Science Fiction

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Favorite scifi concept? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 days ago by ashenone@lemmy.ml to c/sciencefiction@lemmy.world

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I'd love to hear about your favorite concept or idea you've read about or seen in scifi media.

My personal favorite is the Conjoiner Drive out of the Revelation Space series. These ship drives are dual drives on either side of a lighthugger and have a living being inside the drives to act as a supercomputer, which holds a wormhole open inside the drives. The wormhole links far in the past to the big-bang and uses the energy from the big-bang for propulsion.

In most scifi I've come across wormholes are used for FTL travel, and I thought this was such a unique and creative use of a wormhole it has stuck with me for years after reading about it.

So what are your favorite devices or ideas that have come out of scifi media?

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[–] sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyz 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

People permanently grafted into ships is pretty cool. That does come up a lot, doesn't it?

[–] elephantium@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Something like it comes up somewhere in Scalzi's Old Mans War series. One of the later books, I think. That's from aliens giving a human "brain in a jar" treatment, though -- not sure if it quite counts as being grafted into the ship.

[–] sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You know I'd say that's pretty close. I forgot I should read those, somebody recommended that to me for liking Enders Game

[–] elephantium@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

I loved Ender's Game when I read it as a kid. The followup trilogy was also intriguing, but I kind of lost interest during the 'Shadow series. Maybe around 2002?

Looking again now...wow, the author really expanded the setting! I had no idea he'd added even half this much.

[–] jaycifer@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

In Christopher Paolini’s book To Sleep in a Sea of Stars there are people whose brains have been removed and installed as ship minds to augment ship functions. There’s some discussion about what it cost and whether it was worth it.

[–] ashenone@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

There were definitely a few other instances of that happening on accident but I think the conjoiner drives were the only ones that were on purpose.

[–] Ixoid@aussie.zone 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Anne McCaffrey's The Ship Who Sang has children with severe physical disabilities given new lives, bodies, and possibilities as 'shell people' - brains grafted into ships. An amazing new view on what it is to be human.

[–] CADmonkey@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

There's lots of ship-who-something books written all or in part by Anne McCaffery, they're all pretty good. I enjoyed City who Fought, also.

[–] sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Nah, Chronicles of Riddick has ship telepaths who live in pods. Battlestar Galactica has something similar. The video game Homeworld had galactic travel ships that were controlled by a human grafted to the computer, that turned out to he reversible and had lower stakes as time went on. That's probably the closest thing because the ship controller is responsible for plotting hyperspace jumps by ripping holes in reality.

The navigators in Dune are almost like this but you can carry them offship in a giant fishtank. So not grafted but kind of non-ambulatory outside of spaceflight.

I guess the theme I latch on to here is people who trade their body and autonomy to gain interstellar flight and provide for others. Is it not the same with conjoiner drives?

[–] decolo@piefed.social 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Warhammer 40k, more or less with cogitators and servitors - no automation is allowed after an AI uprising tens of thousands of years ago. All processing is done by lobotomized and heavily modified humans. Many of these cybernetics are built into ships.

Ork FTL ships are built around the brain of an ork 'weirdboy' or psyker (sometimes).

[–] sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That's RIGHT! I knew there would be something 40k related but I completely mind blanked the cogitators. Did the Mechanicus ever put one of those in charge of driving an entire ship?

[–] decolo@piefed.social 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I'm not too knowledgeable, but there are lots of edge cases. The machine spirits of the largest mechas (Titans) are known to have some autonomy and individual personalities, which is to say, they probably have some illicit AI or a less disabled human consciousness (-es) at their core.

https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Titan

[–] ashenone@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago

My bad I thought you were talking about within the Revelation Space universe. Great examples of that trope in different media. Didn't know that was a trope used in homeworld I didn't pay much attention to the story when I played it ages ago