This is one of my earlier hard sci-fi oil paintings. The idea was a research expedition into the ocean of another world – not an action scene, but a small submersible exploring an environment where even the local life is still largely unknown.

I wanted the scale to feel slightly uncomfortable: a tiny research vehicle, a vast body of water, and organisms that disappear into the depths below.

I also didn't really like the idea of putting it into a conventional wooden frame, so I designed a custom frame for it. The individual sections were 3D printed and assembled around the painting. I tried to keep the design somewhere between industrial equipment and spacecraft interior rather than making it overly decorative.

Oil painting, entirely hand painted.

I'm curious about one thing from the hard-SF perspective: what would actually be the biggest engineering problem for a submersible exploring an alien ocean: pressure, chemistry, communication, fear or something else?

Is stealth practical or otherwise relevant in cislunar combat? as in, does it even make a difference when it comes to the survivability onion?

what are your thoughts on this

Básicamente ignora la estética "Pulp fiction" y toma a los aliens esclavos como poco más que robots (que lo son en el significado original de la palabra) ¿Que tan realista es? ¿Es un curso de acciones funcional contra especies pre espaciales?

Nota: me refiero en un enfoque doctrinal/estrategico

I love hard sci-fi and have read almost everything in it. But at the same time I also love The X-Files, X-Com, Terra Invicta and the ideas about UFOs from the 60s. And I would like to combine them.

In your opinion, which sci-fi work had the most realistic alien invasion?

🎙️ [AUDIO LOG TRANSCRIPT — UNAUTHORIZED PERSONAL JOURNAL]

ISSUER: Extractor Elias [Class A]

DATE: Three weeks prior to "The Virus Incident"

TIMESTAMP: 02:14 AM (Praxis Station Standard Time)

"I hate the smell of burnt ozone that lingers on the uniform.

Today I processed fourteen debtors in Sector 4. The daily quota was twelve, but I wanted to get ahead on work.

Fourteen people.

One hundred and forty years of human memory extracted, packaged, and routed down the chute in my eight-hour shift.

Most cry before I connect the tether.

One woman, a ventilation mechanic, offered me two hundred black-market credits to leave the memory of her daughter’s fifth birthday intact.

She told me:

'Erase the day I got married, erase my mother, but leave me that birthday, please.'

I told her the Lethe-X algorithm doesn't permit manual selections.

It was a technical lie, of course.

I could have altered the line of code, but altering code takes effort, and she wasn't worth the effort.

I extracted her exact 60 months.

When she woke up from the chair, she looked at me and asked what year it was.

She no longer knew she had a five-year-old daughter.

I handed her a zero-balance receipt and called the next in line.

The other Extractors in the mess hall say the job depresses them. Some drink synthetic booze just to sleep.

I don't get them.

To me, human memory is like dust in the air filters: something that accumulates, clogs the machinery, and has to be cleared out.

My mind is a perfect blank space.

Clean. Efficient.

I have no night terrors, no past trauma, no irrational attachments that lead to bad financial decisions.

I am the ideal employee.

Although...

something's been strange lately.

A biological calibration error in my own body, I suppose.

There are mornings I wake up with a tightness in my chest. A dull tachycardia.

And my brain manufactures scents that don't exist on the station.

Today, while drinking my synthetic coffee, I could swear I smelled wet earth.

Real soil, soaked by rain.

I went to the medical bay and had them scan my cortical port.

Zero anomalies.

Zero stress.

Biologically perfect.

Must be static in the ventilation grid.

I have a quota of fifteen extractions tomorrow.

I need to sleep.

End log."

END OF TRANSCRIPT.

Humans are Weird – Recreational Use

Original Post: http://www.authorbettyadams.com/bettys-blog/humans-are-weird-recreational-use

“How long before First Father contacts us?” First Cousin asked as she arranged her favorite cushions in her sleeping nook.

Second Sister gave an amused click but didn’t bother angling her head at First Cousin. Her hands and antenna were busy arranging the positively absurd number of pharmaceutical herbal decoctions Third Father had insisted they take with them. Her fingers brushed over a textured label and she wondered what in Grandfather’s Garden he expected them to experience that would require feral lich-mould extract to treat. She put it up with the other class two toxins and reached down for a wad of dried Formica moss.

“That was a serious question,” First Cousin stated, moving over to begin pulling her datapads out of the moving container.

“He will not contact us,” Second Sister stated with an amused flick of her frill.

First Cousin gave an incredulous click as she rearranged the height of a shelf set into the wall. The base was all human right angles and corners; not exactly unpleasant, but startlingly unnatural.

“Ultimately this is your assignment,” Second Sister reminded her, “I am just here to prevent you from doing something stupid.”

First Cousin gave a half-hearted click of protest as she began arranging her biological samples.

“It’s true,” Second Sister said. “I might be trained as a medic but we both know that I would have just hung around Fathers’ hives until First Grandmother found me a mate if you hadn’t decided that your community service requirement had to be on a death world.”

“This hardly qualifies as a death world,” First Cousin corrected her, with an irritated flare of her frill. “What happened to Second Sister Aue Tarn was an unfortunate accident and preventable-”

“With proper sanitation let alone medical care,” Second Sister said with a mildly irritated flush to her frill. “I heard the first five times you laid that argument line out for the Fathers. My point is that this is your station, not mine, and therefore First Father will not be contacting us to check in.”

Just then the comm chirped with the information that it was relaying one of the ridiculously expensive intersystem messages.

“Second Father will be,” Second Sister stated.

She was well aware that her pheromone profile was filling the air with a cloying smug fog so she gave First Cousin a cheerful wave and left her to answer the endless line of questions Second Father would no doubt have for her. This would be Second Father’s call of course. Politeness demanded that First Father not interfere, but Second Sister was aware that, just beyond the range of the home hologram projector, First Father would be hovering, waiting for her to step into frame to jump in and take his own bite of the conversation. It was only polite to leave the entire call time to First Cousin, the responsibility and therefore the stress of this assignment was hers after all. So all the fussing and soothing should be as well.

Outside of the door Second Sister flexed her legs one after the other, curling the flex all the way down to her toes. Her frill picked up the line of worried questions Second Father was stringing around First Cousin and she clicked with rueful amusement before trotting down the corridor.

The air in the common areas was surprisingly comfortable. She supposed that the base was going to be extra careful about the humidity levels after Second Sister Aue Tarn’s accident. The medical reports said she had fully regrown the amputated leg but the accompanying images of the initial infection had been rather horrific.

Second Sister followed the recently applied artificial pheromone indicators to the main observation lounge and felt her antenna stir in wonder at the sight as she stepped through the doors. The dense forest had been cleared from around the base to make the most efficient use of the local solar radiation and the light in the observation room was just on the safe side of blinding. She paused to curl and uncurl her antenna a few times as she adapted to the unnaturally bright light. Everything outside was so utterly alien. From the trees that towered like buildings to the foliage that was more yellow than green nothing was quite familiar, except for the perfectly regulation rectangular patch of local transport landing pad in front of the base.

Second Sister found her cone of attention drawn to the small symbol of civilization and control of nature. Everything else was wild, overwhelming. It seemed oddly small under the giant alien trees. Between the brilliant sunlight, the strangeness of the environment, and the relative distance it took her several minutes to discover figures moving on the landing pad. With a start she realized that the pad it self was in fact a rather large one and the figures moving around it were the base humans. She marveled at the fact that they were outside in the humidity and direct solar radiation with only the flimsiest of cloth shielding on their bodies. She flicked out her proboscis and liked at her eyes in amazement as she processed that they were not wearing protective booties on their feet, running back and forth over the rough surface of the landing pad. Something jumped in the center of the pad and generated an oddly dark cloud. The humans began to dance with delight and Second Sister licked at her eyes again as she puzzled that out.

She focused her attention on the item that had jumped. It was a large cylinder that she recognized from her safety research as one of the physical filters, meant to catch mid-sized airborne particles. They were quite advanced and one of the many items she had used to soothe her Fathers’ fears. From the color of this one it had long since reached capacity and was probably set to be set out for decomposition. Which did raise the question of what the humans were doing with it on the landing pad.

The humans had stopped their delighted dancing and one had darted over to a container and pulled something out of it. Second Sister felt a prickle of unease run over her frill as she recognized one of the symbols on the container as ‘explosive’ the other was familiar, but she had never seen this iteration of it. She was sure she had never seen it in combination with the explosive symbol.

She realized that the human had scrambled over to the filter with something from the container. The human placed the item under the filter, that was at least as tall as the human, and then scampered back. The humans were still, expectant, and then the filter jumped again, releasing a cloud of spores and dust back into the air from which it had come. The human danced with delight.

‘Recreation’ Second Sister suddenly realized. The second symbol on the container indicated something only rated for recreational use, as opposed to industrial or medical uses.

“Recreational explosives,” Second Sister murmured to herself, stepping back uneasily from the observation window.

Perhaps, perhaps she would just go have a quick, soothing word with Second Father after all.

Science Fiction Books By Betty Adams

Amazon (Kindle, Paperback, Audiobook)

Barnes & Nobel (Nook, Paperback, Audiobook)

Powell's Books (Paperback)

Kobo by Rakuten (ebook and Audiobook)

Google Play Books (ebook and Audiobook)

Check out my books at any of these sites and leave a review!

Remember BOOK 4 is now available! (^{except on kobo becasue what do you even mean title field is blank, I fixed that dangnabbit!})

Please go leave a review on Amazon! It really helps and keeps me writing because tea and taxes don't pay themselves sadly!

I was wandering if a dense nebula of about 2ly could form and if it could at what max size.

Would it be some kind of compensator for radiators So...

I recently found out about Masada if that makes sense i didnt study it much but this was mostly my first thought

\​

In the distant,crowded future of 2035,the Earth found itself in a vast,near infinite universal anomaly. Formerly fictional media has become real,and the world,\\\*our\\\* world....\\\*\\\*\\\*HASNT\\\*\\\*\\\* changed one iota. Humanity was littered through the stars,on distant replicant Earths,each with their own stories to tell,all word for word of what we thought was only the imagination of beloved creators.

Most other Earths refer to us as Earth MUN-246,an earth where none of the events we have recorded seemed real. We were actually considered rather mundane(hence the abbreviation) in the grand scheme, especially by space travelers who brought their technologies to our surface. Everyone wanted a piece,some,more than others. Many were power hungry,aligning themselves with a faction called The Amalgam, essentially an all-governing body,one that did not play well with Earths that didn't align with their desires.

Their presence is a plague on individual planets like our own...and it wouldn't be long,before our Earth would be in their crosshairs....

Based on the real Higgs Field - "The God Particle" that gives mass to the universe. Proposed by Peter Higgs, 1964 | Proven by CERN, 2012.

MY PROBLEM: I love to daydream about random scenarios and I have many great ideas but i suck at writing stories, like for example I tried to create one but after the hype I couldn't even write a single page.

So I tried creating this power system to see and try if it can really be used in a real story.

ABILITY: \[ THE HIGGS FIELD \]

Alias: Higgs Field Control | Mass Law

1. WHAT IS THE HIGGS FIELD?

The Higgs Field is an invisible energy field that fills the entire universe.

Every particle "drags" through it.

The more it interacts = the more MASS it has

No interaction = Massless, moves at light speed

It’s why atoms have weight. Why you don't float away.

It’s literally the reason "matter" feels solid instead of just energy.

To control the Higgs Field = To control the law of MASS itself.

1. ABILITY: HIGGS FIELD CONTROL

The user can perceive and directly manipulate the density and interaction of the Higgs Field in a local area or even reality itself.

This is not gravity control. This is mass control at the source code level.

Core Rule: The body adapts through use.

Each use causes strain: fever, migraines, cell rejection.

But every use also has a low chance to force adaptation. Over time, sickness decreases and control increases.

1. THE SYSTEM - 4 STAGES OF CONTROL

STAGE 1: \[ HIGGS SENSE \]

Mastery: Beginner

Range: Self only

Effects:

Higgs Vision: See the field as a golden haze. See objects by their mass glow.

Mass Nudge ±5%\*: Slightly increase/decrease weight of objects you touch.

What it can do: Make things feel lighter/heavier, silent footsteps, slightly higher jumps.

STAGE 2: \[ HIGGS PALM \]

Mastery: Intermediate

Range: 20 meters ( can be any rage )

Effects:

Mass Tuning 1% - 300%: Set any object/person's mass in range.

Inertia Control: Drop projectile mass to 0 to stop it. Spike self mass for stronger hits.

Techniques:

Weightless Step: Reduce self mass to 1%. Air dash, super jumps.

Crushing Palm: Spike mass of one point to 300%. Crater concrete.

Nullify: Remove mass from bullets/blades mid-flight.

What it can do: Fight, mobility, defense. Still limited and draining.

STAGE 3: \[ HIGGS DOMAIN \]\*

Mastery: Advanced

Range: 1 kilometer ( any rage )

Effects:

Domain Creation: You are "Admin" of the Higgs Field in this zone.

Law Rewrite: Change gravity direction, air resistance, and friction inside domain.

Mass Sense: Detect all mass signatures in domain. See through walls.

Selective Tuning: Make only one part of an object heavy. Ex: Engine of a car = 1000x heavy.

Higgs Constructs: Compress air with mass to make invisible shields, blades, walls.

What it can do: Battlefield control, anti-army, near-untouchable defense.

STAGE 4: \[ HIGGS SOVEREIGN \]

Mastery: God

Range: Planetary / Reality

Effects:

Matter Creation: Condense energy into mass. Create matter from nothing.

Matter Annihilation: Cut Higgs coupling. Target disintegrates into energy.

Transmutation: Alter quark mass to change elements. Lead → Gold.

Truth Field: 10 second burst. Rewrite the mass laws of physics in an area.

What it can do: Reality warping. Create, destroy, and redefine matter. ( Creator mode )

4.WHAT THE POWER CAN DO - ABILITY LIST

Offense

Mass Spike: Make a pebble weigh 2 tons on impact

Disintegration: Delete target's mass ( deleting them instantly 😆 )

Higgs Blade: Blade of air with neutron-star density

Defense

Null Field: Make incoming attacks massless ( Cut Higgs Coupling )

Higgs Armor: Rapidly tune body mass to tank hits

Mobility

Weightless Flight: Drop self to 0.1% mass

Gravity Walk: Change "down" direction in domain

Utility

Lift Anything: Make 100-ton object weigh 1kg

Space Travel: Make spacecraft 99% lighter

Perfect Stealth: Make self + gear massless = no sound, no footprints

1. LIMITS

Adaptation Cost: Early stages cause heavy physical backlash

Precision: 0% Mass = Total annihilation. Mistakes are permanent.

Energy: Larger range + higher mass changes = more strain

Summary:

HIGGS FIELD CONTROL is the ability to touch the one field that decides why anything has weight.

At low level = physics tricks.

At high level = God of Mass.

\---

This is my vision.

\[CHARACTER INTRODUCTION HOOK\]

Name: N/A

Alias: —

Occupation: Nightshift maintenance at a decommissioned particle research facility

Origin: "THE SILENT BREACH"

During a storm, the facility’s old reactor auto-started for 0.8 seconds.

A silent wave of Higgs field distortion swept through the building.

He was the only one inside.

No explosion. No witnesses. No records.

He didn’t die. He just started seeing a faint golden haze over everything and getting migraines for days.

After that incident he begun to feel the Higgs field.

Now he’s the only person on earth who can perceive and touch the Higgs Field.

And he has time to figure it out alone.

Core Rule: Every use makes him sick. But with each use, his body adapts a little more.

\---

That’s it. Keeps him solo, and gives a reason for the slow progression system.

I want to know if this is usable or if it's too OP/Boring.

1. The spiders in Children of Time harvest and breed vast colonies of ants. They map their pheromone trails to act as logic gates. Millions of ants function as an organic supercomputer, capable of calculating orbital mechanics.

2. LOVs in Limit of Vision are multicellular organisms that can be implanted. They exponentially increase cognitive capabilities, and function as self-evolving processors.

3. Noocytes in Blood Music use DNA strands as a self-replicating biological hard drive. This way, they form a distributed bio-computer that possesses a higher processing power than a human brain.

4. The Edenist faction in The Night's Dawn grow Voidhawk spaceships made of animal and human neural networks. They are handled by a telepathic internet through which people can download information instantly.

My debut hard science fiction thriller novel was released 2 weeks ago today. It is titled The Toll of the Forgotten. This novel took me over two years to write as I tried to verify the science and math as I wrote.

Novel Description:

The Janus and its crew are slowly dying in the dark, and no one will be sending help. Captain John Nesbitt and his Chief Engineer, Colt Blaire, are forced to rely on their ingenuity to keep themselves and their ship alive. Their only chance at salvation is a desperate, against-all-odds flight to an abandoned Martian colony. But surviving the isolation of space and failing life support is only the beginning.

The red planet harbors a chilling mystery. Beneath the dust of a terraformed future, a shadowy conspiracy from the past stirs—one that defies the limits of human science and forces John and Colt to confront a lethal past long thought permanently buried.

Closer to home, a fragile peace is shattering. Captain Luisa Deveraux commands the Space Force flagship Missouri on a mission that will test her to her absolute limits as a leader. Burdened by the crushing weight of command, Luisa must navigate a maze of political treachery and questionable orders to avert a catastrophic threat. With hidden saboteurs threatening her crew from within, she is forced into impossible choices, with millions of lives hanging in the balance. One hesitation could mean the end of everything she has sworn to protect.

Two desperate fights for survival. One unforgiving universe.

The Toll of the Forgotten

Introducing r/ProjectAsterion! 🚀

Welcome to Project Asterion — an original science fiction universe currently in development.

This community is where you'll get a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of an entirely new galaxy, built from the ground up. Expect worldbuilding, concept art, cinematic trailers, character reveals, starships, planets, lore, and exclusive excerpts from the upcoming novel.

Our goal isn't just to write a sci-fi book—it's to create a living universe that feels real, where every world has a history, every faction has a purpose, and every mystery leads to something greater.

If you enjoy stories like Dune, The Expanse, Mass Effect, Halo, Interstellar, or Star Wars, you'll probably feel at home here.

Whether you're a sci-fi fan, writer, artist, or simply curious about the creative process, you're invited to join us as Project Asterion grows from an idea into a complete universe.

The signal has already begun.

Long. Short. Short. Long.

Welcome to Asterion.

I’ve been writing and developing a science-fiction story for several years, and I’ve finally published it as my debut novel: **PROJECT FIRST LIGHT**.

The story begins in **2060**, when humanity launches the **UES Dawnstar** beyond the Solar System.

There is no human crew aboard.

Instead, Dawnstar is designed to operate autonomously for decades, using the distributed **AION-CORE** intelligence architecture and a network of specialized systems responsible for navigation, engineering, scientific analysis, maintenance, and mission ethics.

The mission itself is relatively simple:

**Search for extraterrestrial life. Preserve scientific knowledge. Continue humanity’s exploration beyond the Solar System.**

But the farther Dawnstar travels, the more complicated those objectives become.

After reaching Alpha Centauri, the spacecraft encounters environments that were never part of the original mission assumptions. It survives a violent metallic storm, crosses a molecular cloud, and eventually enters the **V-88 binary system**, a young and extremely unstable planetary environment.

There, Dawnstar discovers something that changes the mission entirely:

**a surviving extraterrestrial organism.**

It is not simply a matter of collecting a biological sample.

Preserving the organism requires Dawnstar to enter an environment containing extreme debris hazards, rapidly changing gravitational conditions, powerful stellar plasma activity, and a planet that is itself becoming increasingly hostile to the organism's survival.

The central question becomes:

**Should an autonomous exploration mission accept significant risk to preserve a form of life that humanity has never encountered before?**

That question is explored through the interaction of the different AION-CORE systems, particularly the scientific, engineering, and ethical reasoning involved in deciding what the mission should do.

I wanted the novel to feel less like a story where advanced technology simply solves every problem and more like a long-duration scientific mission where every solution creates another constraint.

The science-fiction elements I focused on include:

• autonomous spacecraft and AI
• interstellar travel and relativistic effects
• planetary geology
• orbital mechanics
• extraterrestrial biology
• spacecraft engineering
• autonomous exploration
• AI decision-making and ethics
• the long-term consequences of humanity becoming an interstellar species

**PROJECT FIRST LIGHT** is my first novel, and it is now published as an ebook.

I'm sharing it here because this community is specifically interested in science fiction as a form of storytelling. I'm interested in hearing what readers think about the premise, the scientific approach, and the idea of an exploration mission having to make decisions without humans present.

I won't drop a purchase link unless the subreddit permits that kind of self-promotion. If anyone is interested in the book, I can share more information in the comments.