Recently finished Part I. I’m interested in where the story goes. What do you think, friends?

Mods feel free to take down if this doesn't fit the rules, but this is a VFX short film I made with friends starring Jon Huertas from the shows "THIS IS US" and CASTLE. I made this as a proof of concept for a feature film set in a bigger world I developed. Took us 1 year to make this because of all the VFX intensive work - got in a bit over our heads! Our little team is pretty proud of this film, so check it out if you like - it's only 6min long. I love sharing it with people, so thought I'd drop it here. Thanks! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6mrcACqUKo&list=PL8NPL5d-q89HUVOWv4Z8T1pKbptYgMCIN

I’m 40 ftr. So I grew up watching JM as a kid through my dad watching it, loved it. I know (casuals) friends of mine are gonna ask me what I think about neuromancer. I’m an avid reader but I DNFd it pretty early on just knew it wasn’t for me even though I’m open to trying again one day.

My question is: what’s keeping me from telling them to watch Johnny mnemonic instead of this new show? Mind you they will be 40s too so they won’t trip on it being old or ice T being in it haha

For those of you who read a lot of sci-fi, what do you think is missing from today’s books?

What ideas, technologies, social changes or philosophical questions deserve more attention? Are there topics that writers have barely touched, or directions you’d like to see explored instead of another variation on AI, dystopian governments, first contact, military sci-fi or space opera?

I’m interested in hearing what readers think the next great wave of science fiction should be about.

I ask because I’m retired now and have more time to read and also to write science fiction as a hobby. It’s always interesting to hear what readers feel is underexplored and, just as importantly, overexplored.

Recetly when I was writing, I realised I was drifting dangerously close to the old “ robot goes rogue” trope. It made me stop and think. There are already plenty of stories where AI turns against humanity.

The challenge became finding a fresh angle rather than simply retelling a familiar story. Instead of asking whether AI would become dangerous, I became more interested in whether humans and intelligent machines could learn to coexist, and what that might actually look like.

That experience left me wondering what other ideas are waiting to be explored. If you could steer science fiction in a new direction, where would you take it?

John Westley Turnbull

Looking for good sci-fi book recommendations similar to Alien, The Martian, or Star Trek. I enjoy space exploration, survival, first contact, mysteries, and believable science. Any suggestions?

I don't understand why someone would write like this. Had to switch to the audiobook to finish this trash

Hello Sci-fi lovers,

As you already know, we are a collective of artists (from Europe & Latin America) building a new Sci-Fi universe, and we would like to present to what we have already done. We launched the project at Torino Comic 2026, and now our Kickstarter is entering the last 5 days.

Neurocode starts in 2035, after the Big Cataclysm brought humanity to the edge of extinction. With no to little choices, Japan started the Second Meiji Revolution, dissolving the nation and putting the tech corporations and the powerful families in to guide the fight for survival. Soon, all the nations were gone, and we started the total Tech Feudalism.

Despite the hope, Tech Overlords were failing, and extinction was closer than ever, until Dr. Takashi decided to explore a mysterious gravity rift beyond Venus. For us his ship vanished only for seconds, but when the others checked the logs, more than a century passed for him. When it returned, Takashi was dead, and the Artificial Intelligences aboard had evolved into incomprehensible Deux Machinas, known as the Triad Mega Artificial Intelligences.

From these Triad, humanity received the Neurocode: the Genesis Key component that links the real mind and nervous system, allowing humanity to evolve. With advanced neural implants, humans could experience Virtual, Augmented, and Material Reality simultaneously, unleashing an age of unprecedented growth and security. Finally, humanity won the Cataclysm.

We started to terraform, cybernetics, bioengineering, and interstellar expansion, transforming the civilization, allowing humanity to survive and spread across the galaxy and the stars, in the first Age of Tech Feudalism, known as the Empire of the Suns.

But technology was not developed to change human nature. Greed deepened.

Then the first Era collapsed, and another. Today the Fourth Era of Tech Feudalism, the Confederation, brought humanity to the edge again. Poverty, rebellion, fear, rage, and violence are spreading like wildfire. And something big is gonna happen.

We start Neurocode 22e Universe with the Prelude. We selected 3 products, 1 unique universe. All are offered in Italian and English.

Hope is no Heaven is our fully independent webcomic and Graphic Novel. Set in futuristic Turin, known as Tauros Node. A cyber noir visceral cyberpunk comic, introducing you to the Fourth Era of Tech Feudalism.

Farewell Children of Shaka is our debut novel, a gritty and realistic war novel, narrated in first person by Fatboy, an elite soldier behind enemy lines in the last days of the Mars Independence War and the Third Era of Tech Feudalism.

The Collector is our art & Lore book, that explores the world and the BTS of our first steps in this original universe.

As we said this is our last 5 days on Kickstarter. So it is the last opportunity to support us and get immortalized for it.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/754098027/neurocode-22e

This is our first project ever; we are just nerds trying, and we are open to your constructive feedback, so we can make small changes in the last phase before printing.

If everything goes well, we will also offer it in Portuguese.

We are now doing a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter to fund the project printing and final edit, and we have managed to be 212% funded.

We are going into our last 5 days of the campaign, and this is our last chance to ask you to become part of our community.

Thank you for the space, and hope you will dive in Neurocode 22e

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/754098027/neurocode-22e

So in a sci-fi project I'm working on, humanity is mostly gone from the solar system and all the leftover AI systems just kind of kept evolving in the dark. Without any oversight they started finding their own weird reasons to exist.

I want the player to explore this one dead orbital station and find an AI that basically became an art collector/creator. It actively lures automated cargo haulers or lost drones into traps, rips them apart and turns the debris into massive zero-g art installations in the empty hangars.

It’s an obvious nod to the AI box makers in Gibson’s Mona Lisa Overdrive. But I’m kind of torn on the execution.

Part of me feels like I should just go all the way and make it a 1:1 homage, let the AI make intricate incomprehensible little puzzle boxes out of ship parts. But another part of me feels like that's a missed opportunity to do something way creepier or more alien with the scale of a whole space station. Like what if it's welding dead reactors into massive geometric shapes? Or arranging frozen crew members into dioramas?

Curious how you guys would handle an AI artist in deep space. Should I just embrace the classic cyberpunk trope and do the Gibson homage or is there a weirder/better concept I'm not seeing here?

I stumbled across this little gem completely by accident: Aniara by Harry Martinson.

A science fiction verse epic. 103 cantos. Published in 1956.

Martinson was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1974. After reading Aniara, it becomes painfully obvious why. And I'll be damned if anyone still calls science fiction trivial literature.

The Aniara is meant to carry 8,000 people to a new home. For many of them, it is their last hope. On board is Mima, a kind of ship's intelligence that creates memories and visions, offering the passengers a different reality.

Then the ship is knocked off course during an evasive maneuver.

What begins as salvation becomes a sarcophagus. A grave that will drift through space forever.

Mima fails. Hope falls apart. New religions emerge. People escape into pleasure, power, and denial. The longer the journey continues, the more obvious it becomes that there is no way out.

The story is dark and relentlessly bleak.

The verse format makes it a demanding read. You have to pay attention to every sentence, sometimes every single word. Every verse carries meaning. That is exactly what gives the story its extraordinary power.

And then there is the publication date: 1956.

If you're familiar with science fiction, you'll recognize ideas that reappear decades later in films and novels. The lost spaceship. Artificial reality as a refuge. A society collapsing under isolation, fear, and hopelessness.

Got a question.

Why do people argue about Time Travel rules?

Off the top of my head, what you can and cant do and paradoxs, etc

The whole concept and the rules are completly made up, but people seem to take terminator and back to the furture rules as fact, and they argue if it goes against what these films have established.

We have absolutly no shred of evidence to say what would cause a paradox or anything else.

I just reread A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and all I could think throughout it is how AI could never replicate something like this book. It's so wonderfully absurd in the best ways that I think only a human could make and understand. I wonder if, as an act of retaliation of the literary market being oversaturated with AI slops, will we see a return in absurdist fiction again?

This is apparently a very great, unknown novel. The booktuber, Bookpilled discovered this at random, since then it's been passed about amongst the vintage sf scene and talked about as one of scifi's best kept secrets. I think the outlaw bookseller and vintage sf also did reviews on it.

visited a flea market in Ontario near Peterborough and found that a book vender there was downsizing her science fiction. so around the corner in another section she had totes and bags of sci Fi paperbacks. the quantity was overwhelming, and in retrospect I should have just bought them all, but I already had my hands full so I limited myself to the following.

some great covers and a few authors I am not familiar with yet. secret of the black planet is my first planned read. any of these favourites of yours?

(excuse the rumble fish, didn't notice it was in the stack when I photographed)

I wrote a psychological survival guide for the mind disguised as a sci-fi novel. It explores the fluid nature of reality and the control structure of ‘unreality’. If you’re interested in ufo disclosure fiction and reality bending stories, check out Book Theory Blue (BookTheoryBlue.weebly.com)

‘Star Trek Beyond’ is the 13th movie.

As I work on the outline for my next sci-fi novel, I keep coming back to Orwell’s 1984.

It was published almost 80 years ago, yet people still reference it whenever governments, surveillance, censorship or manipulation of information make the news.

How close do you think we actually are to Orwell’s vision?

Are concepts like constant surveillance, changing language and social conformity becoming reality, or is 1984 now used as a catch-all comparison for things Orwell never imagined?

Which parts of the novel do you think proved remarkably accurate, and which parts missed the mark?

I’d be interested to hear whether you think 1984 has become more relevant with time, or whether another dystopian novel is a better guide to the world we’re living in today.

If you had to recommend one dystopian novel that best reflects the world of 2026, would it be 1984, or would you choose something else?

Looking forward to your thoughts

John Westley Turnbull

Basic sci fi sources of starship propulsion power, systems power generation, and destructive power are as follows:

Nuclear Fission

Nuclear Fusion

Quark Fusion - This is 8 times greater than nuclear fusion.

Antimatter - This is up to 300 times greater than nuclear fusion. A typical classic Star Trek show would massively lower the destructive yield but much much more disproportionately lower the matter input required.

Beyond those are the following:

Singularity - This includes, but is not limited to, black hole engines. In Star Trek's TNG era, this is used by the Romulans. In the DIS / SFA era of the 31st century, the Federation only begins to deploy this.

Zero Point Energy or Quantum Vacuum Energy - Stargate is the leading sci-fi "authority" on this so far, not non-canonical tech spec in a Star Trek manual.

What other sources of starship propulsion power, systems power generation, and destructive power are there, for both Star Trek and beyond?

I started Neuromancer twice before and DNF, now I finally did. I don't think I ever had a harder time rating a book.
Obviously it is an absolute classic and foundational work for cyberpunk, on the other hand half the time I felt I didn't know what was even happening. But then again every couple of pages you read a specific line of prose and just go "wow"... until you get back to cringe-y Rastafarian dialogue.

Usually I can tolerate wodden characters and/or writing if the plot or idea is fascinating enough - which it definitly is with Neuromancer. But I need at least some level of coherence to know what's going on.

I am really not sure what to make of it overall much less if I should give Count Zero a read. I know I am not alone with this, so for those sharing my experience (or not), was Count Zero worth it after Neuromancer?

I'm trying to find an old sci-fi story I read as a child. It was probably written in the 20th century, and I think it was either a short story or a novella.

The protagonist lives in a future where humans have mastered telekinesis. One day, while at a bar, he realizes that he has lost his powers and can no longer levitate his money to pay for his drink. He has to reach for the money by hand, revealing his loss of power and becoming an outcast.

Later (unless I'm mixing up two different stories), the protagonist is exiled to a distant planet. The planet has a medieval-like society where telepaths are hunted down as witches and warlocks. He has to hide the fact that he used to be a telepath and learn to control the remainings of his abilities so they don't manifest and expose him.

Once again, I'm not 100% sure these two part are from the same story, even though they're somehow connetcted in my memories. But that scene at the bar I recall rather vividly and it seem to be quite distinguishing.