that's what makes Star Trek so appealing to me, it's not about the post-scarcity or going into space, it's the fact that most people seem driven by a sense of purpose that gives them individual satisfaction while also avoiding myopic, antisocial pleasure-seeking. It also avoids the radical subjectivism that plagues postmodern philosophy.