My blog The Audiophile recently surpassed 1 Million page views. A long standing goal of mine. I wanted to do something special to celebrate. I hadn’t reviewed any Robert J. Sawyer novels, even though he’s one of my absolute favorite science fiction authors. So, I decided to do something about that, and I reviewed Calculating God.

Tom Jericho is a paleontologist who works at the Royal Ontario Museum. Life has certainly had its ups and downs for him. Though, lately more on the down side. Getting diagnosed with lung cancer will do that to a guy. But on the flip-side, aliens have arrived, and they come in peace. In fact, one of them, named Hollus, wants to have a chat with Tom. Hollus is part of a research crew that made a shocking discovery: the universe was created by an intelligent being. A being that they have decided to call God. And Hollus can back up these assertions. What follows in an unlikely friendship blossoming between a dying paleontologist and an alien scientist. They have many conversations about science, the universe, life, mortality, and the people who make it all worthwhile.

So, who is Robert J. Sawyer? I’ve already told you he is one of my absolute favorite science fiction authors. He is also one of the finest science fiction authors Canada has ever produced. He has won numerous awards over the years. But again, this is insufficient. So, I will speak about why I love his work.

Robert J. Sawyer constantly reminds me of why I love science fiction. His works constantly deal with big ideas. Ideas that expand my horizons, and make the universe feel like an even more wondrous place. And he explains them in plain language that is easy to understand. At times, it almost feels like he’s writing especially for me. No matter if it is designing aliens, imagining alternate societies, or contemplating the social ramifications of scientific discoveries. Sawyer is science fiction at its best. And there is a strong spirit of optimism and hope throughout his work. That isn’t to say bad things never happen. But Sawyer believes that we are more than capable of overcoming the bad times. Aliens can be strange, but they aren’t hostile conquerors. They’re curious, inquisitive, and just need a sympathetic ear.

Robert J. Sawyer’s books were some of the first truly adult books I read back in my teenage years. And he was a great start. Another big thread through multiple Sawyer books is the tension between science and religion. Robert J. Sawyer is an atheist, and a big proponent of rationalism and secularism. However, the plots of many of his books deal with scientific discoveries that provide evidence for religious phenomena. This doesn’t mean Sawyer is secretly pro-religion. Far from it. Science fiction is all about asking the question what if? And Sawyer’s work is no exception to that rule. What he’s doing is going “Okay, suppose we could prove this religious phenomena. And suppose it operated within the parameters of the natural world. How would that work, and what are the implications of that?”

Sawyer said that he was inspired to write Calculating God by thinking about Carl Sagan and Stephen J. Gould. They were two men who championed science and rationality. They were also both avowed atheists who lost their lives to cancer. Sawyer said he wondered what it was like for them as the end drew closer.

On that note, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say there was another reason for this review. I saw a post Sawyer made on Facebook. He said that a few years ago he was diagnosed with mantle cell lymphoma, a form of blood cancer. The good news is that, thanks to a regimen of chemo, radiation and stem cells, his cancer is in remission. The bad news is that mantle cell lymphoma has a 100 percent recurrence rate, and it’s incurable. Eventually, that remission is going to end. But Sawyer has said he has no plans of slowing down any time soon. Still, knowing that the cancer will come back sooner or later…that’s got to weigh on the guy. And I worried it would be in poor taste to pick this book under the circumstances. Still, not like this is the only of Sawyer’s books to touch on the subject. If I had picked Frameshift, we’d definitely still be having this conversation. But Calculating God no doubt was on his mind during the treatment.

On a lighter note, Sawyer always does a fantastic job making Canada sound like a magical place. Robert J. Sawyer is a proud Canadian and a big champion of Canadian science fiction. He said that, early in his career, he was advised to never set his novel in Canada. On the grounds that novels set in Canada wouldn’t sell. Sawyer decided to defy this advice, and he had done perfectly well for himself.

Now, Calculating God did attract a little controversy. Skeptical Inquirer published a review where they accused Sawyer of promoting creationism. They even included quotes from the book that seemed to support this. But you see, there was a slight problem. Those quotes were uttered by the villains of the novel. The ROM is putting on a special exhibit of the Burgess Shale. It is a set of exceptionally well preserved fossils from the Cambrian Era. I got to see some of them at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC. They are truly quite the sight to behold. The creationists want to destroy the fossils, by shooting them, to destroy evidence of evolution. They are presented as unambiguously bad for doing this. Oh, and did I mention that one of them is named Falsey? I mean, Sawyer wasn’t being subtle about his actual views.

Frankly, that was no different than those Fundamentalist Christians who ranted about Harry Potter. The ones who quote it to claim it encouraged bad things. But conveniently left out that the quotes were coming from Voldemort. You know, the bad guy.

Now, in Calculating God, one of the big pieces of evidence the Forhilnors have is that our universe is the only one in existence. This is a variation on the fine tuning argument. The claim that the universe is uniquely suited to support life, and therefore, someone must have made it that way. But that argument falls apart in the face of the multiverse hypothesis. If our universe is merely one roll of the dice, then it isn’t all that special. Actual science supports the multiverse hypothesis. Sawyer himself has said he doesn’t believe in the fine tuning argument specifically for this reason.

However, this goes back to what I said about science fiction asking the question what if? Suppose it could be proved that ours is the one and only universe. What are the potential implications of that? That was the question Sawyer was asking. And the God of this novel is very different compared to the one Christians believe in.

what does God look like? Kind of like a shoggoth. Black and kind of globby, but also with lots of tentacles. Like a cross between a squid and a spiral galaxy. God does save Earth from getting fried by radiation after Betelgeuse goes supernova, but for purely selfish reasons. God needs the DNA of humans, Forhilnors, and Wreeds to be combined so that it can reproduce. So, essentially, what we are presented with is a variation of the Deist idea of God. That is, the watchmaker who created the universe, and then left it alone. Only occasionally popping in every now and again, if at all. Certainly doesn’t sound like Christian propaganda, now does it

A lot of people consider Calculating God to be Robert J. Sawyer’s best book. I don’t know if that is true. Like I said, there’s just too many good options to only pick one. But I do know that it is an excellent book, and that you should absolutely pick it up if you have not already.

Have you read Calculating God? If so, what did you think?

Link to the full review on my blog: https://drakoniandgriffalco.blogspot.com/2026/10/book-review-calculating-god-by-robert-j.html

I’m writing a paper for one of my college courses and right now my thesis is that what makes Science Fiction special is how it causes cognitive estrangement a concept coined by Darko Suvin (a narrative logic in science fiction where an alternative, scientifically plausible reality forces readers to view their own world from a critical distance) my question is because other genres cause cognitive estrangement how is the cognitive estrangement caused specific to science fiction itself what makes it different?

What have I missed?

The series was highly rated in one of the sci-fi subs, so I dove in.

I raced through the first book, then the second, got to the final page in the last book, and then the story...just...stopped.

No grand finale. No cliffhanger. Not even an epilogue! It's like Christopher Hinz just got up from his manuscript and walked away.

I'm so thoroughly annoyed that I'm not going to bother with the prequel; there's absolutely no point in reading the beginning of the saga if the author couldn't be bothered to write an ending for it.

Rant over.

What is god's responsibility toward man?

To answer prayer, to smooth over misfortune? Generosity? Mercy? Compassion?

Or is it to have the strength to turn from the suffering, and in turning, offer something more?

Homo Sapiens Domesticus is the story of twelve people handed that unenviable responsibility. What would you do with the powers of a god and a people you truly cared about? How would your people write about you? Could you bear the sorrow?

About 35 minutes.
artofali.com/homosapiensdomesticus/

Tom Wright's condition in First Light Rising could easily have turned into wish fulfillment, but that was never what interested me. I was much more interested in what happens when something extraordinary about one person suddenly becomes important to governments, scientists, and everyone who wants control over it.

Hey r/sciencefiction ,

I’m developing a hard sci-fi techno-thriller titled THE NOISE, and I’d love a quick pulse-check on the core premise.

The Premise: In the late 2050s, Mars is a fully automated, uncrewed corporate infrastructure hub acting as collateral for Earth's financial markets.

Then, the machines start drifting.

Quantum navigation sensors and automated rovers across Mars and high-altitude networks begin experiencing sub-code anomalies. No error logs, no physical damage—just raw data streams coming back in high-entropy noise that mimics top-tier military encryption.

The Conflict: Because high-entropy noise is statistically indistinguishable from a cyber-attack, global intelligence agencies and corporate PMCs immediately assume a covert war over Martian assets has begun. The terror of the book doesn't come from an external invasion, but from human institutions weaponising a physical phenomenon they don't understand, driving themselves toward geopolitical collapse.

Vibe: The Diplomat meets Peter Watts' Blindsight and Stanislaw Lem. No humanoids, no green men, no superhero protagonists.

My question: Would you pick up a book driven by institutional paranoia and corporate greed where the "enemy" is essentially a misinterpretation of a physical anomaly?

Hi! So I've always been repelled by science fiction whether it's in books, movies or shows, primarily because I find the underlying message so overt that it pulls me out of the immersion and I feel like I'm watching a thought experiment rather than experiencing a story.

So my question is about the genre in itself : Is it a prerequisite for science fiction to have this didactic layer in it? Does it have to explicitly warn us about something like dangers of technology, the unchecked powers of corporations, etc?

Of course these themes are rarely as simplistic and I've only watched/read the most famous works of SF, so I'm biased there, but I hope you get what I mean. I'm wondering whether there are science fiction works whose worlds feel like they exist for their own sake, rather than primarily as vehicles for social commentary. Maybe you could point me towards such stories?

Thank you so much for your answers!

Excerpts from catalog notes for Lot 197, Swann Fine Book Sale, Oct. 22

The First Utopian Work of Science Fiction Written in the United States.
Mary Griffith (1772-1846)
Camperdown; Or, News from Our Neighborhood: Being Sketches. Including "Three Hundred Years Hence." Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1836, First Edition.

"Three Hundred Years Hence," is narrated by Edgar Hastings, who dozes off in 1835 only to awaken in 2135. Change is all around him. A helpful tour commences, narrated by some of his descendants. Dogs have been eliminated (rabies), the fields are ploughed by autonomous machines, railways abound, the market is tidy and civilized. Referring their antiquated progenitor to the local paper, The Recorder of Self-Inflicted Miseries, his modern hosts describe the many improvements in evidence all around.

Asking about the elevated food shopping experience, over the unhygienic, disorganized, uncivilized hawkers of the 1830s, Hasting wants to know, "What has done all this?' 'Why, the improvement which took place in the education of women.'"

Statements in favor of women's rights pervade the text. "As soon as [women] took their rank as an equal to a man, equal as to property I mean, for they had no other right to desire; there was no longer any struggle, it became their ambition to show how long the world had been benighted by thus keeping them in a degraded state. I say degraded state, for surely it argued in them imbecility or incapacity of some kind, and to great extent too, when a man appointed executors and trustees to his estate whilst his wife was living. It showed one of three things-- that he never considered her as having equal rights with himself; or, that he thought her incompetent to take charge of his property-- or, that the customs and laws of the land had so warped his judgment, that he only did as he saw others do, without considering whether these laws and customs were right or wrong."

We shouldn't wonder that Griffith's futuristic utopia sets women in this light: educated, successful, holding equal rights, and valued for their empathetic and humanitarian qualities. 190 years hence, this generation of women continues to plot the feminist future.

First edition, octavo, bound in publisher's lightly textured cloth with floral and leaf motifs; original printer's paper label still attached to spine; remnants of old paper cover over pastedowns; old Odd Fellows Lodge stamp on front free endleaf (free endleaves at front and back torn with losses); single sheet of publisher's ads precedes title; rare, no copies in the auction record; Worldcat locates 15 copies in libraries worldwide; 7 1/8 x 4 1/2 in.

If you were the smartest person alive, what would you do? More importantly, what should you do? Cure disease? End hunger? Conquer space? Travel through time? Amass unimaginable wealth? Defy death itself? Or all of the above?

The Smartest Person Alive is a high-concept science thriller with a gripping emotional core that asks two deceptively simple questions: How do we define genius, and what expectations, if any, come with that distinction? Will it be the Healer, the Lawyer, the Inventor, the Gambler, the Dreamer? Can any of them save humanity from itself? The answers unfold across two timelines that snap together with satisfying inevitability.

In the present, Dr. Alea Crisp, a brilliant neuropathologist on the verge of curing Alzheimer's disease, finds herself confronting troubling questions about her own discovery. Her search for answers leads her to Dr. Paul Geissler, a polymath entrepreneur, and his extraordinary Quanti-Fi team—a small collection of brilliant minds whose competing ambitions and perspectives on intelligence may prove that genius is not a monolith.

Nearly two centuries in the future, a crew at the outer edge of the solar system grapples with the aftermath of “lightspeed mania”—an era of extraordinary scientific ambition, devastating consequences, and an uncertain future for humanity among the stars. When a lone crew member encounters a mystery that challenges everything humanity believes about the universe, the boundaries between scientific possibility and the impossible begin to dissolve. What emerges carries implications that reach across space, time, and consciousness itself.

At first, these appear to be two very different stories. But as their mysteries deepen, they become part of a larger design with cosmic consequences—a winding path toward the answer to a question centuries in the making: Who is the Smartest Person Alive?

Although rooted in science, at its heart this is a deeply emotional journey about love, sacrifice, and the choices that define who we are. The Smartest Person Alive explores genius not as entitlement, but as responsibility, pairing audacious scientific ideas with deeply personal questions: What would you risk to save your child? Your species? Your soul?

Apply to be an Early Reader here:

https://booksprout.co/reviewer/review-copy/view/328965/the-smartest-person-alive-advance-reader-copy

... Ian's still just a rat in a cage. But who has him? And where? AND WHERE'S THEA?!? -- FLUNG by Jason E Raines drops every Wednesday on all your favorite webcomic platforms including Webtoons, Tapas, GlobalComix or in widescreen Epic Format at www.stardog.tv!

Love his work. 😎🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦

We have always wondered why the universe seems so empty, but the truth may be that we are looking for life in the wrong reality, separated from an alien civilization by a mirror image of physics. In this universe, black holes are massive, immortal organisms, and the sentient beings born within them are made of pure quantum energy or exotic dark matter, thriving perfectly in the absolute stillness, zero pressure, and darkness of these gravity giants. Because their bodies are stabilized by immense gravitational forces, our empty, low-pressure space is fatal to them; when explorers leave the dark, they undergo a catastrophic, reversed version of spaghettification, slowly unspooling and bleeding out their dense energy over eons in a process we mistake for steadily burning stars. A supernova is the tragic final breath of these dying explorers, but their ultimate collapse punches a hole back into spacetime, birthing a brand-new black hole sanctuary for their children. Ultimately, Earth and our bright universe of solid atoms is the "black hole" to them... a crushing, radioactive death trap they can only observe from a safe distance, leaving both of our civilizations staring at each other across the cosmic glass, each believing the other's home is a place of impossible death.

I hope this is the right place to post this, so here ya go

So my story is set in space with the main cast having spaceships with AI. I mean AI in the most literal terms though, as an artificial intelligence, not the slop bots or generated answers based on algorithms that we're used to today. The ships themselves are autonomous, and think freely, their limitation is they are bound to the ship and subsequently, the pilot. 

We see lots of sci-fi through the years with similar AI integration ideas from inside ships to robots, so I followed that path given my own spin on it. But now, with the AI boom literally everywhere and people’s frustrations around it, I think I need to change at least how I name it (changing the name from ‘AI’) or its function in my universe. 

One idea I had is forming stricter guidelines on where AI is used and seen. For instance, currently I have other forms of AI used in places similar to Jarvis, or digitally working on internal systems, which is something we are all used to and maybe annoyed with right now. So I could gut any use of AI like that and you would only see AI as a freely autonomous thing like the ships or other bots. 

These AI characters are essential to the story and not something I can just take out or turn dumb. I also like to keep things “realistic” or “plausible” in my universe. Like inventing weapons that could actually work in a vacuum given the other things found in the environment of space and developing spacecraft with real physics and calculations in mind. 
 
I’d love to hear any ideas you all have! 

Today my library informed me that this was ready for pickup. It's been so long that I have no idea why I asked for it in the first place.

Can anyone tell me why I wanted to read this?

Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?

Aeon class colonization ship

Humans are Weird – Lost and Found

Original Post: https://www.authorbettyadams.com/bettys-blog/humans-are-weird-lost-and-found

The warm angle of the front porch really wasn’t supposed to be a lounging site. Human feet trod quickly past the site, their focus on getting into the house, or getting out into the busy little community making the site theoretically dangerous for species who didn’t want to get stepped on. The ground limestone foundation had been pressed with tessellated patterns that were visually pleasing and kept the clumsy bipeds safe from slipping and throwing their falling gate out of pattern, but it tasted of nothing save the dust that collected in the groves. However if you had healthy scutes and sturdy scales, underlayed by reasonably dense bones, and an attractive layer of fat, well what did it matter if a human stepped on you? Just keep your snout safely tucked in the curve of your foreleg and at the cost of a few non-repentant apologies you had the whole morning to bask in the local sunlight.

If the grain scattered very, very well in your direction, one of the local domestic animals came and judged you a fitting headrest and came and basked with you. Sift, stretched out a claw and ‘scritiched’ the creature under its chin. It gave a grunt and the motion dislodged a small cloud of warning pheromones from its collar. Sift made a mental note to ask what its species designation was. It wasn’t a ‘cat’. Those creatures, despite being perfectly ideal for keeping local vermin off of grain stocks were rated as far too dangerous to exist in mixed colonies. Sift thought this was a bit of over caution, but it had been agreed to by the humans. This might be a ‘dog’ but the species had so much variety, supposedly going back long before the humans mastered genetic manipulation that it was hard to tell if a given mammal fell into that category. It had fur to be certain, and it was very dependent on human interaction.

The door of the dwelling swung open, knocking against the hip of the creature and it gave a mild huff of annoyance as it heaved its mass, up and away from the door. Mary stepped out, holding the little one on her hip, Sift felt a surge of now familiar admiration of the usefulness of the baby holding ledge humans had built in. Mary’s other hand held a container of the domestic creature’s food, a mix of grain and animal fat that it particularly enjoyed and it began to cavort around Mary’s feet while Mary scanned the ground with growing perplexity. She began examining the shelving with a wrinkled face and Sift lifted up her head and idly licked her teeth.

“Rooting around for something?” she asked.

Mary started and glanced down at her in surprise.

“Oh, I didn’t see you there,” she said, shifting the little one who was focused on drinking water out of a soft cup.

“Here I am,” Sift commented, wondering not for the first time exactly how human vision worked. “What are you looking for?”

“The food bowl for Snuffles,” Mary said indicating the animal who had decided to sit down and tremble with eagerness until its food was forthcoming.

Sift rolled over and lifted her snout to sniff with dramatic emphasis. Then she swung her tail to indicate a door set low and subtly into the wall of the structure.

“I smell the grain and rancid fat in here,” she said with a yawn.

Mary’s face creased in a frown and she set the little one down. Instantly it ran, smacking its fat little feet against the porch, to vigorously pet the creature. Snuffles started back with a wince, and then braced itself to accept the affection. Mary used her now free hand to open the door and pull out the container.

“How-” she started to ask, but the little human made a dash at the food bowl, hands eagerly out, and Snuffles sat back with a resigned sigh.

Mary snatched the little one up and scolded the very unrepentant child.

“We don’t steal Snuffles’s food!” she said.

Snuffles got back up and began happily rooting through the food.

“No one would have put the bowl in the utility access point,” Mary observed out loud.

“It has very small human handprints on the side,” Sift pointed out.

Mary squinted down at the bowl and blinked in surprise before turning her attention to her offspring.

“Why would you do that, you chubby little chonker?” she demanded, pinching the jiggling rolls of fat on the little human’s thighs?

The little one giggled and smacked her face. Mary with clear effort turned her laugh into a frown and captured the chubby little arm in a hand.

“We don’t smack Mommy,” she said in what was trying to be a firm tone.

Sift gurgled in amusement.

“But why?” the adult human demanded.

“The little one does see you putting bowls in similar storage places on a regular basis,” Sift pointed out.

Mary blinked down at her in startled thought until the little one used his other hand to reach up and smack her, and she had to repeat the gentle discipline. Human hatchlings, apparently hated being restrained, at least this one did. Once that was done Mary gave a rueful smile down at Sift.

“I guess you are right,” she admitted. “I’ll have to remember that little trick until he gets bored of it.”

Sift blinked up at the human as she went back in the house. The two of them had spent many long hours discussing human learning patterns. Mary was well aware of the fact that all sapient creatures learned by mimicking their elders to one degree or another, that this was the core of the universal concept of ‘play’. Yet it seemed that she had forgotten it. Sift yawned and flipped over, stretching her hind-claws against the texture of the porch. This might be yet another manifestation of ‘baby brain’ that Mary talked so much about. Or it might be something worth noting in her research journal. At the moment Snuffles was done eating, the sun was still at the perfect napping angle, and human architecture consistently made delightful sunning nooks.

Hey everyone! I'm a solo developer from Italy, and I've been dreaming of creating my own game since 2013! Last December I started working on Over Human, a sci-fi adventure set in a frozen world where drones have taken control of everything: they've become so technologically advanced that they can manipulate the weather creating tornadoes and other environmental threats to hunt down the remaining humans. And you have no weapons to fight back!

One of the things I wanted to explore with this project is what happens when technology becomes so advanced that humanity completely loses control over it. I've always found the relationship between humanity and technology fascinating. We create machines to make our lives easier but what happens when those same machines become so advanced that we are no longer the ones in control?

The atmosphere and the sense of isolation is heavily inspired by Firewatch and The Long Dark.

I really hope you like my idea, it's simple but it's mine!! And I'm so proud about this <3

This is the Steam Page if you're curious about it: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5237810/Over_Human/

Francesco

One of my favorite traditions in speculative fiction is using artificial beings or cybernetic operatives to hold a mirror up to our own humanity—from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and The Murderbot Diaries to Ghost in the Shell.

Often in military sci-fi, cybernetic soldiers or synthetic assets are framed around operational capability: reaction times measured in microseconds, carbon-reinforced skeletons, and unfeeling detachment. But as someone working closely with veteran communities, the theme I find most compelling—and frankly, terrifying—is moral injury.

In real-world service, moral injury isn’t just PTSD; it’s the psychological and spiritual damage that happens when you are forced to witness, execute, or become complicit in acts that violate your core moral boundaries—often under the orders of a bureaucracy that treats you as disposable.

I wanted to explore this exact dynamic in my debut novel, Protocol 99: The Perfect Weapon. The Flawed Human.

The Thought Experiment:
Imagine an operative—Julianna (Agent 99)—engineered in a black-ops lab hidden beneath the mundane bureaucracy of the Department of Agriculture. She’s built with sub-millisecond tactical processors and programmed for deep-cover social engineering. Her target is an alien warrior empire (the Githron), and her mission is sabotage.

To refine her cover, her tactical processors are bridged directly to an organic emotional core. The unintended consequence? The machine begins to feel. She feels real grief, empathy, and the agonizing weight of statecraft when she’s ordered to stand by and watch thirty thousand civilians march into a volcanic trial just to keep her cover intact.

If a weapon is conditioned to view genocide as acceptable arithmetic, what happens when she starts choosing her own moral targets? Is her awakening a technical malfunction—or proof of a soul?

Questions for the community:

• Which sci-fi books or media do you think have best handled the theme of moral injury and institutional betrayal in military operatives (human, cyborg, or AI)?
• Where do you feel the line is between an operative losing their humanity to their programming versus reclaiming their agency?

For anyone interested in diving into this specific story, Protocol 99: The Perfect Weapon. The Flawed Human is out now on [Amazon / Kindle Unlimited]. But I’d love to hear your thoughts and recommendations on stories that dig deep into the ethical weight soldiers carry when duty clashes with conscience.

THis photoengram was found among the papers of Dr Francis Beerjug (times obituary 12 12 27) Well known as the director of the Mount Ozempic Telempathic observatory in West Narnia he was sadly mised by many .Attached to the engram is a note which reads "Following the unexpected disturbances in the Mitchells and Butler galaxy we suffered from surge interference with our regular monitoring of the ongoing wars on Barsoom . Andy Inchscape suggested that thinterference appeared to behave a regular pattern and might even be an attempt by John Carter to regain Communication.This was not so and after further histyrecalographic distilation we realised it was intended as a visual representation .the similarities to the ancient home world of the hopefully extinct frumious bandersnatch is rather worrying "

I humbly submit this to the noble and scintific members of this esteemed panel and would value their opinion on this matter .If this is real itwe should be prepared for all out war at once yours sincerely Gallumphing Asit Kane

This is a guided tour of an Ark, the organic vessel central to my humanist sci fi setting Infinite Ashes. You can examine it in detail here: https://loquaciouslou.itch.io/infinite-ashes-ark

Please let me know your thoughts!

Wider bundle, including a full lore integrated planet globe: https://loquaciouslou.itch.io/infinite-ashes

I’ve noticed a frustrating trend in my own reading lately: my “Did Not Finish” (DNF) shelf is growing way faster than my completed list.

Too often, I pick up an ambitious sci-fi or fantasy novel only to find it grinding to an absolute halt three chapters in. It gets bogged down in endless lore dumps, characters sitting in dry committee meetings, or pages of mundane, procedural dialogue that drain all the momentum out of an otherwise cool premise.

When I read for pure recreation, I want a story that respects my time and delivers a genuine ride. For me, a great read comes down to a few key ingredients:

1. Brisk, Relentless Pacing: It moves. Think of the forward momentum in The Hobbit—every chapter propels the characters into new trouble or unfamiliar territory. You don’t have time to get bored.
2. Characters Who Are Fun to Spend Time With: Distinctive, memorable personalities who react with personality, not walking cardboard cutouts meant only to deliver exposition.
3. Witty, Snappy Dialogue: Conversations should crackle with tension, banter, and subtext rather than sounding like a transcribed technical manual.
4. Cinematic, Descriptive Action: Action scenes you can visualize instantly without needing a blueprint to figure out where everyone is standing.
5. An Emotional Core: Cool gadgets and epic space battles are great, but if a story doesn’t make me laugh, wince, or root fiercely for someone to make it out alive, it falls flat.

The Shameless Plug:
Frustration with slow, sluggish books is honestly what drove me to write my own novel, Protocol 99: The Perfect Weapon. The Flawed Human.

I wanted to write the exact kind of high-octane story I was craving: a military sci-fi thriller about Agent 99, a synthetic black-ops operative with a carbon-nanotube chassis and sub-millisecond combat reflexes, who is sent deep undercover into a ruthless alien warrior empire to sabotage their dark matter power forge. But when a neural upgrade causes her tactical code to bleed into authentic human emotion, the galaxy's ultimate weapon has to choose between state-sanctioned genocide and her own awakened conscience. The book is packed with visceral combat scenes, galactic fleet warfare, immersive worldbuilding and political intrigue.

I cut out the room-to-room filler and mundane meetings to keep the pedal to the floor with snappy banter, visceral hand-to-hand combat, and real stakes.

If that sounds like your cup of tea, it’s available on Amazon and free to read on Kindle Unlimited: [Link to Protocol 99]

Now over to you all:

• What is your #1 dealbreaker that makes you put down a sci-fi book before finishing it?
• What books in the genre nailed that elusive blend of quick pacing, witty banter, and vivid action for you?

S.P.E.C.T.O.R Book 1 is officially available for pre-order now.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HP2H35Q1

26/10/2026

Adam was having a great time camping in the woods with his girlfriend until they were suddenly attacked. During the attack, his girlfriend was shot while he was thrown from a cliff.
Unconscious and on the verge of death, an android appeared before taking him to a spaceship, Spector, which healed him up.
Armed with advanced technology, Adam hunts them down before heading out to explore the universe.
Strangely, though, he has to do all this and more while livestreaming to the whole universe

MAJOR SPOILERS!

I'd really suggest watching the film first and then coming back here. It's only 20 minutes and free on YouTube. If you've already seen it, maybe you'll notice a few things you missed. I'm attaching some pictures as visual aid because there's a lot of little details I wanna talk about.

So I watched this sci-fi short called Erik and ended up going back through it almost frame by frame. At first I thought it was another film about dreams, hallucinations or parallel realities, but the more I looked into it, the more convinced I became that almost everything is connected. I have a theory about the ending that completely changed how I see the film.

It starts with a pill dissolving in a glass of water, which fades into Erik with this almost Disney-like innocent music. Naturally you assume he's medicated and we're entering some hallucination. But look at the TV in the background. It's showing military commercials, which is pretty strange considering what happens later. Almost like the next reality is already bleeding into this one.

Then there's the classroom. Notice the number on the calendar, I'll get back to that later. Erik meets a girl, they write something on a piece of paper, she's already got a boyfriend but they become friends. Later she breaks up with him and Erik consoles her. Pretty standard romantic storyline. But there's this strange shimmer of light that illuminates Erik at one point, almost like he's being chosen. They also check their grades and they've done well. Could this whole classroom sequence be some sort of test? Like he's completing a stage?

Then comes something I found REALLY interesting. "It's only half." Half of what exactly? The pill? Something else?

In the blue room he takes the other half. And notice what he's writing, compare it with the classroom scene. Also look at the library! In the beginning there are no books, but now suddenly there are two, one red and one blue. Why only two? Could they represent two halves of something? Maybe two different people contributing to one identity?

And suddenly we're at a military base. Remember those commercials on TV? Here they are. Look closely at the number on Erik's tag, and compare it with the earlier numbers. He fights one soldier, then another, then both and starts getting a bit cocky. But something really weird happens. He doesn't seem to bleed during those fights. Only when the sergeant punches him does he actually bleed.

And the next time we see Erik, the mark is STILL THERE. So these aren't just disconnected dreams? But here's the interesting part: his father has the same mark!

Could this be some kind of inherited characteristic? Something being passed from father to son? Maybe the sergeant isn't just punishing him, maybe he's actually giving him something. And could the other soldiers represent some sort of competition or selection? I'll explain why I think that in a moment.

At this point the film pretty much tells us Erik isn't simply dreaming, he's on a journey. But a journey where? To another universe? The afterlife? Is he dead? Being experimented on?

And what are those strange structures we see? Am I crazy or do they resemble chromosomes?

Then comes the reveal that really messed with me. The girl is his MOTHER and the Guide is his FATHER?! And they're basically the same age as Erik!

So he was falling in love with his own mother? It immediately made me think of Freud and the Oedipus complex. Or maybe something simpler, that a mother is a boy's first experience of love and attachment. Maybe the whole romance wasn't actually romantic at all, but a representation of his earliest connection to his mother.

Then there's that slap from his father. Erik wants to do everything, experience everything, and gets slapped and told he'll do as he's told. Very Balkan parenting lol. But symbolically the mother seems to represent love and attachment, while the father represents authority, discipline and limitations. And notice how the father's physical mark connects him to Erik.

Now for the ending, because this is where I started losing my mind.

Erik wakes up and travels through what seems like another galaxy, eventually passing through something resembling a white hole. In theoretical physics, white holes are basically the opposite of black holes. Instead of swallowing matter, they would expel it. They haven't been proven to exist, but there are speculative ideas connecting black holes and white holes, even on microscopic scales.

And then we see it. A sperm cell entering an egg.

WHAT?!

Suddenly I started thinking, what if this entire movie is actually about what happens BEFORE birth?

What if the classroom represents the maternal half, the blue room and military sequence the paternal half? Humans inherit 23 chromosomes from each biological parent. That would explain the two halves, possibly the red and blue books, the strange structures, even the inherited mark.

And the military sequence? Millions of sperm cells competing, with only one typically succeeding in fertilizing the egg. Could Erik be the one who gets selected? Could the sergeant's punch actually represent ejaculation, the force launching him on his final journey?

It sounds ridiculous when I write it like this lol, but the more I connect these scenes, the more it makes sense to me.

And remember that calendar in the classroom? Look at the date again, especially in connection with the ending. Could that actually be Erik's birthday? The mystery of that number suddenly has an explanation. Obviously conception and birth aren't the same day in reality, but the film might be treating the whole journey as a symbolic beginning of life.

Maybe the white hole is a representation of entering existence. Maybe the egg is the destination of this cosmic journey. Something microscopic being shown as an adventure across the entire universe.

So after all that, I really don't think Erik is about death or reincarnation. I think it's actually about the journey toward birth, represented through human experiences. Love, competition, inheritance, authority and finally conception.

And what I loved most is how the film constantly makes you theorize about where it's going. Is Erik dreaming? Is he insane? Is this some experiment? Space travel? Is he dead and traveling through the afterlife?

You're so busy trying to figure out which one it is that you don't even consider the complete opposite.

It's not death. It's birth.

And personally I think that's one of the best twists I've seen in a long time, especially for a short film.

Also gotta praise the acting, which I thought was really convincing considering how strange the material gets. The cinematography is gorgeous, the transitions between realities are very well done and the whole atmosphere really pulls you in. But what impressed me most was the overall idea. It's such an original way of approaching something as universal as human existence. I can forgive a few slower moments when a film gives me this much to think about afterwards.

Really enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone into weird, philosophical sci-fi.

Anyway, maybe I'm just connecting dots that aren't there, but I'd love to know what others think. Did anyone else notice the books, the calendar, the numbers or the matching marks? And did you interpret the ending completely differently?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7JdkNaut6A

When I was a youth, I snuck this spooky book into the house and my mother hid it from me because I was always reading scary stuff and giving myself nightmares. The book was lost or thrown out or whatever. Now that I’m a very brave adult (JK, still a weenie!) I really want to track it down. I’ve posted in a couple other book-ID subreddits but no dice yet. Here’s info about when I read it and what I can remember about the book:

Time period & age: Mid-2000s, probably 2005-2007. I would’ve been between 10 and 13ish.
Location & language: US, English
Book age level: I’m fairly sure it was YA. I read a lot of not-age-appropriate stuff, so there’s a slight chance it was an adult book, but I think that’s unlikely (I was easily spooked and probably would’ve found an adult book too scary).
Genre: Scary/sci fi/supernatural story collection.
Physical book appearance: I don’t remember the book cover very well, but it may have been a light blue color. I don’t remember it being a traditional scary book vibe with monsters, shadows, etc.
Content: I only remember one story, where a group of people went on some kind of (mountain?) research expedition and inexplicably went missing one by one. I believe the setting was cold and snowy. There was something about one of them disappearing in the night and leaving behind only a small pile of goo in his sleeping bag.
Books that it is not: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Goosebumps.

If anyone can help me ID this book, I’ll be eternally grateful!