Welcome to the Sunday Science Fiction Roundup 😄

What sci-fi book did you finish this week and love?

• One book is enough.
• No reviews required.
• A sentence or two about why you loved it is perfect.

This thread is about celebrating great reads and helping others find their next adventure.

Looking for a new read :)

I'm embarrassed to say I haven't read his books yet...

Which should I start with?

Consider Phlebas?

Welcome to the Sunday Science Fiction Roundup 😄

What sci-fi book did you finish this week and love?

• One book is enough.
• No reviews required.
• A sentence or two about why you loved it is perfect.

This thread is about celebrating great reads and helping others find their next adventure.

I loved There is No Antimemetics Division by qntm :)

Anyone got any good recs?

I haven't read The Luminious Dead, is it as good as people say?

Welcome to the Sunday Science Fiction Roundup 😄

What sci-fi book did you finish this week and love?

• One book is enough.
• No reviews required.
• A sentence or two about why you loved it is perfect.

This thread is about celebrating great reads and helping others find their next adventure.

Science fiction tends to imagine AI and robots becoming dangerous because they become too intelligent, take control and eventually decide humans are an inconvenience.

But suppose we avoid all of that.

Imagine that in 30 or 40 years AI is completely mundane and tightly controlled by humans. Household robots are everywhere. They cook, clean, drive, repair things, look after children and the elderly, and handle most routine work.

Nobody has to work unless they actually want to. At first, it sounds like paradise. But then what?

For thousands of years, human life has been structured around the need to be active to survive. The need to work and earn a living. Remove most of those pressures and we are left with an enormous amount of free time.

Would people become happier? Would we devote ourselves to art, science, sport, exploration and relationships?

Or would boredom, lack of purpose and the need to find something meaningful eventually create new problems?

Perhaps the real challenge of advanced AI won’t be keeping it from destroying humanity.

Perhaps it will be finding a reason for humanity to get out of bed when the machines can do almost everything better.

What do you think happens to us?

Welcome to the Sunday Science Fiction Roundup 😄

What sci-fi book did you finish this week and love?

• One book is enough.
• No reviews required.
• A sentence or two about why you loved it is perfect.

This thread is about celebrating great reads and helping others find their next adventure.

Does anyone remember Isaac Asimov’s Nightfall (my favoutite sci-fi short story) later becoming a full length novel by Robert Silverberg?

The basic premise got me thinking about something slightly different. In Nightfall, civilisation repeatedly collapses and has to rebuild because people are confronted every few thousand years with an astronomical event they have never experienced before.

Here on Earth, we assume our civilisation started off when fire and tools were first used and our technologically advanced times are simply an extension.

As we learn more about human history, we keep discovering that ancient times were considerably more sophisticated than we once assumed. We also keep finding evidence of settlements, engineering and organised societies far older than we were traditionally taught in history books - at least when I went to school.

So here’s the speculative question:

Is it remotely conceivable that an advanced human civilisation existed thousands, or even tens of thousands, of years ago, collapsed for some reason, and that we simply don’t recognise it because most of the evidence has disappeared?

John Westley Turnbull

What was your favorite sci-fi read last month?

Plus, why did you like it? Who should try it?

Bonus points if you post the book cover 😄

On the 1st of every month, we make a sticky thread for authors to pitch their books directly to our members.

Please follow the pitch below; otherwise, we will remove it.

What is the required format for your pitch?

Book cover image: people love images 😄
Book Title and Author:
Pitch us your book in 70 words or less:
Optional: What books influenced your book:
Bookstore URL:

Welcome to the Sunday Science Fiction Roundup 😄

What sci-fi book did you finish this week and love?

• One book is enough.
• No reviews required.
• A sentence or two about why you loved it is perfect.

This thread is about celebrating great reads and helping others find their next adventure.

For those of you who read a lot of sci-fi, what do you think is missing from today’s books?

What ideas, technologies, social changes or philosophical questions deserve more attention? Are there topics that writers have barely touched, or directions you’d like to see explored instead of another variation on AI, dystopian governments, first contact, military sci-fi or space opera?

I’m interested in hearing what readers think the next great wave of science fiction should be about.

I ask because I’m retired now and have more time to read and also to write science fiction as a hobby. It’s always interesting to hear what readers feel is underexplored and, just as importantly, overexplored.

Recetly when I was writing, I realised I was drifting dangerously close to the old “ robot goes rogue” trope. It made me stop and think. There are already plenty of stories where AI turns against humanity.

The challenge became finding a fresh angle rather than simply retelling a familiar story. Instead of asking whether AI would become dangerous, I became more interested in whether humans and intelligent machines could learn to coexist, and what that might actually look like.

That experience left me wondering what other ideas are waiting to be explored. If you could steer science fiction in a new direction, where would you take it?

John Westley Turnbull

From some authors with their favorites as well:

https://bookdna.com/best-books/large-galactic-empires

https://bookdna.com/best-books/multi-cultural-space-operas

https://bookdna.com/best-books/space-opera-with-a-hint-or-a-whole-lot-of-magic

https://bookdna.com/best-books/classic-space-operas-written-by-women

I'd love to hear your favorites :)

For me it has to be the Commonwealth Saga by Peter Hamilton.

Has anyone read an indie science fiction novel recently (not your own work) that surprised you because it was a page turner?

John Westley Turnbull

Hi all. I’m John Westley Turnbull, an Australian sci-fi reader and writer. Retirement has given me the dangerous amount of free time required to read too many books and write a couple of my own. I’m especially interested in AI, first contact, and thought-provoking speculative fiction. I have read all the old masters including but not limited to, Asimov, Clarke, Harrion, Wyndham, Brackett, Heinlein etc etc. I really need to explore some of the current sci fi authors. Suggestions most welcome.

Looking forward to talking books with fellow science fiction fans.

I've read a ton of the top books on this site:

https://bookdna.com/bookshelf/hard-science-fiction

And I'd love to get some suggestions!

I'd love some suggestions.

On the 1st of every month, we make a sticky thread for authors to pitch their books directly to our members.

Please follow the pitch below; otherwise, we will remove it.

What is the required format for your pitch?

Book cover image: people love images 😄
Book Title and Author:
Pitch us your book in 70 words or less:
Optional: What books influenced your book:
Bookstore URL:

Welcome to the Sunday Science Fiction Roundup 😄

What sci-fi book did you finish this week and love?

• One book is enough.
• No reviews required.
• A sentence or two about why you loved it is perfect.

This thread is about celebrating great reads and helping others find their next adventure.

Welcome to the Sunday Science Fiction Roundup 😄

What sci-fi book did you finish this week and love?

• One book is enough.
• No reviews required.
• A sentence or two about why you loved it is perfect.

This thread is about celebrating great reads and helping others find their next adventure.

I'd love to hear any suggestions for someone like him :)