Excerpts from catalog notes for Lot 197, Swann Fine Book Sale, Oct. 22

The First Utopian Work of Science Fiction Written in the United States.
Mary Griffith (1772-1846)
Camperdown; Or, News from Our Neighborhood: Being Sketches. Including "Three Hundred Years Hence." Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1836, First Edition.

"Three Hundred Years Hence," is narrated by Edgar Hastings, who dozes off in 1835 only to awaken in 2135. Change is all around him. A helpful tour commences, narrated by some of his descendants. Dogs have been eliminated (rabies), the fields are ploughed by autonomous machines, railways abound, the market is tidy and civilized. Referring their antiquated progenitor to the local paper, The Recorder of Self-Inflicted Miseries, his modern hosts describe the many improvements in evidence all around.

Asking about the elevated food shopping experience, over the unhygienic, disorganized, uncivilized hawkers of the 1830s, Hasting wants to know, "What has done all this?' 'Why, the improvement which took place in the education of women.'"

Statements in favor of women's rights pervade the text. "As soon as [women] took their rank as an equal to a man, equal as to property I mean, for they had no other right to desire; there was no longer any struggle, it became their ambition to show how long the world had been benighted by thus keeping them in a degraded state. I say degraded state, for surely it argued in them imbecility or incapacity of some kind, and to great extent too, when a man appointed executors and trustees to his estate whilst his wife was living. It showed one of three things-- that he never considered her as having equal rights with himself; or, that he thought her incompetent to take charge of his property-- or, that the customs and laws of the land had so warped his judgment, that he only did as he saw others do, without considering whether these laws and customs were right or wrong."

We shouldn't wonder that Griffith's futuristic utopia sets women in this light: educated, successful, holding equal rights, and valued for their empathetic and humanitarian qualities. 190 years hence, this generation of women continues to plot the feminist future.

First edition, octavo, bound in publisher's lightly textured cloth with floral and leaf motifs; original printer's paper label still attached to spine; remnants of old paper cover over pastedowns; old Odd Fellows Lodge stamp on front free endleaf (free endleaves at front and back torn with losses); single sheet of publisher's ads precedes title; rare, no copies in the auction record; Worldcat locates 15 copies in libraries worldwide; 7 1/8 x 4 1/2 in.

Love his work. 😎🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦

I hope this is the right place to post this, so here ya go

So my story is set in space with the main cast having spaceships with AI. I mean AI in the most literal terms though, as an artificial intelligence, not the slop bots or generated answers based on algorithms that we're used to today. The ships themselves are autonomous, and think freely, their limitation is they are bound to the ship and subsequently, the pilot. 

We see lots of sci-fi through the years with similar AI integration ideas from inside ships to robots, so I followed that path given my own spin on it. But now, with the AI boom literally everywhere and people’s frustrations around it, I think I need to change at least how I name it (changing the name from ‘AI’) or its function in my universe. 

One idea I had is forming stricter guidelines on where AI is used and seen. For instance, currently I have other forms of AI used in places similar to Jarvis, or digitally working on internal systems, which is something we are all used to and maybe annoyed with right now. So I could gut any use of AI like that and you would only see AI as a freely autonomous thing like the ships or other bots. 

These AI characters are essential to the story and not something I can just take out or turn dumb. I also like to keep things “realistic” or “plausible” in my universe. Like inventing weapons that could actually work in a vacuum given the other things found in the environment of space and developing spacecraft with real physics and calculations in mind. 
 
I’d love to hear any ideas you all have! 

Today my library informed me that this was ready for pickup. It's been so long that I have no idea why I asked for it in the first place.

Can anyone tell me why I wanted to read this?

Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?

Aeon class colonization ship

Humans are Weird – Lost and Found

Original Post: https://www.authorbettyadams.com/bettys-blog/humans-are-weird-lost-and-found

The warm angle of the front porch really wasn’t supposed to be a lounging site. Human feet trod quickly past the site, their focus on getting into the house, or getting out into the busy little community making the site theoretically dangerous for species who didn’t want to get stepped on. The ground limestone foundation had been pressed with tessellated patterns that were visually pleasing and kept the clumsy bipeds safe from slipping and throwing their falling gate out of pattern, but it tasted of nothing save the dust that collected in the groves. However if you had healthy scutes and sturdy scales, underlayed by reasonably dense bones, and an attractive layer of fat, well what did it matter if a human stepped on you? Just keep your snout safely tucked in the curve of your foreleg and at the cost of a few non-repentant apologies you had the whole morning to bask in the local sunlight.

If the grain scattered very, very well in your direction, one of the local domestic animals came and judged you a fitting headrest and came and basked with you. Sift, stretched out a claw and ‘scritiched’ the creature under its chin. It gave a grunt and the motion dislodged a small cloud of warning pheromones from its collar. Sift made a mental note to ask what its species designation was. It wasn’t a ‘cat’. Those creatures, despite being perfectly ideal for keeping local vermin off of grain stocks were rated as far too dangerous to exist in mixed colonies. Sift thought this was a bit of over caution, but it had been agreed to by the humans. This might be a ‘dog’ but the species had so much variety, supposedly going back long before the humans mastered genetic manipulation that it was hard to tell if a given mammal fell into that category. It had fur to be certain, and it was very dependent on human interaction.

The door of the dwelling swung open, knocking against the hip of the creature and it gave a mild huff of annoyance as it heaved its mass, up and away from the door. Mary stepped out, holding the little one on her hip, Sift felt a surge of now familiar admiration of the usefulness of the baby holding ledge humans had built in. Mary’s other hand held a container of the domestic creature’s food, a mix of grain and animal fat that it particularly enjoyed and it began to cavort around Mary’s feet while Mary scanned the ground with growing perplexity. She began examining the shelving with a wrinkled face and Sift lifted up her head and idly licked her teeth.

“Rooting around for something?” she asked.

Mary started and glanced down at her in surprise.

“Oh, I didn’t see you there,” she said, shifting the little one who was focused on drinking water out of a soft cup.

“Here I am,” Sift commented, wondering not for the first time exactly how human vision worked. “What are you looking for?”

“The food bowl for Snuffles,” Mary said indicating the animal who had decided to sit down and tremble with eagerness until its food was forthcoming.

Sift rolled over and lifted her snout to sniff with dramatic emphasis. Then she swung her tail to indicate a door set low and subtly into the wall of the structure.

“I smell the grain and rancid fat in here,” she said with a yawn.

Mary’s face creased in a frown and she set the little one down. Instantly it ran, smacking its fat little feet against the porch, to vigorously pet the creature. Snuffles started back with a wince, and then braced itself to accept the affection. Mary used her now free hand to open the door and pull out the container.

“How-” she started to ask, but the little human made a dash at the food bowl, hands eagerly out, and Snuffles sat back with a resigned sigh.

Mary snatched the little one up and scolded the very unrepentant child.

“We don’t steal Snuffles’s food!” she said.

Snuffles got back up and began happily rooting through the food.

“No one would have put the bowl in the utility access point,” Mary observed out loud.

“It has very small human handprints on the side,” Sift pointed out.

Mary squinted down at the bowl and blinked in surprise before turning her attention to her offspring.

“Why would you do that, you chubby little chonker?” she demanded, pinching the jiggling rolls of fat on the little human’s thighs?

The little one giggled and smacked her face. Mary with clear effort turned her laugh into a frown and captured the chubby little arm in a hand.

“We don’t smack Mommy,” she said in what was trying to be a firm tone.

Sift gurgled in amusement.

“But why?” the adult human demanded.

“The little one does see you putting bowls in similar storage places on a regular basis,” Sift pointed out.

Mary blinked down at her in startled thought until the little one used his other hand to reach up and smack her, and she had to repeat the gentle discipline. Human hatchlings, apparently hated being restrained, at least this one did. Once that was done Mary gave a rueful smile down at Sift.

“I guess you are right,” she admitted. “I’ll have to remember that little trick until he gets bored of it.”

Sift blinked up at the human as she went back in the house. The two of them had spent many long hours discussing human learning patterns. Mary was well aware of the fact that all sapient creatures learned by mimicking their elders to one degree or another, that this was the core of the universal concept of ‘play’. Yet it seemed that she had forgotten it. Sift yawned and flipped over, stretching her hind-claws against the texture of the porch. This might be yet another manifestation of ‘baby brain’ that Mary talked so much about. Or it might be something worth noting in her research journal. At the moment Snuffles was done eating, the sun was still at the perfect napping angle, and human architecture consistently made delightful sunning nooks.

Hey everyone! I'm a solo developer from Italy, and I've been dreaming of creating my own game since 2013! Last December I started working on Over Human, a sci-fi adventure set in a frozen world where drones have taken control of everything: they've become so technologically advanced that they can manipulate the weather creating tornadoes and other environmental threats to hunt down the remaining humans. And you have no weapons to fight back!

One of the things I wanted to explore with this project is what happens when technology becomes so advanced that humanity completely loses control over it. I've always found the relationship between humanity and technology fascinating. We create machines to make our lives easier but what happens when those same machines become so advanced that we are no longer the ones in control?

The atmosphere and the sense of isolation is heavily inspired by Firewatch and The Long Dark.

I really hope you like my idea, it's simple but it's mine!! And I'm so proud about this <3

This is the Steam Page if you're curious about it: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5237810/Over_Human/

Francesco

One of my favorite traditions in speculative fiction is using artificial beings or cybernetic operatives to hold a mirror up to our own humanity—from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and The Murderbot Diaries to Ghost in the Shell.

Often in military sci-fi, cybernetic soldiers or synthetic assets are framed around operational capability: reaction times measured in microseconds, carbon-reinforced skeletons, and unfeeling detachment. But as someone working closely with veteran communities, the theme I find most compelling—and frankly, terrifying—is moral injury.

In real-world service, moral injury isn’t just PTSD; it’s the psychological and spiritual damage that happens when you are forced to witness, execute, or become complicit in acts that violate your core moral boundaries—often under the orders of a bureaucracy that treats you as disposable.

I wanted to explore this exact dynamic in my debut novel, Protocol 99: The Perfect Weapon. The Flawed Human.

The Thought Experiment:
Imagine an operative—Julianna (Agent 99)—engineered in a black-ops lab hidden beneath the mundane bureaucracy of the Department of Agriculture. She’s built with sub-millisecond tactical processors and programmed for deep-cover social engineering. Her target is an alien warrior empire (the Githron), and her mission is sabotage.

To refine her cover, her tactical processors are bridged directly to an organic emotional core. The unintended consequence? The machine begins to feel. She feels real grief, empathy, and the agonizing weight of statecraft when she’s ordered to stand by and watch thirty thousand civilians march into a volcanic trial just to keep her cover intact.

If a weapon is conditioned to view genocide as acceptable arithmetic, what happens when she starts choosing her own moral targets? Is her awakening a technical malfunction—or proof of a soul?

Questions for the community:

• Which sci-fi books or media do you think have best handled the theme of moral injury and institutional betrayal in military operatives (human, cyborg, or AI)?
• Where do you feel the line is between an operative losing their humanity to their programming versus reclaiming their agency?

For anyone interested in diving into this specific story, Protocol 99: The Perfect Weapon. The Flawed Human is out now on [Amazon / Kindle Unlimited]. But I’d love to hear your thoughts and recommendations on stories that dig deep into the ethical weight soldiers carry when duty clashes with conscience.

THis photoengram was found among the papers of Dr Francis Beerjug (times obituary 12 12 27) Well known as the director of the Mount Ozempic Telempathic observatory in West Narnia he was sadly mised by many .Attached to the engram is a note which reads "Following the unexpected disturbances in the Mitchells and Butler galaxy we suffered from surge interference with our regular monitoring of the ongoing wars on Barsoom . Andy Inchscape suggested that thinterference appeared to behave a regular pattern and might even be an attempt by John Carter to regain Communication.This was not so and after further histyrecalographic distilation we realised it was intended as a visual representation .the similarities to the ancient home world of the hopefully extinct frumious bandersnatch is rather worrying "

I humbly submit this to the noble and scintific members of this esteemed panel and would value their opinion on this matter .If this is real itwe should be prepared for all out war at once yours sincerely Gallumphing Asit Kane

This is a guided tour of an Ark, the organic vessel central to my humanist sci fi setting Infinite Ashes. You can examine it in detail here: https://loquaciouslou.itch.io/infinite-ashes-ark

Please let me know your thoughts!

Wider bundle, including a full lore integrated planet globe: https://loquaciouslou.itch.io/infinite-ashes

I’ve noticed a frustrating trend in my own reading lately: my “Did Not Finish” (DNF) shelf is growing way faster than my completed list.

Too often, I pick up an ambitious sci-fi or fantasy novel only to find it grinding to an absolute halt three chapters in. It gets bogged down in endless lore dumps, characters sitting in dry committee meetings, or pages of mundane, procedural dialogue that drain all the momentum out of an otherwise cool premise.

When I read for pure recreation, I want a story that respects my time and delivers a genuine ride. For me, a great read comes down to a few key ingredients:

1. Brisk, Relentless Pacing: It moves. Think of the forward momentum in The Hobbit—every chapter propels the characters into new trouble or unfamiliar territory. You don’t have time to get bored.
2. Characters Who Are Fun to Spend Time With: Distinctive, memorable personalities who react with personality, not walking cardboard cutouts meant only to deliver exposition.
3. Witty, Snappy Dialogue: Conversations should crackle with tension, banter, and subtext rather than sounding like a transcribed technical manual.
4. Cinematic, Descriptive Action: Action scenes you can visualize instantly without needing a blueprint to figure out where everyone is standing.
5. An Emotional Core: Cool gadgets and epic space battles are great, but if a story doesn’t make me laugh, wince, or root fiercely for someone to make it out alive, it falls flat.

The Shameless Plug:
Frustration with slow, sluggish books is honestly what drove me to write my own novel, Protocol 99: The Perfect Weapon. The Flawed Human.

I wanted to write the exact kind of high-octane story I was craving: a military sci-fi thriller about Agent 99, a synthetic black-ops operative with a carbon-nanotube chassis and sub-millisecond combat reflexes, who is sent deep undercover into a ruthless alien warrior empire to sabotage their dark matter power forge. But when a neural upgrade causes her tactical code to bleed into authentic human emotion, the galaxy's ultimate weapon has to choose between state-sanctioned genocide and her own awakened conscience. The book is packed with visceral combat scenes, galactic fleet warfare, immersive worldbuilding and political intrigue.

I cut out the room-to-room filler and mundane meetings to keep the pedal to the floor with snappy banter, visceral hand-to-hand combat, and real stakes.

If that sounds like your cup of tea, it’s available on Amazon and free to read on Kindle Unlimited: [Link to Protocol 99]

Now over to you all:

• What is your #1 dealbreaker that makes you put down a sci-fi book before finishing it?
• What books in the genre nailed that elusive blend of quick pacing, witty banter, and vivid action for you?

S.P.E.C.T.O.R Book 1 is officially available for pre-order now.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HP2H35Q1

26/10/2026

Adam was having a great time camping in the woods with his girlfriend until they were suddenly attacked. During the attack, his girlfriend was shot while he was thrown from a cliff.
Unconscious and on the verge of death, an android appeared before taking him to a spaceship, Spector, which healed him up.
Armed with advanced technology, Adam hunts them down before heading out to explore the universe.
Strangely, though, he has to do all this and more while livestreaming to the whole universe

MAJOR SPOILERS!

I'd really suggest watching the film first and then coming back here. It's only 20 minutes and free on YouTube. If you've already seen it, maybe you'll notice a few things you missed. I'm attaching some pictures as visual aid because there's a lot of little details I wanna talk about.

So I watched this sci-fi short called Erik and ended up going back through it almost frame by frame. At first I thought it was another film about dreams, hallucinations or parallel realities, but the more I looked into it, the more convinced I became that almost everything is connected. I have a theory about the ending that completely changed how I see the film.

It starts with a pill dissolving in a glass of water, which fades into Erik with this almost Disney-like innocent music. Naturally you assume he's medicated and we're entering some hallucination. But look at the TV in the background. It's showing military commercials, which is pretty strange considering what happens later. Almost like the next reality is already bleeding into this one.

Then there's the classroom. Notice the number on the calendar, I'll get back to that later. Erik meets a girl, they write something on a piece of paper, she's already got a boyfriend but they become friends. Later she breaks up with him and Erik consoles her. Pretty standard romantic storyline. But there's this strange shimmer of light that illuminates Erik at one point, almost like he's being chosen. They also check their grades and they've done well. Could this whole classroom sequence be some sort of test? Like he's completing a stage?

Then comes something I found REALLY interesting. "It's only half." Half of what exactly? The pill? Something else?

In the blue room he takes the other half. And notice what he's writing, compare it with the classroom scene. Also look at the library! In the beginning there are no books, but now suddenly there are two, one red and one blue. Why only two? Could they represent two halves of something? Maybe two different people contributing to one identity?

And suddenly we're at a military base. Remember those commercials on TV? Here they are. Look closely at the number on Erik's tag, and compare it with the earlier numbers. He fights one soldier, then another, then both and starts getting a bit cocky. But something really weird happens. He doesn't seem to bleed during those fights. Only when the sergeant punches him does he actually bleed.

And the next time we see Erik, the mark is STILL THERE. So these aren't just disconnected dreams? But here's the interesting part: his father has the same mark!

Could this be some kind of inherited characteristic? Something being passed from father to son? Maybe the sergeant isn't just punishing him, maybe he's actually giving him something. And could the other soldiers represent some sort of competition or selection? I'll explain why I think that in a moment.

At this point the film pretty much tells us Erik isn't simply dreaming, he's on a journey. But a journey where? To another universe? The afterlife? Is he dead? Being experimented on?

And what are those strange structures we see? Am I crazy or do they resemble chromosomes?

Then comes the reveal that really messed with me. The girl is his MOTHER and the Guide is his FATHER?! And they're basically the same age as Erik!

So he was falling in love with his own mother? It immediately made me think of Freud and the Oedipus complex. Or maybe something simpler, that a mother is a boy's first experience of love and attachment. Maybe the whole romance wasn't actually romantic at all, but a representation of his earliest connection to his mother.

Then there's that slap from his father. Erik wants to do everything, experience everything, and gets slapped and told he'll do as he's told. Very Balkan parenting lol. But symbolically the mother seems to represent love and attachment, while the father represents authority, discipline and limitations. And notice how the father's physical mark connects him to Erik.

Now for the ending, because this is where I started losing my mind.

Erik wakes up and travels through what seems like another galaxy, eventually passing through something resembling a white hole. In theoretical physics, white holes are basically the opposite of black holes. Instead of swallowing matter, they would expel it. They haven't been proven to exist, but there are speculative ideas connecting black holes and white holes, even on microscopic scales.

And then we see it. A sperm cell entering an egg.

WHAT?!

Suddenly I started thinking, what if this entire movie is actually about what happens BEFORE birth?

What if the classroom represents the maternal half, the blue room and military sequence the paternal half? Humans inherit 23 chromosomes from each biological parent. That would explain the two halves, possibly the red and blue books, the strange structures, even the inherited mark.

And the military sequence? Millions of sperm cells competing, with only one typically succeeding in fertilizing the egg. Could Erik be the one who gets selected? Could the sergeant's punch actually represent ejaculation, the force launching him on his final journey?

It sounds ridiculous when I write it like this lol, but the more I connect these scenes, the more it makes sense to me.

And remember that calendar in the classroom? Look at the date again, especially in connection with the ending. Could that actually be Erik's birthday? The mystery of that number suddenly has an explanation. Obviously conception and birth aren't the same day in reality, but the film might be treating the whole journey as a symbolic beginning of life.

Maybe the white hole is a representation of entering existence. Maybe the egg is the destination of this cosmic journey. Something microscopic being shown as an adventure across the entire universe.

So after all that, I really don't think Erik is about death or reincarnation. I think it's actually about the journey toward birth, represented through human experiences. Love, competition, inheritance, authority and finally conception.

And what I loved most is how the film constantly makes you theorize about where it's going. Is Erik dreaming? Is he insane? Is this some experiment? Space travel? Is he dead and traveling through the afterlife?

You're so busy trying to figure out which one it is that you don't even consider the complete opposite.

It's not death. It's birth.

And personally I think that's one of the best twists I've seen in a long time, especially for a short film.

Also gotta praise the acting, which I thought was really convincing considering how strange the material gets. The cinematography is gorgeous, the transitions between realities are very well done and the whole atmosphere really pulls you in. But what impressed me most was the overall idea. It's such an original way of approaching something as universal as human existence. I can forgive a few slower moments when a film gives me this much to think about afterwards.

Really enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone into weird, philosophical sci-fi.

Anyway, maybe I'm just connecting dots that aren't there, but I'd love to know what others think. Did anyone else notice the books, the calendar, the numbers or the matching marks? And did you interpret the ending completely differently?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7JdkNaut6A

When I was a youth, I snuck this spooky book into the house and my mother hid it from me because I was always reading scary stuff and giving myself nightmares. The book was lost or thrown out or whatever. Now that I’m a very brave adult (JK, still a weenie!) I really want to track it down. I’ve posted in a couple other book-ID subreddits but no dice yet. Here’s info about when I read it and what I can remember about the book:

Time period & age: Mid-2000s, probably 2005-2007. I would’ve been between 10 and 13ish.
Location & language: US, English
Book age level: I’m fairly sure it was YA. I read a lot of not-age-appropriate stuff, so there’s a slight chance it was an adult book, but I think that’s unlikely (I was easily spooked and probably would’ve found an adult book too scary).
Genre: Scary/sci fi/supernatural story collection.
Physical book appearance: I don’t remember the book cover very well, but it may have been a light blue color. I don’t remember it being a traditional scary book vibe with monsters, shadows, etc.
Content: I only remember one story, where a group of people went on some kind of (mountain?) research expedition and inexplicably went missing one by one. I believe the setting was cold and snowy. There was something about one of them disappearing in the night and leaving behind only a small pile of goo in his sleeping bag.
Books that it is not: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Goosebumps.

If anyone can help me ID this book, I’ll be eternally grateful!

My book’s cover artist drew this poster for recruitment to the Valor Guard Corps. I just got it in the mail today and it’s as epic as I hoped it would be.

This is a small excerpt from the story where the main character sees the aftermath of battle and the sacrifice of his fellow valor guards:

Wolffe’s eyes swept across the aftermath of the battle. Bodies of fallen valor guards lay twisted on top of each other. The closest fallen Tertullian bore a lieutenant’s insignia. All of the corpses were covered with bloody shards of glass and exploded pieces of metal. Silence fell over the sergeant and the bot as emotion filled Wolffe.
“War takes everything,” Wolffe said.

Hi all,

I'm R. F. Beesley, debut indie author. My novella The First Petition (first in the Broken Door Chronicles) releases tomorrow, free to my mailing list subscribers.

The setup: the vault is dying. Every day another drive fails, another piece of the city's memory corrodes past saving. For twenty years, Corvain Voss has decided what survives and what does not — and he has three days left to choose.

It's quiet, morally unsettled sci-fi about inheritance, erasure, and the cost of choosing what a civilization remembers:

https://rfbeesley.com/the-first-petition/

One email with your copy, occasional worldbuilding notes after. Unsubscribe anytime.

Hey, I’ve made a video essay talking about Big Time. It’s a really strange sci-fi book that feels almost like a play. Some very interesting time travelers are locked up together arguing about all short of things. Primarily about the cosmic time traveling war they are fighting which they don't know anything about. So they start wondering is it worth fighting? Its a book I freaking enjoyed and wanted to share some thoughts on it! If you’ re interested give it a listen. And I’d be happy to read your thoughts on it. Also any feedback would be most appreciated, and I know my accent is not great but I like talking about books, so…

If we were to actually find Life forms based on elements other than carbons such as Silicon or Germanium, What are the actual probabilities of this being a thing? What would some of the complications be? How similar and how different would they be compared to carbon based ones?

I still managed to find an old version via web archive—linking it here—but when did NASA remove this stuff? It's not anywhere on the current website. And is there an current alternate source for science fiction writers?

I've been posting on Royal Road for a while now, but just recently decided to get a bit serious about one of the directions I'm taking this series. The first book up there is...well, the first book...it's supposed to suck, right? The thing is I like where it's leading and I'm definitely having a LOT of fun coming up with the "next big thing". In fact, I've planned out three trilogies worth of material. One of those trilogies will be based in hard science fiction set in space. This all sort of starts in Book 1 (Shock and AWE), with a continuation in what I'm calling Book 3 (To the STARS). Following Book 3 in this genre will be Books 7 (It's a RAILGUN), 8 (TANKs a Lot), and 9 (Throwing MOSS Covered Rocks).

My upcoming Book 3 takes a hard turn into science fiction concepts first proposed by the genre's well known authors. The core of these concepts is CORTEX (Computational Omnidirectional Resonant Tensor Executor).

The idea for CORTEX started with my fascination for Asimov’s positronic brain. Asimov's version was simply a piece of future technology that made sense inside his universe. I wanted something similar, but with a little more structure behind it. Asimov didn’t need to explain the inner workings of his positronic brain. CORTEX was going to take the positronic idea I loved and give it a foundation that made sense in the world I was building.

What I learned about positrons in my research was that we can’t currently make them stay stable long enough to matter. Since I needed them to for CORTEX to function in my universe, I assumed a scientific breakthrough had occurred to make that possible.

With that piece settled, I could finally focus on what CORTEX was meant to be. In my universe, it isn’t just a computer. It is the core intelligence that ties a starship together. It manages the systems, interprets the world around it, and acts as the ship’s steady mind.

The next step was figuring out how CORTEX connects to the larger systems in my universe. That is where STARLINE and Q-LINK come in. CORTEX isn’t limited to a single ship. It can integrate with those networks and operate as part of a wider lattice. That lattice is what makes it possible for a consciousness to exist across multiple nodes instead of being trapped in one location.

That networked lattice becomes important when I introduce the idea of a Von Neumann probe. A device like that can replicate itself endlessly, which is the one problem that makes it dangerous in any universe. CORTEX doesn’t solve that on its own. Its connection through STARLINE and Q-LINK lets a human consciousness sit inside the lattice, and it is that human presence that prevents the probe from running unchecked.

If you would like to see and experience the "backstory" to Book 3, Book 1 is fully available now, and the first chapter of Book 3 has been published here (free of charge): Autonomous World Enhancer

I will certainly understand if you want to skip the other trilogy and Book 2 (these are planned as progression fantasy/gamelit/litrpg styles). But I wouldn't be disappointed if you enjoy those either :-)

I know that before the 70s, Venus was widely believed to be covered in dense rainforest & Mars had canals & cities. What was believed about the rest of the planets? Was there a consensus?

(Please, open the image)

I don't want to promote myself or anything, it's just a hobby, and I want people to give their opinions on it.

This cover is my tribute to Harlan Ellison's most renowned work.