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Ace O'Hara by Basil Blackalle and Conrad Frost
#comicstrip #aceohara #comicstrips #sciencefiction #scifi
#comicstrip #aceohara #comicstrips #sciencefiction #scifi
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What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading? + Update No. XXI https://sciencefictionruminations.com/2025/04/20/what-pre-1985-science-fiction-are-you-reading-update-no-xxi/
Come join the discussion!
#scifi #sciencefiction #books
John Boston and Damien Broderick’s Building New Worlds: 1946-1959: The Carnell Era, Volume One (2013), New Worlds: Before the New Wave, 1960-1964: The Carnell Era, Volume Two (2013) and Strange Highways: Reading Science Fantasy, 1950-1967 (2013)
Four books: Jean-Louis Curtis’ The Neon Halo (1956, trans. 1958). I’m a sucker for lesser-known SF in translation. Here charts the evolution of modern society between 1995-circa 2100 with an unusual focus martyrdom and persecution.
Edgar Pangborn’s Davy (1964). One of my absolute favorites. I should have a review of another Pangborn novel posted soon. Stay tuned.
Octavia Butler’s Mind of My Mind (1977) is the second-published and second chronological installment of her Patternist series of novels (1976-1984), that chart the dystopic and hyper-violent development (and destruction) of a telepathic society.
Damon Knight’s Far Out (1961)–worth acquiring for “The Enemy” (1958), “You’re Another” (1955), and “Cabin Boy” (1951).
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Looking for some book recommendations:
Trying for some non-military based space opera. Some recent ones I've enjoyed are Annihilation Aria by Mike Underwood, the Wayfarers series by Becky Chambers, the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper series by Nathan Lowell, and not sure if it counts as space opera quite but get the same feeling in Mary Robinette Kowal's Lady Astronaut books.
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The bravest and most horrifying book I’ve read in ages https://www.davideriknelson.com/sbsb/index.php/2025/04/the-bravest-and-most-horrifying-book-ive-read-in-ages/#newsF #reading #recommendations#RecommendedReading #revies#ScienceFiction #scifi
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Short Story Reviews: E. C. Tubb’s “Without Bugles” (1952), “Home is the Hero” (1952), and “Pistol Point” (1953) https://sciencefictionruminations.com/2025/04/13/short-story-reviews-e-c-tubbs-without-bugles-1952-home-is-the-hero-1952-and-pistol-point-1953/
Gerard Quinn's cover for New Worlds, # 15, ed. John Carnell (May 1952). Man stands in anguish in what looks like a red hand clutch at earth with a galaxy at his feet.
Gerard Quinn’s cover for New Worlds, #13, ed. John Carnell (January 1952). Man with two cables connected to his head is surrounded by a crab-like creature, a rabbit, and a spaceship.
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#captainfuture #kult #scifi #sciencefiction #spaceopera #80er #70er #zeichentrick #anime #pulps #retro#lieblingsserie #kultserie
Captain-Future-Fan-Art von Samy Hadj Ammar
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#ttrpg
#scifi
#scifi
Folks, I have a child who is looking for play testers for a _hard_ sci fi RPG system - real physics, optimistic and thoroughly decolonial politics. ("well, it's not optimistic if half the world gets nuked", they said.)
It is not another capitalist warmongers in space hard SciFi system.
If anyone's interested, please contact me by DM and I will put you in touch.
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For no particular reason tonight I was reflecting on science fiction. And I’m sure other people have written this more eloquently than I will. But it’s a shame the way science-fiction gets civilisations wrong.
If you look at humanity, we come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Tall, short, thick, thin. All kinds of different colours. We have poets and soldiers, doctors and teachers, singers and farmers.
Science fiction will write “These are the blorgons. They are all 2.5m tall, green, muscular warriors.” There won’t be any blue blorgons. No fairy-like happy-go-lucky blorgon poets. No brainy blorgon engineer with a pocket protector.
I do like Star Trek Lower Decks that has a small running plot line about how not all Orions are pirates. They do it pretty well. But a lot of other shows’ attempts at that do it badly. They focus so much on one exceptional character who bucks the trend of their civilisation. The only reason there is any plot at all is if you believe these exceptional people are super duper rare, and the overwhelming majority of that civilisation fit a crude and rigid stereotype.
I dunno why this popped into my head tonight. But now it’s in your feed.
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#scifi #fiction
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Unrelated to the stereotype thing, there’s also the absurdity of planets and the sizes of planets. Earth has like 7 billion people spread out over massive land area. Every climate, every kind of biome.
Some ways they get this wrong in lots of #scifi. 1. Some characters are looking for someone or something and they only know what PLANET it is on. Like, imagine finding ONE specific person—even if you have a super high res, high tech holographic photo of them—if all you know is that they’re on Earth somewhere. Then they land on “the planet” and go to the first town or city they see, and that’s where the thing they need is. They never spend months wandering around an entire planet trying to find the one thing.
2. Every real culture makes a single city of their culture the representative for the whole Earth in sci-fi stories. In American movies, aliens come to New York or DC. When aliens attack Earth and Godzilla is needed, Tokyo takes the lead to save Earth. James Bond is the only hero who can save Earth from total destruction (not exactly sci fi, but I wanted another example)
3. If you see extreme weather on an alien planet, that’s because the _entire_ planet has that extreme weather (blizzard, desert, swamp). It’s never like “oh on this continent at this time of year, the rains are super heavy. But the summers are warm and sunny.” You know, like Earth.
They invite us to imagine a planet so homogeneous that the weather never changes, culture never changes, and everyone on the planet looks and thinks pretty much the same.
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James White (1928-1999) was born on this day. Bibliography: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?304
L, Dean Ellis, 1970; R , Dean Ellis, 1972
#scifi #sciencefiction #books
Cover for The Watch Below. Shows a man looking outside of an underwater craft. Fish and plants float and swim around him
Cover for Hospital Station. It depicts a large space station with a spacecraft approaching. The space station contains two major parts -- a spherical end and a long tube with various other tubes along its outside. It has a medical red cross on it.
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'Tron' Sequel Trailer Released by Disney - This October will see the release of a film that's nearly 43 years in the making, ... - https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/25/04/05/2218210/tron-sequel-trailer-released-by-disney?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed #scifi
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@clive And a former nazi rocket scientist Werner von Braun created: ”Elon, the Techno King of Mars” in his 1952 science fiction novel: ”Project Mars”
The society of Mars was run like that very same technocracy, with engineers running it while a CEO-like absolute dictator calls the actual shots.
Coincidence? I think not. Musk lists his registered title as ”Techno King” in the official papers of Tesla inc.
https://nypost.com/2021/05/08/german-engineer-predicted-elon-would-conquer-mars-in-1952-novel/
#elon #mars #novel #scifi
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With every Hunger Games book, Suzanne Collins gets blunter about the messages readers keep missing
https://www.polygon.com/analysis/547538/hunger-games-suzanne-collins-explained-meaning #scifi #sciencefiction #art #scifiart #fantasy #space #cyberpunk
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The Biology of B-Movie Monsters
https://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/2/21701757/
#scifi #sciencefiction #art #scifiart #fantasy #space #cyberpunk
@steaphan
The current standard is the Langston Field that originated in Niven and Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye. It was invented by Dr. Dan Alderson as per spec the limits desired by Niven & Pournelle. It was specifically designed in order to allow dramatic space opera combat scenes in scifi stories, but with interesting rules making interesting limitations.
For that reason it is also used in some scifi war games.
https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardefense.php#langston
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@nyrath @steaphan
Fascinating... this is making me want to re-read Mote, as I didn't recall this element of the story.
I did remember the term "Alderson Drive" though!
Apparently Dan Alderson appears in-world as the discoverer of the "Alderson force" that enables the interstellar drive: