#science fiction novels

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Zenya - art by Kelly Freas (1975)

[rotten-whispers]

Calling all LGBTQ+ horror and scifi authors!!

I want to promote your work, as it is hard for us to get our books out there on Tumblr :)

Send an ask with your novel, cover, and blurb, and I'll include your book in a master post, as well as an individual post if you're comfortable with being @'ed there!

Stay strong, fellow authors!

[thefugitivesaint]

I had never looked at a robot that closely before, having been brought up to fear and respect them. And I became aware, looking at his stupid, manufactured face, that I was seeing for the first time what the significance of this dumb parody of humanity really was: nothing, nothing at all. Robots were something invented once out a blind love for the technology that could allow them to be invented. They had been made and given to the world of men as the weapons that nearly destroyed the world had once been given, as a “necessity.” And, deeper still, underneath that blank and empty face, identical to all the thousands of faces of its make, I could sense contempt—contempt for the ordinary life of men and women that the human technicians who had fashioned it had felt. They had given robots to the world with the lie that they would save us from labor or relieve us from drudgery so that we could grow and develop inwardly. Someone must have hated human life to have made such a thing—such an abomination in the sight of the Lord. from 'Mockingbird' by Walter Tevis, 1980 (appropriated from biblioklept)

[latveriansnailmail]

I am trying to remember the author and title of a science fiction book I read prior to 1996 about a planet with two species of bird people. The two species are hostile to each other and both are being poached because neither yet fits the criteria for sentience as set by the dominant intergalactic government. A human ambassador is sent to live among one group of lake-dwelling people (let's call them motherduckers) and look for the qualifying hallmarks of sentience so that they can gain protection from the poachers. The human is a female of American First Peoples descent and is deaf, which is useful here because the motherduckers' distress call can deafen or kill a human. The other species is called Aquila and are more hawk-like as the name would indicate. Some of the characters are named Flies-Too-Fast, Kills-The-Ripper, and the child of the hosting family, Sailor. The human ambassador confirms the motherduckers' sentience by examining the wall decorations they're always on about with filtered light since birds see different sections of the spectrum. She discovers the decor to be artistic murals that cinch their bid for personhood. At one point late in the book the human goes to camp by herself and greet the sun in accordance with the traditions of her people only to discover that her tent was facing the wrong way, the sun rising in the west on this planet. She comes to understand herself as being a heyoka/ backwards person/ contrary. This is about all I remember.

[pulpsandcomics2]

Otis Adelbert Kline - the Grandon trilogy    covers by Roy Krenkel

Planet of Peril  (Ace. 1963)

Prince of Peril   (Ace, 1964)

The Port of Peril  (Ace, 1964)

[djmunden]

An amazing review of my novel, Dusk Mountain Blues. If this doesn’t convince you to read my book or support my Kickstarter, I don’t know what will!

[ebookporn]

3 Body Problem: Lawyer sentenced to death for Lin Qi murder

by Kelly Ng, BBC News

The release of Netflix's series 3 Body Problem has been watched millions of times around the globe since its release late last month.

It has even found an audience in China where Netflix is unavailable, sparking much chatter among viewers of the series.

But many fans of the three-book series, credited with propelling China's nascent science fiction genre after its publication in 2008, have also been paying attention to a court room in Shanghai where one of the key players behind the adaptation was sentenced to death just a day after the show's release.

His crime? Murdering a man sometimes dubbed China's "billionaire millennial" - the gaming tycoon Lin Qi, whose company Yoozoo Games owns the rights for film adaptations of the Chinese science fiction epic.

According to the court, Xu Yao, who was known as a distinguished lawyer, became consumed by professional rivalry after Lin sidelined him shortly after he helped land the Netflix deal in 2020.

Within months of this apparent slight, Lin was dead - the victim of a poisoning plot described as both "premeditated" and "extremely despicable" by the court last week.

READ MORE

[thedepartmentofdiscoveries]

Demon from The Gaea Trilogy by John Varley, 1984 with cover art by Steve Ferris.

[therogerclarkfanclub]

"Bones In Blackbird"

Author: J. R. Frontera Narrated by: Roger Clark Series: The Legacy of Lucky Logan, Book #3 Release Date: November 02, 2022 Run Time: 16 hours, 47 minutes

👇 Listen to a sample Roger's latest audiobook! 👇

Publisher's Summary:

"Bullets and brawlin’ he can handle… …prophetic old witches and living statues, maybe not so much…" Caught in a bidding war for his sister’s freedom he can hardly hope to win, Van Delano embarks on his most challenging quest yet: to locate previously undiscovered Old World ruins for the outlaw queen Nine-Fingered Nan. Except he ain’t the only one looking for such treasure. And the creatures that protect such ancient things defy all understanding. Amid a boomtown suddenly teeming with prospectors, academics, curiosity seekers, religious zealots, cutthroats and thieves, Van struggles to sort truth from legend even as he scrambles to stay one step ahead of the law. But navigating this strange new territory comes at a price, and Van soon realizes his sister ain't the only thing he has left to lose… For fans of The Coilhunter Chronicles series, Indiana Jones, and the Red Dead Redemption games… saddle up for another gritty, gunslingin', action-packed adventure in this third installment of The Legacy of Lucky Logan series and grab your copy today!

NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART!

This series contains adult themes, situations, and language. Additionally, each installment of this series will end on a SOFT cliffhanger, with the final events of one book setting up the events of the next book. And lastly, the sci-fi elements are a semi-slow build, appearing in a "lost civilization is rediscovered" kind of way.

"I confess I really want to know what happens next." -- Roger Clark, Arthur Morgan in Red Dead Redemption II

────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──────

Bones in Blackbird is available from:

Audible ✰ Audiobooks.com ✰ AudioBookNow.com ✰ Barnes & Noble ✰ Chirp Books ✰ Downpour ✰ Google Play ✰ Hoopla ✰ Kobo ✰ Libro.fm ✰ Overdrive + Libby ✰ Scribd

TIP: If you want to find more audiobooks from Roger, you can click on the "Roger's Audiobooks" tag or check out my pinned post. Happy Listening!

[quasar-concept]

Say for instance I had a completed original ya/na sci-fi novel,,, is there anyone who might be interested in potentially being a beta reader?

I'd have some specific questions for you to answer on things such as pacing, characters, voice, grammar,l etc, and I'd be asking you to read the whole thing (expecting it to be 85-95k words, about 450 pages)

(I don't have a complete manuscript yet but I just want to put out some feelers lol, cause

lol)

In the meantime I'll be posting about it so you can decide if you're interested later on, too

[tscnews]

TSC News TV host Fred Richani interviews award-winning author Dana Dargos about co-writing the critically acclaimed science fiction novel Einstein in the Attic with her uncle Said Al Bizri, coming up with the story's unique concept, being an independent writer, her activism, working JobsForLebanon.com, her Lebanese heritage, and advice for success!

For more info: https://danadargos.com/

Follow Dana Dargos: https://www.instagram.com/officialdanadargos/

https://www.tiktok.com/@danadargos

✅Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/TSCGaming?sub_confirmation=1 

 Dana Dargos’ impressive career spans across multiple fields, including journalism, technical writing, and content creation. After earning her degree in English Literature from UC Berkeley, she held various positions such as columnist, magazine and film review writer, editor, and content creator for prominent companies like Facebook and Lucid Motors. Additionally, she collaborated with her uncle, Said Al Bizri, to create her debut novel, Einstein in the Attic, which has won numerous awards.

[scifi4wifi]

Science Fiction Novels Don't Destroy Society

Corrupt people emulating the worst aspects of human nature do. TYLER AUSTIN HARPER hyperbolically declares: “Science fiction is not simply politically useless, it is dangerous. Two centuries of sci-fi have been a net negative for the world, fueling the megalomaniacal fantasies of tech tyrants and inspiring the invention of untold horrors. The world would be a better place without it.” Science…

[rotten-whispers]

Tales from a Mall Masterpost

Status: Available for purchase on Amazon!

Online Sneak Peek

Redbubble Stickers

Full Tags/Navigation

Are you tired of living in the 21st century? Come explore the Fresh Malls, an establishment in a sci-fi 22nd century world, where ferrets have mechanical attachments, people have tails, and there is a squad of approaching zombies that annoyingly blocks our ability to buy the newest summer fashions!

[warblingandwriting]

I was not into The Archive Undying

I had a hard time reading this book - and full disclosure I DNF'ed it, I just couldn't keep going, so if you're a fan feel free to not read this. It's more of a vent/rant because I don't have any other way to get my thoughts about it out.... and I have Thoughts. The book, to me, is indicative of a lot of stuff I dislike in modern writing so I just want to get a few thoughts out here.

Personal Gripes:

Written in the present tense: I simply dislike it in a story, I mush prefer past tense, and present tense just sounds sort of... wrong to me. On top this, I think the present tense contributes to what felt rushed about the story to me, bypassing really interesting plot/worldbuilding elements without explaining them was annoying in and of itself, and the choice of present tense compounded this issue for me, that I'll talk about more in depth later.

MC and his voice: I’m not a fan of the main character and his voice. Honestly a lot of it really feels like the author wanted to write an anti hero, but was afraid that the Online folks would come for her for having an unlikable main character so she constantly explicitly states that there is something deeper beneath his veneer of unkindness. Something I neither needed to know nor cared about, at least, at the beginning of the story. It wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t so clumsy, with the main character often directly thinking things like about how he’s worried that he has the urge to be nice to people etc. Obviously this isn’t the only book to do that, but I don’t enjoy it so it goes in the personal gripes section. I also just don’t enjoy the way the characters are written in general, at least at this point they all have very similar voices, and those voices feel very ‘today modern’ for a book set in the future. It’s just in the cadence of their dialogue, but it irks me a bit.

General Gripes:

Show and Tell: The book sort of does too good of a job of trying to show and not tell when it comes to the world, and the opposite when it comes to the characters. Like Sunai’s constant, very direct thoughts about how he is this or that (for a loner who doesn’t like to think he’s awfully good at dissecting his own emotions), the other characters get similar treatment where we’re often told very directly what they’re thinking or feeling. Admittedly this is a bit personal, as I do prefer books that are a bit more subtle, wherein characters often can’t state their direct feelings because they don’t know or totally understand them. But as it is I feel like I have a very narrow idea of what Candon’s (really interesting!) world is like, but I already know everything about her characters.

For a high concept sci-fi novel like this I would expect (and prefer) a focus on worldbuilding first, with the characters remaining obscure, getting to know them as the book went on, while at the same time getting a solid view of the world in the beginning so that as the story goes on I need less explanations. This is not helped by the book being written in the third person, since the omniscient narrator could just explain things without the (alleged) immersion breaking problem of characters explaining things they should already know to each other. It frankly feels like another preemptive reaction to a criticism I see a lot online around explaining worldbuilding. Many people want it to be organic, to just be thrown into a world and figure it out, and while I think that works in certain books with less complex worlds (something like The Mortal Engines comes to mind), in this book there is simply too much going on for the slapdash ‘the main character says something and you infer from there’ style of exposition Candon goes for. It feels like when someone has read and re-read their own novel so many times they forget which details are extraneous and which are vital to a first time reader.

Clunky events: The way things happen in this book also feels very clunky to me, like the pacing seems off. The first time I noticed this was in chapter one, when Sunai, who has awoken on a strange brage, decides to go talk to the captain to see what’s going on, as he was blackout drunk the last night, and doesn’t remember how or why he’s here. It’s written like this:

“...goes to track down the rig’s captain. He finds her near the head of the rig...” he just... goes to look for her and finds her. At this point I don't know if the rig travels by air, land, or water, no idea what the layout might be, and only the vaguest idea of what it’s purpose is. When I read the first sentence I figured I was probably about to get some explanation of how he gets to the spot the captain is in, some idea of what the rig is, it’s happening during a tense scene where Sunai has spotted the AI So-Beloved, so I presume Candon wanted to keep it fast paced for ensuing battle, but for me it didn’t work here. I would have preferred a bit of an info dump, because I genuinely think Candon has created a complex and interesting world here, I just wish I had understood it. I think this sequence may have worked better if Sunai had gone to find the captain, uncertain of why he was there, and had to walk around the rig a bit to find her, giving the reader a better idea of what exactly this rig is, and it's layout. And then spotted the AI from the captain’s window, and have the battle ensue from there to give a little time for explanations. Granted, I don’t need everything perfectly spelled out for me, but a little context would have helped.

Clunky writing: This was pretty mild, but mixed with everything else it felt like a major crutch in this novel. Candon’s writing is often simply redundant, which may seem counter-intuitive to what I’ve just been saying, but specifically, once again, she is redundant about character thoughts and feelings, and small details that didn’t need to be explained, while she’ll fly over a really interesting idea once, and then hardly ever return to it. Early in the novel, a character notes that in one lanaguage, the word for ‘archivist’ was a synonym for ‘vital organs’ that’s interesting! I wish she had actually made up a new word in this fictional language instead of always using 'archivist'. But we need to heard about how conflicted Sunai is over Veyadi 20 times a chapter.

Frankly, I think in spite of the seemingly complex world, Candon was more interested in her characters than her ideas, and for me, that is a writing style that demands a less complex world, something more recognizable. Or, perhaps, a longer book that took a little more time with itself to explore both. A mix of the personal and general grievances I had led to me not really liking this book, and I must admit my guard goes up every time I read something that seems to have been written to anticipate criticisms I see a lot on goodreads, especially when they’re criticisms I don’t necessarily agree with.

[prokopetz]

Contemporary Japanese light novels and classic American sci-fi are basically evil opposites when it comes to their titling conventions: both titles will be long and rambling, but the former will be a prosaically descriptive phrase that lays out the story's entire premise, while the latter will be a line from a poem the author liked that tells you absolutely fucking nothing.

[pulpsandcomics2]

Perry Rhodan #2 and #3    (Ace Books, 1969)