Writing Nonsense

I just finished up this interview!! It was a fun time :)

@brynwrites

@quilloftheclouds

@brynwrites

@tlbodine ??

You could try: Rendezvous with Rama or 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke. It is fairly dated now, but does have a fairly decent element of spook and no space battles or politics. The Fifth Season series by N. K. Jemisin. Post-apocalyptic fantasy, that touches on space travel in the slow unravelling of a mystery around a half-forgotten past and a deadly unknown threat. Definitely recommend this one. Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Bit of spook, mostly introspective. Vaguely recall one or two space battles but it wasn’t really a prominent element to the story. There are spiders. Lots and lots of spiders. Noumenon by Marina J. Lostetter. What happens when a fleet of generation ships crewed by clones of elite personnel and scientists is sent on a mission to find out if an star anomaly is sign of alien life, and what that will mean for humanity. Diaspora by Greg Egan. Artificial intelligences and cybernetic humanity living in an entirely digitalised civilisation discovers evidence of a precursor civilisation during a galactic apocalyptic scenario. Extremely hard sci fi, very technical. But not particularly political or spooky. Focused mostly on exploration, physics and mathematics which I really enjoyed. All Systems Red by Martha Wells. An extremely introverted self-aware security android, who hates people and their job, gets stuck with a bunch of scientists and ends up having to rescue them. Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear. A mysterious derelict ship is hurtling through space with no known name and no known destination, infected by some unknown hostile. One person who discovers dead copies of himself must find clues from his past self to try and solve the mystery of what is going wrong with the ship - without getting killed. Again. Caution: there is squick. Mostly gore. I haven’t read the book in awhile and can’t really remember much other than it got pretty weird. But spooky? Yeah. Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer. Very spooky and goes some interesting places. Set on earth though. Movie is also worth checking out (note for body horror and gore). In terms of TV Shows and movies: Threshold. Sci fi  series (complete), set on earth and spooky. Fairly generic invasion premise but goes fairly strong on the X Files style weird and Lovecraftian body horror. Infini. Sci fi movie. Some bizarre thing killed people on a remote space station and a team is sent to find out why. Fairly gory but an interesting twist at the end. Europa Report. Documentary style hard sci fi movie about a team of scientists set out to explore Europa and discover something alarming about Jupiter’s moon. Spooky, fair bit of drama. Minimal politics. The Fourth Kind. A documentary style movie about alien abduction, from the point of view of a psychologist who gets involved in a mysterious group of abduction cases all hinting at a sinister alien agenda. Fairly spooky. The Last Days on Mars. A mission to Mars goes extremely wrong when some mysterious pathogen starts killing the crew. Gore. Life. A harder sci fi movie, where a team of NASA scientists make the discovery of alien life and attempt to study it on a space station. Predictably, things go very wrong. Fairly spooky, mostly horrifying, no space battles or politics. Fair bit of gore. Complete downer ending, so if happy catharsis is something you’d like don’t watch this movie. Alien design is interesting though. Dodging space battles and politics in sci fi is not going to be easy. Most science fiction will end up touching the subject one way or another even if briefly, so I’m not sure how strict on that you want to be. I prefer to pick up anything that has aliens in it that isn’t invasion plots but that tends to be pretty difficult as well.

It’s like that, unfortunately. Annihilation and Arrival are right at the top of my favourites when it comes to sci fi, honestly they were just such a breath of fresh air. The Expanse is also amazing. No aliens, alas (so far? Only seen first season though). First season and second season is complete, dunno if there’s more. But I loved that it focused mostly on detective work and a great big mystery plot. It’s also got a book series attached to it which it’s based on, but I haven’t read those yet so I don’t know what they’ll be like. But I absolutely recommend the TV series. Enemy Mine is a pretty old movie and… atrocious. It’s really really terrible. But I recommend it because it tries to do something a lot of sci fi movies won’t do and won’t try (probably because it’s a tricky cerebral thing and you can either nail it like Arrival did, or you… don’t. And get Enemy Mine). Basically the premise is as this: humans and an alien civilisation are at war. They hate each other. In a skirmish a human soldier and an alien soldier are shot down and end up stranded on the same planet, in the same location. They must work together to survive. The drama comes though, when the human soldier finds out the alien is hermaphroditic and pregnant. The alien dies and leaves their offspring to the human soldier, who must put aside his prejudice to raise the child and get them back to their homeworld. There is apparently a book that Enemy Mine was based on. I’d like to get ahold of it and see if it does a better job. Ann Leckie and John Scalzi are easily my favourite sci fi authors and reliably good. I enjoy basically everything they do but they both tend to aim more for the high politics and high stakes struggles. The Ancillary series by Ann Leckie and the Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi wrecked me emotionally. You might also want to try: Revenger by Alastair Reynolds. Kind of a steampunk/fantasy pirate story set in space, it’s fairly grimdark but it does have spectacular imagery and an interesting twist on the theme. Adrift by Rob Boffard. A mismatch group of tourists aboard a junky tourist spaceship are thrown into a battle for survival when the space station they departed from is destroyed by a mysterious enemy. Few supplies, no help and no one to contact, the tourists and small tourism operator crew must figure out how to survive. This was a gritty read but it was really fun and had a happy ending that I liked for its honesty. The Binti series by Nnedi Okorafor. Culture, aliens and interesting imagery with some fairly fantasy-style elements.

CONGRATULATIONS!!

Terry would be proud.

THIS IS IMPORTANT (says the guy who hasn’t written in two days)

@tlbodine ??

You could try: Rendezvous with Rama or 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke. It is fairly dated now, but does have a fairly decent element of spook and no space battles or politics. The Fifth Season series by N. K. Jemisin. Post-apocalyptic fantasy, that touches on space travel in the slow unravelling of a mystery around a half-forgotten past and a deadly unknown threat. Definitely recommend this one. Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Bit of spook, mostly introspective. Vaguely recall one or two space battles but it wasn’t really a prominent element to the story. There are spiders. Lots and lots of spiders. Noumenon by Marina J. Lostetter. What happens when a fleet of generation ships crewed by clones of elite personnel and scientists is sent on a mission to find out if an star anomaly is sign of alien life, and what that will mean for humanity. Diaspora by Greg Egan. Artificial intelligences and cybernetic humanity living in an entirely digitalised civilisation discovers evidence of a precursor civilisation during a galactic apocalyptic scenario. Extremely hard sci fi, very technical. But not particularly political or spooky. Focused mostly on exploration, physics and mathematics which I really enjoyed. All Systems Red by Martha Wells. An extremely introverted self-aware security android, who hates people and their job, gets stuck with a bunch of scientists and ends up having to rescue them. Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear. A mysterious derelict ship is hurtling through space with no known name and no known destination, infected by some unknown hostile. One person who discovers dead copies of himself must find clues from his past self to try and solve the mystery of what is going wrong with the ship - without getting killed. Again. Caution: there is squick. Mostly gore. I haven’t read the book in awhile and can’t really remember much other than it got pretty weird. But spooky? Yeah. Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer. Very spooky and goes some interesting places. Set on earth though. Movie is also worth checking out (note for body horror and gore). In terms of TV Shows and movies: Threshold. Sci fi  series (complete), set on earth and spooky. Fairly generic invasion premise but goes fairly strong on the X Files style weird and Lovecraftian body horror. Infini. Sci fi movie. Some bizarre thing killed people on a remote space station and a team is sent to find out why. Fairly gory but an interesting twist at the end. Europa Report. Documentary style hard sci fi movie about a team of scientists set out to explore Europa and discover something alarming about Jupiter’s moon. Spooky, fair bit of drama. Minimal politics. The Fourth Kind. A documentary style movie about alien abduction, from the point of view of a psychologist who gets involved in a mysterious group of abduction cases all hinting at a sinister alien agenda. Fairly spooky. The Last Days on Mars. A mission to Mars goes extremely wrong when some mysterious pathogen starts killing the crew. Gore. Life. A harder sci fi movie, where a team of NASA scientists make the discovery of alien life and attempt to study it on a space station. Predictably, things go very wrong. Fairly spooky, mostly horrifying, no space battles or politics. Fair bit of gore. Complete downer ending, so if happy catharsis is something you’d like don’t watch this movie. Alien design is interesting though. Dodging space battles and politics in sci fi is not going to be easy. Most science fiction will end up touching the subject one way or another even if briefly, so I’m not sure how strict on that you want to be. I prefer to pick up anything that has aliens in it that isn’t invasion plots but that tends to be pretty difficult as well.

@tlbodine ??

Awesome thanks! (And I'd totally read some eldritch space type books! I'm just not looking for 'ships shooting at other ships/humans shooting at humans or traditional aliens with guns' books. I want Arrival and Annihilation instead of Independence Day.)

I have this on my TBR list already, yes! ❤️