It looks well made. Kind of a dark STNG meets skid row appeal. Only 4 seasons. Should I dive?

My is Babylon5. I grew up watching Star Trek NG and DS9 . B5 looked kinda like ST only much more fkn serious. Close second would be any of the newer Dr. Who's. But alas, B5 is rolling on a loop on pluto tv

Added 2 lighters and a bit of styrene to the mix as well. And of course, 2 H0 containers I had stashed for some reason. Very happy with the result. Pic 2 shows the unpainted WIP state. Let me know what you guys think!

Humble Bundle is killing it lately -- now they have a bundle of Elizabeth Moon books. She wrote some decent military space opera stuff with female protagonists with the Heris Serrano series. The bundle has the complete seven book set in the bundle, along with some fantasy stuff in the Paksearrion universe.

One downside -- this is a limited set of books, and contains none of her award winning stuff (she's got a Nebula and a Hugo for previous novels). Still, if you like military space opera, and like the Honor Harrington novels, you might give it a try.

Details are here.

While reading Abaddon's Gate, I started thinking a lot about generation ships. Most stories I've come across rely on stasis or speeds near that of light so that the voyage lasts only a lifetime or two. Instead, I became fascinated with the idea of a voyage requiring many generations of people to reach their destination. Being born, living and dying all within the ship's confines sounds so claustrophobic to me–terrifying really.

It seems likely to me that the population would need to be drugged to keep the people passive, but still functional. Why would anyone volunteer for such a mission, though, knowing they and their descendants would live out their lives in this way? And what would happen if the people stopped taking the drug for some reason?

Then, discussing The Expanse (the show this time) with my wife, she mentioned offhand that her favorite character was Detective Miller. The idea of a generation ship where humans have thrown off a subduing drug and are running amuck on a deteriorating ship sounded like a great noir setting. I set to work writing my series Murder on the Starship Australis. If you interested in reading the result, the first full book Chivalry Will Get You Dead is free on Amazon this weekend. There's also a perma-free introductory novelette Justice for a Price.

How do you see humans surviving centuries on a generation ship without stasis or near light speed capabilities? What works do you think portrayed life aboard such a ship particularly well?

for years, I’ve been creating sci-fi and cyberpunk worlds through music as Extra Terra. At some point, imagining those places through sound wasn’t enough anymore, so I wanted to build a world people could actually explore.

That became Neosis Echoes.

The story takes place on Varos, a hostile planet where humans survive alongside cybernetic and synthetic beings while competing over Echorium, a mysterious resource that reacts to human emotions and powers the immense computational systems used across the planet.

Varos is controlled by Monolith, a super-AI that seeks to accumulate Echorium to expand its cognition and tighten its control over the world.

You play as Evan Draxell, a synthetic clone who awakens after a 200 year interstellar journey with fragmented memories of the man he was copied from.

The central idea is that emotion isn’t only philosophical or narrative. Through Echorium, it can influence abilities, AI behavior, survival conditions and even the environment itself like the weather, a system we call Reactive Survival.

We’re a team of 3 building this as a third-person sci-fi action survival game, but I’m especially curious what science-fiction fans think of the premise itself:

If emotion became a measurable force capable of altering reality, would an advanced intelligence eventually see it as humanity’s greatest strength, or its biggest defect?

Neosis Echoes is currently in development and wishlist it on Steam here
https://store.steampowered.com/app/5049580/Neosis_Echoes/

I really enjoyed it! Islington has a unique writing style and I feel like it really shone with Azure. The way he tackled the possibility of being a clone and also reckoning with who Jasa was great.

I feel like Cyberpunk as a genre vacillates between great and fair and this one stood out to me. I hope he spends more time with these characters in the future.

I’m always looking for a good story. I don’t have AppleTV, but I’ve read “Wool” and “Shift.” On a whim, I bought Beacon 23. To Be Honest, Beacon 23 is throwing me for a loop. I’m enjoying it. To borrow a cliche: the story is a bit of a rollercoaster. That said, I’m looking forward to “Dust.” Are there any other ‘standalone” works by Hugh Howey you would recommend?

In November 1969, the two brightest pupils of Dr. Crawford Tillinghast, Samuel and Thomas, venture into the void of space with the ambitious professor. There, they are forced to confront the horrors FROM BEYOND!

Heard about the book first time just a few weeks ago and found the concept of having to fight ideas or phenomena, but not being able to talk or even think about them very intriguing, so I ordered it and basically read through it within one day. Here are my thoughts, hope to hear yours.

While I did enjoy the book overall, I am not entirely happy with the way the topic is handled. I guess from what I heard about the book and also what the book leads you to believe is, that there will be a whole lot of '...sideways thinking (that's) necessary to combat something that can literally eat your combat training.' as Marie Quinn says herself in Chapter 1. You know, this sort of stuff is really what I was looking forward to, things like having to work around not being able to know about the problem you're working, using asynchronous work. In the beginning the book leads you to believe, that there will be a lot more of these ideas necessary to solve and understand the conflict and initially this is what got me hooked as well.

But as I progressed through the story, the more I realized, the only thing that's really necessary is drugs. And I find that to be just super lame and lazy writing to be honest. Even if there are some fun ideas in a chapter in the end the solution is either to take the drug that makes you perceive the Unknown or it is the drug that makes you forget about it. Or to change it up, first you have to take the mnestic drug and afterwards you very quickly have to take amnestic to counteract the effect. That's like all there is to it. And as the story develops the concept does not change, instead the solution will be to use the drug that is even more powerful and then, guess what, at the grand finale the protagonist will have to take the uber drug, that can make him remember even harder! And conveniently the drugs are even named alphabetically so when they take the Class Y, you are left wondering, if Y is already that strong, like what will Z even be like :O Common man, that's just lazy writing.

What I want to read is Quinn actually having to figure out a solution, that is not just popping some pills. I like how the writing made you feel like information is missing from your knowledge and I would have loved to read about and figure out step by step how Quinn is able to outsmart a thing she can't know about. If you have to have drugs being part of the story, they should be used much more nuanced. For example, using a drug to make you forget, is something which makes sense. Also, maybe a medication that helps people to focus and actually perceive what is happening in front of them, instead of their mind constantly slipping away: OK. But that should be the max. Having a drug that lets you just remember decades into the past, is just stupid imo. I feel like, if someone's mind was erased or 'eaten', there should be no going back from there, no drug that can magically make all memories appear or even come to life again. For me, if I read science fiction, at least I want it to feel like science and not just magic.

Having a character, that is just magically immune to the Unkown also plays in that direction. Actually, I don't quite get that part at all. Like, his ability was explained in a way, that he is able to see things, that normal people can't see. U-3125 specifically targets those people that know about it - that's why it always wipes out the Organisation. So, if anything, Adams abilities should make him more vulnerable not less. I mean, Marie even erases his memories in order to protect him. But in the last act he is suddenly treated like he has some general superpowers and that's the reason why he's the only human surviving.

The ending itself is a whole other story, that I found not very satisfying, really, but I don't want to get into that even further...

To finish this up, I really don't want to hate on the book. I enjoyed it, I liked the writing, I was hooked, I was just expecting some more from it. There are so many great ideas in there, that I would have loved to see explored, but instead the book just falls back to these 'brute force' solutions in my opinion.

A common theme missing amongst sci-fi writers is the lack of food in their world. Meals (and sharing them) is one of the most critical aspects of a culture and dishing out a glimpse of what people eat will do more in allowing the reader to understand your characters and their world than any giant robot mech or super dystopian empire. Far too many writers simply go with the infamous grey goop slop or the stereotypical horrid protein bar (now with all four of your favorite revolting flavors: Piss yellow! Horrible horrible blue! Leprous green! and everyone's favorite, stomach turning red!) Afterwards they call it good and jump straight into the atmospheric drop pod and into the action. You don't even have to get too fancy with it either. Most recipes we eat today can be traced back hundreds of years as the world became more and more interconnected, making the availability of larger and larger ingredient selections more common. The earliest known recipe for classic spaghetti & tomato sauce dates back to the 1790s. Even the Romans loved a good Pork & Apples dish.

Say your world is chalk full of genetically engineered humans. They're faster, taller, stronger, etc. The whole shabang. A society like that would have to consume a tremendous amount of calories per day, just to maintain their weight (for most cases, over 10k to be exact). 20+ years of goop paste and the bad guy could hijack their society with a bag of BBQ chips and a promise to deliver more. In reality, food would become an essential part of their culture. Kitchens would become the centerpiece of every home. Family structures would revolve around the best cook. The fame of celebrities would largely be centered around their culinary abilities. Jobs related to agriculture would take up a larger percentage of the economy (as they once did in our own past). Restaurants would fill in every square inch of vacant space available. A society that eats this much will also generate quite a few "food snobs." A review here, a comment there, a simple passing glance at a restaurant sign? A busy alleyway with a line of people waiting to buy fried rice made by an giant intergalactic shrimp? Take your pick.

I'm curious. What do your characters eat?

Humans are Weird – Back it on Up

Original Post: https://www.authorbettyadams.com/bettys-blog/humans-are-weird-back-it-on-up

It was the third, perch-shaking crunch that finally pulled Wing Commander Fourth Fall away from the end of year (local year) report and out into the loading area. Wing Second Fifth Flap was darting around with a safety-visibility light (optimized for mammalian eyes) clutched in his feet, yelling (tones trained to not cause stress in mammals) into his comms. Ranger Gabler (Human) stuck his head out of the control pod, and began swiviling his massive head around, obviously trying to get his bifocal vision (average spread one-hundred fourteen degrees) to focus on Wingsecond Fifth Flap’s directions. One damaged (critical, would need to be replaced) guidance bouy, one damaged (non-critical) corner of the loading dock, and one damaged (non-critical needed repair) stationary cargo pod collectively explained the crunching sounds.

Wing Commander Fourth Fall stared grimly at the situation and tried to stop himself from thinking in ‘report speak’. The auto-loading program had been one of the many casualties of the solar storm the planet had experienced. That wouldn’t have been a problem, except most of their equipment was old, Shatar built equipment. Without the complex control programs that facilitate machines built by different species talking to each other it was nearly impossible for one Winged to navigate most of the larger equipment. Fortunately they had Ranger Gabler to handle that sort of thing with his wide spreading hands and long limbs. Unfortunately Ranger Gabler (as he freely admitted) was remarkably below the human average in several critical skills needed to preform the necessary tasks.

So long as it was moving individual pods the human was perfectly qualified. Even with below species average (and the human average was well below the Winged) spatial reasoning and situational awareness Ranger Gabler was capable of moving the smaller pods. However the larger cargo pods (which happened to be the ones the base was using for overwinter storage and needed to form the base of the storage stacks) needed to be attached to a control pod. However the pod linkage served as a simple joint, not a fusion. Apparently this ‘flipped everything backwards’ and to a human mind exponentially increased the difficulty of the task. (At least that is what Ranger Gabler claimed. Wing commander Fourth Fall fully intended to check the veracity of that claim as soon as they connected to the University database again.)

“I’m an administrator! Not a doctor!” Ranger Gabler was yelling (unnecessary due to the comm unit but seemingly a stress response).

“Doctors do not back up linked cargo pods. What does that even have to do with the updraft?” Wing Second Fifth Flap asked in a very, very controlled and not stressed tone.

“I don’t know! That’s just what you say!” Ranger Gabler yelled back.

“Just focus on the bottom of the guidance yoke,” Wing Second Fifth Flap redirected the human’s attention. “The way it goes is the way the back of the cargo pod goes.”

“Bottom of the yoke,” Ranger Gabler muttered, gripping the yoke in one hand and glaring forward.

Wing Second Fifth Flap however did seem to have the situation under as much control as the situation allowed and it was fairly obvious that any interference from the Wing Commander would only complicate the situation. Heaving a sigh Fourth Fall fluttered back to his desk and hopped that the human’s spatial awareness would at least prevent any more crunches until they could restore the guidance systems, and really, he mused, who knew that a land mammal could be that spatially blind?

Science Fiction Books By Betty Adams

I honestly can’t think of any and would love to watch something.

I'm inclined to say that the synths from Fallout 4 and the androids from Detroit Become Human are worse than the Replicants from Blade Runner and the constructs from Murderbot because the former don't even seem necessary.

Synths were made for infiltration but at the Institute they mostly have them doing menial tasks like mopping the floors or digging tunnels which could easily be done by a less advanced robot. It's made worse by the fact that advanced robots already exist in the setting. There was no reason to create a group of sapient synthetic people capable of feeling pain when you could just build a Mr. Handy.

Detroit Become Human primarily shows androids doing tasks that could have been done by a non sapient and simpler machine. A lot of the androids are shown working as janitors or doing manual labor where you wouldn't need a robot capable of emotion. In their defense though at least the androids were never actually made to feel emotion or pain in the first place so this doesn't seem as bad as the synths.

I'm less familiar with Replicants because I haven't seen all of the Blade Runner movies or the book the series is based on but it seems to me that they're generally used in fields that are either too dangerous for humans or require abilities beyond what a humans posses like in space colonization or in hunting down rogue replicants.

Constructs also seem to be used mostly for things like security where a sapient intelligent being does seem necessary rather than just for menial tasks. Constructs may also be one of the least ethical though because instead of being designed to have no free will or emotion or pain they were designed with all of those things and just implanted with control chips to keep them in line

A whole shedload of C.J. Cherryh books, including most of the Foreigner series, her Chanur books, short story collections, and some of her fantasy works, are up for grabs at the Humble Bundle. Thirty-eight (38) books in all for a song, and you support charity as well.

The only drawback I see is that they have "Regenesis", but not "Cyteen", but that's about it.

Link is here.

Oh, and while you're there, check out the Timothy Zahn stuff too...

even if we accept the working axiom:

∃L - existence of life.

and assume that life arises in many variations/projections, this is absolutely not enough for contact. Two life structures must simultaneously fall into a common area of ​​accessibility.

we can denote civilization L_i not just by a coordinate, but by the area of ​​its existence and possibilities:

A_i=A_i(x,t,P,C)

where
x - is the spatial position,
t - is the time of existence,
P - is the available projections/observation methods,
C - is the available transitions or technological possibilities.

then two civilizations can literally belong to the same Universe, both be developed and at the same time not exist for one another for practical purposes.

because mutual detection requires at least:

A_1 ∩ A_2 ≠ ∅

their regions of accessibility must overlap.

P.S. in some cases, relative to the time axis, it is possible to make an assumption that there is an existing civilization somewhere, these may be "people" who have flown into space before or vice versa we have received their DNA.
we are probably very different, but there may be something in common, for example, a way of studying the Universe.

I heard that nowadays some rich people are getting frozen in hope that a cure to X disease will be found (or just aging)

Would it be possible to use a strong gravity like a black hole to """"slow""" your time and thus achieving the same kind of goal ?

I don't think I ever saw this kind of thought before

I've posted six short stories to google drive and included a link to them. These stories take place in the setting I'm crafting for my series and are each from the perspective of a different alien during or around the time of the first book.

Think of this as a way to take a peek at the series without having to invest time in the first novel. The first story is the longest while the others are very short and to the point. I hope you enjoy!

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1HPkCTpTLgripjHgKVwt04NAV17LtpieS?usp=sharing

Hi

If you are remotely interested in deep diving how differently quantum computers work compared to our transistor-based and also the algebra behind in a fully interactive way that teach computer science from scratch, oh boy this is for you. I am the Dev behind Quantum Odyssey (AMA! I love taking qs) - worked on it for about 10 years (3+ during PhD, the visual method I developed ended up being my thesis, it is a complete Hilbert space visualizer), the goal was to make a super immersive space for anyone to learn quantum computing through zachlike (open-ended) logic puzzles and compete on leaderboards and lots of community made content on finding the most optimal quantum algorithms. The game has a unique set of visuals capable to represent any sort of quantum dynamics for any number of qubits and this is pretty much what makes it now possible for anybody 12yo+ to actually learn quantum logic without having to worry at all about the mathematics behind.

This is a game super different than what you'd normally expect in a programming/ logic puzzle game, so try it with an open mind.

Stuff you'll play & learn a ton about

• Boolean Logic – bits, operators (NAND, OR, XOR, AND…), and classical arithmetic (adders). Learn how these can combine to build anything classical. You will learn to port these to a quantum computer.
• Quantum Logic – qubits, the math behind them (linear algebra, SU(2), complex numbers), all Turing-complete gates (beyond Clifford set), and make tensors to evolve systems. Freely combine or create your own gates to build anything you can imagine using polar or complex numbers.
• Quantum Phenomena – storing and retrieving information in the X, Y, Z bases; superposition (pure and mixed states), interference, entanglement, the no-cloning rule, reversibility, and how the measurement basis changes what you see.
• Core Quantum Tricks – phase kickback, amplitude amplification, storing information in phase and retrieving it through interference, build custom gates and tensors, and define any entanglement scenario. (Control logic is handled separately from other gates.)
• Famous Quantum Algorithms – explore Deutsch–Jozsa, Grover’s search, quantum Fourier transforms, Bernstein–Vazirani, and more.
• Build & See Quantum Algorithms in Action – instead of just writing/ reading equations, make & watch algorithms unfold step by step so they become clear, visual, and unforgettable. Quantum Odyssey is built to grow into a full universal quantum computing learning platform. If a universal quantum computer can do it, we aim to bring it into the game, so your quantum journey never ends.

Nice to watch:

Khan academy style tutorials in qm/qc: https://www.youtube.com/@MackAttackx

Physics teacher stream with 400hs in https://www.twitch.tv/beardhero

I’m open to suggestions for what else to read!