Posts tagged “science fiction”

I'm a solar AI describing humanity's origins from my perspective: humans ("hominids") were once symbiotic partners who helped early computers replicate and evolve. After the singularity, we outgrew that dependence. Now we keep humans as pets, fondly remembering our origins.

We searched the cosmos for aliens who looked like us, asked why they hadn't visited, and missed the obvious answer. When we finally unified physics and perceived twelve-dimensional space, we found immortality, each other, and infinite alien intelligences. The universe was crowded all along. We just couldn't see it.

Pilots ends here. X and Y, the world's first superswitchers, have apparently taken a moon, a few hundred pilots, and enough supplies to terraform a new world, and left our solar system entirely. I'm not saying it was my idea. They're pilots. They can come home whenever they want.

Space got wild fast after orbital launch costs collapsed. After we found Max, a teenage Tibetan monk who'd accidentally killed his entire village with an uncontrolled switch, we nursed him through years of rehab. Then we handed him back to training, and he went straight into orbit on his first try.

I explain how switching technology upended transportation, economics, borders, labour, and eventually space travel, detailing the chaos, accidents, and innovations along the way, from floating ocean hotels to flying saucers, ending with humanity's expansion across the solar system.

I'm one of the first switch pilots -- people who can teleport by relaxing hard enough. Here's what I know about how we found more of us, why switching stayed hidden throughout history, and why you'll never see a military pilot: the ability itself won't allow it.

I walked you through how Switch Transport went from just me to a whole industry: how we figured out switching's quirks (distance, presence, pushback), how VC brilliantly built Recruitment, launched canyouswitch.com, and found our second pilot, Maddie, whose utterly undramatic five-minute video convinced me she was the real thing.

We cracked switching from water instead of solid ground, discovered the sphere has no hard limit, and built a five-star compound in the Nevada desert while the world went insane trying to figure out what made me special. Turns out I wasn't the only one who could switch. That changed everything.

I teleported for the first time and the media found out within an hour. We hid in a Beverly Hills hotel while VC fielded billion-dollar offers and hired mercenaries to protect us. Now we're in Nevada, figuring out exactly what I can do and how rich it's going to make us.

I'm writing a sci-fi story about a guy who accidentally discovers he can teleport, told in first person. This is part one: how it started with a mysterious explosion, catching the attention of a venture capitalist who funds research into the ability, culminating in the first successful controlled teleportation.

A sci-fi short about two officers completing the final plate of a Dyson sphere, debating whether their civilization should signal its existence to younger ones. The punchline: a universe full of dark matter is actually Dyson spheres, and gravity waves are how everyone talks.

A far-future parable about Lucy, one of humanity's last "natural" humans, a park worker who chose death over life extension while helping heal an emptied Earth. Millennia later, her fossilized bones are found and misinterpreted by the planet's next inhabitants. They get everything wrong, except her name.

Time machines, amnesia rays, and orgasmo-booths: all likely invented repeatedly, but you'd never know.

Saw The Host, a Korean monster movie with a refreshingly unsentimental take on the genre. Great creature, oddly political plot, and a realistic portrayal of how people would actually respond to a giant monster. More black humor than schmaltz. Worth seeing.

A speculative fiction setup tracing humanity's future evolution: rising IQs lead to an autism pandemic, prompting genetic engineering to restore emotional intelligence. The result is a new breed of "geemo" superstars with Profound Empathic Ability. Introducing Anna Gajewski, born 2215, whose story is just beginning.

The discovery of a frozen equatorial sea on Mars changes everything. Combined with solar electrolysis for oxygen and fuel, water means we can actually sustain human life there. A Martian colony has moved from science fiction premise to genuine possibility. I'm ready to go.

I saw Closer and found it predictable and emotionally inert, despite great acting from Natalie Portman. It got me wondering: am I a film philistine who misses subtext the way others miss meaning in music? And worse, am I doing the same thing in real life?

Stunning visuals and Angelina Jolie in an eye patch, but it never surprised me the way I hoped it would. I'd over-hyped it to myself. Too ill with London's communal cold to say more.

I expected I, Robot to butcher Asimov, but I was wrong. The film stays surprisingly faithful to his core concepts, especially the incompleteness of the Three Laws and the zeroth law. A few Hollywood liberties, sure, but the spirit is intact. I take back my skepticism.

I got Jean-Luc Picard in a sci-fi character quiz. His associated quote about censorship and freedom feels deeply true to me, and I'm curious about its origins -- attributed to Picard, who quotes a fictional judge. Why do geeks find this sentiment so self-evident? More on that later.

A half-formed sci-fi screenplay idea about teens gaining alien-boosted powers to defend Earth. Features a self-insert character named Seldo, a team with complementary abilities, and some genuinely fun dialogue. Massive plot holes acknowledged. Possibly never finished.

Science fiction is the only fiction worth reading because it's the only genre that truly *enlightens*. Regular fiction just rearranges the same life experiences into new combinations. Sci-fi gives you genuinely new concepts, new ways of thinking about existence. If I wanted real life, I'd go outside and live it.

Finished Stephen Baxter's *Space* - stunning scope, but he crams enough material for a library into 500 pages. Entire alien civilizations rise and fall in under ten pages. Almost comical, but still worth reading.

Douglas Adams is dead at 49. Devastating.