A Stargate between Earth and a distant planet named Qita is found. Earth sends an invasion fleet, but the Qitans step aside peacefully to let the humans explore their planet and mine its resources. In the aftermath, a human woman and Qitan man start a pub on earth, in an area of England that has shunned modern technology and Qitan influence. They clearly love each other, but they also remain firmly separate. This is a strange story of lonely people who struggle for both belonging and for isolation. There's also a surreal element that creeps into the story and becomes central. I'm not sure this is a book for everyone, but I enjoyed it.

What is your favorite or memorable "solution to a mundane everyday problem" that turns out to have severely dystopian implications from sci-fi?

Just finished Dream Hotel, and one of the near-future devices is an implant that allows you to sleep a full cycle in only 5 hours. Other than the "work more" implication, ::: spoiler spoiler agencies use dreams as evidence against a person, and later, to implant advertisements into dreams :::

Which then reminded me of appetite-suppressing toothpaste from The Outer Worlds. But instead of a weight-loss product, ::: spoiler spoiler it is a necessity because the entire colony is starving :::

(I know smartphones etc. are at this point IRL, curious about more original ideas)

I'd love to hear about your favorite concept or idea you've read about or seen in scifi media.

My personal favorite is the Conjoiner Drive out of the Revelation Space series. These ship drives are dual drives on either side of a lighthugger and have a living being inside the drives to act as a supercomputer, which holds a wormhole open inside the drives. The wormhole links far in the past to the big-bang and uses the energy from the big-bang for propulsion.

In most scifi I've come across wormholes are used for FTL travel, and I thought this was such a unique and creative use of a wormhole it has stuck with me for years after reading about it.

So what are your favorite devices or ideas that have come out of scifi media?

This is an update to Chapter 1 of short-ish original Doctor Who story I'm writing. Or trying to, at least. I'd love some opinions on whether or not I'm capturing the energy of the show in a kind of novel-form. The general pace of everything will come down a bit in coming chapters.

I have it up as a Speechify above which will narrate it, or a PDF: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DO6ZoDWImaaAiaj8P1TUeukzXm6GbP5-/view?usp=drive_link

The story starts with a man trying to create a major diplomatic incident during negotiations with an alien race by using a device hidden in his colon to send insulting messages in the alien’s scent language. Then it gets weird. Scalzi mentions in a forward to the edition I read that he wasn't under contract to write the book, so he felt free to do whatever he wanted. That attitude really shows: it's a rollercoaster with strange twists and fun surprises. It kept my attention and I ripped through it pretty quickly. Recommended.

Jean is an older woman in Australia who loves her granddaughter, alcohol, cigarettes, her job as a tour guide at a zoo, and a dingo named Sue, maybe in that order. A virus is sweeping the country that causes the sufferers to be able to understand animals (somewhat), and to communicate back (somewhat). This isn't the Dr. Dolittle experience of overly anthropomorphized animals thinking and talking like humans; here, animals are still animals, and their thoughts and expressions are still somewhat alien, communicated with body language more than sounds. The book won a number of literary awards, but I didn't love it. For one thing, I think Jean is supposed to win our hearts, but she didn't win mine - her flaws are significant and she doesn't seem to grow over the course of the story (which, to be fair, is more likely than the characters in so many stores who go from being horrible to being saintly). For another, though I appreciated McKay’s attempt at representing communication with animals in a more realistic way, I found it frustrating. In some places, I think I was supposed to understand what the animals were saying, but I didn't. In other places, the animal thoughts seemed too complex or philosophical to be realistic. I didn't hate the story, and I can see why some people really enjoyed it, but I found myself happy to move on to the next book.

An original story, in progress.

Summer is here! What are you going to read, and what would you recommend to others?

I recently revisited The 100 and was curious how other science fiction fans view it today. What began as a survival story gradually evolved into a series that explored leadership, morality, artificial intelligence, tribalism, and the consequences of difficult choices. While some seasons were stronger than others, I thought the show consistently raised interesting ethical questions and gave several characters meaningful development throughout its run. For those who have watched it, which season was your favorite, which character had the best arc, and how do you think the series compares to other modern sci-fi television shows?

I tried my hand at searching and couldn't seem to find anything, but then I'm not necessarily the best at finding things here, anyway.

Meanwhile, I'm currently working my way through a massive media archive I'd collected a few years ago, and have found a fair amount of sci-fi art to be shared somewhere, if possible.

There's also a reasonable amount of such art appearing in Euro comics, which I'm collecting here: https://piefed.social/c/eurographicnovels?flair=Sci-Fi

So, any advice on where to look?
Oh, whoops, and the piece above is by Peter Elson, in 1980!

After a mysterious cosmic event rips Oak Street from suburbia and transports their neighborhood to someplace unknown, the Platt family soon discovers that their very survival depends on them sticking together as they navigate their now unrecognizable surroundings.

Starring Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor, THE END OF OAK STREET also stars Maisy Stella and Christian Convery. The film is written and directed by David Robert Mitchell and produced by J.J. Abrams, Hannah Minghella, Jon Cohen, David Robert Mitchell, Matt Jackson, and Tommy Harper.

Trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oB9AxspVow

With earth suffering environmental disaster and war, a group heads for a distant planet to make a new, peaceful, better start for humanity. The planet has abundant plant and animal life, though they quickly discover that at least some of the plants are sentient. The story is told from the viewpoint of members of different generations of the colony, alternating male and female.

Early on, I wasn't thrilled with the book. There were a few things that seemed problematic, like the ridiculously inadequate redundancy in technology and skills for a mission to settle a distant planet. But the issues seemed to mostly wane as the story got more interesting. Lots of characters with complex motivations, and some interesting developments.

I tore through The Faith of Beasts by JSAC, really loving the new universe they've developed. Very much looking forward to rereading TMoG, Livesuit and TFoB very soon and the show being developed.

I'm reading book 4, Children of Strife by Tchaikovsky and enjoying it thoroughly. AT has been my favorite contemporary author for the last few years based on how wide-ranging and prolific he is. I discovered AT by reading The Final Architecture series, which is still my favorite series by him. Honorable mention is his Dogs of War series, also amazing.

Last year I discovered China Mieville by reading Embassytown, the mindfuck storytelling and intelligent prose blew me away. That book still haunts me and twists my brain almost a year after reading it. I've never had a book that still makes me think and feel strange months after finishing it. Perdido Street Station was also amazing, super fun and original steampunk world. Very much looking forward reading the next two in that series and digesting more of his catalogue, I think he's my new favorite.

Also recently read The Prefect by Alaistar Reynolds, set in the Revelation Space universe and it's also fantastic, really good stuff. Stoked to finish the series.

As far DNF I was surprised I couldn't push through The Algerbraist by Iain Banks, I got bogged down in Jupiter just couldn't keep at it.

I just finished reading the third book, so I thought I'd put my notes on the three of them together.

Rosewater

• No few sentences of summary are going to do this book justice. It takes place in near future Nigeria. Some decades prior, complex alien life has landed (impacted) on earth; now there’s an alien dome in Nigeria, and a town has grown around it. The main character, Kaaro, is one of the “sensitives" that have become more prevalent - people who can access and interact with the thoughts of others. He’s not a great guy, initially using his abilities to steal, later getting pulled into a secret government organization. The story is told through three different timelines, which are creatively woven together. I really enjoyed the new ideas and interesting storytelling of this book. Will read the sequel.

The Rosewater Insurrection

• Book two of the Wormwood trilogy. Kaaro from the first book is an instrumental character, but Aminat is now central. The first woman who has become more alien plant than human has been identified, and Aminat is tasked with finding and studying her. Mayor Jack Jacques declares independence of the city, and there is war between humans, but Wormwood is also at war. As with the first book, there’s a lot going on, but this one is a little more linear. Very good and enjoyable.

The Rosewater Redemption

• This one has a grander scope and scale, with most of the characters from the prior books engaged in one thing or another. In the aftermath of the war of the prior book, the town is healing, but things may be much worse than they seem. I really enjoyed the whole series, and this final book creates a pretty satisfying conclusion. The new ideas and interesting storytelling that I commented on regarding the first book continue through the trilogy.

A short story about communicating with the past, Rube Goldberg society, and the end of it all.

Hard science fiction.

A detective is investigating the drowning death of a man and his small child. The catch is that they appear to have drowned in the middle of their high-rise apartment in Chicago. I very much enjoyed the way this story unfolds. It seems like it's going to be a murder mystery at first, but we learn and surmise much of the details fairly early on. Instead, there are other questions we want answered, and those are revealed skillfully. The book has a lot to say about racism, family, friendship, and justice. Some of the very end seemed a bit rushed, but overall it kept me turning pages and was satisfying from start to finish.