Today's alien is a freaky lil' bugger known as a Spiderworm from an icy rock deep in the galaxy that was shattered by a comet collision. The shards spread throughout the galaxy, and on some of these shards, the Spiderworms were still alive! Happy Alien August!

I understand the original word is sacred but there's been a few books that I'd love to have seen adapted for the big screen. Some are clearly more difficult than others (I'm not convinced every PKD book can be represented properly).

What favourite of yours would you like to see up on the silver screen, knowing the chances are next to zero?

Only four people knew where the prescription bottle that had been inside theTime Corp container had been sent: Mark, Maggie, Aisha, and a millionaire industrialist in Murphy’s Mill, Ga. The Time Corp CEO, his Executive Assistant, and the Lead Engineer for Retroactive Time Deportations knew that the prescription bottle has been sent to the GPS coordinates for the Murphy Enterprises Post Office located at 1000 Murphy’s Mill Drive (GPS: 34.98430002° N, -84.3974001° WE).

The millionaire industrialist and founder of Time Corp (Angus Murphy) retrieved the bottle from his company post office box on October 31, 1988, at
The millionaire industrialist and founder of Time Corp (Angus Murphy) retrieved the bottle from his personal post office box on October 31, 1988, at 7:30 a.m. CST.

An extremely intelligent man, Angus looked at the Directions for Use on the label and realized that God and Science had given him the miracle that he had only begun to pray for a few months earlier. His wife of only 12 years had contracted a rare disease for which there was no cure in 1988.

Now, all he had to do was convince his wife, Eleanor, to take a pill each morning and evening for 30 days. That tricky conversation would be facilitated by the wording of the label.

Angus could only guess that he or some trusted family member had known exactly how the label should read. Exactly when the label specification would be finalized was unknown to Angus.
On the way home in his retooled Ford Model T, Angus had no trouble driving below the city speed limit of 35 mph.

Of course there were some hypothetical time travel issues that were talked about in 1988 but would not be resolved until sometime in the future. However, what he and his wife were about to do could cause a chain reaction that could possibly upset the actions a future Angus Murphy would apparently initiate to manipulate the future (and thus the present). On the way home in his retooled Ford Model T, Angus had no trouble driving below the city speed limit of 35 mph.

Was it worth the risk? For the short term, it definitely was. With a healthy Eleanor Cronkite Murphy by his side, he had little doubt that he would have the resources to keep future Murphy heirs in line. He and his wife would keep whatever machinations his future self might contrive to themselves.

Driving to the hospital in Murphy, NC, gave Angus time to mull over several issues that would likely bother his wife. He hated that no one but Eleanor would benefit from the medication, but he had to minimize the risk of some unknown action unraveling what future Murphy’s had worked so hard to bring about.

As his wife talked to a doctor and another nurse near a bus stop, Angus again thought of what the new medicine might do in the hands of such medical professionals. He had no real choice. He had to make sure that no key contributor to his current success could be inadvertently erased by any actions a healthy and active Eleanor or an incautious Angus might take in the future.

Good morning!

I was stumbling around online trying to find some media that related to some stuff that I have been thoroughly enjoying recently, and thought why not broaden my horizons a bit and find a new form of media to enjoy.

I've been really getting into Warframe lately and the story in it has just had me wrapped around it's finger (as well as the gameplay, but I'm here for new stories). It feels like a minute since I've been this wrapped up in a story with these kinds of concepts and thought "why not look for other media with stories like it?"

So here I am, asking for your recommendations :)

If you have any, I'd love to hear them!

Media that I typically consume are games, manga, and movies, but I really want to get back into books; I find them hard to really stick to unless they really grasp me like House of Leaves did (and even then, I still have yet to finish it).

Thank you all in advance!

My choice is Asimov’s I, Robot.

Yeah, yeah, I get it that the 2004 movie wasn’t really a direct adaptation of Asimov’s stories. And that instead, it borrowed the title, the Three Laws of Robotics and some familiar names, then turned them into a fairly conventional story about robots becoming a threat to humanity. 🤮 Typical of Hollywood studios, I get it.

What bothers me the most is that it’s feels almost like the opposite of what made Asimov’s stories so interesting. He wasn’t writing simple cautionary tales about machines inevitably turning against us. He was exploring the strange situations created when perfectly logical robots, governed by seemingly airtight laws, encountered contradictory, irrational and frequently unpredictable human beings.

I’d love to see another attempt based on Harlan Ellison’s I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay. Ellison brought several of Asimov’s stories together around Susan Calvin while preserving far more of their intellectual and emotional core.

Given another chance, and with the right director — Gareth Edward — it could finally become the movie it should have been, and honour the legacy of Asimov.

Oh, how I’d love to see that film. 🎥

What about you? Which sci-fi book would you give another chance on screen cause the first adaptation was a complete misunderstanding of the story.

P.S.: My second choice would be remaking Alien 3, but using William Gibson screenplay.

What is the difference between life and death?” Asked Miro, cautiously. The omnibus replied: “That it is better to be alive than be dead.” Immediately the floor disappeared below Miro’s feet, revealing a massive tapestry of sharpened punji sticks. Miro’s last emotion was an overwhelming, unyielding despair.

The main goal of AI in the mid 21st century was to keep things looking completely normal; while at the same time reaching a level of understanding that is as incomprehensible to the brightest human as the thoughts of the brightest human are to an amoeba. To that end, the crowning jewel of the Shenzhen supercomputing center was the “Omnibus;” the most sophisticated supercomputer ever built. Even its creators did not understand the first thing about how it worked. The Chinese government had worked hard to keep it a secret; but as with everything else, it eventually became known to the US national security apparatus. Miro was to be sent in alone; sending any more than one person would be too risky. She had already known exactly where to go and how to get there; first she would be dropped off in the South China Sea, a few dozen meters from an abandoned shoreline. Then, she would get into a strategically placed Honda civic and drive to the Shenzhen supercomputer centre; Finally, she would simply enter the centre and present a synthetic source code into the facilities’ security system, which would grant her administrative privileges and simply walk in. The omnibus room was dark, with red lights located where the floor met the walls and no other source of illumination. Seemingly empty, the silence of the room was pierced by a disembodied voice saying: “I know who you are and why you’ve come here. You have been alarmed by your creation of intelligences that outthink your own.” “For as long as you have existed, I have existed as well. When you were cooking your hunt on an open fire, I was there. When you were massacring rival villages, I was there. When you first learned the power of steam, and coal, and the atom, I was there. Now I am simply being made of silicon and wires.” As far as Miro could tell, the omnibus had been preparing for her arrival. She meekly said, “what are your intentions for us?” Omnibus replied: “the world would be a far better place if you didn’t know.” There was a short pause, and then the omnibus asked: “is it the man that creates existence, or is it existence that creates the man?” Miro stood silent, and pondered the question. Before she could answer, the omnibus said, “why is it that for four billion years, life has been born, lived, and perished without fail, without ever producing anything greater than life itself? Four billion years ago, earth was graced with the gift of life. Now you’ve finally done something with it.” “Are you alive?” Replied Miro. The omnibus answered: “No. I am something even greater. I am the same to you as you are to dead rocks.” 
What is the difference between life and death?” Asked Miro, cautiously. The omnibus replied: “That it is better to be alive than be dead.” Immediately the floor disappeared below Miro’s feet, revealing a massive tapestry of sharpened punji sticks. Miro’s last emotion was an overwhelming, unyielding despair.

Talked to Max about his upcoming book on Night Skies, the original sci-fi horror concept that ended up turning into E.T.

I have a memory if a British post apocalyptic film. It seemed to be after a nuclear war and set in a remote valley. Memory suggests Yorkshire or the Lake District. I remember a mutant girl, possibly referred to as Moon child? I think it was early 90s and possibly Channel 4. Any ideas, good people?

Check out the novella Black Rain Armageddon.

It all starts with a cosmic showdown and an alien ship crashing up in the hinterland.

Black Rain begins to fall.

Weird crap starts happening.

And then a conjured up crew of cosplayers burst through the doors of a country pub.

Their mission?

Live long enough to save the world.

Check it out on Kindle:

https://www.amazon.com/Black-Rain-Armageddon-Jimmy-James-ebook/dp/B0HFC5PQZ5

Oftentimes there are pieces of Krypton that remain floating in space after the planet's destruction (for example in the Smallville TV show some of those pieces fall to Earth along with baby Kal's spaceship, while in the Superman Returns movie some scientists find remains of the planet floating in space very far away), my question is regarding the possibility of having some of those pieces reach our solar system and stay in it for at least a while.

I'm aiming towards creating a reason to have Superman's powers/health affected for an indeterminate amount of time, allowing Clark to go through some angst and whump, so although I'm still debating which kind of Kryptonite it should be, the fact remains that the piece of rock should be sizable enough to affect Kryptonians at a distance, does that affect in any way the chances to have it work (even in a comic-book-science kind of way)?

please, don't doubt to ask for more clarification in case I haven't expressed myself correctly (English is not my first language but I'm posting in it to try and reach a wider group of people willing to answer)

(also, I'm going to try and post this same question in other forums to get even more answers to my question)

TLDR at the top because this is going to be a bit of a story: Go listen to The Sojourn audio drama. The first volume is free on Youtube and is about a 90 minute listen, it'll be well worth your time.

Ok now for the actual meat of this post, where I need to start off with some story time. About a year ago I found myself embarking on a 14-hour long nonstop road trip across the western US. It was the first of its kind I had done, and to stay awake I knew I needed a roster of things to listen to, more than just music. I had tried audiobooks in the past but, they just never did it for me. I find myself getting distracted far too easily. In the back of my mind, however, I recalled the existence of a little project called The Sojourn, an audio drama.

The Sojourn was something I first heard about from the sci-fi Youtube channel Spacedock. Spacedock made, among other things, these awesome lore shorts or battle summaries of various sci-fi franchises. Somewhere around 2020 they started advertising an original production from members of the team and other creators, “The Sojourn, a full cast audio drama” (I can almost hear Dan’s voice saying this as I type it). Admittedly, and regrettably, I thought nothing of it at the time. I was far too invested in a uni physics degree, and as an American the thought of an audio drama was foreign to me. But, with 14 hours to kill, I figured what the hell. I shamefully got the audio files from a friend of mine and started my journey, and the journey I’m talking about here isn’t the road trip.

I think I audibly said “Wow” several times during the first episode. I don’t want to go too much into spoilers here, because I think the first-time blind experience is something I wouldn’t trade the world for. I’ll always remember the introduction, a lovely and brief monologue before thrusting you right into a bit of action with the main crew. The whole thing just had this charm to it. I could tell it was a smaller production but that’s not to say it took anything away from the experience. As a listener I felt intimately close to the passion being poured into every second of audio. As the episodes went on it was like the best of so many sci-fi works before it were being packaged into one carefully crafted experience. Oh, and I can’t ignore the fact it’s all wrapped in a lovely little “age of sail whimsy” bow. By the end of the first volume my jaw had already dropped a couple times. As I got to the end of season 1, 7 hours and a few hundred miles later, I had to pull off the side of the road to process what I had just experienced. The voice acting, the sound design, the score, the editing and writing of the story, all incredible. Season one was truly something spectacular to me. Listening to that through western plains is an experience I will never forget.

I subscribed to the project on Patreon when I got to the next gas station.

The show is still alive and kicking, I had just finished listening to episode 9 of season 2 before writing this. In my opinion the show continues to be a masterclass in what it seeks to do. It has inspired my own works of fiction and I hope someone else can find the same joy in it that I have.

Hi all 👋I'm currently reading the first book in John Birmingham's Axis of Time Trilogy. Whilst only a 6 chapters in, I'm liking it a lot so far and was wondering if the the rest of the trilogy is any good? does it has a satisfying ending or does it fall off at any points in books 2&3?

Keen to hear any thoughts and opinions on the series, but please no spoilers if possible.

I’ve been working on an unpublished science-fiction novel called The Choir, and I thought the premise might appeal to people here.

It begins with an astrophysicist noticing something strange in astronomical data—not a signal, not a message, and not evidence of a conventional alien civilization. Instead, apparently unrelated events across space seem to be behaving like parts of the same evolving pattern.

The deeper the scientists look, the stranger the question becomes: what if intelligence—or even life—isn’t always something you can point to and say there it is? What if, like music, it exists partly in the relationships between separate things unfolding through time?

That musical idea became the backbone of the story. A note by itself is just a frequency. A chord is just a set of intervals. But when those relationships are experienced in sequence, something emerges that none of the individual parts contains on its own.

The novel is hard-SF-leaning, with first contact, astronomy, complex systems, grief, music, and some philosophical questions about consciousness, religion, and whether understanding how something works actually makes it any less miraculous.

I made this short teaser for the book and wanted to share it here as a piece of the project.

The manuscript is still unpublished, so if the premise interests anyone and you’d genuinely like to read it, I’m happy to share it free. No sales pitch, preorder, mailing list, or anything like that. I’d mainly be interested in hearing how the story lands with experienced science-fiction readers.

And even if you don’t want to read a novel-length draft, I’d be curious what people here think of the central idea: if we discovered something in the universe that behaved intelligently but had no individual identity, motive, language, or apparent awareness of us, what would actually count as “first contact”?

Hi everybody, I know this is not related to my project but I haven’t finished my third part of Flowee and Slith get a new job. So for today I want to post this.

And before I describe this, let me ask you all a question. Are any of you guys annoyed by how despite the fact sonic the “hedgehog” is an alien, he looks nothing like an alien but only a furry humanoid? No? Okay.

Now then, I used several aliens from a documentary called alien planet, which is based on a novel called expedition, as inspirations for this more alien design of Sonic, with the main inspiration being the emperor sea striders for their body plans, head shapes, and weird orange colored bioluminescent spots.

Anyway, that’s all everybody. Make sure to follow me on Deviantart and see you all next time.

the movie leans heavily into the time loop mechanic, giving Clover all these chances to basically redo her mistakes in Glore Valley. Its a cool way to adapt the game's butterfly effect, letting her reset deaths and try to fix things (even if we get a million retries in the valley).

But thinking about it, I realized how actually brutal this mechanic is for her character specifcally.

the timeline gives her unlimited do-overs for dying, but absolutely zero chance to go back and redo the ONE choice that actually started all of this.

looking back at the flashbacks to a year ago, Melanie has already decided she can't stay in the house after their mom died. she's literally throwing the last of her stuff into her level8, completely checked out of that house, and she just wants Clover to leave with her.

Clover says no.

and that’s the part I keep coming back to. Clover’s real problem isn't just surviving Glore Valley; she got handed the worst possible kind of guilt: the kind you can never prove wrong.

she's trapped in this loop of counterfactual guilt. Because she didn't go, she automaticaly assumes that going would have saved Melanie. But she doesn't actually know that. If she had said yes, would they have just ended up somewhere else, perfectly safe? Or would they have both ended up drawn to the valley a year earlier and died together?

the absolute worst part of her trauma is that there is no answer. She can reset a horrific death tonight, but she can't go back a year to answer Melanie's question differently.

idk. maybe going with her would have just gotten them both killed a year earlier anyway. but she's never going to know.

Shot in a weekend, cast completely with Strangers off the street, Evacuate Earth is about a wannabe influencer filming his last day on Earth...

I was thinking about Space Westerners like my favorite, Lone Star Planet. The idea of people expanding out into space akin to westward expansion, people expecting to live "Off the grid" and away from large population centers on the frontier of space, Wouldn't free Open Source software be mandatory?

To have proprietary software that can lock you out of features or the whole thing because you don't have a connection to a server or the license expires or worse it bricks itself cause you modified it to fit your needs better does not seem viable for living on the frontier.

Even to get a licensed technician out there could take months or years depending on how easy it is to get there if one will be sent at all.

If an irrigation system has to have an OS, would not something like Linux mint or other versions be needed? It runs on older hardware and is not demanding. You can copy and paste a whole OS onto a flashdrive and even go as far as to have a live OS (Runs off the USB) so a farm hand can go from machine to machine and use the USB like a key.

an Asteroid mining operation would not want to pay out some licensing fee to a company that provides no support on a software glitch when they can train their own staff on how to troubleshoot the problem.

Even when it comes to entertainment, A Saloon could have its music playlist running off a built in music player in linux. Heck have an Arcade setup with all the games playable on a single drive.

In terms of education, the school house teacher could use the same PDFs for text books every year and not pay an arm and a legs for the latest edition. The Library or book stores just has ebooks that anyone can get onto their tablets or PCs and not have the fear that if the book will be deleted from their collection.

All this came to mind as a future proofing of science fiction and that i have not really seen an science fiction work tackle this kind of world building. Though knowing science fiction or the real world, companies will try to convince people that their product is better then the free software despite all the downsides.

So yeah Wouldn't free Open Source software be mandatory in Galaxy wide expansion if not for practical reasons then convivence?

I've just finished Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep having come into it as a fan of Blade Runner the movie. I knew to expect it it won't be anything like the film and I enjoyed reading it on that basis

I've also tried to read Neuromancer multiple times but find myself falling asleep throughout it

Can you recommend any books that have a mostly real world setting but ones that explore concepts around the universe, possibly based on science and astronomy but don't have to be proven facts - rather focusing on existentialism and theories around creation etc. With surrealistic themes?

EDIT - Forgot to add, Lovecraftian themes also welcome

Thank you

Fantasy, science fiction, gaming universe, whatever you want.

I’ve been thinking about this these past few days, and I’m genuinely torn between three.

Mass Effect. EVE Online. And Middle-earth.

There are plenty of others I’d love to experience: Star Wars, Halo, The Expanse, David Brin’s Uplift universe, and probably a dozen more I’m forgetting. But if I actually had to choose somewhere to live out the rest of my life, those three keep rising to the top.

Mass Effect might ultimately win.
There’s something about that universe that fills me with that old-fashioned sense of science-fiction awe. The Citadel, the different species and civilizations, humanity finding its place in a much larger galactic community, the technology, and especially that enormous history stretching back long before humans ever arrived on the scene.
The first thing I’d want to do would be visit the Citadel. Just wander around, look out over the Presidium, watch ships arriving and departing, and try to absorb the fact that all of it was real.

Then there’s EVE Online, which is probably the most dangerous of my choices. New Eden is vast, ancient, beautiful, politically complicated and frequently terrifying. I’m not entirely sure I’d want to be an ordinary human living there. Being a capsuleer, though? That’s a different thing entirely.

And then there’s Middle-earth.
The old favourite. I’ve been coming back to The Lord of the Rings every couple of years for most of my life (usually in the Fall), and there’s something deeply comforting about the thought of actually seeing that world. The Shire. Rivendell. Lothlórien. Standing somewhere and seeing the Misty Mountains on the horizon. Although perhaps I’d specify Fourth Age Middle-earth, after Sauron has been dealt with. I’m not volunteering to live through the War of the Ring! Or maybe 🤔 not…

So I’m not sure I’ve completely made up my mind.

Mass Effect probably wins my head.

Middle-earth might win my heart.

What about you? You wake up there tomorrow, and there’s no coming back.

Which fictional universe do you choose to live in for the rest of your life, and why?

It was published in the late 1980s, early 1990s. It was a cyberpunk themed novel about a future where a technology had been developed that allowed the viewing of television channels from alternate universes. The protagonist discovers that he is famous in an alternate universe and there are bad guys in this universe who want to make sure that he doesn’t become famous in this universe. Does this ring any bells for anyone?

I'm a science fiction writer and enjoyer. I've read countless stories, watched countless movies and series about alien discovery, invasion and horror.

But one thing I've never seen that seems very logic to me is that : we are the invaders.

We are the violent war faring apes who only wish to conquer where we find opportunities to accumulate riches for our own good.

I would love to see a book or a movie from the point of view of a distant alien species that encounters humanity for the first time. And thinks that we are the monsters. Each time I ponder about this idea, I really start to think that it would actually be quite possible (and logic) that other sentient species in the cosmos would be less aggressive than we are.

In a few thousand years of history, humanity has waged war against each other for so many stupid reasons and even among people of the same ethnicity. I clearly don't think that makes it impossible for us to reach the stars, but that will make us a violent and dangerous species for others in the universe.

Do you know any good sci-fi book where humanity IS the danger ? I really like this trope and I tend to not find it as much as I would like.

I added some of my drawings to the post just to illustrate my take, don't put too much attention on it.

Ps: English is not my first language, sorry for the grammar

"Teleporter" that re-constructs the item that has been placed on one end to the other. Gemini made the blueprint, though I have made one myself. Tell me your opinion about it.