Book number sixteen of a sixteen book dark fantasy series. I read the well printed and well bound trade paperback published by Ace in 2026. I will purchase and read future books in the series.

On a parallel Earth, Jane Yellowrock is a full blooded Cherokee who walked the Trail of Tears when she was five years old sometime during the 1830s. Somewhere along the trail, her parents were murdered and she became lost. Being a shapeshifter who could control her DNA, she shifted to a bobcat form and tried to attack a mountain lion for its food. She ended up merging bodies with the mountain lion and spent around a 100 years in merged form. She emerged from the wilderness as a human child in the early 1900s and then was raised as a human child in an Christian orphanage. She was apparently aged out and released from the orphanage where she became a vampire hunter for around a hundred years. But now she is the Dark Queen of the vampires in the USA.

It has been several years since WW III, the Witch War. A group of Russian witches opened an interdimensional doorway to a very bad place and billions of demons flooded the Earth. The good witches and the Armies of the world won the war but at a horrendous cost. The PTSD amongst the Witch War's survivors, both supernatural and normals, is overwhelming.

Angelina Everhart-Trueblood and her brother Evan run Everhart Investigations, a witch PI firm in Chattanooga that solves paranormal crimes committed by supernatural beings. They won their freedom from the Queen but the Queen forced a vampire warrior on them, Walter the spy. But, somebody has stolen magical repositories from the Witch War full of demons. And they are planning on releasing the demons again.

The series is very well written. I really enjoy the series a lot due to the Christian symbology and that my wife is half Cherokee.

The author has a website at:
http://www.faithhunter.net/

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars (1,066 reviews)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FWBSLGR8

Lynn

Just finished Automatic Noodle by Analee Newitz in a single reading session and it was great! Cute and cozy while still offering interesting speculation and a pretty well developed world for a 165 pager. Also nice little endorphin boost from starting and finishing a book in a single day. Got a pretty lengthy book coming in the mail in a few weeks, looking for reccs for some more quick reads before it arrives.

Looking for scifi, doesn't need to be hopepunky like automatic noodle but I certainly wouldn't mind it. Just needs to be short. Thanks in advance!

I've been reading scifi/fantasy for almost 40 years. Lately, I've been rereading some of my early favourites. The experience is almost invariably disappointing. This made me doubt my recommendations to people over the years. Is this feeling common? Should I even bother rereading stuff or just keep the fond (partial) memories of the first reading? How do other people handle rereading?

(To be more specific, I reread The Helmsman by Bill Baldwin, Heechee books by Frederik Pohl and even The Forever War by Haldeman seemed emptier, thinner and ending less heart catching.) I am now afraid to reread Scalzi's Old man's war books and Card's Ender series. I love them too much to risk spoiling the memory.

I'm trying to identify a science fiction novel I read as a child in West Germany around 1974. I've been looking for it for years, without success.

It was a relatively short book, probably a paperback, set on Earth in the future. It wasn't particularly utopian or dystopian, and the writing had some humorous or satirical elements.

Here's what I remember:

• The main character was a reporter or journalist investigating some kind of secret.
• He visited a scientist, possibly named Dr. Brehm, who had developed a spray smelling of lily of the valley. The substance seemed to have a drug-like effect, making people peaceful or less aggressive.
• The reporter had a female companion, possibly named Ulla. Their relationship was described using something like the German term "Sexualgruppe" ("sexual group"), suggesting different social or relationship structures in this future society.
• The reporter had a colleague, possibly named Kramm, who had a habit of picking his nose.
• There were futuristic vehicles called "Hovers" and "Cabin-Cars". I vaguely remember a sentence that translated roughly as: "The hovers and cabin-cars raced back to the suburbs."

I read the book in German, so it could have been written by a German author or translated from another language. It must have been published by approximately 1974 or earlier.

I don't remember the cover or title, but I suspect I might recognize them if I saw them again.

Important: These are memories from more than 50 years ago, so some names, terms, and details may be slightly wrong.

I've already ruled out several well-known novels, including Brave New World, The Futurological Congress, The Joy Makers, and The Stone That Never Came Down.

Does this sound familiar to anyone, especially collectors or readers of vintage European science fiction?

Going through the first book. The content is entertaining but I am missing any gravitas or central struggle other than killing mobs. Does it get better in the coming books?

I started reading New Earth by M.R. Forbes and stopped about 16% of the way in. Has anyone read it, and is it worth continuing?

The opening sequence has some real gems in the writing, but also has some earmarks of being written by A.I. I’m not necessarily against reading AI-written novels, though I want what I read to be good. My real problem is just how dark the opening chapters are. Without spoilers, there’s a lot of creeping doom in the opening. It’s fine to set the hook, but if the whole book is like this, I’ll leave it on the DNF pile.

From what I've read, dark carnival was published first and has 27 stories in it, while October Country was published few years later and contains 15 of those stories and plus 4 others. Now that part is clear, but I've also read that those 15 stories in October Country are actually revised/rewritten, so they are not the original versions.

Has anyone actually read them both and can explain to what extent where they rewritten? And which version do you prefer?

So had myself an introduction to one of John Brunner's mid-career novels in "The Day of the Star Cities", and had quite an interesting time with it.

This is the set up of the story: Aliens arrive on the planet Earth, which causes the stockpiles of nuclear weapons and materials to explode immediately, causing death and chaos that last for months. Then reports pour in of massive and mysterious star shaped cities appear, scattered across parts of the globe. Huge areas of light and powerful free energy that can disrupt human senses, and completely impossible to attack. But one question is; are these bases for the aliens or something entirely different?

Brunner still plays around with the old concepts of the golden (like post-apocalypses and alien invasions) but in "Star Cities", and even his other mid sixties books, is where he starts to experiment. The novel is a bit more philosophical than the last two Brunner novels, particularly around religion and also a bit more weirdness than usual.

This book I really like and I hope to get more of the mid period novels sooner or later. And there's still his later stuff and also more of his early work that I might pick up also, and even some of his short story collection if those happen to turn up too. Only time will tell I guess!

So I’ve started going to used book stores and I’ve found several novels that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed that were too obscure and underrated that my usual recommendation algorithms never mentioned them
Most notably Starplex by Robert J Sawyer
What novels and series have you all found over the years that are lesser known but yet made a big impact on you?

Sci-fi writers love cats. Almost as much as they love black coffee. Dogs, though, only rarely appear in the genre.

So, I'm looking for books (sci-fi or fantasy) where a dog (normal or sentient) is the main or a major character.

For example, I remember reading a short story about an apparently immortal dog that lived with every major genius in history of humanity, subtly suggesting things to them. And there was this novel (I think it was one of the sci-fi classics, but for the life of me I can't remember who) where humanity was destroyed in a war, and sentient cats and dogs inherited Earth, and then an astronaut returned from a mission to another star, and there was some conflict about whether he's allowed to live (dogs were for, cats against). And of course, there are sentient dog-like aliens called Golovans in Strugatskiy brothers books (though they never are main characters).

Major condition: the dog should NOT come to any major harm in the story (beyond the usual heroic injuries which are always healed in the end), and certainly not die!

Also, please don't recommend "John Dies at the End". I already read it, and while the dog was a major plot point, this is not what I want here.

Looking for a story that has a large amount of sci-fi sub genres and/or tropes. I'm talking aliens, robots, space travel, time travel, advanced technology, etc. I can think of s good example at the moment

Does anyone here own the 2014 paperback editions of Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series published by Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy?

I’m interested in the quality and durability of the paper. Does anyone know whether it is acid-free or alkaline? Is there any information about this on the copyright page?

For those who have owned these editions for a few years, how has the paper held up? Have you noticed significant yellowing or brittleness? I’d also appreciate comments on paper thickness and how much the print shows through.

I have been reading mostly short stories recently due to limited time and I'd love to read some opinions and recs from everyone.

Short stories are a great way for writer's to show their chops, some can get real cool concepts with quite a limited number of pages.

Recently I've read Stories of Your Life and Other and Exhalation by Ted Chiang (both compilations of his short stories, The Alchemist one in Exhalation is simply phenomenal, Liking What You See: A Documentary is such a fun read too), some Tchaikovsky stuff, Beyond the Aquila Rift by Reynolds and Stephen King.

I'm looking for the title/author of an SF/speculative short story published in the 80s or before. I thought it was in The Survival of Freedom anthology but I'm coming up blank there. Best other choice would be Analog magazine.

Tobacco has been made illegal, and the MC is a tobacco smuggler. The anti-tobacco enforcement agents are known as "The Reapers of the Nightshade" or Reapers for short. It's told first person, possibly as a flashback. The MC (accidentally) kills a Reaper in the course of his smuggling. The Reaper may be a relative, brother in law? Anyway, it ends with him in prison on death row. He's been allowed to choose his method of execution and chose smoking, so he's forced to smoke (two?) cartons of cigarettes every day until it kills him, his last laugh against the system.

Anybody remember it? Thanks in advance!

The Culture has always been a blindspot, and I was determined to get to it sometime this year.

On paper, I'm close to the target demographic - I enjoy space operas, especially the ones that include intergalactic dalliances with aliens (Mass Effect was semi-formative). And trite as it is to say it, living through 2026 does have me pondering the idea of a society run by benevolent AGI, and any fiction advertising a similar premise would've drawn me in.

The Culture is very much an alluded-to concept in Consider Phlebas, neither the core setting nor a concrete entity involved in the events of the plot. There are, of course, a few active Culture-aligned agents in the thick of it - Balveda, Unaha-Closp - but we spend slivers of the total word count in their heads, and they're mostly subordinate to the whims and whimsies of one Bora Horza Gobuchul.

Horza is... an okay protagonist. I wouldn't call him one-dimensional, but there aren't really a lot of opportunities for him to debate his positions with, say, Balveda, or any of the Free Company, on why he's so opposed to the Culture's existence. As he exists, he is an action hero, tragically forced by the book to play the anti-hero for his ideals. He ends up being shunted about by the narrative in an Odyssey-like fashion, and there's so little time where we get to see any parts of his interiority.

And I think that's one of my complaints about the book actually. It is so enamoured with the set pieces, and the inane, excruciating amount of detail about the mechanics of how those set pieces play out - be it chasing someone down at a dock, piloting a ship out of an orbital station, escaping an incoming high speed train collision - I had to genuinely grind my way through each of these sequences.

The prose did not help with it either. I like my sci-fi prose purple, with high information-density and a slight poetic bent. William Gibson and Ursula K Le Guin are some of my favourite writers regardless of genre. Banks' writing feels very utilitarian to me in comparison, and maybe that's a deliberate stylistic choice, one that serves the more beat-by-beat telling of this story. But I have to admit that it dampened my excitement quite a bit.

But I do think the conclusion is pretty strong, in that, it thematically ties up what is an anti-war story by my reading, by effectively killing off its main cast of characters and granting PTSD to the only survivor, so much so that they choose to self-euthanise.

I still remain hungry for the post-scarcity AI utopia though, and what little I’ve seen of it in Consider Phlebas does make me want to keep wading through the rest of the series. How does humanity cope with the loss of purpose when we’re no longer the top dog? How do we keep our curiosity alight when there’s a clearly superior form of intelligence that can solve our problems, answer our questions, and ask even more profound ones?

I know that this first volume is not considered to be fully representative of what the Culture books are like, and I hope that every book from now on will endeavour to have more yapping, more character headspace, less frame-by-frame action sequencing.

*Have Space Suit - Will Travel* always does well in popularity polls, being many people's favorite Heinlein juvenile or even favorite book overall. Why is this?

I just reread it, and I enjoyed a well written fast paced adventure story with two very exciting space suit sequences. The wonderful Mother Thing is a definite asset. But that's pretty much it. Several other juveniles feel more substantial and leave me much more fulfilled (*Between Planets*, *Starman Jones*, *Tunnel for the Sky* and especially *Citizen of the Galaxy*). What makes *Have Space Suit* so well-liked?

Hi everyone!

I have created a discord channel for a sci-fi book club and will host the first meeting on 26th of October, reading H.G. Wells - The First Men In The Moon. Please join if you'd like to!

I was always a girly girl and wasnt interested in sci-fi much but recently ive picked up the interest and since there isnt any book clubs where i live, i thought i can host one online. If you are also new to the sci-fi world, want to reand and be part of a group, meet people and be friends, please join me! Im sure we can make our own list by time but reading hugo and nebula awarded books is a good suggestion list itself! Here is the link to join: https://discord.gg/tapyRnJS

The Traveler by Joseph Eckert, I don't see it getting the love online that it should. If you've not give it a god already, I'd highly reccomend it! It's an amazing concept, fast paced, with written characters.

I can't reccomend it enough, I think it's probably one of the best SF novels of the year.

Book number one of a five book military science fiction series. Plus an awesome prequel series of six books and several sequels consisting of fourteen books total. I read the well printed and well bound MMPB published by Ace Books in 2011 that I bought new on Amazon. I have purchased the rest of the four books in this book series and plan to read them soon.

I did not know John G. Hemry was the real name for Jack Campbell as I purchased the Stark series quite a while back and enjoyed it also. BTW, the author says on his website that the MMPB books will not be reprinted in MMPB or republished in trade paperback so buy your copies soon before they run out.

Captain John “Black Jack” Geary was found by the Alliance fleet on their way to Syndicate space, in stasis in an old emergency pod. A hundred year old emergency pod. Captain John “Black Jack” Geary may be a hundred years out of date but some things like tactics of war spaceship fleets never go away. The Alliance Fleet Admiral left Captain John “Black Jack” Geary in charge of the Alliance fleet before he and his staff were murdered by the Syndics in their surrender negotiations. Black Jack subsequently defeated the Syndicate CEOs and returned to Alliance space with much of the fleet.

The Alliance council promotes him to Fleet Admiral from Captain, resupplies and fixes his fleet. Now they send him and his newly rebuilt fleet back through Syndicate space to investigate the mystery of the space aliens, the Enigmas, on the other side of the Syndicate territory.

The author has a website at:
https://jack-campbell.com/

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars (3,047 reviews)
https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Fleet-Beyond-Frontier-Dreadnaught/dp/1937007499

Lynn

Hello! Not sure if this niche really exists but am curious if anyone knows of any second world or far future SFF/police procedural mashups?

I have already read Robert Jackson Bennett’s Leviathan series and several other SFF murder mystery books, but am looking for something that is more Law & Order and less Sherlock Holmes.

TIA!

I am getting the itch to find a story that is similar to Mass Effect. essentially near future earth, travels into our system and uncovers alien tech way beyond our means...so forth and on.

i just picked up Salvation by Peter F Hamilton, and i just can't deal with his writing style. any recommendations? id prefer something with a quicker pace

edit: wonderful suggestions, thank you all! I keep reading all new replies

I am sitting on my balcony and was suddenly overcome with the harrowing realization that so many people have never been born—who themselves never gave birth to more people that were never born.

The entire timeline of a single person's lineage, their infinite progeny, is immediately effaced. I googled and couldn't find anything fitting this description.

So had an eye on this British SF author from the 20s and 50s, and I hoped to get at least one of his books, and finally I would get one as an old US paperback edition of his novel "Out of the Deeps", which is also known under it's original title "The Kraken Wakes".

The first that came to my mind was that Wyndham was one of the writer's writer of SF, something like Bradbury and Sturgeon. And when I started reading "Deeps" I actually hit the mark!

The story starts with the arrival of fireballs entering into the oceans of Earth. Sometime later ships begin to mysteriously disappear without a trace. Two divers in a bathysphere investigate the deep waters where they come across a strange shape hovering close by, only for it to attack them, and all that's left of the bathysphere is a bit of fused cable.

And now something is coming up from the deeps and onto the beaches and wages war on the people of Earth.

This reminds me so much of Wells's "War of the Worlds". Apocalyptic alien invasion SF with a lot of horror overtones. It's also a slow burner, and that really enhances the suspense and dread running throughout the book.

There's two other novels from him that I would also like to get some copies of; "Day of the triffids" and "The Midwich Cuckoos", and also maybe some of his short story collections too. Those might be good also!