Oolite Bulletins

I recently read and enjoyed "Remnant Population" by Elizabeth Moon. Here's how "Best Sci-Fi Books" describes it:

Seventy-year-old Ofelia is a population of one on an abandoned colony planet, and she loves it.

She is happily free of the demands, the judgments, and the petty tyrannies of others. But when a reconnaissance ship arrives at her idyllic domain, and its crew is mysteriously slaughtered, Ofelia realizes she is not the sole inhabitant of her paradise after all. And, when the inevitable time of first contact finally arrives, she will find her life changed yet again—in ways she could never have imagined.

I loved it because the hero is someone older, and in the book world is looked upon as excess baggage, but she has far more insight and strength than anyone was willing to give her credit for.

John Brunner's The Wrong End of Time. The ending, the resolution, is so simple, so elegant. It is like the dénouement of a good story: unthinkable before it is revealed, obvious after. Oh, wait... It is the dénouement of a good story.

If we're still on "name your favourite SF novel", with a side serving of "overpopulation stories", did anyone mention Harry Harrison's "Make Room! Make Room!" which through the usual obscure mechanations of Hollywood became the screenplay for "Soylent Green".
Oh, I hadn't noticed that (per Wiki) it was set in 2022 ... And I didn't notice any celebrations of that.
Odd that, such an important topic being ignored by the publicity machinery. Almost as if it's a scary topic.

Welcome, as Fermi might put it, to the Great Filter.

RockDoctor wrote: ↑Sat Jan 31, 2026 9:23 pm

If we're still on "name your favourite SF novel", with a side serving of "overpopulation stories", did anyone mention Harry Harrison's "Make Room! Make Room!" which through the usual obscure mechanations of Hollywood became the screenplay for "Soylent Green".
Oh, I hadn't noticed that (per Wiki) it was set in 2022 ... And I didn't notice any celebrations of that.
Odd that, such an important topic being ignored by the publicity machinery. Almost as if it's a scary topic.

Is this where some grumpy, old man with accelerationist tendencies mentions the Limits to Growth?

Summary: What is your favourite SF book. And why?

1) Ffutures: John Brunner's "Stand on Zanzibar" (1968)

2) Phkb: "Remnant Population" by Elizabeth Moon.

3) Wildeblood: John Brunner's "The Wrong End of Time"

4) Rock Doctor: Harry Harrison's "Make Room! Make Room!"

5) Wildeblood: "The Limits to Growth" by the "Club of Rome" (to whit: Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers & William W. Behrens III)

Wildeblood wrote: ↑Sun Feb 01, 2026 8:56 am

A grumpy, old man with accelerationist tendencies

has just been awarded the chalice! Congratulations, Sir!

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Mon Feb 02, 2026 11:12 am

Summary: What is your favourite SF book. And why?

Ohh, sneaky covert submissions.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Mon Feb 02, 2026 11:12 am

Wildeblood wrote: ↑Sun Feb 01, 2026 8:56 am

A grumpy, old man with accelerationist tendencies

has just been awarded the chalice! Congratulations, Sir!

Phew!

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Mon Feb 02, 2026 11:12 am

A grumpy, old man with accelerationist tendencies has just been awarded the chalice! Congratulations, Sir!

Yeah, nah, I think not.

Your punishment for attempted entrapment and assault with a deadly chalice is to watch these:

https://youtu.be/s2PwhxbZBoo?si=oWeFqylvzOrk4Rus

https://youtu.be/dk99MjYlWZ0?si=ZnT4lKPiQHpfrCHV

Wildeblood wrote: ↑Sun Feb 08, 2026 4:20 am

Your punishment for attempted entrapment and assault with a deadly chalice is to watch these:

Happy happy joy joy.
Since you're in such a joyful mood, what do you think are the chances of either side (or sides) in the coming American civil war managing to get hold of some of the nuclear arsenal, and re-engineering them to work without the current electronic "safeguards"?

RockDoctor wrote: ↑Sun Feb 15, 2026 10:01 pm

Since you're in such a joyful mood, what do you think are the chances of either side (or sides) in the coming American civil war managing to get hold of some of the nuclear arsenal, and re-engineering them to work without the current electronic "safeguards"?

As a matter of policy, I do not comment on the internal politics of foreign powers.

Having said that, let me say this: were we to find ourselves in the hypothetical situation where a major world power had (s)elected a transvestite, neo-Nazi* hillbilly, with a mail-order wife, who appeared to have deliberately modelled his public persona on the fictional character J.R. Ewing (let's call him J.D. Wanks), to be their deputy el presidente, I would conclude we aren't "living" in the prime timeline.

Having been a fan of Superman (another fic. char.) in my prepubescent days, I think of the Kryptonians'** method of dealing with their intractable criminals, by transporting them, not to North America, not to New South Wales, but to a place called the phantom zone. There the hapless convicts could observe life continuing around them, but were completely invisible to the normal Kryptonians and unable to interact with them in any way.

I think also of the movie "The Sixth Sense", which I have never seen owing to my dislike of its lead actor, which if information is to be believed depicts the adventures of a young lad who delivers the creepy line, "I see dead people", and concludes with a very surprizing, totally didn't see that coming, twist along the lines of, "Why are you telling me, kid?" / "You're dead, dumbo."

I think also of the astrophysicists, and their babbling about "dark matter" - observations which imply 80% of the universe's mass is unaccounted for - and I ask myself, if "normal matter" comprises only 20%, what strange, new usage of the word "normal" is this? Surely the 80% fraction of any phenomenon is the normal version, and the 20% fraction is the abnormal version?

And I conclude, in that hypothetical scenario, that we, dear comrade-colleague-interlocutors, are inhabitants of the phantom zone, are dead people, are "living" an existence which is a mere shadow of the real universe. Nothing is real anymore. Was it ever?

Hypothetically speaking.

* Why does chrome's spellchecker insist on capitalizing Nazi?
** What the heck are Reptonians?

Were we to find ourselves in the hypothetical situation where a major world power had (s)elected a transvestite, neo-Nazi* hillbilly, with a mail-order wife, who appeared to have deliberately modelled his public persona on the fictional character J.R. Ewing (let's call him J.D. Wanks), to be their deputy el presidente, I would conclude we aren't "living" in the prime timeline.

Yes, I still find Jamey Vance to be one of the most comical characters in modern history.