Goodreads Authors/Readers discussion

Hi Readers!

I genuinely don't just want to talk about my book. I'm really looking for good discussions about what you like about sci-fi. I specifically love military + dystopian + found family + hard science + worldbuilding + high tech weapons, and so much more. Worldbuilding is my go-to for escapism.

What are you drawn to? Would you prefer post apocalypse on Earth or another planet? Boots on the ground or space ships? Time travel back or into the future?

Let's dive in!

Personally, my absolute main favorite sub-genre of SF is space opera, but it's one of those genres you can do just about anything with. Aliens, romance, military SF, and on and on. I think I like it because it can encompass all of SF. You can have engaging characters, grand adventures, and unique worlds.

You'll laugh, but I was in single digits in the early 70s. My intro to SF(F) were old reruns of the original Lost in Space TV series.

Hi everyone,

I’m an indie author and I’d love to share my time-loop love story with you:

📖 IF TOMORROW NEVER COMES
A romantic story trapped inside a repeating day, exploring love, memory, and the fear of losing someone before you can save them. It’s about what we would do differently if tomorrow never truly arrived.

Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GL8NHJQH

If you enjoy emotional time-loop stories, second chances, and heartfelt sci-fi romance, this might be for you. Thanks for letting me share!

Hi everyone,

I’d love to share one of my recent releases:

📖 The Day Time Knocked
A reflective time-travel story about regret, memory, and the quiet weight of the choices we leave behind. When a mysterious knock at the door bends time itself, one man must face the past he tried to bury.

Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GK71XBG8

If you enjoy emotional, character-driven time travel stories, this might be for you. Thank you for letting me share!

Hi Cristine, great questions — and great discussion starter!

For me, sci-fi is at its best when it's a vehicle for philosophical inquiry. The setting — planet, spaceship, timeline — matters less than what the story forces you to confront: What does it mean to be conscious? What are the ethics of creation? Can a civilization be held morally accountable for what it builds and then abandons?

Worldbuilding is essential, but I think of it as the scaffolding for ideas, not the destination. The deep logic underneath — why a civilization makes the choices it makes, what values it encodes into its technology and its laws — that's where the real story lives.

I recently published a novel that tries to do exactly this: "The Attorney: Contract With God" — a legal thriller where biblical events are reimagined as alien intervention. The "gods" are an ancient spacefaring civilization, and the protagonist is their legal representative negotiating a contract with humanity. The framework is hard sci-fi, but the questions are ancient: creation, abandonment, accountability, free will.

If that sounds like your kind of rabbit hole, I'd love to know what you think:

Sue wrote: "Personally, my absolute main favorite sub-genre of SF is space opera, but it's one of those genres you can do just about anything with. Aliens, romance, military SF, and on and on. I think I like i..."

Nothing funny about it -- Lost in Space, original Trek, all that plus the fantasy stuff out at that time -- got me into to it too! So what's a "space opera?"

I'm with BER -- philosophy is a key element of sf(f) for me as well.

My other keys to escapism are worldbuilding, of course, and the kind scifi where an author does the research into something that's actually possible in a positive way. Think about the things you've seen in movies and read in books that truly exist now; it's pretty exciting. Medical, natural, and so on.

I could live without battles/weapons and that sort of tech, but some always comes with the territory and that's ok.

Ellen wrote: "I'm with BER -- philosophy is a key element of sf(f) for me as well.

My other keys to escapism are worldbuilding, of course, and the kind scifi where an author does the research into something th..."

Indeed — and I think that's actually the superpower of sci-fi over every other genre.

Realistic fiction is constrained by the world as it exists. Sci-fi hands you a blank canvas and says: keep the human condition, change everything else. That freedom is what makes it the ideal setting for genuine philosophical inquiry. You're not fighting the reader's assumptions about how the world works — you've already replaced them with something purpose-built for the idea you want to explore.

The worldbuilding isn't scenery. It's the argument.

My own novel takes the ancient astronaut hypothesis as a hard science premise and asks: what legal and ethical frameworks would govern the relationship between a creator civilization and the species they left behind? Philosophy dressed as a legal thriller.

Cristine wrote:  "What are you drawn to?"

Iain M Banks said ideas are central to sf, as opposed to characters and relationships.
    The best sf must arise from multiple new ideas, plus new twists on some old ones.  Novelty helps, predictability hurts, and fantasy – e.g, FTL or time travel – is antithetical.
    As such, every sf sub-genre is inherently handicapped by its predictability.  Nearly all sf titles get pigeon-holed into one sub-genre or another – it's the nature of the industry – so the best sf will be an uncomfortable fit in its assigned bin, an accidental argument against all such categorization.

David Bowie said you should never play to the gallery.
    Music and lit have that in common.  The best sf doesn't give a damn what the readers like.  And it will score poorly in any creative-writing class.

What attracts me most about science fiction are military stories, dystopias, chosen families, rigorous science fiction, world-building, and high-tech weaponry. World-building is my escape, because it gives me the freedom to imagine radically different scenarios.

In my work, the real challenge was to create a truly alien civilization, one that didn’t rely on human clichés but had its own logic, aesthetics, and philosophy. For me, world-building is a way to offer something authentic, where the strange feels genuine and not just a humanoid disguise.

A mí me atraen mucho las historias militares, distópicas, de familias elegidas, de ciencia ficción rigurosa, de construcción de mundos y de armas de alta tecnología. La construcción de mundos es mi vía de escape, porque ahí encuentro la libertad de imaginar escenarios radicalmente distintos.

En mi obra, el verdadero reto fue crear una civilización realmente alienígena, que no dependiera de clichés humanos y tuviera su propia lógica, estética y filosofía. Para mí, la construcción de mundos es una forma de ofrecer algo auténtico, donde lo extraño se sienta genuino y no como un disfraz humanoide.