1
posts
2
A tech thriller set in a near future in which AIs, both corporate and personal, have become ubiquitous. Julia is a gifted young hacker with a troubled past, trying to put the troubles behind her. A man comes to her desperate for help finding his famous wife who disappeared and may have been kidnapped. The future in this book is very believable, especially in the growth, use, and misuse of AI. It's also very disconcerting. Interesting characters, though some don't feel as fleshed out as they might have deserved. I enjoyed it.
3
A very short movie (4mn) produced by Blender Studio. In a dystopian world where energy is scarce, a destitute man attempts to break into a battery factory. He soon finds himself cornered by a threat: a security droid…
https://youtu.be/UXqq0ZvbOnk?is=ORjTJkqQwUWZLm77
“Charge” © Blender Foundation / Blender Studio, dir. Hjalti Hjálmarsson — CC BY 4.0
4
Book five of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. Carl and Donut get to the next level, get into more trouble, get additional skills and levels, and figure more things out. In this level, hunters from the “real world" alien races are there killing the crawlers. This one felt somewhat less superficial and a little more gritty than prior books, but still in keeping with the series. It continues to hold true that if you liked the prior books, you'll probably like this one.
5
6
A man returns from a trip to the future remembering just one small (but disturbing) thing about his adventure.
Under 1-minute read.
Before Williams went into the future he bought a camera and a tape recording-machine and learned shorthand. That night, when all was ready, we made coffee and put out brandy and glasses against his return.
“Good-bye,” I said. “Don’t stay too long.”
“I won’t,” he answered.
I watched him carefully, and he hardly flickered. He must have made a perfect landing on the very second he had taken off from.
He seemed not a day older; we had expected he might spend several years away.
“Well?”
“Well,” said he, “let’s have some coffee.”
I poured it out, hardly able to contain my impatience. As I gave it to him I said again, “Well?”
“Well, the thing is, I can’t remember.
“Can’t remember? Not a thing?”
He thought for a moment and answered sadly, “Not a thing.”
“But your notes? The camera? The recording-machine?”
The notebook was empty, the indicator of the camera rested at “1” where we had set it, the tape was not even loaded into the recording-machine.
“But good heavens,” I protested, “why? How did it happen? Can you remember nothing at all?”
“I can remember only one thing.”
“What was that?”
“I was shown everything, and I was given the choice whether I should remember it or not after I got back.”
“And you chose not to? But what an extraordinary thing to—” “Isn’t it?” he said. “One can’t help wondering why.”
7
Set in a future in which there are basically two types of governments: the Eastern countries have formed into a brutal autocracy called “The Federation,” which is ruled by a president who gets copied into a new body when the old one fails, and the Western countries have each turned to AI Prime Ministers, programmed to make the most beneficial decisions without human influence, with less than utopian results. We follow the stories of dissidents of the former, and cabinet members of the latter, as the world is fundamentally changed. I enjoyed the book for its exploration of how technology might be used by different sorts of governments (especially to keep the powerful in power), and for the way it captures the way people keep finding hope, even when they feel they've lost it all. It's definitely a cautionary tale for our times.
8
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/53712212
Monthly SciFi short story publication since 2006. Each month they release about 6-8 short stories (and a few non-fiction articles). The stories always feel fresh and varied from authors around the world. They don't shy away from modern topics, but try not to play the same old dystopian tropes. It can be lighthearted or heavy you never know what you will get. Even if the rare story doesn't hit, I never finished a story and felt like I regretted reading it.
Its free on the website, but if you want the epub or a physical copy, it costs a few bucks a month. The enjoyment I get from this subscription is worth every cent. I highly recommend it.
https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/
Clarkesworld is a monthly science fiction and fantasy magazine first published in October 2006. Each issue contains interviews, thought-provoking articles, and between six and eight works of original fiction. Our fiction is also available in ebook editions/subscriptions, audio podcasts, print issues, and in our annual print/ebook anthologies. Clarkesworld has been recognized with a World Fantasy Award, three Hugo Awards, and a British Fantasy Award. Our fiction has been nominated for or won the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, BSFA, Sturgeon, Locus, Shirley Jackson, Ditmar, Aurora, Aurealis, WSFA Small Press, and Stoker Awards.
The cover art is also very good imo
There are even ways to subscribe that don't use Amazon's Kindle system. I think they're currently encouraging that based off of some Amazon rule changes. I know how we are here on Lemmy.
9
Chisom is a Nigerian fiction writer and poet. His short stories have been featured on Omenana, Apex, Clarkesworld, Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction 2023, African Ghosts anthology, Isele, Mythaxis, ZamaShorts, and elsewhere. His short story, “Ancestors’s Gift” won the 2024 Tractor Beam short story contest. He was a finalist for the Seattle Worldcon Short Story Contest, longlisted for the British Science Fiction Association Awards, and is the winner of the 2025 Nommo Award for Best African Speculative Fiction Short Story.
1) Which Nigerian city do you live in, and what is it like?
I live in Lagos and it’s quite an interesting city. It wants to be everything at the same time, so it has its hands in many places. Some parts of the city are quite urban and there are houses in estates that run into millions of dollars, but there are also shantytowns with houses built from corrugated sheets. Also, there are churches in almost every street corner, but someone can pick your pocket right in front of one if you’re not careful. Lol. It’s a jack of all trades and master of many.
2) I know relatively little about African science fiction, but I get the impression that Nigeria has a particularly lively and growing SF scene. Would you agree? If so, what do you think accounts for this growth, and how does the Nigerian scene compare with those in other African countries?
I agree with you that it has a growing speculative fiction scene, “growing” being the key word. Most people who come to literature and writing in these parts usually do so through the literary fiction and (more recently) romance route. Nigerian writers have broken a lot of ground in those areas so they’re the most popular. Genre fiction over here is still picking up steam and trying to catch up. Longtime torch bearers like Nnedi Okorafor, Wole Talabi, Tade Thompson, and others, have helped spread the word through their extensive works, but a new crop of writers are finding their voices too and doing magic. Look out for the works of folks like Pemi Aguda, Uchechukwu Nwaka, Plangdi Neple, Somto Ihezue, Osahon Ize-Iyamu, Gabrielle Emem Harry, amongst many others, and you’ll see exactly why the genre is on the rise here. I think some other things that are also driving this growth are social media, genre literary magazines, and the prospect of writers getting paid for their works. Social media has helped us find outlets willing to platform our writings, and the knowledge that we can earn something from that is enough to keep some of us writing. I think something similar too is happening across other African countries. These little fires are spreading everywhere.
From Across Time (2024)
A woman discovers a hidden message from a time-traveling lover who erased their love story to save it. No one remembers it, no proof remains except a video, and she decides to build a time machine to find her.
3) In your story From Across Time, the heroine Adaeze experiences the emotional consequences of a relationship she cannot remember. What interested you in exploring the emotional impact of a relationship that only one person bears memory of?
The thing that got me thinking about this story, like I usually say, was a short story by Vajra Chandrasekera titled Peristalsis. In the story, he used a concept that involved the two main characters watching a movie of themselves on TV. They hadn’t seen this movie before and thus didn’t know how it was going to play out, so they were keen on following it. The story moved between the characters in the real world and the version of themselves in the screen, and this interesting technique got me thinking: What if one character was on the other side and was trying desperately to communicate with the other who didn’t remember them again? Then, because I love exploring themes around time travel, I asked, again, what if they were distances from each other in time?
4) Is the woman in the video being selfless by preserving the memory of their love, or selfish by forcing Adaeze to live with a loss she would otherwise never have known?
I think it’s a bit of both. She feels terrible for taking away the memories of their beautiful relationship from Adaeze, so she wants to make up for that by telling her about it. In this way, we can say that she’s selfish. She’s inflicting memories on someone who would have otherwise lived her life perfectly without them, just to assuage her guilt. But she’s also giving Adaeze a gift, one Adaeze herself isn’t sure she’d have given back if the option presented itself, because that information is precious to her.
5)The ending suggests that the heroine values knowing the truth over the comfort of blissful ignorance. Was that an important theme you wanted to explore?
Not really. That ending just came to me as I was drawing close to completing the story and it just felt like the most natural place to leave things off.
Prerequisites for the creation of a possible world (2025)
When a futuristic simulated World's Fair unexpectedly begins to malfunction, an undercover employee must navigate the collapsing digital past while a major technological crisis threatens the entire enterprise.
6) What interests you about the futures people imagined in the past, especially those that never came true?
The present we are living now is largely as a result of the imaginings and postulations of people who lived in the past. Someone imagined humans flying like birds through the air and got to work on the idea, and today the skies are filled with airplanes. Someone once imagined communicating with someone else far away from them wirelessly, and so they began to manipulate radio waves. Today, we have cell phones. Things we have now began from past predictions, and so will things in the future. But there are also tons of things people thought about that never came to fruition; technologies (flying cars come to mind, at least for now), societies, and all. I like to think about them too, and that’s how I came to the idea of the story.
7) Why is belief in a prediction one of the four prerequisites for recreating a possible world? What role does belief play in this process?
Because I believe that the level of conviction a creator has in their idea, amongst other things, contributes greatly to whether the idea would eventually be brought to fruition. In the story, a giant AI simulator builds photorealistic worlds that people from different planets can come and take tours in. These worlds are the imaginations of earth people from the distant past. They’re predictions of how things would look like, but were ultimately wrong about. So these future people in the story then use this AI to create that world just to connect with the people of old. But the AI can only proceed to create such a world if there was sufficient evidence that the people who predicted them believed in them completely, even though it never came to pass. It’s one of the prerequisites that the AI demands, because without that, it doesn’t think that world would be believable after building it.
To the Death (2023)
A man's feud with his sister's abusive police boyfriend moves into their dreams, where the officer tries to kill him every night.
8) Your story To the Death suggests that understanding someone's deepest fears can be a powerful way to defeat them. Do you think this kind of psychological insight is a form of power?
I think so. Think of the ways big tech companies go to lengths to obtain private data of their customers. The way they use that information to eventually force their users to stay glued to their platform like zombies, eventually divulging more data. This isn’t exactly what happens in the story, but it’s a version of it. The protagonist used information gathering to access his adversary’s weaknesses, and used that in a spiritual warfare against him.
9) When the protagonist and the policeman fight in their dreams, are they experiencing lucid dreams? I've had a few myself, and I find the experience fascinating.
Would have been interesting too if they were lucid, but I just wanted to set these dreams in the actual dream realm to add to the spookiness of the story. I don’t know how well I achieved that eerie feel though. I just hope readers find the story interesting enough.
10) To conclude, what are you currently working on?
At this moment, I’m writing a story for the volume 2 of the Applied African Speculative Fiction anthology. It’s a collaborative project between speculative fiction writers and experts in different fields. So I’ll be working with a renowned expert to deliver a scientifically accurate and grounded story. On the longer term, I’m still hoping to put together my short story collection. Hopefully I manage to achieve that in the nearest future.
10
The story takes place some years in the aftermath of a war that ended with a reunited Korea, in a future where robots are ubiquitous. Ruijie is a disabled young girl who walks with the aid of automated braces. While exploring a scrap yard she finds a damaged but charming robot in the shape of a boy. Jun and Morgan are estranged brother and sister, each with emotional scars from the disappearance of their older brother, a lifelike robot created by their visionary roboticist father. Jun, now a cop, is investigating the disappearance of an older model child robot, and Morgan, now a roboticist herself, is preparing for the rollout of her company's new line of advanced child robots. The story has a lot going on, with a number of interesting characters, both human and robot. There's a little too much coincidence in the circumstances that reconnect the siblings for my tastes, but the story is otherwise interesting, with a lot of exploration of how we're shaped by memories and what it means to be human.
11
The people of Earth develop nuclear power. Naron, a long-lived Rigellian who serves as the Keeper of galactic records, notes this achievement and records humanity as having reached maturity. Until he discovers something else... Despite the seriousness of the subject, Asimov keeps a light touch in this very short story.
A 1-minute read.
Naron of the long-lived Rigellian race was the fourth of his line to keep the Galactic records.
He had the large book which contained the list of the numerous races throughout the Galaxies that had developed intelligence, and the much smaller book listing those races that had reached maturity and had qualified for the Galactic Federation. In the first book, a number of those listed were crossed out; those that, for one reason or another, had failed. Misfortune; biochemical or biophysical shortcomings; social maladjustment, etc., took their toll. In the smaller book, however, no member listed had yet blanked out.
And now Naron, large and incredibly ancient, looked up as a messenger approached.
“Naron,” said the messenger. “Great One!”
“Well, well, what is it? Less ceremony.”
“Another group of organisms has attained maturity.”
“Excellent. Excellent. They are coming up quickly now. Scarcely a year passes without a new one. And who are these?”
The messenger gave the code number of the Galaxy and the coordinates of the world within it.
“Ah, yes,” said Naron. “I know the world.” And in flowing script, he noted it in the first book and transferred its name into the second—using, as was customary, the name by which the planet was known to the largest fraction of its populace. He wrote: Earth.
He said, “These new creatures have set a record. No other group has passed from intelligence to maturity so quickly. No mistake, I hope.”
“None, sir,” said the messenger.
“They have attained to thermonuclear power, have they?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, that’s the criterion.” Naron chuckled. “And soon their ships will probe out and contact the Federation.”
“Actually, Great One,” said the messenger, reluctantly, “the Observers tell us they have not yet penetrated space.”
Naron was astonished. “Not at all? Not even a space station?”
“Not yet, sir.”
“But if they have thermonuclear power, where then do they conduct their tests and detonations?”
“On their own planet, sir.”
Naron rose to his full twenty feet of hight and thundered, “On their own planet?”
“Yes, sir.”
Slowly, Naron drew out his stylus and passed a line through the latest addition in the smaller book. It was an unprecedented act, but, then, Naron was very wise and could see the inevitable as well as anyone in the Galaxy.
“Silly asses,” he muttered.
12
13
A boy takes a national intelligence test. His parents wait by the phone. Not a word is wasted in this very short story, and the twist at the very end will catch you off guard. A 3-minutes read.
The Jordans never spoke of the exam, not until their son, Dick, was 12 years old. It was on his birthday that Mrs. Jordan first mentioned the subject in his presence, and the anxious manner of her speech caused her husband to answer sharply.
“Forget about it,” he said. “He’ll do all right.”
They were at the breakfast table, and the boy looked up from his plate curiously. He was an alert-eyed youngster, with flat blond hair and a quick nervous manner. He didn’t understand what the sudden tension was about, but he did know that today was his birthday, and he wanted harmony above all.
Somewhere in the little apartment there was wrapped, beribboned packages waiting to be opened. In the tiny wall-kitchen, something warm and sweet was being prepared in the automatic stove. He wanted the day to be happy, and the moistness of his mother’s eyes, the scowl of his father’s face, spoiled the mood of expectation with which he had greeted the morning.
“What exam?” he asked.
His mother looked at the tablecloth. “It’s just a sort of Government intelligence test they give children at the age of twelve. You’ll be taking it next week. It’s nothing to worry about.”
“You mean a test like in school?”
“Something like that,” his father said, getting up from the table. “Go read your comic books, Dick.”
The boy rose and wandered toward that part of the living room that had been “his” corner since infancy. He fingered the topmost comic of the stack, but seemed uninterested in the colorful squares of fast-paced action. He wandered toward the window and peered gloomily at the veil of mist that shrouded the glass.
“Why did it have to rain today?” he asked. “Why couldn’t it rain tomorrow?” His father, now slumped into an armchair with the Government newspaper, rattled the sheets in vexation. “Because it just did, that’s all. Rain makes the grass grow.”
“Why, Dad?”
“Because it does, that’s all.”
Dick puckered his brow. “What makes it green though? The grass?”
“Nobody knows,” his father snapped, then immediately regretted his abruptness. Later in the day, it was birthday time again. His mother beamed as she handed over the gaily-colored packages, and even his father managed a grin and a rumple-of-thehair.
He kissed his mother and shook hands gravely with his father. Then the birthday cake was brought forth, and the ceremonies concluded.
An hour later, seated by the window, he watched the sun force its way between the clouds.
“Dad,” he said, “how far away is the sun?”
“Five thousand miles,” his father said.
Dick: “It won’t be long now. When they call your name, you go through the doorway at that end of the room.” He indicated the portal with his finger.
A concealed loudspeaker crackled and called off the first name. Dick saw a boy leave his father’s side reluctantly and walk slowly towards the door.
At five minutes of eleven, they called the name of Jordan.
“Good luck, son,” his father said, without looking at him. “I’ll call for you when the test is over.”
Dick walked to the door and turned the knob. The room inside was dim, and he could barely make out the features of the gray-tunicked attendant who greeted him.
“Sit down,” the man said softly. He indicated a high stool behind his desk. “Your name’s Richard Jordan?”
“Yes sir.”
“Your classification number is 600-115. Drink this, Richard.”
He lifted a plastic cup from the desk and handed it to the boy. The liquid inside had the consistency of buttermilk, tasted only vaguely of the promised peppermint. Dick downed it and handed the man the empty cup.
He sat in silence, feeling drowsy, while the man wrote busily on a sheet of paper. Then the attendant looked at his watch and rose to stand only inches from Dick’s face.
He unclipped a pen-like object from the pocket of his tunic and flashed a tiny light into the boy’s eyes.
“All right,” he said. “Come with me, Richard.”
He led Dick to the end of the room, where a single wooden armchair faced a multi-dialed computing machine. There was a microphone on the left arm of the chair, and when the boy sat down, he found its pinpoint head conveniently at his mouth.
“Now just relax, Richard. You’ll be asked some questions, and you think them over carefully. Then give your answers into the microphone. The machine will take care of the rest.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll leave you alone now. Whenever you want to start, just say ‘ready’ into the microphone.”
“Yes, sir.”
The man squeezed his shoulder and left.
Dick said, “Ready.”
Lights appeared on the machine, and a mechanism whirred. A voice said:
“Complete this sequence. One, four, seven, ten…”
Mr. and Mrs. Jordan were in the living room, not speaking, not even speculating.
It was almost four o’clock when the telephone rang. The woman tried to reach it first, but her husband was quicker.
“Mr. Jordan?”
The voice was clipped; a brisk, official voice.
“Yes, speaking.”
“This is the Government Educational Service. Your son, Richard M. Jordan, Classification 600-115, has completed the Government examination. We regret to inform you that his intelligence quotient has exceeded the Government regulation, according to Rule 84, Section 5, of the New Code.”
Across the room, the woman cried out, knowing nothing except the emotion she read on her husband’s face.
“You may specify by telephone,” the voice droned on, “whether you wish his body interred by the Government or would you prefer a private burial place? The fee for Government burial is ten dollars.”
14
Sequel to Foundryside, set in the same city in which inanimate objects can be "scrived” to somewhat change their structure or state (make a wooden door behave more like stone, or a sword behave like it's moving much faster than it is). In the prior book we learned that this ability was learned from recovered fragments from a long gone civilization of "hierophants” who were masters of it. Here, Sancha and most of the main characters from the prior book have settled into a new life, but learn that someone is attempting to resurrect the original and greatest hierophant, who is likely to destroy their world. As with the first, I enjoyed this book. The world is interesting, the characters relatable, and the action kept the pages turning.
15
There are some great novel recommendations here, but I wouldn't say that most of them are lesser-known.
What are your recommendations?
As for me, I've exclusively read well-known novels, except if you consider someone like Alfred Bester obscure, for example.
One exception: Misha Burnett's Endless Summer: Twelve Strange Tales of Mankind's Future. It's a collection of exceptionnaly well-crafted stories. It ain't a novel, though.
16
In an unspecified but not too distant future, classrooms give way to individual instruction on mobile devices and children are more isolated. “Artificial Friends” (AFs) - androids designed as companions - become more popular to help reduce their loneliness. Klara is an AF, bought for a very sick young girl. Though Klara is especially clever and observant, her knowledge of how the world works is very limited. This is a wonderful but very slowly paced story - if you're looking for something action packed, it's not here. I really enjoyed the way Ishiguro gives us a constant trickle of information about the future he's created, and I enjoyed Klara’s joyful nature.
17
18
There is a sweet little horror story that is only two sentences long:
“The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door…”
19
Kai is a powerful demon who awakens outside of his human body to find he's been trapped unconscious in a tomb for over a year. His long-time friends are also missing. He has to figure out who has done this, and why. The story alternates between this “present" timeline, and a "past” timeline that starts with him as a young demon in his newly-gifted human body. Wells has a real knack for creating worlds with interesting rules (far from the cookie cutter tropes of some fantasy), and then exploring the boundaries of those rules. I enjoyed it, but also felt like there was an odd detachment to the story - like there wasn't a lot of emotional attachment to the characters. As an aside, Wells has a penchant for making subtle or not-so-subtle commentary on our society and the prejudices in it. As examples in this one, demons are referred to by the gender of their demon selves, not the gender of the body they're in. Some societies have gender neutral clothing, but where it's gendered it's the men who wear skirts and women who wear pants. One culture is referred to as confusing because they stick to two genders.
20
Just found out about this artist, goes by Dirty Iron online. Amazing grayscale work.
21
Book four of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. Carl, Donut, and Katia get to the next level, get into more trouble, get additional skills and levels, and figure more things out. This level has the crawlers divided up into separate domes with different circular quadrants. Also, there's getting to be a little more about the underlying factions and politics of the universe as the serious progresses. As before, if you liked the prior books, you'll probably like this one.
22
Zula has taken a job at a company responsible for a globally popular video game, founded by her billionaire uncle. Her boyfriend Peter has entered into an illegal transaction with someone he doesn't realize is connected to the Russian Mafia. Everything goes south, and Zula and Peter are abducted. What follows is a book with a giant scope. It's an international suspense thriller that takes a multitude of interesting main characters to the limits of their capabilities. Stephenson manages to linger on lots of small technical details in a way that's interesting, and while still making a real page-turner with characters we care about for over 1000 pages.
23
The shortest sci-fi story ever.
24
So, it's a very optimistic story. If some of you are utterly despaired, well of course it certainly won't fix the problem(s), but it could be food for thought.
In general, I'd be curious to know what did you think of this story (its very long tho compared to my usual posts, so theyre might not be a lot of readers)
Thinking of adding a comment section in the future
25
I'm non dénominationel Christian and id be interested by any kind of christianity inspired works, be they catholic or protestant or whatever.
Same for all religions: buddhism, islam, anything religious.
If not religious but spiritual and exceptionnal like PKD's gnosticism, Im also curious. Not only for the gnosticism, but the whole doubting if some things experienced during psychosis are not all batshit-land, so I've also put Jung in my to read list, but let's keep it sci-fi.
view more:
next ›