Triggers
{4.5/5} “He tried to shunt aside his own fear so that he could see Jerrison’s face contort, see him recoil from some invisible blow or explosion, see him, the president of the United States, be the first person holding that office in decades to walk in a soldier’s shoes, share a soldier’s burden, and feel […]
A story you need to read right now
Ted Chiang is one of my favourite short story writers. He’s not very prolific (a story every year or two) but his collection Stories of Your Life and Others is amazing and so are the stories he’s written since then. He’s got a new story available on the Subterranean Press web site, and it’s brilliant: […]
Elysium
{4.5/5} “Elevation of heart rated detected. Would you like a pill?” In the 22nd century the poor live on crowded Earth and the rich live on beautiful Elysium, orbiting the Earth. Max used to steal cars but now he has a job at a factory. One day he accidentally gets a lethal dose of radiation. […]
Farscape (season 2)
“May your afterlife be almost as pleasant as mine.” In “The Way We Weren’t” it’s revealed that Aeryn was previously on Moya when she was a Peacekeeper — when the previous pilot was killed and the current Pilot was brought on board. In “Out of Their Minds” the ship is attacked and everyone on board […]
Use of Weapons
{4.5/5} “Everywhere they found themselves, the galaxy bubbled with life and its basic foods kept on speaking back to it… Still, he suspected if the Culture had really wanted to, it could have found far more spectacularly different and exotic places for him to visit. Their excuse was that he was a limited creature, adapted […]
Farscape (season 1)
{3.5/5} “Since I left home I’ve been hunted, beaten, locked up, shanghaied, shot at. I’ve had alien creatures in my face, up my nose, inside my brain, down my pants. This is the first time, the first place, where I’ve felt peace.” John was performing an experiment when his ship went through a wormhole — […]
The Player of Games
{5/5} “All reality is a game. Physics at its most fundamental, the very fabric of our universe, results directly from the interaction of certain fairly simple rules, and chance; the same description may be applied to the best, most elegant and both intellectually and aesthetically satisfying games. By being unknowable, by resulting from events which, […]
Consider Phlebas
{4.5/5} “They’re on the side of life — boring, old-fashioned, biological life; smelly, fallible and short-sighted, God knows, but real life. You’re ruled by your machines. You’re an evolutionary dead end. The trouble is that to take your mind off it you try to drag everybody else down there with you. The worst thing that […]
Aliens
{4.5/5} “Did IQs just drop sharply while I was away?” Ripley’s escape pod drifted through space for 57 years until someone rescued her. When she told the Company about the aliens she encountered on LV-426 they didn’t believe her. But now contact with the colony on LV-426 has been lost. The marines are sent in to investigate, and […]
The Prisoner (season 1)
{3.5/5} “I will not make any deals with you. I’ve resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own.” After a man resigns from his job, he’s drugged and whisked off to a town that’s called “the Village” where he finds himself a prisoner. The people in […]