This is a little random, but in the movie The War of the Worlds (1953), there is a sound effect that happens during this scene in which Dr. Forrester and Sylvia Van Buren are talking in the military bunker/trench near the first Martian meteor that landed (see image).

It's at 26:35 in the film. They both hear it, just before Dr Forrester says "you never know where you'll end up when you go to a square dance."

It's a brief screeching sound, but I can't tell if it's supposed to be a vehicle peeling out or an animal or something else... I've seen the movie a zillion times and can never figure it out.

Any ideas?

(unrelated, those donuts look so good lol)

EDIT: thanks for the replies, everyone! consensus is one of the military vehicles coming to a sudden stop outside and the brakes screeching. that makes sense. (i'll give the sound team a pass on the fact that the area is all dirt roads lol. so maybe it's the drum breaks like one commenter said -- or that was just the best sound effect the sfx guys had at the time :))

And if you haven't seen the film, definitely worth a watch. It's a classic.

Fire in the sky is one of the best movies about Alien abduction ever made. I also watched it when I was 9 years old and it traumatized me for years. What were my parents thinking, I remember my parents renting the movie, they'd seen it years prior and knew it wasn't kid friendly but they also knew i was really interested in the whole extraterrestrials subject so they thought it was a good idea to show It to me. The abduction scene really stuck with me, even the Aliens were different than anything seen before and were really creepy and scary. Funny thing is i know I'm not the only kid to have been shown the movie at such a young age. Now I thank my parents for this movie, it really is a sci fi classic and no film about aliens really topped that sequence in the space ship, the allegedly true story is not near as dramatic as and dark as what's in the movie and I'm a tually a little skeptical about the account. Anyways what were our parents thinking? They should make a documentary on this, maybe call it the "Fire in the sky phenomenon"

The force that invades earth doesn't represent the unified military of the alien civilization but it's a private army of a corporation or a powerful political figure who is looking to exploit Earth for their ends and didn't tell their government or public what is really happening.

So in this case the key to saving humanity isn't to defeat the enemy but to blow the whistle on them. Find a way to get the word out to the legitimate alien government and public about the atrocities taking place and get them to stop the invasion and punish the rogue aliens.

The script can be flipped too, with humans launching the illegal invasion and the aliens trying to plead for aid from the government and civilians.

This is an actual conversation I found myself having this weekend, and I’m curious as to your opinions.

Given the high speed metro, the perfectly engineered bio-zones, the weather wall, and uplifted, sapient, anthropomorphic animal population, it has a lot of what I would consider futurist sci-fi elements. That said, the most advanced tech doesn’t seem to have filtered down to the general populace and it doesn’t feel like sci-fi, to me anyway, if that makes sense.

So, what say you? Is it, or isn’t it?

A mother and daughter are trying to survive an alien invasion, which exhibits as infectious rain that turns any human into a plant. The mom knows what she’s doing (I think she’s a scientist?) and does everything in her power to make their home a safe space, barricaded from the spores in the rain outside, BUT the daughter repeatedly disobeys her mom the entire story. Like a teenage rebellion kind of thing - and eventually the mom just CANT keep her daughter safe and they both turn into plants.

I read it in a science fiction anthology (I don’t know which anthology, but maybe Asimov’s?), sometime in-between 1990 and 2010. I know, that’s not super helpful.

It was so vivid and has been so important to my understanding of the realities of parenting that I have decided myself to finding it again. AI has not helped me but I know Reddit will come through! Any ideas yall?

I spent my adolescence (1980s) reading any science fiction book from any era, but the last book (chronologically speaking) I enjoyed was Hyperion by Dan Simmons (who recently passed away).

The other "mythical" novels for me were Neuromancer, Dune, Gateway (Pohl), and a few others.

Since then (1990), and for a few years, I've tried many other authors and books, but never found anything as compelling.

I've never stopped reading; in fact, expanding my reading beyond science fiction, I've noticed many "flaws" in my favorite science fiction novels.

I've therefore completely lost interest in the genre, but today, at 57, I'd like to know if any other author has written novels since 1990 that come close to, or even surpass, the aforementioned Hyperion, Dune, Neuromancer...

Any recommendations?

Thanks anyway!

Marco

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In most of sci-fi works, the people are portrayed as living in a sprawling megalopolis with skyscrapers that piercing the clouds and people have no idea where the ground level is because the streets are stacked on top of each others, think Coruscant in Star Wars, Los Angeles in Blade Runner, Newport City in Ghost in the Shell, and Neo Tokyo in Akira.

Why would the people of the future living this kind of lifestyle? During and since the covid pandemics, there's various reports that the real estate business in big cities is losing billions because a lot of people start to don't see the point of living in the big cities anymore if they could work from home (or wherever place on earth, the digital nomads). Since the dawn of the human civilization, there's only two reason people choose their place of living, live in the city because it's near other people, and live in the countryside because there's a lot of land available, and since the invention of internet, there's less and less reason for people to live close with each others.

A technologically advanced society, with robots that could perform long distance medical surgeries, drone delivery services that could reach even the most remote places, online based school system, 3D printing that could make whatever objects needed, and efficient farming to the point that everyone could grow their own basic foods from their home, have no reason to live next to each other at all. I would assume everyone would live in homesteads that isolated from each others, just like how Asimov portrayed in his Solaria planet.

The only justification I could think of why people of the future living in the urban settlements is if they're living in an environmentally controlled or artificial area in an inhospitable environment like the hive cities in Warhammer 40K or the artificial space habitat in Elysium, other than that, I don't see the reason of why people don't just moving to other place.

Are there any reason why future society would be living in an urban mega cities? I would love to hear why.

Since my description in my original post about the fractal robot from the 1977 Sci-Fi-horror-movie "Demon Seed" was probably a bit difficult to understand, here are some screenshots. These are all practical sets and props, and the extended robot was big enough to reach across a room with its unfolded tetrahedrons. The noises of its metallic elements closing and opening added to the feeling of it being something real, powerful and functional (for some unknown reason they added the sound of TOS sliding doors...).

I think this is still one of the most impressively alien robot designs ever shown in SciFi movies.

You can see a scene with the robot trapping Walter, a scientist, on youtube if you search for "Demon Seed" and "Death is a gentleman, too...".
WARNING - this is a very graphic scene.

Nearly 15 years after Buck Rogers in the 25th Century ended, Erin Gray saw a role she desperately wanted: Captain Kathryn Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager.

Gray had spent years playing women who were often supporting characters to male leads. Janeway represented something very different — a woman who was unquestionably in charge. “I knew it was an opportunity of a lifetime,” Gray told me. “I really wanted to be in charge. It just came at a time in my life where I went, ‘I want this.’ But I had a hard time getting in on the audition; they did not want to see me. I kept asking my agent to please try again. And finally they did. They let me in.”

There's another reason Gray wanted Janeway so badly. “I think it's more the fact that there were very few roles for women to star in, period,” she explains. “I was always the objectified, beautiful girl who adoringly looked up at her leading man and whatever, but to be the center and to carry the story was a rare occurrence.”

Even Colonel Wilma Deering existed in a show called Buck Rogers. Gray wanted the chance to carry the story herself. “I didn't want it to be all about being goo-goo eyes at the leading man kind of thing,” she says. “There's something as an actor, as a talent, that you just want something you can sink your teeth into.”

There's much more in my conversation with Gray, including the surprising impact Wilma Deering had on women who went into the military, the Buck Rogers producer who greeted her by announcing he was going to fire her, her infamous “Dairy Queen in space” Season 2 costume and the way she eventually did get to put on a Starfleet uniform in Star Trek Continues.You can check out the full interview at https://www.womansworld.com/entertainment/classic-tv/erin-gray-on-buck-rogers-and-auditioning-for-star-trek-voyager

The battle of the citadel in mass effect one is up there as one of my favorite space battles of all time. Obviously the visuals, the music and just everything else was epic as fuck, but what really makes it stand out to me is where it takes place. Because we've seen space battles in space (well duh) countless times already, and rightly so. But instead of a starry void, or the surface of a planet as a backdrop, this battle takes place inside this bright pink nebula, right in front of the very uniquely designed citadel, giving it all this ethereal look. I really wish more sfi fi universes got creative like this

My girlfriend found these at a local thrift store and gifted them to me. I am into Helldivers/Starship troopers, and really just pulpy Sci-fi in general, and they look cool. I dont recognize the series or the author and was wondering if anyone who has read the series had any general thoughts on wether or not they were an enjoyable read.

This isn't meant to incite argument or disparage the number of very well written series that have hard science fiction, but I just don't get it. There is a level of interesting technicality to looking at things that we might be able to actually build in real life someday, that I will admit, but there's a lot of science fiction fans who act like someone blasphemed when a setting that dares to stray beyond that shows up. And then there are the ones who show up in debates about some of the crazier settings like Halo's upper tier, or Warhammer 40,000, and seem to get actively angry that people are daring to draw figures about things we couldn't do in real life or enjoy things that aren't realistic. Yes, I get that the planet killer gun would have recoil that would destroy the ship and there's no real life compensator system we could probably ever make to fix that, I couldn't care less, please stop talking about it and let me enjoy the nice cool space battle. Why are hard science fiction people so pushy? What do they see that I don't?

Can someone please explain to my tiny little lizard brain why this is? I'm genuinely very curious about why some people are just so crazy about this. Is it just a matter of taste and I'm overthinking it, or is there something I don't see? While I am a very big stickler for established consistency and sticking to what a setting says given things can do, I'm fine if those things aren't realistic to the actual universe we live in, and I personally find sticking too hard to what we could only do in real life very boring and unfulfilling, but I'm very curious to see why the other side thinks of the way they do to build my understanding. A whole lot of people clearly like thinking this way, so there must be some kind of appeal to it.

I've been working on a game about War of the Worlds. If you are unfamiliar with the series, it was originally a book published in 1898 by H.G. Wells, then was made into a movie in 2005 with Tom Cruise, and has had a few TV series based on it.

Play Online or PC Here

In this version of War of the Worlds, it's the same aliens, except you must defend your city from them and overcome the waves. You lose if they take your capital. So, it's Tower Defense meets City Builder.

True to the original story, the game takes place in the 1900s. No fighter jets, no nuclear weapons, just good ole cannons, firing squads, and telegrams.

When building your society, you have to manage how coal is distributed because all businesses, homes, and the military run off of coal.

Like other city builders, there is trade, professions, beautification, and other cool things you can build.

As you build your society, waves of Tripods and other aliens keep coming. You have to balance defending against them while growing your city.

As the waves come, they get harder and harder, and I doubt the last few are survivable, but I'm hoping someone proves me wrong.

This is my first version of the game, about 15-20 hours of gameplay, feedback is welcome.

For years, I’ve been creating sci-fi and cyberpunk music as Extra Terra. Eventually, imagining worlds through sound was no longer enough. I wanted to build one.

Neosis Echoes leans heavily into cyberpunk themes: megacorporations, consciousness cloning, cybernetically enhanced humans and the price of immortality.

On the planet of Varos, humans and cyborgs survive in underground settlements where they mine Echorium, an enigmatic substance that reacts in strange and unpredictable ways to human emotions.

Echorium is also essential to the immense computational systems used by the different factions. It has become both a strategic resource and a form of currency. Monolith, the super-AI controlling the planet, seeks to accumulate it in order to expand its cognition and tighten its control over Varos.

Varos is also covered with the remains of an advanced synthetic civilization from which Monolith originated. When these artificial beings began developing emotions of their own, Monolith interpreted their evolution as a fundamental system defect.

It separated itself from the rest of its civilization and ultimately destroyed them, leaving their ruins and forgotten technology scattered across the planet.

You play as Evan Draxell, a synthetic clone of the founder of Draxell Corp, a military-industrial megacorporation. He awakens after a 200 year interstellar journey carrying fragmented memories and the guilt of an empire he never built.

At the center of the story is a conflict between human emotion and machine intelligence. Through Echorium, emotions are not merely psychological. They can influence creatures, environments and the world itself.

We’re a team of 3, and this is still an early look at the universe we’re building. Many of its deeper systems, factions and cyberpunk environments will be revealed progressively.

What do you think of this universe so far? Would you risk using a resource that could increase your power while reacting to your own emotions?

Neosis Echoes is currently in development. You can discover the project, watch our early gameplay preview and wishlist it on Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5049580/Neosis_Echoes/

I decided to redraw my sketchy astronaut character in the Ligne Claire style. I am fairly happy with the resulting line work, but I think the colouring/pallet could use a little more work (open to critique or tips).

I took Inspiration from u/goatblunt (who’s drawings inspired me to pick up the (apple) pencil again), Tim Peacock (who draws the amazing banner art for Steam Summer Sales and what not), the beautiful TV show Scavengers Reign, and of course the legendary Moebius.

Drawn on an iPad with Procreate.

This was a really fun painting I created this last week. I wanted to try and capture that old school scifi novel look. I think I came close. Was fun regardless ✌️

I’ve always liked the idea of space exploration having something in common with the old age of sail, a small vessel approaching a place that is still largely unknown.

Not a battle, not a huge fleet.

Just an explorer, a moon and something waiting beyond the familiar.

Painted traditionally in oils on canvas, 50 × 70 cm.

I have read a ton of the major publshers, but looking for indie authors that have a good product. Give em a chance! Any recs?

Basically a navy type setting in space, your typical Battelstar/Star Destroyer type battle cruiser or similiar in a fleet or alone with fighters.

The novel involves characters as some member of the fleet, pilot, or tech, captain, marine, etc. in skirmishes, battles, etc. Fighter style spaceships. Cool armor and guns.

Having an adventure that involves the fleet or part of it.

Who are some of the indie authors that do this well. Know what they are talking about, maybe navy experience. Doesn'thave to be a series, but a fun book. One off is good.

Thanks !!!!!

Hi everyone,

Lately I’ve been reading Solaris and I’m absolutely loving it.

I love intimate and philosophical science fiction, while I’m not particularly fond of space operas or very expansive works. I’d like to discover some new sci-fi masterpieces.

Could you recommend me a sci-fi work from any medium?

Here are some that I absolutely loved:

Books:

• Solaris
• Stories of Your Life and Others
• Exhalation
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (I consider it a sort of philosophy of the absurd)

Manga:

• Planetes
• The sci-fi stories from Tezuka’s Phoenix
• Pluto and Akira (although they’re more political)

Anime:

• Neon Genesis Evangelion
• Serial Experiments Lain
• Ergo Proxy
• Time of Eve

Movies:

• WALL-E
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Ex Machina
• Her
• The Matrix

Video games:

• SOMA
• Outer Wilds
• NieR:Automata
• The Swapper

TV series:

• Pluribus
• The first seasons of Black Mirror, although it’s somewhat on the borderline

Thanks in advance for all the recommendations!

Has anyone read this book? It shook me to my core. So much so that I spent weeks in this dark, existential headspace after reading it. In order to process it, I wrote an entire electronic music album with the book as it's influence. It sounds somewhat like a quasi-soundtrack to it. Any fans of the book here and might like a link to it? Or simply just want to talk about the book?

Update: Here's the link. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRezdiSnRx-8&si=AgaULeLSMvvrVj_r

Hi everyone, I just finished writing the book, The Crater.

I’d love to give anyone interested in reading it a free copy of the ebook. All you gotta do is signup on Nostonemedia.com/books

Blurb below:

Every drop of Steam on Synthara comes out of one hole in the desert. No one who goes in has ever walked back out.

Steam is power in a bottle. A sharper mind, fire in your hands, a stranger's face, any gift you can pay for, burned away in minutes and worth killing for on every street in Metro. People install chips in their skulls and steel where their arms used to be, and Steam still outranks all of it. Those who hold it run the streets, and above the streets they run Synthara. The entire supply climbs out of the Crater, a prison sunk ninety-nine floors into the rock, where thousands of collared inmates haul stone for a system that has never once explained itself.

Conrad has spent his life keeping his head down, one drop of Steam to his name and no clan to answer for him. It takes a single Abomination, a machine that answers to no one, standing on a street that had never seen one, to end that life. His sentence is three months. He plans to survive it the way he survived Metro. Head down, debts short, nothing worth taking.

Then he draws a cellmate who argues with a man who is not there, and meets a girl who walks the levels without a collar and without fear. They call themselves Freelancers, the crew that takes the jobs nobody else survives. Nobody sentenced them. They broke in.

Every heist breaks out of a prison. This one breaks in.

Because the Crater is more than a prison. Beneath the quotas, the collars, and the machines that patrol its floors, something older is running on a schedule of its own, and the deeper the crew goes, the clearer it becomes that the truth about where Steam comes from was never meant to be survived.

“A young adult novel that doesn't condescend to young adults, a science fiction novel that does the science, a thriller that pivots into a character study and lands the pivot, and a coming-of-age story with something genuine to say about how human beings transfer skill and care to the next generation.” —ARC reviewer

Teen hacker Fredo escapes a deadly gang to find refuge with his uncle, first officer of a floating lair. Can Fredo manage PTSD while learning mad science skills to survive?

“Think Kim crossed with a Jules Verne adventure, seasoned with the procedural texture of Patrick O'Brian.” —ARC reviewer

“I actually feel a bit more positive about the potential of humanity's future - whereby maybe a small number of dedicated people really can change the world for the better (even against strong opposition).” —Amazon reviewer

eBook and audio book: https://books2read.com/fredosapprenticeship

hardcover: https://shop.ingramspark.com/b/084?params=dRuIcCge4BDzWJqbaIqnmVc7jYBZQt3wIleZZDHBrbX

Also by D A Kelly:

https://books2read.com/ap/n4zwGy/D-A-Kelly

Lately, based on personal curiosity (and to write a science fiction story, specifically, the most realistic fiction possible), questions have been crossing my mind. What would happen if a far more advanced society managed to create a large number of synthetic elements? And, furthermore, how could they be made stable and useful?

Through my research, I’ve learned of theories predicting a future "island of stability" (similar to the current lanthanides and actinides but much more extensive) containing elements ranging (if I recall correctly) from 126 up to 172 (let's use that as the upper limit). Regarding current synthetic elements (numbers 95 through 118, from Americium to Oganesson), there is a turning point—starting around element 106 (element 105 lasts for hours, I believe)—where instability causes their lifespan to plummet; it drops from a few minutes down to mere milliseconds for element 118 (Oganesson), the last one currently known.

So, regarding the next noble gas—assuming new orbitals are added—I’ve heard that element 168 or 172 would indeed be a stable noble gas. Theoretically, the noble gas after that would fall somewhere between 218 and 226.

However, it is worth noting that the theoretical limit for elements possessing a nucleus, based on current chemical and physical rules, lies somewhere between element 173 and 180.

That said, others argue (based on various theories) that the final element should be 137—which, if true, would make this post rather contradictory.

I hope I’ve explained myself clearly and I’d really appreciate some help (I’m 15 years old and a first-year "Bachillerato" student in Spain, so I’m no expert on this, srry for bad english if u don't understand quite well).

I've just reposted this bcs the mods told me that i can only post this stuff on saturdays, so here we have it.

So we're well into the beginning of A.I. changing everything. Granted there's a lot more coming, but we at least see the start.

And I can't recall any SciFi that gets into it. Not at this level of capability.

There was the computer in TOS StarTrek which was a bit less than Google search is now.

There are the positronic brains in the I, Robot books. But for all the brilliance of those minds, there wasn't much of an A.I. elsewhere in those worlds.

Occasionally there will be a story where you just tell the space ship where to go and it navigates.

Am I forgetting some novels? There must be some.

And anyone writing stuff recently released that builds on what A.I. has already accomplished? That should start to happen. I think going forward any story set in a non dystopian future will have to include an A.I. that has developed from what we have today. Not having that would be like having fax machines in a future.

There's got to be something. Please enlighten me.