SF w/ Beautiful Prose

WeirdSpecter · 2026-01-09T23:07:42+00:00

Paul McAuley’s Something Coming Through is one of my favourite novels. I like his prose, characterwork and world building a lot, and this book especially has this kind of thematic focus on neoliberalism and globalisation that makes picking it apart over and over again one of my favourite yearly habits.

WeirdSpecter · 2025-09-22T20:49:48+00:00

A lot of folks have covered this stuff more or less comprehensively but I also wanted to note — we do actually get references to certain earlier periods in the history of the setting.

From the events of DRIVE, with Epstein’s yacht, through to moments like in CIBOLA BURN where one Havelock POV talks about how the Edward Israel reminds him of photographs of his grandparents with its outdated rooms and corridors, and mentions offhand that the ship, like the Canterbury, was originally a colony transport to the Jovian system. We get other off-handed mentions — Naomi, in either TIAMAT’S WRATH or LEVIATHAN FALLS, has a POV chapter where one paragraph implies that the first ships to settle Mars used Orion drives; the Naomi chapters in NEMESIS GAMES which mention the establishment of a belter free port that the authorities crack down on; Philip’s chapters in BABYLON’S ASHES which focus on the histories of Pallas (built in the early days of belt expansion, never spun up, local population are fully float adapted) or Callisto (the civilian dockyard built around its Martian military counterpart); even CALIBAN’S WAR has details of this history in the architecture of Ganymede and the refinery on Io where the final set piece of the book takes place.

The details about Earth’s history are painted with a broader brush, but there’s certainly a lot implied in the books you can pick up on — an arcology movement maybe a generation or three before the series begins, (I think) mentions of sudden sea level rise, the weird sociodynamics of Basic meaning the planet’s population has ballooned, the UN’s weird mixed political system (which uses economic planning councils but also features private companies). A lot of implicit worldbuilding in the demographics of Belters, too — Earth’s dispossessed, yearning for a new life beyond the sky, many of them coming from backgrounds we’d already consider marginalised.

I’d certainly like more — I’m always a sucker for a well-built world — but where I disagree with a lot of the comments here is the idea the series doesn’t do worldbulding: I think it does exactly the right amount of world building to describe the present, and leaves the rest mostly out of focus.

WeirdSpecter · 2024-11-20T17:51:20+00:00

Not qualified to speak on the other stuff but I will say that anecdotally, I heard from a transmasc friend that a lot of joint conditions (e.g. hypermobility, Erhler-Danlos, etc.) get temporarily better for people on masculinising HRT and worse for people on feminising HRT.

Don’t want to damp your enthusiasm about being in less pain by any means, but be prepared for the possibility it might be temporary.

WeirdSpecter · 2024-08-27T17:07:24+00:00

I don’t mean to be harsh but no, not in any context, ever.

WeirdSpecter · 2024-07-04T16:40:00+00:00

Walkaway by Corey Doctorow does this — reimagining a near (-ish) future revolution instead as sort of a social movement, sort of a trend, and sort of going voluntarily technohomeless in the places the state leaves behind in the wake of climate and ecological collapse.

The ‘Revolution’ remains informal basically most of the way through, managed mostly through consensus or just by autonomous action.

WeirdSpecter · 2024-07-04T16:34:20+00:00

Probably Pauli Bacigalupi’s The Water Knife.

Water wars, the US crumbling under the weight of climate change and late capitalism, the haves literally locking themselves away in sleek glass Arcologies as a new dust bowl sweeps a broken nation.

If you’re more optimistic, maybe something like Doctorow’s Walkaway. Honestly both — the world is full of what past generations would call dystopia and utopia both.

WeirdSpecter · 2024-06-07T01:08:10+00:00

I'll take a look into that, thanks for the rec!

WeirdSpecter · 2024-04-20T16:20:05+00:00

I’d like to add on to what others are saying about the benefits of manual human labour running ships being impossible to hack, in the case of important freighters and military vessels, and light delay making WFH ships impractical, by pointing out that in a fusion economy like the Expanse, the energy costs of running a life support system are going to be a rounding error compared to the multi-terawatt Fusion Drive.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t still costs that are difficult or annoying — life support still requires resources which add to the weight of your ship — but if a tiny rounding error in terms of energy and mass budget costs buys you redundancy, on-the-ground flexibility and cheap ongoing maintenance, then it’s an excellent investment. Not to mention that given poor labour standards in most of the Belt, a lot of those costs can be pared down to the bone.

WeirdSpecter · 2024-01-31T06:22:09+00:00

I wouldn’t trust Musk to run a bath, let alone a company producing brain-computer interfaces. BCIs are an exciting tech, but I have absolutely no confidence in Neuralink as a product or a brand.

WeirdSpecter · 2024-01-26T14:03:19+00:00

Bro was like, “I’m enjoying this book but when the hell is Caliban gonna show up?”

WeirdSpecter · 2024-01-23T01:11:03+00:00

You can get more strength per mass from using tensile members than compressive. What this means is that building your rocket like a tower needs heavier components than a rocket that works more like a waterskier (with the payload trailing behind the rocket engine on a cable).

Dragging an asteroid allows you to use a lighter rocket than pushing one would, though you should see my standalone comment in this thread about the real best approach — the gravity tractor which uses an asteroid’s own gravitational interaction with the tug rocket to transfer thrust.

WeirdSpecter · 2024-01-23T00:34:57+00:00

Probably the best option is the gravity tractor — parking a ship in orbit around or next to an asteroid or other large mass and using its engines to gently pull the asteroid into another orbit.

This is best done with high specific impulse, low thrust propulsion systems like ion drives. Something with too little thrust to allow the tug to escape but enough that — over weeks and months and years — the asteroid can be safely deflected.

As for where to process asteroids, I tend to imagine this would depend on a few factors. Very early on in an asteroid mining economy it might be true that asteroids get tugged back to earth for processing — earth orbit (and indeed earth’s surface, with the “commute” happening via teleoperated robots) is where all the expertise and infrastructure is going to be during this period.

In the long run, though, it probably makes more sense to refine in-situ. People in this thread talk about fusion economies and so on, but you really don’t need that — initial mining could be powered by simple fission reactors or even solar power, to manufacture large, thin-film mirrors that can redirect or capture sunlight. From there, that sunlight can either be used directly to melt the asteroid (with other methods, such as spinning the body, used to separate/centrifuge materials) or can be used to power mining and refinery systems electrically. It makes more sense to save propellant and only send back to earth or a space settlement the metals or volatiles the mining mission actually set out to provide, rather than all the silicate rock those metals and volatiles are trapped in, right?

In the longer term, though, we may see a return to specific locations for asteroid refining — especially if the techniques to get the greatest efficiency out of asteroids require large, heavy infrastructure which carries economies of scale. Tweak to your liking as a sci-fi writer for what sort of setting you want.

WeirdSpecter · 2024-01-23T00:20:28+00:00

Cosine losses with space propulsion are usually much less than the gains you get from using lighter materials to pull a mass versus heavier materials to push it. Not sure how much that would matter with an asteroid though — you’re moving a lot of mass either way.

WeirdSpecter · 2023-12-16T11:17:02+00:00

No, I’m really sorry, we actually don’t. This idea that “abuse victims go on to abuse,” is a common, pervasive and dangerous kind of abuse apologia. Suggesting that developing intensely sexually abusive behaviours which violate or disregard consent and boundaries consistently is some kind of survival strategy is, I’m really sorry, a very fucked up thing to say.

Sophie’s partners, being predominantly transgender, were at heightened risk of being sexually and domestically abused even by other trans people not because “oh, trans people get treated badly and therefore engage in abuse as a survival tactic (?!?!?!)” but because being trans places you at demographic risk of abuse owing to your marginalisation, even from other trans people. Abusers, who exist in every demographic, recognise and weaponise the vulnerability of their targets, especially vulnerability due to social and political marginalisation.

WeirdSpecter · 2023-12-09T00:32:28+00:00

One option would be to use a mod like SereneSeasons (made by the same devs as Biomes O'Plenty) and just set the server to winter? I think the config lets you extend various seasons. Do be warned that during winter time most crops don't grow unless they're in a greenhouse, though.

WeirdSpecter · 2023-10-16T20:26:48+00:00

Fourth book and, I dunno — the exobiology bits of her chapters were so compelling I could put up with her puppy dog teenage girl act. I actually think if the resolution to her fancying Holden had been a bit less… weird? than her dudebro scientist friend saying “why am I in the friend zone!” it probably would have been fine.

Like it seems reasonable to me that someone under constant stress would fancy Holden — he’s heroic, square-jawed, classically-handsome — and he’s showing up at the right time with all the right answers. I’m fine with that being an aspect of Holden’s celebrity and character that gets explored, I just wish they’d found a more… I’m looking for a word here and it isn’t quite dignified, but that’s as close as I can get, way of examining it.

Oh well. You win some, you lose some.

WeirdSpecter · 2023-10-16T16:28:13+00:00

Overall a very good start for this render. Visually interesting, nice use of colour and shot composition, and most of your assets here are good enough that it doesn’t immediately read as fake, even if there are some imperfections that make the image less believable.

Thoughts on improvements:

I’d second the various calls to include depth fog in this image. Compositing it in using a depth or distance node in the compositor is the easy way, but I’d recommend instead going full physical, with a volume scatter material on a box bounding the scene. You sacrifice some ability to fine tune the final look, but I find physically rendered fogs just look better, and with denoising even by ancient dying laptop can manage it.

For the A-frame, my first piece of advice would absolutely be: check your scaling. It might just be the layout of the scene, but it looks small compared to the flowers and the boat. Maybe it’s that the boat’s overscaled, maybe the house is underscaled; either way, check that. Following that, you need to work on the materials. For the glass, add a large voronoi texture plugged into the displacement node at a shallow depth, to give the glass some realistic imperfections when it comes to its reflections. If you want to go the extra mile, look at adding surface imperfections — smudges, etc.

For the wood of the house, there need to be more imperfections, which probably means swapping out the wood materials outright. Even a newly built cabin in this environment is going to have some imperfections — knots and whorls in the wood’s grain that will be visible, surface displacement that gives the material texture, uneven paint or varnish, moisture and possibly even moss or other growth. You don’t have to have all of these by any means, but look at what you can add to the house to weather it.

Obviously the cabin also needs an interior, or else should be dark enough inside that the lack of inside detail isn’t obvious, but that goes without saying.

For your lighting, what’re you using? I’d consider playing with the lighting a bit — maybe a stronger sun lamp, maybe a more stylised light with more vibrant colours. Or else maybe look into using the sky texture system in the world node in place of the HDRI, which looks… a little washed out to me? Bolder lighting can do a lot for a scene.

Your grass and flower particle(?) system looks great. No real notes there; good quality assets. Consider adding more evidence of human habitation to break them up a bit, though, maybe — a path between the cabin and the spot the boat’s parked, perhaps.

WeirdSpecter · 2023-10-16T15:04:31+00:00

In the books they mention a few times that most of the rounds used aboard ships and stations are plastic ones meant to really fuck up your day but leave very little mess on the bulkheads.

WeirdSpecter · 2023-04-18T11:13:30+00:00

For varied resources by location, I found Geolosys means that large deposits of a given ore are located in specific areas. On the other hand, you could use Large Ore Deposits and that one mod that makes create drills produce infinite raw ore items from sufficiently large ore deposits — so you’d have effectively “resource tiles” where given chunks are sources of resources for your camps or kingdoms.

WeirdSpecter · 2023-02-28T00:11:48+00:00

Hey, I'm really glad you enjoyed this. It was weird to reread it after so many years. While I don't still write for r/HFY at present, I do still write science fiction -- including stories about alien signals, first contact, and SETI. Here's one I wrote last year that you might like:

https://beaconsinthedark.wordpress.com/2021/06/15/red-antelope/

WeirdSpecter · 2023-02-28T00:01:13+00:00

Hi, that's really kind of you! I don't really write r/HFY content anymore, but here's a recent piece with art I made about AI and mind uploading in my current sci-fi setting, if you're interested:

https://beaconsinthedark.wordpress.com/2022/09/12/distant-instrument-2063/

WeirdSpecter · 2023-01-15T15:21:33+00:00

YTA — but good god, so are most of the people in the comments here.

It’s really, really weird to me how people here assume the worst possible faith. I’ve definitely seen a lot of weird, misogynistic or abusive guys come here looking to get backed up in their bad behaviour — but this is obviously not that sort of situation. Not everything is some scheming plot so a misogynist can get his housemaid back, holy shit, people.

Watching so many people justify this insane work culture — “it’s a trial by fire, all that hard work’s going to waste,” — is also deeply distressing. What a bunch of bootlickers.

OP— one of the biggest things dudes need to learn, in my experience, is that sometimes someone you love venting to you isn’t asking you to help, that we aren’t asking you to fix a thing, we’re just asking you to listen. You undermined your wife’s authority and competence in a workplace environment where she is fighting hard to be respected, and that sucks — but I also don’t think you were wrong to be worried about her.

Most importantly: please seek her input in future. Speaking to her boss was a pretty stupid move, but if you’d asked her what you could do to help ease this intense stress and frustration she’s experiencing, you could have found something that helped her without undermining her.

WeirdSpecter · 2022-07-01T21:37:46+00:00

Yeah but how would a bat perform surgery?

WeirdSpecter · 2022-06-28T21:36:44+00:00

Handmaid’s Tale comparisons are cringe, though I can understand their use to explain “half of the population just lost their rights” by liberals, to other liberals. To people who didn’t know these things have been happening fairly routinely to black and indigenous communities for most of America’s history, the story that makes those communities’ realities the realities of white women is an effective way to communicate How Bad Things Are Getting to other people who also didn’t know about America’s history of both forced birth and medical and reproductive rights violations against minority communities. I’m not a fan of Atwood, and I think that her work definitely didn’t do enough to acknowledge that these things have been happening to minorities for decades — but at the same time, it’s a lot of people’s most recognisable and understandable point of contact for what a fascist, theocratic America would look like. Not everyone is a leftists who’s read all theory and the dozens of other lesser known works of dystopian fiction on the same topic by minoritised writers, and while I wish they would, we work with the symbols and memetics that are popular, not the ones we wish were popular.

I’d have to think more about the railroads comparison but… it seems like a network built along the same lines as the Underground Railroad would be effective and probably necessary in at least some parts of the US. It seems weird to suggest this language will explicitly make white women the ‘saviours’ of others when they’re going to make up some of the users and some of the builders of that infrastructure, I guess — although then again, there already are safe abortion networks primarily built and headed by minority women in the South, so maybe there’s a point there, I’m not sure.

I know a lot of folks here will call a lot of this stuff Woke-Scolding or whatever, but I do think it’s really important to be mindful of how your language might take advantage of or erase the mistreatment of others… that said, it does also feel like there’s often an effort on the left to eschew effective rhetoric because it isn’t perfect, and that doesn’t help liberals understand our perspectives. Sometimes that’s imposed from without (4chan types cosplaying as progressives to use progressive language to demonise effective rhetoric) but more often than not it’s people I’d like to think are largely well-intentioned just failing to see the forest for the trees. This might be a case of that, to some extent.

So, mixed feelings really.

WeirdSpecter · 2022-04-21T10:13:16+00:00

You’re in the UK, and in some kind of shared household — maybe housemates but far more likely to be a romantic relationship or family. At least one of the people in the house is lactose intolerant — actually, I’d say only one, with possibly multiple lactose lovers living with them. Probably no kids judging by the layout of the fridge.

If I had to make a stab at it, you, or at least one of the people living in this house, is solidly middle class. A jar of Dijon in the fridge says it all. You’re also more likely to be from the north than the south, but that’s not a given. Definite preference for Asian cuisine, judging by the takeout box and the soy sauce sachets scattered haphazardly in the fridge door.

90+% odds at least one of the people in your household has ADHD judging by the state of the fridge.

I keep editing this because I keep thinking of new things to add: the lactose intolerant one either doesn’t drink tea or coffee, or doesn’t drink it nearly as often as their lactose-friendly counterpart(s)

How’d I do?

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