I’d love to hear about your favorite concept or idea you’ve read about or seen in scifi media.
My personal favorite is the Conjoiner Drive out of the Revelation Space series. These ship drives are dual drives on either side of a lighthugger and have a living being inside the drives to act as a supercomputer, which holds a wormhole open inside the drives. The wormhole links far in the past to the big-bang and uses the energy from the big-bang for propulsion.
In most scifi I’ve come across wormholes are used for FTL travel, and I thought this was such a unique and creative use of a wormhole it has stuck with me for years after reading about it.
So what are your favorite devices or ideas that have come out of scifi media?
My current favorite topic is the idea of a world ark, a self-contained world adrift in space containing the remnants of life from a doomed world, and the inhabitants aren’t aware of it. Intetestingly it has been featured in two different games: SOMA and Genshin Impact. I’m currently working on a TTRPG campaign within such a world.
I don’t know if this is the same or at least similar, but I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of a generation starship that is moving toward the universe either toward another planet, in search of another planet, or simply as an indefinitely mobile home. It’s wild to imagine generations being born and living on the starship without having any real understanding of the place that humans came from. Stories of Earth would start to seem like wild folklore and mythology rather than actual human history.
Eventually, some generations may become angry that the decision to live on this starship was made by other people many generations before them, and now everyone on the starship is cursed to live under that decision. Was the starship navigation designed so that people may one day change the course? Or perhaps enormous safeguards were put into place to ensure that the ship kept going toward the initial objective because all other options were decidedly much much worse for everyone.
Eventually, some generations may become angry that the decision to live on this starship was made by other people many generations before them, and now everyone on the starship is cursed to live under that decision.
In Genshin Impact, it’s not known by the vast population that the planet they’re on isn’t a normal world. But it’s expansive enough that I think most people wouldn’t have much opinion either way. It would be like telling you that you’re trapped on a chunk of rock suspended in space. Well, yeah and?
If you haven’t read his books, Stephen Baxter has at least a couple of good explorations of long journey ships.
I’ve been thinking of an idea like this for a while. A bubble of stars and planets preserved from a dying universe, either doomed to drift the void for eternity or perhaps lucky enough to stumble into a new existence. Either way, I imagine people on worlds with a countable number of stars in the sky. Think of it as almost the same as a world arc, but on a local cluster scale instead of planetary.
Anne Leckie’s Translators. Aliens so alien that the only way we can have any shred of common ground is by them taking a few humans and rebuilding them specifically to be their ambassadors, with interesting results.
highly recommending this series as well. the ships soldiers are pretty interesting as well
Okay, but that human translator thing sounds like something similar to what we see in a single episode of Sliders when we are introduced to the Kromagg. Except the one human translator you see is still seen as an inferior being.
Would have been a cool plot point had they not completely dropped it in season 4.
It’s hard to describe if you haven’t read it without just spoiling the books, it’s a fantastic bit of writing, and very integral to the story
Is this from Translation State? That’s what came up when I searched Anne leckie translators, but sounds like something I’d enjoy.
Have you read Embassytown? It has some funky linguistics going on that sounds like it might be up your alley
It’s a theme that runs through the Ancillary series, and is further expounded on in Translation State. I like the latter, but the way she writes them in the series is something else, it’s an incredibly imaginative and funny piece of writing. I love those three books, I think they’re amongst the best sci-fi ever committed to paper.
I haven’t read it, but I will now I reckon, thanks for the recommendation
A Translator appears in Ancillary Sword, and it’s pretty much “try to simulate a human” silly stuff for comic relief.
Translation State is a standalone book in her Imperial Radch universe, which includes the Ancillary Justice trilogy, which is a great series. I highly recommend it.
The book writing technique of the D’ni from Myst. It was not magic, it was essentially math and virtual reality. It just was in hand written books you could enter by placing your hand on a window instead of walking into a big room like the holodecks of Star Trek.
Sounds interesting. Is this from the game Myst or is there another piece of scifi that goes by the same name?
The details of how the books work mostly comes from the book series, specifically The Book of Ti’Ana, which IIRC is the second book in a trilogy. I haven’t played more than the first one and a little bit of 3 tho. Always wanted to play Riven after reading the books, since they all take place right before the events of that game. But the book series and the games were written by the same people, so it’s all the same lore.
The wormhole network of the Nasqueron Dwellers in “The Algebraist.”
Niling d-sinks, from Peter F Hamilton’s Commonwealth novels.
The Planet Express ship from Futurama (it would take too much energy to move the ship at FTL, so it moves the universe instead.)
Planet express ship is cool and all but I think the finglonger takes the cake
People permanently grafted into ships is pretty cool. That does come up a lot, doesn’t it?
Something like it comes up somewhere in Scalzi’s Old Mans War series. One of the later books, I think. That’s from aliens giving a human “brain in a jar” treatment, though – not sure if it quite counts as being grafted into the ship.
You know I’d say that’s pretty close. I forgot I should read those, somebody recommended that to me for liking Enders Game
I loved Ender’s Game when I read it as a kid. The followup trilogy was also intriguing, but I kind of lost interest during the 'Shadow series. Maybe around 2002?
Looking again now…wow, the author really expanded the setting! I had no idea he’d added even half this much.
In Christopher Paolini’s book To Sleep in a Sea of Stars there are people whose brains have been removed and installed as ship minds to augment ship functions. There’s some discussion about what it cost and whether it was worth it.
IIRC there was something like that in Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda. The FTL method in that series requires a sentient biological mind to navigate it. In “The Sum of Its Parts,” the crew encounters a race of artificial intelligence that has found a way around this problem…by simply taking the brains from sentient biological beings and basically using them as specialized processors for FTL calculations.
There were definitely a few other instances of that happening on accident but I think the conjoiner drives were the only ones that were on purpose.
Nah, Chronicles of Riddick has ship telepaths who live in pods. Battlestar Galactica has something similar. The video game Homeworld had galactic travel ships that were controlled by a human grafted to the computer, that turned out to he reversible and had lower stakes as time went on. That’s probably the closest thing because the ship controller is responsible for plotting hyperspace jumps by ripping holes in reality.
The navigators in Dune are almost like this but you can carry them offship in a giant fishtank. So not grafted but kind of non-ambulatory outside of spaceflight.
I guess the theme I latch on to here is people who trade their body and autonomy to gain interstellar flight and provide for others. Is it not the same with conjoiner drives?
My bad I thought you were talking about within the Revelation Space universe. Great examples of that trope in different media. Didn’t know that was a trope used in homeworld I didn’t pay much attention to the story when I played it ages ago
Warhammer 40k, more or less with cogitators and servitors - no automation is allowed after an AI uprising tens of thousands of years ago. All processing is done by lobotomized and heavily modified humans. Many of these cybernetics are built into ships.
Ork FTL ships are built around the brain of an ork ‘weirdboy’ or psyker (sometimes).
That’s RIGHT! I knew there would be something 40k related but I completely mind blanked the cogitators. Did the Mechanicus ever put one of those in charge of driving an entire ship?
I’m not too knowledgeable, but there are lots of edge cases. The machine spirits of the largest mechas (Titans) are known to have some autonomy and individual personalities, which is to say, they probably have some illicit AI or a less disabled human consciousness (-es) at their core.
Anne McCaffrey’s The Ship Who Sang has children with severe physical disabilities given new lives, bodies, and possibilities as ‘shell people’ - brains grafted into ships. An amazing new view on what it is to be human.
There’s lots of ship-who-something books written all or in part by Anne McCaffery, they’re all pretty good. I enjoyed City who Fought, also.
my favorite trope that i dont see enough of in movies is realistic galactic travel and all the tech that would require… travel to another star system… usually multi-generational attempts. feels like there is a lot of this in books.
you often see a brief glimpse, or some hand waiving with hibernation techniques. not much feels real.
Chasm City has a pretty realistic take on generation ships.
ill take a look, thanks!
Oh yes, and the deep dark fear of people on the first ever flotilla that someone back home will build a second FTL capable one that would OVERPASS them before their destination and they would arrive to an already colonised world.
The issue with multigenerational stuff in movies is that you would need a new cast for each generation. Foundation series is for example very hard to adapt and they diverged from the books to make things more convenient by having the emperor clone himself and cryosleep. I think currently it’s very hard to get a series through that requires people to pay attention when they’re literally on their phones while watching.
Fully agree, give me non-ftl space is really really fucking big scifi and I’m a happy camper
I have just finished Peter F. Hamilton’s latest excellent duology The Archimedes Engine and The Helium Sea and slower than light interstellar travel, and the time dilation that ensues, is a constant theme. There is some hand-wavy
magictechnology for speeding ships up to 99% of lightspeed (and slowing them down again) using massive gates, which means the main parts of the story are told over decades.
I’m a big fan of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s work, but one concept of his that I am fascinated by comes from his book “Alien Clay”:
Spoilers below
On the planet the protagonist finds himself on, life has evolved to be fundamentally symbiotic to an absurd degree. Essentially, individual organisms specialize in something… say… jumping. And then they offer their services to whatever macro community comes along. So “creatures” are just communities of individual, highly specialized members who are essentially all free agents. Just wild.
Not gonna read the spoiler because I already have it on my list to read, but I really enjoyed the children series. Excited to get to Alien Clay now
I can’t believe how prolific that guy is. He puts out like 3 novels per year, and the vast majority of them are absolute bangers. Just finished book 4 in the Children series the other day, and it blew me away.
Nice didn’t know a 4th was released
Yup! Just a couple months ago.
Since I read Stranger in a Strange Land long ago. I keep coming back to the idea of an indoor lawn.
It’s an idea that seems fairly complicated when you get into the details, but also there’s no real reason it can’t be done.
I was a building engineer for years and this sounds like an absolute nightmare, but it would definitely be super cool.
I love that, of all the out-there ideas in Stranger in a Strange Land, that’s the one that sticks with you. Honestly, I think you’re right to favor it! 😄
piers anthony has a series called I think kirilian quest. There is no ftl and the law of physics as we know them can’t be circumvented (I think its been awhile but maybe its real difficult and rarely used). Anyway all civilizations eventually realize astral projection is possible and time and space make no difference. Thing is it takes two types of people to work. People with strong auras can project and people with weak auras can be possesed. Its not a requirement but more it will work better and last longer. Anyway people with the strongest auras get jobs traveling and people with the lowest get jobs as vessels. This is how communication between societies in an intergalactic culture communicate and interact.
Yea thats pretty cool definitely gonna check this out
just one word of warning he is more of a fantasy writer so the alien species are a bit fantastic. On the other hand they are not all humanoid. In fact quite the opposite. So sci fantasy but definately different.
One more warning, he’s a chauvinist pedophile
A universe/dimension where everything takes place inside a giant creature can be pretty fun one. The bloom in torment: tides of numenera is the example I recall but I’m sure there’s more.
I think my favourite is just when they play with the unknowable. Things so different from humans they operate on different principles and see the world differently.
Sure you see this in fantasy and horror a lot with like the house in House of Leaves or Cthulhu but I’m also thinking the TechnoCore and Shrike in Hyperion, maud’dib in Dune, or the black stuff in the Expanse series. I just like alien stuff that’s, well, alien
Just give me neon lights in the rain and I’m already happy.
I’m boring and I really like rotating megastructures. I think what I find fascinating is they’re feasible for us to make IRL if we somehow figure out refining on the moon and mass drivers (ignoring the economics too lol) since they use conventional materials even for relatively large ones.
Everyone is always focused on terraforming or colonizing distant planets. A rotating habitat is engineered to be exactly what we need better than any planet we can colonize.
Life on Mars would be demonstrably worse. You need to bury your habs under meters of regolith to not kill your colonists from radiation. Going outside is a space walk with a laundry list of items you need to attend to with little to no time to enjoy being outdoors (you’re in a suit regardless which means it sucks to some extent no matter what)
A rotating Hab means you can live much closer to how you live on Earth
The Uplift Series is a gem. Copied directly from Wiki because it’s succinct yet thorough:
The Five Galaxies are filled with alien races, all of whom were “uplifted” into sentience by another race through the use of directed breeding. As “payment” for being made sentient, the uplifted races are subservient to their uplifters for a period of time. All existing races have reached sentience through this process, and follow a common evolution in which the races become free of their uplifters, enter a period of independent power, and then fade and eventually disappear.
The arrival of a human ship at a populated star upsets the established races as humanity reached sentience on their own. This had been believed to be impossible, nothing of the sort is known in the eons-old galactic library. This leads to great arguments among the alien powers. Humanity begins to uplift other species on Earth, including chimpanzees and dolphins, but does not demand subservience.
Besides the whole uplift concept, I’ve also liked the concept that the galactic civilization is really old - like hundreds of millions if not billions of years old. Some of the ships flying around are tens of millions of years old.
I have to say the second and third books, Startide Rising and The Uplift War, are some of my favorite sci-fi novels of all time. The first book is David Brin’s first novel and it kind of shows. It’s not a bad book, but it’s a bit weak. The last three books are a trilogy and they start getting pretty weird and I didn’t care for it as much. The second and third books are standalone so you can read them without the first book very easily. I actually had read the second and third books a few times before looking into it a bit more and realizing there was a first book.
sounds interesting !
but does not demand subserviencethat’s the fictional part right there I guess :)
This is a bit of a general one, but I have a fondness for very large space structures. A number of my favorite scifi stories take the premise of “exploring a (usually abandoned or tech-regressed) alien megastructure”.
Dyson spheres and ringworlds and stellar engines and the like are the obvious candidates, but honestly I like smaller (but still huge) ideas like oneill cylinder colonies just as much, because what I like in them is a function of both size and how close to understood physics they follow, and the latter tend to be easier to make plausible.
There’s a certain sense of inspiration that comes of someone describing something almost incomprehensibly huge, explaining that it is designed by intelligent entities, and then justifying it with enough real science as to convince you that something at least somewhat like it really could exist, someday, or maybe already does somewhere out in the vastness of the universe.
Im with you i love a good megastructure. I know the bobiverse books are a bit cheesy but I really enjoyed the oneill cylinder world that was the main focus of book 4 I think it was. Pushing Ice, Ringworld, and Rendezvous with Rama were all good as well. Got any other good superstructure stories I could get into?
You named virtually all of the ones I’d mention first lol. I guess I’d probably add “bowl of heaven” to that, I’m not sure it’s design is the most plausible form for the concept really but it features a stellar engine (specifically, one using the star as a sort of rocket thruster, to move something like a ringworld around).
