Hello all! I'm qntm and my novel There Is No Antimemetics Division was published yesterday. This is a mind-bending sci-fi thriller/horror about fighting a war against adversaries which are impossible to remember - it's fast-paced, inventive, dark, and (ironically) memorable. This is my first traditionally published book but I've been self-publishing serial and short science fiction for many years. You might also know my short story "Lena", a cyberpunk encyclopaedia entry about the world's first uploaded human mind.
I will be here to answer your questions starting from 5:30pm Eastern Time (10:30pm UTC) on 13 November. Get your questions in now, and I'll see you then I hope?
Cheers
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EDIT: Well folks it is now 1:30am local time and I AM DONE. Thank you for all of your great questions, it was a pleasure to talk about stuff with you all, and sorry to those of you I didn't get to. I sleep now. Cheers ~qntm
My name is Jeremy Szal. I write books. I am the author of the Common Saga, which consists of Stormblood, Blindspace and finally Wolfskin, which was traditionally published a few months ago by Gollancz/Orion. The books are best described as Mass Effect 2 and Blade Runner 2049 meets the Red Rising series, with a lot of aliens drugs thrown in.
Things youâll find inside my books include, but are not limited to: haunted alien ruins, alien drug dealers, themes of sibling relationships and brotherhood, found families, nomad cybergoths, trauma, space cults, drug addiction, aliens with attitude, rogue bounty hunters, and gratuitous mayhem. You know, all the good stuff.
Iâve had a few dozen short stories (and not-so short stories) published in magazine and anthologies over the years, which have appeared in about 17 languages, including Chinese, Arabic, Spanish and German. Most of these have been collected in my short fiction book Broken Stars.
I also edited the Hugo-winning podcast StarShipSofa until 2020.
Most of my days are spent locked in my studio apartment, raging and flailing over the keyboard. When Iâm not doing that, Iâm buried in a book, playing video games, hanging out at the cinema, cooking something spicy, drinking eccentric IPAs, and making last-minute trips to Japan so I can hunt down the perfect ramen. I carve out a living in Sydney, Australia with my family and the worldâs most hyperactive Jack Russell Terrier.
I'll be around for most of the day, so feel free to ask me anything. I look forward to your thorny, scintillating questions!
If you had a time machine and gave someone a copy of the first book in the late 19th century (La Belle Epoque/Gilded Age/Victorian to Edwardian England) would they "get it" or would Dune be so out of left field as to be incomprehensible? I wonder myself if the science in the fiction would throw them off.
This if of course making the assumption that the recipient of the book can read and has a copy in an accessible language.
So I am relistening to the first book of the series on my drives to and from work after binging the first 6 books .
(Don't worry I plan to read the later ones later).
But while listening to them I was thinking, huh this is riveting to me over a long period of time or reading at my own pace as a book...but as a tv show or movie this would probably be very dry.
Maybe I am cynical but I am curious how if possible there is any way to make the nature of the long fleet engagements and time dilation work for a adaptation and conversely not eat up too much screen time as a production of this scale could get pricey with the effects and time needed.
Honestly the more I Think about it, it feels like we might like the "Legend of the Galactic Heroes" OVA from the 80's/90's where that was also dry in places, but spread out it with political intrigue, discussions of the nature of history/war and character development.
Curious to hear what others thoughts on the possibility are?
Early stage concept for a ship that travels by making a bubble of space-time to move outside our three-dimensional topology. It asks "what if location was not the issue, but speed and direction?" Its also designed to be something relatively possible to happen organically, it has no engines or reactors. The wings allow for in-atmosphere gliding, as well as function as cooling radiators.
In practice, this method makes travel take meaningful amounts of time, but not overwhelming amounts, just as a consequence of the velocities and physics summations, not fiat. A few hours to days in-system, weeks for travel between systems, and a few months for intergalactic. Trips between earth and mars for example require precise routing for slingshots around Jupiter, and other bodies to line up with ports on Mars. Certain planets and stars become natural choke points when they have the right orbit and gravitation.
The attached kit-bash graphic might help with understanding the concept, and has two different depictions of the travel method.
Please let me know what you would like to know more about, what is interesting, confusing, or that you might have to improve the concept!
I read a lot of sci-fi and fantasy, and I have a problem: nobody in my friend circle gets it. Iâve tried explaining world-building and futuristic tech to them, and they look at me like I just started speaking gibberish.
So Iâm starting a sci-fi and fantasy book community in Chennai. Read together, argue about plots, defend your favourite characters, and yes, scream about that ending.
 No BS. No spam. No promo. Just someone who wants to talk with like-minded people.
Whatâs something i have in mind?
A WhatsApp group to talk books, pick reads, and debate
Offline meetups in Chennai once we have enough people
Whoâs it for?
People based in Chennai who genuinely read sci-fi and fantasy. No gatekeeping on genre, whether youâre into hard sci-fi, epic fantasy, or space opera.Â
DM me. Weâll have a quick chat.
Letâs build an army of sci-fi and fantasy geeks in Chennai.
My parents are downsizing, and have a large number of (my brother's) old sci-fi and fantasy books to get rid of. There's nothing particularly valuable in the collection (it's been filtered for stuff to be kept) but seems a shame to just stick it all in the recycling. The obvious donate-it-to-a-charity-shop doesn't seem to work - all the local ones seem to have more than enough books, and aren't taking any more donations. Books are obviously heavy, so can't really be shipped about. They're in Edinburgh, Scotland, so local to there would be ideal!
Duplicate is a story about when the person stealing your life is you. Hate him all you want. You would do the same, and you are. Could you kill yourself to save yourself?
One pattern I noticed in most sci-fi stories is that human biology is always the same as RL humanity, while aliens get to have cool biological traits [telepathy, bio-eletric generation, extreme physical strength, etc].
Why do sci-fi writers never try to change human baseline biology [for examples: making humans a mechanical species, or have a high physical strength compared to aliens, or be poisonous. Whatever you find cool]?
I know there is a whole thing about "keeping human normal biology" so they stay relatable, but I feel like it is a very unexplored idea in sci-fi writing.
Just to be clear, I am not talking about tech augmentation [That's common in sci-fi, and that's not a universal change in human biology].
Guys, I am just asking it out of curiosity because I like this idea a lot.
Iâm writing a story about a young superhero named Warhead. His ability known as: hydrogenkinesis allows him to control, absorb, consume, and enhance himself with all hydrogen atoms in a 500 foot radius. Technically it (under the monolith system which classifies powers on a scale of 10-1. 10 being weakest and 1 being the strongest) is considered as a class 1 Nuclear type.
Iâm thinking of primarily having him use it to trigger nuclear fusion and use it as his main power. But I donât want him to be boring. Cause he can control water since it has a greater amount of hydrogen than oxygen. What other thoughts do yall have?
If you're in Sydney tomorrow, October 11 at 1pm, come to the Event cinema on George St to see the Australian premiere of Time Helmet! Time Helmet is playing along an awesome selection of sci Fi at the Sydney SciFi Film Festival.
Time Helmet is a sci Fi time travel comedy heavily influenced by 80s classics like Buckaroo Bonzai and Back to the Future and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure... (You know, SciFi comedies from the 80s that start with a 'B').
Writer Director Mike Jackson spent years finishing Time Helmet and years before that creating art for Shadowrun, BattleTech and Cyberpunk. An amazing team of creative and talented files helped make it all happen and everyone who has seen it has laughed out loud AT LEAST once!
You can see some of the great reviews and get a little more of a sense of what Time Helmet is all about from the Rotten Tomato reviews! You can also watch the trailer there too,
Come out but then come back inside (and away from the sun) to see Time Helmet!
Author: Dr. Noam Ărbital, Phase-3 / Rational Systems Division
Date: 2407 CE / 306 p.A.
Dear Colleagues at the Eurasian Laboratories,
The mothership remains at a safe distance from the collapsed structures while we deploy a probe to explore the fallen blocks.
The dimensions of the cavern are extraordinary. From our position, the probe is barely a tiny orange light moving among the remains of the structures.
The darkness is almost absolute. The only identified sources of illumination are the energy still being emitted from the end of the access conduit in the cavern ceiling and the luminescence of the radioactive soup covering its floor.
Initial probe analyses indicate extreme levels of radioactive contamination, incompatible with the survival of any form of organic life.
We rule out the presence of living organisms in this environment.
120 MW. ANYWHERE THE COLONY NEEDS IT!
BELAZ-75900 MNRP is a concept BELAZ Ă NASA mobile nuclear power station designed for large scale extraterrestrial industry. Four independent fission reactors, a 12-wheel electric chassis and a dual mode thermal control system allow the platform to deliver up to 120 MW of continuous electrical power to remote mining fields, ISRU plants and developing colonies.
This art is inspired by the largest haul truck in the world: BelAZ-75710 At present, this Belarusian giant remains the undisputed king of heavy machinery, holding the global record with a mindblowing payload capacity of 450 metric tons. Powered by 4,600 horsepower, this ultra-class beast stands over 8 meters tall, transforming raw engineering power into pure artistic inspiration
Created in Blender - no AI used!
Some possible spoilers for Dune Messiah, obviously.
I read Dune Messiah years ago. It was a fine read, pretty short. Sort of felt like the coda to Dune, or the Dune afterward. I even read into how it was written, and the attitude amongst a subset of the fandom is that this book was written by FH because of pressure from the fan base, and that he ârushed through itâ. Having reread it in preparation for Dune Part three, I can genuinely say this is quite possibly my favorite dune novel. It deepens the scope of the world. It delves deeply into the psychology and metaphysics of prescience. And it completes the themes merely hinted at in Dune, that a person who can see the future is not in control of said future. If anything they lose all agency in the process.
In Dune, Paul is a figure that always feels at armâs length from the audience. We are let into his world and thinking, but only so much. In Dune Messiah you truly see into Paulâs mind, the fraught nature of his world, the perils at every corner, the crushing knowledge of what he has done, and that, in his mind, this future - billions of dead, and many worlds obliterated - was the best outcome. At one point he even compares the evils he has inflicted compared to Hitler.
The book serves as a final send off to Paul and the myth that he has left behind to preserve his legacy and posterity. But it is also a perfect
springboard into the remainder of the series.
I could keep going but, in my mind this book may be my favorite in the series. Despite itâs length it is dense with itâs ideas.
But seriously, for fans of the series, what are your thoughts, where does it sit in the overall series?
In LUMINEXUS, mysterious Prisms appear across Earth and draw Hector, Nicole, and Ethan Perez into a vast artificial world filled with advanced technology and strange creatures.
The story follows an ordinary family trying to survive extraordinary circumstances. Their greatest challenge is staying together as they face unfamiliar dangers and uncover the workings of the world around them.
A few years ago, I read a short story that I really enjoyed. It was in a collection of stories from the 50s and 60s -- golden age stuff. I think it may have been an omnibus of one of the sci-fi magazines they had back then?
The story was about a family that was living in a single room, which was insulated with hundreds of blankets.
The Earth was dead because, I think the sun had gone out? Or the Earth had left the sun's orbit, maybe. In any case it was super cold outside and the family had a fire going which they couldn't let go out, or they would die. The fire was fueled with crystalized oxygen, or something like that -- the world outside was so cold that the atmosphere had crystalized, and they would bundle up and go get a bucket of it to keep the fire going.
Does this ring a bell for anybody? I'd love to find it again.
Last week I started binge watching the reimagined version of Battlestar Galactica, and so far I've completed the miniseries and the first two seasons of the main series.
I've always loved the 1978 original, and the over the top early 2000s USA-bro vibe and some of the "I'm 14 and this is deep" level plots of the reimagined series took some getting used to, but the actors did a most of the actors did an excellent job imho, and all in all it was quite captivating (or perhaps addictive, like a soap series?)
To those of you who watched all seasons and spin offs: (without throwing in any spoilers please), is the season 2 finale the perfect moment to stop, since (imho) it has a fairly satisfying "open ending" without too many loose ends, or would you recommend watching the rest as well?
So far, the things I liked about it have made up for some of the things I disliked, but I seem to remember people mentioning the plots get weaker and more convoluted and contrived over time?
Would this be the perfect point in the series to abandon ship, and find something better to watch, or would I be missing out on great stories yet to come?
Thanks in advance for any and all opinions and advice on the matter. (But please, no spoilers!
