#spaceopera

The Klagan's Christmas Gift by Holly Hanzo
Release Date July 25, 2025
#ScienceFiction #Romance #SpaceOpera #Adult #AlienRomance

https://www.risingshadow.net/book/80539-the-klaganand039s-christmas-gift

J’ai adoré ce roman, que j’ai eu un peu de mal à lâcher. Pour les personnes sensibles, il y est fait mention de viol, violences, oppressions, et validisme. La violence est omniprésente et les personnages sont d’une profondeur inouïe. #mastolivre #vendredilecture #SF #spaceopera

(comment on L'incivilité des fantômes)

The Lies Arcana (Starship's Mage #17) by Glynn Stewart
Release Date July 24, 2025
#ScienceFiction #SpaceOpera

https://www.risingshadow.net/book/78523-the-lies-arcana

Started reading Drew Williams' "The Stars Now Unclaimed: The Universe After, Book One."
https://amzn.to/3F5C1gu
📖🚀👽
Interesting so far, and I'm really curious to see where this series goes, but I sense this may not be a quick read...
#books #reading #ScienceFiction #SciFi #SpaceOpera

Shroud

I was initially leery of picking up Adrian Tchaikovsky’s latest book Shroud. It seemed to have a space horror vibe, and while I’ve enjoyed a lot of Tchaikovsky’s work, I’m not a horror fan. I don’t mind if a story has elements of it, but usually don’t enjoy straight horror. Thankfully, Shroud isn’t horror, but more a demonstration of how hard it could be to communicate with an alien intelligence living in a radically different environment.

Humanity has reached the stars, but only after struggling through a couple of “bottlenecks”, one of which involved the effects of what we’d done to Earth’s environment. Somehow this has resulted in a society ruled by corporations under an extreme form of capitalism, corporations driven to exploit resources in new solar systems and spread out under a manifest destiny type ideology.

When the Garveneer enters a new system to exploit, they discover a moon in orbit around a gas giant that is blasting out over the electromagnetic spectrum. Juna Ceelander is the executive assistant of the leader of the special projects team which is pulled out of hibernation to investigate. The team’s goal is to study the moon to see how it might be exploitable. They are motivated to be as useful as possible since they only earn money when they’re out of hibernation.

The moon is quickly named “Shroud” because it’s shrouded in an impenetrable atmosphere. It turns out to be larger and heavier than Earth, with a much higher gravity, leading to surface pressure over twenty times that of Earth. The atmosphere has no oxygen and has temperatures around minus thirty-five centigrade. It’s not an environment humans can survive in even for an instant. And yet their remote drones quickly discover life.

As they study the moon, the question of whether there should be a crewed mission on Shroud arises. The team engineer, Mai Ste Etienne, under orders from leadership, constructs mobile pods. Ceelander protests the danger but is overruled. She’s happy that she never has to go down into that environment.

Of course, there is a disaster, resulting in exactly that happening. When an accident makes the destruction of their work environment imminent, some of the team realize their only shot at survival is to get into the pods, which end up being ejected from the ship and landing on the surface.

Much of what follows reminds me of Stanley G. Weinbaum’s classic story “A Martian Odyssey”, a story of an astronaut who crash lands hundreds of miles from his team and has to journey back across the surface of Mars.

Ceelander and Ste Etienne end up in a pod together and find themselves in a desperate odyssey across the dark surface of Shroud to reach safety. Along the way they end up in a partnership of sorts with a group of aliens that at times seem threatening, at others seem like their guardians, but whose intentions and motivations are opaque.

But we as the reader get to see things from the alien’s perspective. They are puzzled by this new animal-like thing, which might show aspects of intelligence, but seems so ill-suited for survival. Yet something about it seems important, so after opening up another pod and not finding anything interesting in it (not understanding that it just killed a human), it devotes resources to following the pod with Ceelander and Ste Etienne in it, protecting, guiding, and learning from it as it can.

I enjoyed this book. And Tchaikovsky once again demonstrates his knack for coming up with innovative aliens. But there are some aspects of the story I’m not entirely wild about. The corporate dystopia trope is starting to wear a bit thin with me. And there’s an aspect of the aliens which I feel may be a well Tchaikovsky is going to a bit too often. However that aspect is crucial to the later parts of the plot which I’ll admit give the story a lot more punch.

But these are nits for what is otherwise a thrilling story. I’m learning to trust Tchaikovsky, even when the initial description of the book isn’t necessarily compelling. Highly recommended if it’s your type of tale.

#bookReview #bookReviews #ScienceFiction #SpaceOpera

Trouble just seems to follow some people. People like Mallory, the woman at the center of Mur Lafferty's science fiction space opera mystery series, "The Midsolar Murders." In our new interview, Lafferty and I talk about the third (and possibly last) novel in this sci-fi series, "Infinite Archive."
https://paulsemel.com/exclusive-interview-infinite-archive-author-mur-lafferty/
📖🕵️🚀🪐
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#MurLafferty #MurLaffertyInterview #MurLaffertyInfiniteArchive #MurLaffertyInfiniteArchiveInterview #MurLaffertyTheMidsolarMurders #MurLaffertyStationEternity #MurLaffertyChaosTerminal #Books #Reading #AuthorInterview #AuthorInterviews #BookTok #ScienceFiction #SciFi #SciFiBooks #SpaceOpera

I'm super excited to announce this, and this is the perfect opportunity!

I've just launched my open, generic, setting-agnostic, FREE (as in speech and beer), and modern #TTRPG

It's currently in beta, and I'll be finalizing the version 1.0 release over the next few months, along with publishing an original #fantasy expansion, and a #SpaceOpera #scifi expansion based on my novel Common Accord later this year

https://versesrpg.com

#TTRPGRising
https://dice.camp/@thoughtpunks/114789460090250538

One of the cool things about the movie "Alien" was that the characters were space truckers. It's a similar space (pun intended) where we find the main character in Matthew Kressel's new #SciFi #SpaceOpera novel "Space Trucker Jess." To learn more, check out this exclusive interview.
https://paulsemel.com/exclusive-interview-space-trucker-jess-author-matthew-kressel/
📖🚀🛻
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
#MatthewKressel #MatthewKresselInterview #MatthewKresselSpaceTruckerJess #MatthewKresselSpaceTruckerJessInterview #Books #Reading #AuthorInterview #AuthorInterviews #BookTok #ScienceFiction #SciFi #SciFiBooks #SpaceOpera

In his science fiction space opera novel "Interstellar Medic: The Long Run," author Patrick Chiles made a woman be an EMT...in space. Now, with "Interstellar Medic: The Long Way Home," he's bringing her home. To find out why, check out this exclusive interview.
https://paulsemel.com/exclusive-interview-interstellar-medic-the-long-way-home-author-patrick-chiles/
📖😷🩺👽
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
#PatrickChiles #PatrickChilesInterview #PatrickChilesInterstellarMedicTheLongWayHome #PatrickChilesInterstellarMedicTheLongWayHomeInterview #PatrickChilesTheLongWayHome #PatrickChilesTheLongWayHomeInterview #PatrickChilesInterstellarMedic #PatrickChilesInterstellarMedicTheLongRun #PatrickChilesTheLongRun #PatrickChilesTheLongWayBack #PatrickChilesInterstellarMedicTheLongWayBack #Books #Reading #AuthorInterview #AuthorInterviews #BookTok #ScienceFiction #SciFi #SciFiBooks #SpaceOpera

A reread of Consider Phlebas

Iain Banks’ Culture setting is probably the closest thing to outright paradise in science fiction. It’s an interstellar post-scarcity techno-anarchist utopia, where sentient machines do all the work and the humans hang around engaging in hobbies or other hedonistic pursuits. Some do choose to work, but there’s no requirement for it since money isn’t required. Everyone is effectively immortal and lives as long as they want.

It’s worth noting that in the Culture books “human” means biological humanoid since many of the stories take place before Earth is contacted. This follows a trend in sci-fi in the late 1970s and 80s, following the lead of Star Wars, of telling stories of characters who are aliens that just happen to look and act like us. Banks hangs a lantern on the implausibility of this in at least one of the books, but I can’t recall him ever addressing it in detail.

There are no laws in the Culture, only reputations and consensus. Everyone is free to do whatever they want. However, someone who shows themselves to be dangerous might have a drone assigned to keep them from hurting any other sentient entities.

Perhaps the most striking thing about the Culture are the Minds, vast AI intelligences who control titanic spaceships, space habitats such as orbitals, and warships, among other major functions. This notion of god-like AI might be the biggest influence these novels have had, both on sci-fi and the wider culture. (Although what’s often left out of the wider meme is the Culture Minds’ internal workings existing in hyperspace, meaning their god-like capabilities come from processing information faster than light and in a hyperdimensional realm, essentially working on magic.)

All of which is to say that the Culture unapologetically solves its problems with technology advanced enough to simply render them obsolete.

Banks admitted in interviews that something like the Culture probably isn’t possible, but it made an interesting backdrop for exploring philosophical questions. I recently discovered that one of the Culture books I had missed when I read them many years ago, Excession, is coming out in ebook format later this year, which I’ve already pre-ordered. And that Amazon Prime is planning a TV series based on Consider Phlebas, the first Culture novel. Given their recent track record, I’m not sure how optimistic to feel about that.

But it reminded me that it’s probably been something like twenty years since I read Consider Phlebas, and that a reread might be interesting. Particularly since the first time I initially bounced off of it, and had to be convinced by a friend to finish it and look at the other books. I enjoyed it a lot more this time, either because my tastes have changed, or because I already knew where the story was going.

The Culture is at war with the Idiran Empire, a theocracy of huge warlike aliens. (They seem very similar to Halo‘s Covenant, which they likely inspired.) Horza is a changer, someone who can take on the form of other people, along with other capabilities such as poison nails and saliva. He is an agent working for the Idirans, not because he believes in their religion or cause, but because he’s opposed to the Culture, repulsed by their dependence on machines, which he is convinced will eventually turn on the biological entities.

Most of the story is told from Horza’s viewpoint. He’s a tough and relentless protagonist who we are with through several adventures. He’s often sympathetic, but seems blind to the atrocities the Idirans are committing. While he is usually conscientious toward the people he fall in with throughout the story, his attitude toward machines seems unrelentingly hostile. At one point he ruthlessly destroys a friendly AI that’s in his way, and his attitude toward a drone that saves his life is not to regard it as a thinking feeling entity, but as just a mechanism. And he ultimately coerces a captured crew into perilous mission.

Horza is opposed by a Culture agent named Balveda. She is a member of Special Circumstances, which Horza considers the Culture’s version of military intelligence. If there is a hero in this story, it’s Balveda. Although she spends most of the book being passive, with most of her agency offstage. We only get into her viewpoint late in the story.

Horza and Balveda have a high regard for each other. Balveda attempts to save Horza early in the book and Horza is concerned when he hears the Idiran order to execute Balveda when she is a prisoner. Later in the book, Horza often feels like he should kill Balveda but always seems to have an excuse not to.

The MacGuffin of the story is a Culture Mind that escaped an attack by hiding in tunnels on a world. The world is protected by a powerful alien entity neither the Idirans nor the Culture can afford to antagonize. Yet the Idirans want to capture the Mind for the information it contains, and the Culture wants to rescue it. Horza is sent by the Idirans because he may be allowed in by the alien entity, because he once worked on that world with a team of changers, one of which was his lover. He accepts on the shaky promise that afterward he might be allowed to leave with her and enough money to retire as an agent.

However along the way Horza is captured by a team of pirates and ends up on a series of side adventures which show us various locations in this universe, including a “temple of light”, an orbital, and Schar’s World, a planet which is effectively the burned out grave of a civilization that destroyed itself in warfare, and which is where the Mind is hiding.

Without spoiling too much, this is not a happy tale, which was the reason I reacted against it the first time. But it does have some interesting situations and a lot of action, and as an introduction to the Culture, it has the occasional philosophical discussion. I enjoyed and recommend it if you’ve never tried it. I will warn that Banks’ pacing is far from snappy, but it doesn’t feel as ponderous as some of the other stuff I’ve recently complained about.

While waiting for Excession I might reread some of the other Culture novels, particularly Surface Detail, my favorite. I suspect the TV show, if it gets made, will draw material from a lot of these books, not just the first.

Have you read Consider Phlebas, or any of the other Culture novels? If so, what did you think? Read anything else with similar themes worth checking out?

#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #bookReview #bookReviews #posthuman #sciFi #ScienceFiction #SciFi #SpaceOpera