This 'space opera' like novel is often cited as one of the best scifi has to offer... (Spoiler free, spoilers are marked and in tags)

Warning: Do not pick this up and start reading assuming it'll be an epic space opera. The summary is very misleading in the sense that a huge amount of the chapters revolve around a fairly dull, medieval-like world that is practically a fantasy novel.

I felt this had ingredients of a superb novel in the making, but ultimately fell short. This book is clearly flawed. Yet it's one of those books you like anyway by the time you're through. Certain characters and concepts grow on you. At the same time, this whole book felt like a first draft - as if it was missing things.

And man, some sections really dragged on and on. The first 100 pages had no need to be disorienting at all. The author should've defined things more clearly. I honestly would've put this book down if I didn't look up a basic context of what was happening when we are first introduced to the Tines in the beginning. Other entire chapters later on also dragged quite badly for me.

Furthermore, I think Vinge is not a bad writer - as some who hate AFUTD claim - but he's also not a superb one. He clearly had a vision writing this, and I can follow that vision. But he didn't flesh that vision out enough. He also phrases things confusingly sometimes and has poor word choice, slowing down the reading flow.

There's so many choices the author made that had me go..."really? As a writer, what were you even thinking?"

Could've been much more interesting. But overall, I'm glad I read it...I got something out of the plot, and think it has value. I have to admit the overall effect was good after I finished it.

One criticism of many I have is that:

With the Tines' world, Vinge seems to just assume that the medieval mind is necessarily primitive and their world just has to be dull. On the contrary, medieval-like societies are often very interesting...Where were the rich settings and daily life of this medieval world? The history and myths of the Tines? One huge oversight: The Tines don't even have a religion.

Another one:

A big, big criticism I have...how do you make The Blight be the villain and point of the entire plot, but then not really give them ANY real characterization, no backstory, no nothing? All that happened was we saw a human representative speak as the Blight early on, on a screen, and that was it. Despite the Blight's destruction, it felt hollow as a main enemy...there needed to be more. We needed to see its destruction. The destruction of Relay was a good start, but...you needed more than that...

The podcast A Meal of Thorns, which is a critical book club where in every episode there is an in-depth discussion between the host and a guest who is a writer or a critic about a SFF book and happens to be one of my favourite SFF podcasts, just announced that next year they will have a series of episodes where they will discussed on the works of C. J. Cherryh. This is fantastic news as far as I am concerned since I really enjoy the podcast and I am a huge fan of Cherryh. Her work is also way underdiscussed on the SFF podcast scene and in general (outside of this subreddit at least).

The host of the podcast Jake Casella Brookins has mentioned multiple times that he is a big fan of Cherryh and he did a great episode on 40,000 in Gehenna with Arkady Martine, which I highly recommend (it's ep. 27, here is the episode page on their site - https://ancillaryreviewofbooks.org/2025/06/30/a-meal-of-thorns-27-40000-in-gehenna-with-arkady-martine/).

It's not announced yet which Cherryh works will be featured but the host mentioned in the last episode that they will start with Gate of Ivrel and that the first guest will be Sean Guynes. On Bluesky the host of A Meal of Thorns mentioned that the series will feature 12+ Cherryh works - https://bsky.app/profile/casella.bsky.social/post/3mx4zmfxa4s2k . The podcast usually discusses one book per episode, so hopefully this means 12+ episodes on Cherryh.

In the military spyfi space opera genre, do you like the "captured on purpose" and "fake defector" tropes? In the first, characters are taken prisoner as part of a deeper plan. Infiltrate, lure to a trap or even communicate with an imprisoned head of state. In the latter, there's the spy who came in from the cold. Characters pretend or are allowed to defect to the other side, crossing over, offering secrets, seeking asylum, but are actually still loyal to their original country, for the defection is a deception operation.

Now, would you like to subvert these tropes? For the "captured on purpose", the act seems nothing like it. For the "fake defector", the character does not claim to defect, rather argues why he was detained although he has actionable information the other side needs?

Your thoughts?

I'm thinking something like Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles but more intentional (Bradbury just wrote a bunch of stories about Mars then realized he had enough that they could all be worked into a novel about colonizing Mars). So what I'm looking for is a book where each chapter features a different main character/POV character but the story itself is still all one cohesive story.

Have recently read the "Ubik". What do you think about ending? Spoilers ahead. So, how does Chip appeared on the coins? Was it the result of reborn of Glen, or actions of Pat Conly?

I'm looking for a new sci-fi book. Something with good horror but also an intellectually demanding science or philosophy part.

Kind of like Peter Watts blindsight with more horror. Thank you!

A human scout ship or recon team lands on an alien world and fights the aliens for valuable gems. The humans win and head back to Earth, talking about selling the gems to women as jewellery. In the last scene, the aliens ask each other why the humans took their babies. I heard it as an audio narration on YouTube.

Violent and bloody, I really don't know why I read almost all of it before quitting. I stopped reading 60 pages from the end, which is truly unusual; I figured there would be a few more bloody scenes, somehow the world would be saved, read the last bit and was confirmed.

Fairly well written, action to keep your attention, way too much blood and gore. Not recommended. Unless you like that sort of thing.

I started David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas and switching from a 19th-century Pacific journal to 1970s California to a futuristic Korea is wild. The moment I get comfortable with a cast of characters, the narrative drops them and shifts eras! how on earth do u track recurring themes and characters across nested timelines without spoiling the connections??

One of my first Neal Stephenson reads and my first cyberpunk read in literature form. I've always heard of this book being the predecessor to the genre as a whole and wanted to finally get around to reading it. And I really enjoyed!

Best way I can sum up the overall reading experience was that it was just chaotic fun for the most part. The world and settings that Stephenson was able to imagine and build up back in the 90s is very impressive and prophetic in a lot ways. I'm not tech savvy enough or know the full history of it to know how 100 hundred percent accurate Stephenson's concepts are to what we have today in terms of virtual reality. But from the little I do know about VR and computers, the book is pretty close to the actual thing which is a bit crazy for me to wrap my head around.

The amount of violence and action in the book wasn't something I expected going into it. Science fiction books I've read before tended to lean more into the world building, dialogue, and concepts than pure action and fast paced writing. But Stephenson was able to find a pretty good balance of action, slower dialogue moments, to humor, and sometimes outright absurdity without feeling tonally off.

Characters were fun, cool, and interesting and serve the narrative for the story thats being told. But I wouldn't call any of them super in depth and they dont go through any major development or evolution throughout the book. They pretty much stayed the same from beginning to end, which was fine for me.

Only minor thing that was fine for me, but might annoy other readers is thatthere are moments in the middle of the book where it does get a bit info dump/exposition heavy. Where there full chapters of just dialogue about history, religion, philosophy, mythology, and language itself. Which was fine for me as I was intersted to see how Stephenson was going to tie all these concepts together towards the end. But for others, it may come off as a bit much and slows down the pacing a bit too much.

Enjoyed Snow Crash overall and I look forward to trying out other books by Neal Stephenson in the future!

Book number three of a three book urban fantasy series. I read the well printed and well bound POD (print on demand) trade paperback self published by the author in 2026 that I bought on Amazon in 2026. BTW, the author published this book under a pseudonym, his real name is John Van Stry. The author has stated that he is writing a fourth novel for the series.

Joshua has been an orphan since age six when his parents and older sister were killed in a car wreck. He has been in the foster care system since then in Wichita Falls, Texas and at eighteen was the quarterback of his high school football team. But, he was falsely arrested for an armed robbery right before the championship football game.

Joshua spent time in the County jail before a friend's father bailed him out and got him a lawyer. Now he is trying to get himself cleared of the false charges and to finish high school. And he has three girlfriends. And he is able to change into a wolf or a werewolf since the jail took away his charm that prevented him from turning, descended from Odin's úlfhéðnar.

This book is a harem book as described by the author. That means that there is lots of sex in the book, more so than his regular books so he is using a pseudonym to indicate that to his readers.

I really liked the characters, they are fully fleshed out and very likeable. The story moves fast and is very tough to put down.

The author has a website at:
https://jvanstry.blogspot.com/

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars (810 reviews)
https://www.amazon.com/Resilience-How-Werewolf-Jan-Stryvant/dp/B0H186QSB1

Lynn

The Science Fiction Awards Database (https://www.sfadb.com/) is currently showing an “Account Suspended” page.

I use it regularly to check award winners and nominations, and I’m missing it! Does anyone know what happened, whether the people maintaining it are aware, or if there’s any word on when it might be back?

Hoping it’s just a temporary hosting issue. Thanks for any information.

Hi, I'm asking which of them should read next?

What I've read (in chronological order) :
* ,,I, Robot" + ,,Complete Robot" and ,,Robots'' series by Asimov,
* ,,Diaspora'' by Greg Egan,
* Whole ,,Red Rising" saga by Pierce Brown,
* ,,There is no Antimemetics Division'' by qntm
* ,, The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect" by Roger Williams

Now in reading of ,, Schild's Ladder" by Greg Egan.

As you can see I've never touched fantasy, mostly because personally I don't feel that genera. And I would like to try it, and I think ,,The Way of Kings" would be the most approachable form.

Got back into a little bit of Robert Heinlein's work, and this time it's back to his "Future History" series with "Orphans of the Sky". Read just a little bit of that series in the form of short stories from his "Expanded Universe" collection, so it's a really a nice to be going back to a little bit of that with this fix-up.

"Orphan's of the Sky" is set on a massive ship in space, and the humans on that ship have completely forgotten about Earth after untold years, and now believe it to be a myth, with the ship being the only universe that they ever actually know of. And they have also been reduced to a feudal state also.

Hugh is one such individual who also believes that the ship is the only universe, until he is actually showed the truth by a mutie, and of the mission that the ship itself was supposed to complete.

"Orphans" consists of at least two novellas that were originally published in the forties, but the book itself is extremely short, only coming in at 128 pages, which kind of makes it a novella too. But it's a lot of fun, and is not actually that deep to begin with. Just a really decent space opera from beginning to end.

It's been nice getting back to the SF of Heinlein, but right now it's to get into yet another new author, and it is a novel by John Wyndam, "Out of the Deeps"!

The End of Everything. M. John Harrison.
2026 Booker Prize short list.

The Guardian newspaper states that although Harrison's writings are
literature, he has not achieved prior recognition because of his choice
of genre: Speculative Fiction.

It is a decade since England and presumably the rest of the world were
invaded by the iGhetti, whom nothing is known about but is thought that
they exist in the astral plane. However their presence distorts reality
in both time and space. For example, aeroplanes that flew to London to
bomb the financial district where the iGhetti first appeared are
sometimes seen making the same flight 10 years later. The alternate
space reality is difficult to summarise but is described in detail in
the book. There are now no institutions, no government, no police, no
newspapers, no radio, no tv, no computers, abandoned buildings and less
people. It is not clear how commerce works but the protagonist, Phillip,
is a beachcomber so there must be some sort of market.
From someone's journal of the invasion Phillip's aunt reads "Long before
the iGhetti arrived, everyone was playing out a separate fantasy" and it
was assumed that perhaps the iGhetti were a single entity with a large
number of components, many of which were discarded. "The seas are like a
stew, still full of the biological artefacts they discarded after their
arrival."
Phillip finds a biological artefact and with his 70 year old aunt leaves
the coast in Kent to travel to London to find a purchaser hoping for a
price sufficient to buy him and his aunt a passage to Spain. The
artefact quickly grows in size developing arms and legs. It loses a hand
which immediately starts to regrow. It is soon making noise and later in
the journey develops more quickly learning to read in just one day from
books and advertising pamphlets.
I can't say too much more about events without spoiling your reading.
There are acts of pragmatic brutality which suggest the end of any moral
code but once in an apparently abandoned shop, the aunt admonishes the
artefact for not leaving payment for goods taken.
Ghetti must be short for spaghetti and the lower case i suggests
technology such as an iPhone or iPad so, although it is not mentioned,
the implication is that the iGhetti is Artificial Intelligence whose use
to support political or commercial propaganda has created false reality
which might lead to the end of everything human. The arrival of the
iGhetti in the London financial district implies their creation by money
and greed.
I enjoyed thinking about the metaphor more than the actual reading which
might be a criticism of my appreciation of literature but I still rate
it as Four Stars.

I started reading last night and it put me in the Halloween mood. Each chapter is one day on the October calendar and the story is narrated by a dog. I wanted to take a minute to recommend.

It's long out of print.

M. A. Foster never won a Hugo Award, but he was a finalist twice for a related major Worldcon honor. [1, 2]

He was nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (now renamed the Astounding Award) in two consecutive years: [1]

1976: Finalist (won by Tom Reamy)

1977: Finalist (won by C. J. Cherryh) [1, 2, 3, 4]

While administered and voted on alongside the Hugo Awards by members of Worldcon, the Astounding Award is technically not an official Hugo Award. None of Foster's individual novels—such as his acclaimed Ler or Transformer series—ever made a final Hugo shortlist. [1, 2, 3, 4]

It was actually kind of good sci fi.

Hello, I'm interested to see if anyone has any book recs for either a future human civilization or even an alien one travel back to visit a barren and destroyed earth and learn about the human civilization that used to live on the planet and what caused them to either leave or be destroyed. Thank you.

I'll start. L E Moddessit Jr's "Timegod's World" is very similar to Amber except that it deals with time travel rather than alternate universes.

Book number two of a three book urban fantasy series. I read the well printed and well bound POD (print on demand) trade paperback self published by the author in 2026 that I bought on Amazon in 2026. BTW, the author published this book under a pseudonym, his real name is John Van Stry. I have the last book in the series.

Joshua has been an orphan since age six when his parents and older sister were killed in a car wreck. He has been in the foster care system since then in Wichita Falls, Texas and at eighteen was the quarterback of his high school football team. But, he was falsely arrested for an armed robbery right before the championship football game.

Joshua spent time in the County jail before a friend's father bailed him out and got him a lawyer. Now he is trying to get himself cleared of the false charges and to finish high school. And he has two girlfriends. And he is a werewolf since the jail took away his charm that prevented him from turning, descended from Odin's úlfhéðnar.

This book is a harem book as described by the author. That means that there is lots of sex in the book, more so than his regular books so he is using a pseudonym to indicate that to his readers.

I really liked the characters, they are fully fleshed out and very likeable. The story moves fast and is very tough to put down.

The author has a website at:
https://jvanstry.blogspot.com/

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars (908 reviews)
https://www.amazon.com/Epiphanies-How-Werewolf-Jan-Stryvant/dp/B0GY81Q842

Lynn

So I love reading writers who have unusual worldviews. Among science fiction I can think of 2 writers like these

Philip K. Dick with his paranoia mixed with spiritual psychosis.

Olaf Stapledon with his cosmic philosophy influenced by Spinoza and mixed with transhumanism.

In both of them their worldviews are of major influence on their writing. What are other examples of this?

Humble is on a roll with the sci-fi bundles, this has pretty much everything you'd want from Gene Wolfe as far as I can tell.