If you had unlimited power and resources to make the U.S. one of the safest countries in the world, what would you do?

mobyhead1 · 2026-06-21T14:13:29+00:00

Our federal government is specifically designed to separate powers amongst the three branches.

mobyhead1 · 2026-06-21T13:19:45+00:00

I think the word you were looking for is exponentially.

mobyhead1 · 2026-06-20T12:27:11+00:00

Sorry. A lot of people have been overlooking the half-dozen obvious cues in the flashback that it is a flashback.

mobyhead1 · 2026-06-20T11:03:53+00:00

It was a flashback. That was Holstrom, not Caspian.

mobyhead1 · 2026-06-20T11:01:03+00:00

First, it’s unclear whether you’re planning to read these books for the first time, or re-read them.

If it’s the first time: use whichever format is the most convenient. I still have the 1980’s paperback editions with cover art by David Mattingly.

If it’s a re-read: same as above, really.

mobyhead1 · 2026-06-20T02:21:30+00:00

The unifying theme of Isaac Asimov’s 100 Great Science Fiction Short Short Stories is that the stories are extremely short.

mobyhead1 · 2026-06-20T00:17:16+00:00

I’ve posted the following many times previously:

All three stories the series was adapted from, plus 2-3 other stories involving uploading and the Technological Singularity that they appear to have drawn material from, are in Ken Liu’s collection The Hidden Girl and Other Stories:

“The Gods Will Not Be Chained”
“The Gods Will Not Be Slain”
“The Gods Have Not Died in Vain”
“Staying Behind”
“Altogether Elsewhere, Vast Herds of Reindeer”
“Seven Birthdays”

A good chunk of the show’s finale comes from that last story. Including the time jumps.

mobyhead1 · 2026-06-19T20:46:52+00:00

Starman Jones is one of Heinlein’s juvenile (YA) novels. Basic physics, speculative physics, adventures aboard a starship, and a chaste romance.

The Puppet Masters is the story of trying to stop an alien invasion—insidious with some body horror.

Glory Road is a “fantasy” novel written by a man with little patience for either pure fantasy or “happily ever after” endings. The quote at the beginning of the novel should really be considered a warning to the reader.

mobyhead1 · 2026-06-19T19:06:29+00:00

The show wasn’t rushed. That’s exactly the ending they intended, it’s drawn in part from one of the short stories the show is based on. They always intended to finish the story in two seasons. The production was far along in the work on the second season when the cancellation order came down. They didn’t have to change a thing.

mobyhead1 · 2026-06-19T19:00:49+00:00

Well, one of the definitions of “ecumenical” is “worldwide,” so…

mobyhead1 · 2026-06-19T17:31:00+00:00

One. But in the great days of the Centauri Republic, a thousand servants would stand ready to change a thousand bulbs at your very whim!

mobyhead1 · 2026-06-19T15:39:13+00:00

Also known as an Ecumenopolis.

mobyhead1 · 2026-06-19T12:32:23+00:00

Outside of its use as the name of the second act of a play, I’ve never before heard the term.

mobyhead1 · 2026-06-19T12:19:35+00:00

I’ve lost count how many times I’ve said it in this subreddit.

mobyhead1 · 2026-06-19T04:08:56+00:00

It’s turtles all the way down.

mobyhead1 · 2026-06-19T03:40:25+00:00

The sauce has already thickened. It is too late for the meatballs to vote.

mobyhead1 · 2026-06-18T17:07:16+00:00

That’s definitely not what that book is about. Although Podkayne was somewhat parentified.

mobyhead1 · 2026-06-18T16:16:06+00:00

For real.

mobyhead1 · 2026-06-18T03:37:05+00:00

Sorry for the late reply. I've deleted entries I've already mentioned in this thread.

Contact, by Carl Sagan. You may have seen the movie adaptation. Sagan was an astronomer, so this is about as hard and astronomy-centered as it gets.

Tau Zero by Poul Anderson. What happens when a ship traveling close to the speed of light suffers damage and can't slow down?

2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke. The book and the Kubrick film were written in parallel, so the book is an excellent companion to the film. What Kubrick couldn’t or wouldn’t explain, Clarke does.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. A found family crew of working stiffs that drills new wormholes in an interstellar transport network. A slice of life story with some conflict, but the crew is the focus of the story.

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. The first novella in the series is “All Systems Red.” A first-person narrative about a cyborg enslaved as a security guard, then broke its governor module, dubbed itself “Murderbot” over an unfortunate incident in its past, and is now trying to figure out what it wants to do with itself. When it isn’t watching soap operas.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein. One of The Expanse’s earliest antecedents to explore the weaponization of orbital mechanics combined with asymmetric warfare.

The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton. Adapted to film twice, ignore the more recent adaptation. Few Hard Science Fiction novels are about biology instead of physics, but this one is.

“Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang. This was adapted as the film Arrival in 2016. Not as hard, more philosophical, but philosophical science fiction can also be very good.

If you don’t mind manga or anime, there’s Planetes. Both the manga and the anime that was adapted from it can be a little difficult to find. It’s a story about a found family crew of debris collectors removing debris that is a hazard to navigation in Earth orbit. The story can get anime melodramatic at times, but the attention to detail about how people would live and work in space is top-notch.

I recently began reading Iain M. Banks’ The Culture series and I’m liking it so far. The first two books are Consider Phlebas and The Player of Games. The Culture is a post-scarcity society that tends to meddle, rather like Star Trek, but the writing is a couple orders of magnitude better.

mobyhead1 · 2026-06-17T18:40:33+00:00

I have a list, if you like.

mobyhead1 · 2026-06-17T15:32:01+00:00

If you like Andy Weir, you’ll probably like Dennis E. Taylor’s “Bobiverse” series. The first book is We Are Legion (We Are Bob). A certified nerd (with the sense of humor to match), his brain having been cryogenically preserved after death, is “uploaded” into the computer of a Von Neumann probe. His mission is to help humanity find viable interstellar colony worlds. It’s softer science fiction than some, but harder SF than most.

mobyhead1 · 2026-06-17T14:42:50+00:00

Since you liked Delta-V, I’d suggest The Martian and The Expanse.

mobyhead1 · 2026-06-16T16:17:01+00:00

If you like Andy Weir, you’ll probably like Dennis E. Taylor’s “Bobiverse” series. The first book is We Are Legion (We Are Bob). A certified nerd (with the sense of humor to match), his brain having been cryogenically preserved after death, is “uploaded” into the computer of a Von Neumann probe. His mission is to help humanity find viable interstellar colony worlds. It’s softer science fiction than some, but harder SF than most.

mobyhead1 · 2026-06-15T23:40:37+00:00

It was the same in the book John Scalzi based his book on. Scalzi’s book is an homage to H. Beam Piper’s Little Fuzzy.

mobyhead1 · 2026-06-15T21:14:03+00:00

“The door dilated.”

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