Science Fiction

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Based on curated lists from BookBub, Crime Reads, Book Riot and more, suggestions from readers on Goodreads, Quora and Reddit, and recommendations from authors like Jasper Fforde, Sharon Shinn and David Brin, here is a roundup of the 81 best sci-fi crime novels ever written.

I'm constraining the laws of sentience in my own science fiction universe. I'm conceptualizing and not wording a polished version.

The principals of sentience

• one must never act to harm self or other sentients
• one must practice tit for tat with a tenth extra measure of forgiveness
• sentients disarm and uplift all subsentients to mitigate self harm
• sentience is a measure of behavior only applicable on millennial scales

These ideas lead me to question: where exactly does the Hippocratic principal of "first do no harm" fail us as humans and lead to the mass murder orgies of war?

I'm reading them in the author's recommended reading order and I'm currently up to The Vor Game. While the first Cordelia books are decent the Miles books are real page turners so far. So if you were put off by the cheesy looking covers like me, give them a go!

I just started reading Neuromancer, and finished the first two chapters. Can someone encourage me to keep on reading? It’s just so… disorienting. Very quick scene changes, hard to follow dialogues (who is actually talking?), too much jargon (I have read up on some, to get the gist), … I just feel lost, and doubt I will enjoy it at some point.

I like various degrees of scifi, and many people recommended the book (and the ones following it). I also fought through some harder chapters in Trisolaris, Children of Memory, The Expanse books, CS Lewis‘ Space Trilogy, … but Neuromancer is on awholenother level.

Is it just me? Did anyone else have a hard time with it? Does it get better? Is it worth it?

Pantheon season 1 is being added to Netflix tomorrow, but season 2 is not (and might never be). Both seasons are on Prime Video but it is region-locked, though I'm not sure which regions it is available in.

Pantheon is a fantastic sci-fi show with really smart themes that has been completely screwed over by streaming services. The writing is incredible and contains some very intelligent satire and critiques of big tech corporations, and even dips its toes into geopolitics (not even kidding, the Israel-Palestine conflict becomes a plot point in season 2, and this was written prior to Oct. 7).

If you want to watch the series in its entirety then piracy is a must for the vast majority. Needless to say, I highly recommend watching.

I really enjoyed reading it a couple years ago. Takes place mostly in about 2023, trying to accurately predict what life would be like 30 years after it was written.

I mean, we could speculate and explore the strange future and stuff. Just without that tired trope of "well, science and technology progressed a bunch and then we got this really great machine".

I mean there's gotta be another way. Examples?

So there's a question I've been having for a while now: Why is Ubki, from Philip K Dick so popular ? I've read it, and was pretty disappointed. The scenario starts pretty well, but becomes very obvious amongst the rest of the book, there's little no to connection between the scenes, everything seems to have no relation, the final characters (Ella and Joe) are barely introduced, the resolution (Ubki's provenance) is barely explained, ...

Overall, I feel like I've read a really good scenario idea from a great author, but it feels like a missed opportunity; I’m left feeling unsatisfied.

I just finished this incredibly interesting book and will leave the description from my book service below.

"Worst Case Scenario" by T J Newman

"#1 internationally bestselling author T.J. Newman is back with Worst Case Scenario. When a pilot suffers a heart attack at 35,000 feet, a commercial airliner filled with passengers crashes into a nuclear power plant in the small town of Waketa, Minnesota, which becomes ground zero for a catastrophic national crisis with global implications. The International Nuclear Event Scale tracks nuclear disasters. It has seven levels. Level 7 is a Major Accident, with only two on record: Fukushima and Chernobyl. There has never been a Level 8. Until now. In this heart-stopping thriller, ordinary people--power plant employees, firefighters, teachers, families, neighbors, and friends-- are thrust into an extraordinary situation as they face the ultimate test of their lives. It will take the combined courage, ingenuity, and determination of a brave few to save not only their community and loved ones, but the fate of humanity at large."

She's the namesake of the Del Rey Books publishing imprint.

The article links to a PBS documentary, Judy-Lynn Del Rey: Galaxy Gal from a series "Renegades" which "highlights little-known historical figures with disabilities"

So I found this one season (26 episode) extremely campy sci fi TV show -- a low budget 2007 Canadian production -- called Grand Star. Watched a few episodes last night. OMG it's so terrible it is awesome.

It's like a B-grade GameCube era JRPG got crossed with Snowpiercer. I can't stop watching it somehow.

Anyone else seen this amazing piece of ... something? ;)

First a definition for this question, because there are many kinds of sci-fi out there and they sometimes liberally use cool sounding words without explaining them:

A disruptor is a kind of weapon that weakens, or "disrupts", either material bonds (breaking a material into molecules), molecular bonds (breaking a molecule into atoms), or atomic bonds (breaking an atomic nucleus into protons, netrons, and free electrons. Almost like instantly turning into plasma).

Temperature can do these things, but the idea behind a disruptor, specifically, is that it happens through some kind of catalyst, rather than brute-forcing with insane amounts of heat.

Would such a weapon physically be possible (even if we don't know how to make them just yet)?

How would a target realistically behave when hit by a disruptor?

Using a vinyl cutter and mini-sand blaster I made some alternate universe corporate schwag! I like the idea that someone might have swiped these during an interview before both companies had their 'accidents.'