I love science fiction and have a small library of books on my “to read” list. Help offer some stories by Asimov, Heineken, Dick, etc. that feels a little off beat because I’m an odd nut who gets mildly turned off by the popular choices although logically they are popular for a reason: they’re good!

From what I remember super deformed humans who would still be born with a sound mind end up being bought out by corporations and their consciousness is then uploaded into a ships or a space stations computer mainframe. Anyway the main characters name (I think) is Simon and he’s super into history and I think he plays a super interactive simulation strategy game or it’s like a live action audio book basically. But the dude Simon IS the space station. If anyone has any clue what I’m talking about please let me know.

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Humans are Weird – A Dozen Times Before

Original Post: http://www.authorbettyadams.com/bettys-blog/humans-are-weird-a-dozen-times-before

In the early dawn stillness the rustling of his own wings echoed back to Prince Trill from a thousand points in the massive banquet hall. From the great archways, designed for their human guests, the sounds of the local forest waking provided a soothing background to his musings. Tonight would be the trial of his colonies systems. Hosting even one of the massive mammals was a challenge that was quite simply impossible for most pre-contact Winged systems. Finding enough space alone for a human was difficult, and even if a human could comfortably fold themselves into a mass storage cargo hold the weight distribution of their walking would destroy paths and the wrenching forces of their climbing would damage fragile new growth.

“And that is all merely the physics of the matter,” Prince Trill murmured to himself as he examined the medical report from the branch University studies.

The chances of a pathogen jumping species in any meaningful way was the merest echo of a possibility in most cases. However taking a mammalian species with that great a caloric intake and that inefficient a digestion system meant the sewage processing plants were going to be overwhelmed. The various methods of disposing of the human’s waste suggested by the medical staff, overeager engineers , and under-supervised private inventors ranged from simply practical to quite frankly frightening.

Prince Trill heaved a sigh and moved onto the next page. Something caught his eye and he clicked with anticipation. It looked like one of the human delegates had yet to turn in a medical verification form. That really was something he should see to himself. It could be delegated to one of the University Medicos of course, but this gave him the option to interview the newly arrived human himself again. He tucked the notes into his carry pouch and lifted off from his high perch. The rest of his wing slipped out from their various perches and started to follow him. He flicked a wing to send most of them back to the home tree and all but two pulled off.

Prince Trill flew out into the early morning light and took a moment to appreciate the thick canopy over head. He still had memories of his first flights and the searing sun falling through the gaps in the young forest touching his wings. Now the canopy was solid at least. It was still a far cry from the untold generations deep canopy of the homeworld, but this was one of the few colonies that could boast a complete deliberately grown canopy. He sought out the broad walkways that wound round the trunks and connected the domed huts grown from branches. He spotted the one he was looking for easily enough.

Mary Smythe seemed to be an older human than the spacefaring Winged tended to see. Prince Trill wondered if that explained her tendency to decorate her living space. Long wings of patterned cloth hung over her windows making a not unpleasing contrast to the bark of the walls. Prince Trill came to a landing on the greeting pad set beside the huts door and pulled at the bell set there. The musical chimes sounded from inside the house and he felt the entire hut vibrate as the massive mammal began moving about. The strings of beads that formed the door parted and the human’s smiling face peered out.

“Who’s there?” she called out.

Mary’s face was covered in wrinkles and her hair was flecked with silver coloring, but her skin still showed excellent vascular health. Not for the first time Prince Trill was grateful that aging was so similar in mammalian species. Somehow Mary looked, comfortable despite the alien whites to her eyes.

“Mrs. Smythe,” he greeted her remembering the correct honorific. “I was wondering if you had some time to go over a matter of paperwork with me?”

“Sure,” she said, “Come on in. I just got started on breakfast. Can I get y’all some smoothies.”

“I would be delighted,” he said, and his wing mates echoed the sentiment.

Mary bustled around the kitchen area that looked small with her filling it. She mixed a few fruit blends and passed them through the budder producing three slightly large bulbs of fruit mix which they gladly accepted.

“So what do you need?” She asked setting down to her own mysterious masses of solid protein and carbohydrates.

“The system still does not have your microfauna profile,” he said after taking a sip of the smoothie.

“Oh!” Mary exclaimed suddenly sitting up straight. “That’s right! I never turned it in. Just a tic!”

Before Prince Trill could assure her that there was no hurry she had lifted her mass from her perch and had lumbered into anther room, shaking the hut with each step. They waited enjoying the smoothie, really it was far too fructose rich but it was a nice treat for an early morning. The sounds of papers rustling came from the other room followed by sudden silence and a prolonged howl of agony that set Prince Trill’s wing mates darting into the air. He sighed around his bubble of smoothie and gestured for them to continue eating. They looked at him in shock but as the sound didn’t come again they settled back down to wait, though they kept tilting their sensory horns towards the other room until Mary returned carrying the data chit which presumably held the microfauna profile.

“Here ya go,” she said holding the chit out to Prince Trill.

“Thank you,” he said politely as he scanned it with his data pad. “By the way. I have not yet had a chance to hear that particular scream.”

Mary flushed and grinned a bit as he went on.

“Would you mind sharing what that was?”

“Oh sure I won’t mind,” she said with a laugh. “When I was getting ready to come down here I had to get all my bio-metric data in order. That included my deep bone sample.”

“Getting one must be quite an ordeal with your bones!” Prince Trill observed.

“Oh, it is,” she said nodding vigorously. “They take a chunk right outta your femur! All the medical advancement in the world and they still gotta use that big old needle. Anyway I always kept it in the same space in my gear and I had a recent one but I looked there again and again and I didn’t see it! I couldn’t find it in time to move down here.”

“So you let them take the needle to you again?” Prince Trill asked with a sympathetic wince.

“I did!” she replied. “Well wouldn’t you believe it I just picked up that data chit to show you and there was the original sample right where I thought it would be! In plain sight! Don’t know why I didn’t see it before!”

Her hand drifted down to rub at what he assumed was the spot on her trunk of a leg where they had stuck in the needle.

“So it was a scream of frustration,” he murmured.

“Mostly at my own stupid self for not seeing it,” she clarified.

“Thank you,” he said finishing the bubble and slurping down the membrane. “For both the meal and the information. Please have a nice morning and I look forward to seeing you at the banquet.”

The there of them took off easily and his companions restrained themselves until they were out of the human’s hearing.

“Did she really mean to imply that she looked right at it and didn’t see it?” one of them demanded.

“Yes,” Prince Trill replied with a sigh. “And no I don’t know how that mental circuit works for humans.”

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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! "Flying Sparks" - a novel set in the "Dying Embers" universe is now avaliable on all sites!

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

I’m very curious to know what to you is the best piece of fantasy fiction you’ve ever consumed and your favourite piece of science fiction ever. For me personally The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien is my favourite fantasy ever made, while Blade Runner (1982) is my favourite sci-fi of all time. What’s yours?

Can someone suggest some hard scifi books in the same vein as the bobiverse series? As well as that does anyone know good cyberpunk-themed books? I would really appreciate your thoughts!

Looking for sci fi novels/series with a strong romance subplot, ideally published within the last ten years or so. Preferably with female main characters. An older example of what I’m looking for would be Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonflight, although it doesn’t really have to be similar to the Pern series. Thank you in advance!

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"Give me the incredibly short summary of what the hell is going on, please. The kind you could fit into a movie trailer."

“You’re trapped in a video game world based on a hack dark fantasy author’s rip-off of better books.”

“Uh huh. Maybe you could be a bit more detailed.”

Aragorn "Aaron" Bartkowski was a programmer working at Epic DungeoneeringTM, the world's largest fantasy video game company. Much to his surprise, he was selected to pick up the latest manuscript from reclusive author Larry C.C. Weis. Weis had been working on his newest book for over a decade and the good folk at Aaron's company had dibs on adapting it. Unfortunately, Weis was also a wizard and sent Aaron to the world that inspired his books.

Aaron proceeded to find himself in a Slavic mythology themed world where he's believed to be Weis' main character, Garland of Nowhere. Equipped with the powers of a RPG protagonist, Aaron must accumulate experience and equipment while navigating a setting that seems worse off than Game of Thrones and Dark Souls put together.

LORDS OF DRAGON KEEP is a LitRPG progression fantasy isekai that takes the grim out of grimdark with biting humor as well as intelligent exploitation of the rules. It has excellent world-building, a great supporting cast, a bit of romance, and lots of laughs. Oh and there's a talking raven.

I'm pleased to share my latest book with y'all and thought you'd enjoy that, for the price of a cup of coffee, you can continue an author ruthlessly mocking dark fantasy. So toss a coin to your Witcher and pick up a copy for 99c.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Lords-Dragon-Keep-Dark-Undermaster-ebook/dp/B0DF38YSTD/

Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lords-of-dragon-keep-c-t-phipps/1146211921

Google: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/C_T_Phipps_Lords_of_Dragon_Keep?id=-gIcEQAAQBAJ

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1607683

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/lords-of-dragon-keep

For anyone who loved it or anyone yet to watch it, fans are currently planning to band together to watch Scavengers Reign on Netflix, Saturday 19th October (a year to the day that it originally premiered on Max).

https://www.reddit.com/r/ScavengersReign/s/yaRqjFpv0l

No Star Trek since the Federation is a utopia and is the first and most obvious choice. No The Orville since it is basically old school/better Star Trek reloaded.

You basically are the same person in this other world with the same capabilities, personality, etc. For example, if you didn't become some incredibly elite soldier, pilot, hacker, master of technology, smuggler, etc. in real life then you don't become one in the sci fi world. The same goes for jedi powers or some other kind of super human powers. You are basically the same person you are in the real world, but in another world.

Was on an FB ad today. I’ve never heard of the author or books.

So, for a film about sex bots, there was surprisingly little sex in this movie. And the acting is so bad - most of the human charactors were more robotic than the robots.

Dean Cain was in this movie for some reason. He must be hard up for cash, but I can't imagine they had much cash to give him. He wasn't even one of the leads.

Every scene was just 2 people talking. There might have been 1 seen with 3 people talking. None of it made any sense.

There were no special effects. No conflict. No antagonist. No reason for this movie to exist.

If you are going to make a movie about sex bots, at least put some good sex in it. Or have people doing things to the bots that they wouldn't/couldn't do with a human. Why pay for a robot if you are going to just have super boring sex?

Don't watch this movie. It's not even worth fast forwarding to the sex scenes. They are so brief you will miss them, and even if you do catch them, they are completely interesting.

More sci Fi art @markshipstuff on insta

I’m trying to get into reading, but I have a hard time concentrating. I love sci-fi movies and shows, so I figured starting with a good sci-fi book might help. Any recommendations for something that’s easy to get into and really engaging?

Hi everybody! I’m curious about writing something with sci-fi. I don’t have a ton of experience in writing something for pros but I woke up with an idea and wrote a little bit…

You could find the idea below.

I would love some feedback from anybody. Would you keep reading it?

————————————————-

"Ever wonder if this is all just a show, Lenny?" Max asked, his voice barely cutting through the hum of the neon signs flickering outside the diner. He didn't wait for an answer, just took another forkful of his eggs dripping with yoke. "I mean, what if we're just characters in some cosmic script, and the director's got a twisted sense of humor?"

“There used to be holy wars about shit like this. God had so many people thinking they knew more about him then the next,”Lenny paused, his eyes never leaving the door, replied with a smirk, "In any case, Max, I'm ready for my close-up. But first, we've got a job to do, and I ain't about to let some existential crisis make me miss my mark."

Max swiped his cold rye toast across his plate cleaning up spilled yoke, the slice of tomato in his plate still untouched from when it arrived to the table. "Yeah, about that job," he started, but was cut off by the whirring sound of the server approaching.

A robotic waitress, sleek and polished, glided over, her metallic frame reflecting the diner's dim lights. She was built like a model from a 1980’s men’s magazine. "More coffee, gentlemen?" she asked, her voice synthetic but soothing, like a lullaby from a bygone era.

Lenny glanced up, his eyes catching the robot's, which glowed a soft blue. "Sure, why not? Might be my last chance to taste something real," he quipped, his tone mixing jest with a hint of melancholy.

The robot poured the coffee with mechanical precision, her movements fluid yet devoid of life. Almost sensual. As she turned to leave, Max leaned in closer to Lenny, lowering his voice. "You ever think about what it's like for them? Knowing they're not real?"

Lenny sipped his coffee, the bitterness grounding him. "Doesn't matter, Max. Real or not, we all got our parts to play."

Near the end… Halfway through the final book of the trilogy and although I am not loving this as much as the first two I don’t want the saga to end.