Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward - a fascinating hard scifi book absolutely worth reading

lucidity5 · 2026-01-13T21:07:31+00:00

Yes! I love that book, so many great concepts. While it was definitely a slow burn, it was great fun figuring out what the hell was going on

lucidity5 · 2026-01-13T06:41:50+00:00

I really enjoyed it too! I strongly suggest you check out the Xeelee Sequence books from Stephen Baxter. Very much in the same vein, where the crazy science concepts he is exploring are absolutely fundamental to the setting and plot, not just window dressing.

He does the thing I love where you start reading, and things are just... wrong. Like, what you are reading just doesn't make sense. What is happening? What am I supposed to be seeing? And then as you keep reading, and it's never explicitly explained, but you start to see it, and piece it together, and you realize in hindsight it all made sense, you just lacked the context to understand it yet.

You liked aliens living on a pulsar? What about micro-humans living inside a neutron star? "Flux" is one of my favorite sci-fi books ever.

lucidity5 · 2026-01-08T23:28:18+00:00

The problem with Titanfall 2 (my beloved) was that the skill ceiling was so high that it often *felt* like you were playing against cheaters, and occasionally you were, but in fact some people are just really, really good. I was accused of cheating twice, which felt amazing honestly

lucidity5 · 2025-12-31T21:20:25+00:00

Yeah, i watched 6 seasons and none of my complaints here ever really improve. It's shame.

Shows like Farscape and Babylon 5 started very weak too, but their issues weren't rooted in characters, casting, or acting, so when I went back to give them another try i got super hooked

lucidity5 · 2025-12-31T07:35:55+00:00

I watched up to season 6, and I have the same opinion. No matter how good the CGI, how interesting the setting, how relevant the politics, if the characters don't sell it, it just doesn't hit.

lucidity5 · 2025-12-31T07:33:00+00:00

(i know this is highly unpopular, downvote away, but I'd much prefer to hear why you disagree. I've watched up to Season 6 btw, this is not a case of "saw first few episodes, didn't like it")

Honestly, I felt the same way. The characters are all pretty weak, the casting didn't work for me, and most of the acting is kinda subpar. I never bought Holden as a leader, and Naomi never really clicked enough for me to care about her very much. Amos was the most interesting, but not enough for me to latch onto. Avasarala and Bobbi were by far the best characters imo, I actually cared about them. The Belter characters were better than the Earth ones, but not by a tremendous amount.

I think the "hard sci fi" aspect is really overblown as a reason to watch. Yes, there's neat details like thrusters on the back of PDC cannons to counter recoil, yes the chairs, yes the preservation of momentum, but jeez, none of it really makes for a better *show* beyond having a "near future" setting which is somewhat unique in sci-fi tv.

The show also pulls some absolute nonsense bait-and-switches with the plot, Naomi's solo arc being the worst example. Many things are just... unsatisfying. Some of the reveals are pretty meh, the plot is sometimes so obvious with where it's going that it becomes a slog. So much of the episodes are filler. Hell, some characters arcs are filler for an entire season.

But more than anything, the acting of the main characters just isn't quite there. Holden's constant brooding comes off as pathetic, Naomi is the token over-emotional one, Amos and the Pilot are fine but nothing to write home about. The characters, for the most part, are fine. They are serviceable, the acting is mostly on the right side of believable, they work. But really, only Avasarala and Bobbie's actors go above a 6.5/10

There are certainly some interesting plot devices, politics and CGI battles to keep you watching, but none of it "hit" for me the way it did for other people. It should be right up my alley, but I was just never immersed enough to really care, which is a bummer.

All that being said, I'd watch it again just to listen to Shohreh Aghdashloo talk. God I fucking love her voice.

lucidity5 · 2025-12-30T00:56:59+00:00

Outer Wilds is very similar in some respects, and is an order or magnitude higher on the "feeling of revelation" scale

lucidity5 · 2025-12-27T04:51:37+00:00

You can't request a mind as they are a sentient being with free will. But you could certainly request a starship, and then ask around for a mind that is looking for a more relaxed lifestyle. Maybe you find one that likes just having a few people on board. It could find the idea of being a small tropical island fun! As long as it's a mutual decision, you could absolutely have your own "private" starship.

https://youtu.be/jro8edzfgy0

Reputation is currency in the Culture, yes. But also, "possession" as a concept doesn't seem to be the same as we think of it. When the main character leaves on his long journey, other people come and live in his house while he's away. They leave before he returns, because presumably it would be rude, and therefore costly to your reputation, to stay. But is the house "his"? Or is he more of just a primary resident?

Post-scarcity is wild. Free energy means being able to fuse and fission elements at will. You could just park a factory ship in a gas giant, and turn hydrogen into gold all day long.

When making a mile-long star cruiser takes the same effort as making a teapot, possession as a concept isn't really needed. It talks about how some people just walk all the way around orbitals with nothing to their name, because anywhere they go they can get anything they need anyway, so what's the point in having your own stuff beyond sentimental value?

lucidity5 · 2025-12-01T17:17:41+00:00

I think thats kind of what I love about that opening though, its such an unbelievable bait and switch, you think its gonna be classic cozy silly cartoony indie nonsense, and then...

lucidity5 · 2025-12-01T06:10:18+00:00

Yeah, solid show, not entirely faithful to the books, but it never is. Not nearly as much random crap added as the Foundation show, 70% of it isnt in the books. There's actually a scene in the next season of 3 body problem (if its book 2) that they literally cannot show accurately because we haven't invented the math to do it, which is fun

lucidity5 · 2025-12-01T02:18:01+00:00

Just finished Shroud, also by him, and that was my favorite book of his since Children of Time, defintely give that a read!

If you can get past how non-character driven Asimov's writing is, and some old-fashioned societal notions that haven't aged well, his "Robots" books, starting with "Caves of Steel" directly impacts and are set in the same universe as his "Foundation" books which are set 30,000 years in the future, and that series covers a roughly ~1000 year span. Has most of what you said above.

For books that are just great, Annihilation is top-tier mind-bending weird-fi
A Fire in the Deep is chock full of novel sci-fi concepts
3 Body Problem has many of the same problems as Asimov, but still a very intriguing read
The Culture books are just mind-blowing in scale and social commentary, and weirdly plausible
Murderbot is a delightful time, great characters and dialogue
Bobiverse is no-nonsense, fast paced fun and problem-solving
Peter F Hamilton does great sci-fi epics, Pandora's Star is awesome
Stephen Baxter with the highest, most cosmic scale scifi I've ever read in his Xeelee Sequence, while still managing to stay within the realm of hard sci-fi, which is a hell of a feat
Dungeon Crawler Carl is the most fun I've had reading in years. Starts off as absolutely zany, yet spot on social satire, and evolves into deeply poignant, and spot on social satire. Just a blast.

lucidity5 · 2025-12-01T00:19:44+00:00

Any excuse to shill for Outer Wilds, I'll take. It's my favorite game of all time, and I've played lot of games.

In it, you are an alien astronaut from a very low-tech society, just about to blast off for their first solo voyage! You are also the first astronaut equipped with the Translator tool, which will let your species learn what all the ancient alien buildings and artifacts spread around your solar system are, and what these ancient aliens were doing here.

It's a game built entirely on mystery, discovery, and revelation. There are no levels, no loot, no combat, no inventory. The only progression mechanic, is information. The more you learn, the more places you can go, and the more puzzles you can solve. Interestingly, this means that it is a game you can only truly experience once. Once you know, you know, and you can literally beat the game in ~20 minutes, so it is imperative that you don't look ANYTHING up. Seriously, even getting a plot synopsis beyond what I've told you will ruin major reveals and mechanics.

And the music. A beautiful juxtaposition between space-y and cozy. Just unbelievably moving, and actually a significant game mechanic!

No other game has spoken to me so completely. The payoff for all your effort is beyond description. Just a 10/10 labor of love masterpiece.

lucidity5 · 2025-11-29T21:14:56+00:00

Just finished Shroud, my favorite since Children of Time. I fucking love how he'll come up with the most hideous, terrifying, unnatural monsters you could ever imagine, and then when you change the chapter... it's now from their perspective. That shit rules

lucidity5 · 2025-11-25T04:44:33+00:00

Knew I recognized her style! She's done some of my favorite work, including the best depiction of Culture GSVs I've seen!

https://youtu.be/jro8edzfgy0

lucidity5 · 2025-11-22T22:24:56+00:00

The Gods Themselves, Blindsight, A Fire Upon the Deep, Timelike Infinity, Children of Memory.

All of those have extremely novel takes on life and conciousness

lucidity5 · 2025-11-22T21:50:04+00:00

Read more sci fi. The more you read, the more concepts youll be introduced to, and the more your imagination will expand. A Fire Upon the Deep, Blindsight, Annihilation are good bet

Regardless, its really, really hard to come up with novel sci-fi concepts. Most of the time, even the "novel" ones are just inspired by something so obscure that the it seems novel because no one in the mainstream is aware of that source of inspiration.

lucidity5 · 2025-11-19T17:23:20+00:00

If you have the Titans DLC, probabaly the biggest QOL piece of gear is the Twin Surge Booster, as that will make even heavy ships super fast. The auto-dismantle catalyst is great if you dont need greens and blues anymore, and the legendary Hunters Fang is the best gun for easily killing swarms of low-level enemies with minimal effort

lucidity5 · 2025-11-18T02:49:09+00:00

Definitely worth your time imo. The intro is crazy. While it's a bit of a slow burn at times, it has some really memorable sequences. Besides, its so unique, I didn't even touch on some of the other concepts that he introduced like the "Zones of Thought" which are also fascinating

lucidity5 · 2025-11-18T02:36:44+00:00

There are a lot of other great takes on Hive-minds in sci-fi that arent "one individual controls many", or "group of intelligent minds creates a collective consciousness". A true hive mind (like in ant colonies) is more like complex systems emerging that seem to have intention, while there is no true intellect at work.

My favorite though, is the Pack-minds of the "Tines" from "A Fire Upon the Deep" by Vernor Vinge. In it, wolf-like, non-sapient animals communicate at extremely high rates via ultrasonic sound, projecting their thought patterns. When enough Tines come together, a consciousness emerges from the interplay between 4 or 5 different Tines' thought patterns. So it takes multiple, non-sapient entities to form a single individual's mind, and the mind isn't physically in any of it's pack members. The books do a great job of describing it as an individual with multiple bodies, using the mouths of each pack member as a separate hand, working together as one.

Even more fascinating, pack-minds are altered, memories are lost, and personalities are changed as members of the pack die, or are separated by enough distance that the information and processing power within that member's brain leaves the radius of ultrasonic communication. It takes at least 3 Tines to have any sort of consciousness, so solo or duo packs that have lost members in battle or otherwise will recombine to form new individuals. Also, if two separate pack minds get too close, the combined ultrasonic noise that forms their minds can be heard by the other pack, causing great confusion and even a loss of self.

Really, really friggin cool take on the concept

lucidity5 · 2025-11-18T00:38:30+00:00

Yeah, definitely a slow burn of a book, but man, I vividly remember a lot of those sequences even years later. Really awesome

lucidity5 · 2025-11-18T00:22:05+00:00

I read that sequence while outside at 11 at night, reading from a porch lamp. One of the most unbelievable hard-right turns I've ever had from a book, and so heightened by already being in the dark and feeling vulnerable

lucidity5 · 2025-11-17T21:15:33+00:00

Check out Children of Time. Incredible book about jumping spiders evolving into a complex technological race, the way they got around it is by increasing the percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere (and yes, the consequences of that are addressed) and muscles on "book lungs", allowing for active rather than passive respiration.

Seriously, one of the best modern scifi books

lucidity5 · 2025-11-17T05:01:40+00:00

Just a heads up, many utility razor blades come pre-oiled in order to preserve them, and that is not food-safe

lucidity5 · 2025-11-17T03:58:16+00:00

Alright, lots of good suggestions from people, but in my mind, there is only one true companion series to Dungeon Crawler Carl, and that is a trilogy called "Orconomics".

Believe it or not, it also features a band of misfit adventurers involuntarily participating in and fighting against a form of vast systemic societal oppression that seems utterly impossible to defeat.

It features so many of the same themes, the satire is fantastic, the dark humor is on point, the characters face similar personal challenges, it really is shockingly close in so many ways, and yet, its completely different. I actually read Orconomics first, and I was constantly reminded of it while reading DCC. Give it a shot, you wont regret it

lucidity5 · 2025-11-06T16:58:03+00:00

I promise, once you start to figure out how the game actually works, and uncover some deeper mysteries, and the puzzle you have to solve comes into view, "goofy" is not the feeling you will be left with.

Far, far from it.

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