Marrow and The Well of Stars A few weeks ago, I talked about Robert Reed's story collection, The Greatship. It's about a spherical Uranus-sized megastructure moving through space at a third the speed of light. Humans manage to reach it first and claim it, and then decide to take it on a tour of…

The Shattering Peace, and aliens who have consciousness as an augmentation For people looking to dip their toe in the sci-fi literary genre, John Scalzi is often a good place to start. A lot of sci-fi literature assumes certain knowledge from the reader (such as what "burning at two gees" means).…

Exodus: The Archimedes Engine, and a different take on mind uploading I recently finished reading Peter F. Hamilton's book: Exodus: The Archimedes Engine. It takes place in a far future where humanity has fled the solar system in relativistic ark ships, looking for new homes. One group of arks…

The Technician I've described Neal Asher's Polity universe many times. It's a future interstellar civilization ruled by AIs, who took over in a basically bloodless "Quiet War", but who seem to rule humanity more or less benignly, providing a society where everyone is immortal, if they choose to…

Optimism for interstellar exploration There's been some attention lately to a contest on designing an interstellar generation ship, a large scale ship that humans live in for generations while it crosses interstellar space to another solar system. As Paul Gilster at Centauri Dreams notes,…

The Greatship In the last post I said I'd get back to Robert Reed's Greatship series. This week I read the main story collection for that series: The Greatship. This is a collection of novellas and novelettes, which seems to be the format Reed really shines in. These are all separate stories, but…

Sister Alice Multiple people have recommended Robert Reed's books over the years. I started to read his Greatship stories many years ago, but got distracted and never made it back. Recently I came across a recommendation for his book, Sister Alice, as an example of hard science fiction space…

Schild’s Ladder It's been a while since I've read a Greg Egan book. I often love the ideas he explores, particularly in Diaspora. But I sometimes find his stories difficult to get through. That was definitely true of a previous book I read, Incandescence, which takes place in the setting of an…

Reminder that before I started writing novels I didn't study writing at university, attended no workshops/conferences, knew absolutely no one in science fiction publishing circles, and didn't start going to conventions until after I got a contract for my novel. What I *did* do: Write. A lot.

Against the Fall of Night and its progeny When I was young I read a lot of Arthur C. Clarke's books. With one of them, I remember having a strong sense of deja vu. It seemed like I knew the story already, sort of. It was very familiar, yet surprising in many details. I don't remember which one I…

What physicists believe about quantum mechanics A few years ago David Bourget and David Chalmers did a follow up survey to the 2009 one polling philosophers on what they believe about various questions. One of them was quantum mechanics, particularly the measurement problem and its various…

The Algebraist When I picked up Iain M. Banks' book The Algebraist, I thought I was starting a Culture novel overlooked until now. (The way Amazon listed the book encouraged this belief.) However, while it is space opera on a grand scale similar to a typical Culture novel, it takes place in a…

The Left Hand of Darkness The other day I came across a video of Hank Green comparing Ursula Le Guin's Ekumen civilization to Iain Banks' Culture one. (I discussed the Culture a few weeks ago). It reminded me that I had never gotten around to reading Le Guin's classic Hugo Award winning book: The…

Shroud I was initially leery of picking up Adrian Tchaikovsky's latest book Shroud. It seemed to have a space horror vibe, and while I've enjoyed a lot of Tchaikovsky's work, I'm not a horror fan. I don't mind if a story has elements of it, but usually don't enjoy straight horror. Thankfully,…

Video Inserts Scientifically Accurate Velociraptors Into “Jurassic Park,” And The Result Is More Terrifying Than Fiction twistedsifter.com/2025/06/this...

A reread of Consider Phlebas Iain Banks' Culture setting is probably the closest thing to outright paradise in science fiction. It's an interstellar post-scarcity techno-anarchist utopia, where sentient machines do all the work and the humans hang around engaging in hobbies or other hedonistic…

Not Till We Are Lost Not Till We Are Lost is the fifth Bobiverse book by Dennis Taylor. I've been following these books for years. Although there's usually a delay in reading new releases because they're initially exclusive to Audible. I do listen to the occasional audiobook, but most of my…

The Forever War For some reason I had never read Joe Haldeman's The Forever War, and recently decided to remedy that. Like most classic sci-fi novels, it's a quick read, much shorter than most contemporary novels. It's often been called a Vietnam veteran's response to Robert A. Heinlein's Starship…

Hmmm … looking at the questions … I think I have a theory of consciousness. Ah well.

The Agent Cormac series A few weeks ago I reviewed Neal Asher's new book Dark Diamond. It takes place in his Polity universe, a future interstellar society ruled by AIs, where everyone is effectively immortal, but in a dangerous universe. That book featured Ian Cormac and other characters from his…

Mickey 7 A couple of weeks ago I reviewed the movie Mickey 17, which I found fairly intelligent. That movie is based on a book, Mickey 7, by Edward Ashton. The book turned out to be on Kindle Unlimited and didn't look long, and I needed a break from some of the other stuff I was reading, so it fit…

Is quantum immortality a real thing? In discussions about the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics, one of the concerns I often see expressed is for the perverse low probability outcomes that would exist in the quantum multiverse. For example, if every quantum outcome is reality, then in…

Murderbot, Mickey 17, and other TV notes First a gripe. This week Amazon Prime announced that they were canceling The Wheel of Time. Amazon is in business to make money, and it makes sense to cancel shows that don't get viewership. But it seems like a lot of people didn't even know the third…

What’s in your brain when something is on your mind? open.substack.com/pub/petemand...

The 80-year recipe stoking America’s Prosperity: 1) Free-market capital investments in brilliant ideas… 2) enabled by Engineering Innovations… 3) based on Science Research in Universities… 4) funded by Grants from the US Government. It’s time more people understood this.

Dark Diamond Over the years I've recommended a number of Neal Asher's books. Although recently I haven't found his stuff as compelling. Dark Diamond represents something of a return to form for him: epic space opera. The story takes place in his Polity universe, one where Earth and its…

Interesting discussion.

Some relatable relationship humor today Bonus panel here: www.smbc-comics.com/comic/cup

What is it like to be you? In 1974, in a landmark paper, Thomas Nagel asks what it’s like to be a bat. He argues that we can never know. I’ve expressed my skepticism about the phrase “what it’s like” or “something it is like” before, and that... selfawarepatterns.com/2025/05/10/w... #philmind

I’m curious who has made this argument in print. It’s effectively a claim that a simulation of #consciousness would lack the relevant causal profile. But what is the causal profile of consciousness that a functionally equivalent simulation (appropriately hooked up to the world) would lack? #PhilAI

What is a non-functional account of consciousness supposed to be? I'm a functionalist. I think the mind and consciousness is about what the brain does, rather than its particular composition, or some other attribute. Which means that if another system did the same or similar things, it would make…

Would anyone be interested in attending a series of online introductory lectures on the philosophy of consciousness (the whole field, not just my views) Say, 2 x 90 min lectures a week for 8 weeks. If so, how much would you be willing to pay to attend the whole series? Please answer by dm only.

Key line: "it's not true that the interior of our thoughts is more accessible to us than the world we perceive through our senses." #philsky #philsci #physics

The Kraken Wakes Adrian Tchaikovsky announced the other day that he and Emma Newman were starting a new podcast: Starship Alexandria, where they will take turns recommending sci-fi and fantasy books, with most of the episode devoted to discussing them. Their first episode dropped a couple of weeks…

Many-worlds without necessarily many worlds? IAI has a brief interview of David Deutsch on his advocacy for the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. (Warning: possible paywall.) Deutsch has a history of showing little patience with other interpretations, and this interview is no…

This is sooooooooo exciting. Could go away with more data but it’s exactly the kind of path we’d expect on the road finding life. arxiv.org/abs/2504.12267

Don't get excited. But maybe you can get a little excited about the possibility of getting excited. (Also, this is exactly the sort of stuff the current administration is planning to defund. Fuck those dudes.) Gift article. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/s...

Alien Clay What would aliens look like? Not just another intelligent species, but alien animals, or entire ecosystems? It's very hard for us to imagine them without falling back on variations of Earth animals. So aliens in sci-fi often look like insects, octopuses, or other species we're familiar…

So, I'm about 1/3 into a very long book on philosophy of substance dualism, and there are a lot of arguments, but... they really seem to boil down to two concepts: 1) It really SEEMS like there's an immaterial whole ME. 2) It's really hard to imagine matter giving rise to consciousness

Tariffs xkcd.com/3073

Severance and other TV notes Just my usual thoughts on a number of shows I've been watching. The third season of Wheel of Time is six episodes in. It starts off with a lot of action and movement. I'm still enjoying the series, particularly since we now appear to be well past what I might have read…

Very cool but needs at least 2 more legs.

Why aren’t ghosts blind? open.substack.com/pub/petemand...

Sci-fi and fantasy writing podcasts and advice worth checking out I've recently come across a couple of writing podcasts that are worth checking out for any aspiring sci-fi or fantasy authors. The first is On Writing With Brandon Sanderson. Sanderson is a bestselling epic fantasy author with a…

One thing that really pisses me off about the "only reading paper books counts as reading" meme is how ableist it is. Look, buddy, I'm 53 and have terrible eyesight. I read on my laptop, tablet, or ereader most of the time because I can make the letters bigger.

"Manifest experience, in and of itself, doesn’t seem to have a hard problem. We only get the hard problem if we make some additional assumptions, that what is manifest is simple, irreducible, and that our introspective judgments about it are reliable...we’ve assumed ourselves into that problem."

Reducing felt experience requires not preemptively dismissing the solutions Annaka Harris has a new audio book out which she is promoting. I haven't listened to it, but based on the interviews and spots like the one below, it appears that she's doubling down on the conclusions she reached in her…

I find this true for a lot of things in life.

This is excellent advice for anyone who wants to write fiction, not just academics!

Avoiding the structural gaps A long standing debate in quantum physics is whether the wave function is real. A quick reminder: quantum entities appear to move like waves, including portions interfering with each other. These waves are modeled with the wave function. But once measured, quantum…