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?
Speaking of Alastair Reynolds, concept of Pattern Jugglers - benign algae-like pools that oscillate in strange image-like patterns and can physically connect, read, and modify human brains. A person entering the Pattern Juggler could experience someone else’s life, temporarily gain skills or knowledge, or… die.
In Ursula LeGuin’s Left Hand Of Darkness, I love the idea of society without war. There is still violence and murder, but fighting on someone else’s behalf must be viewed as incredibly absurd and unacceptable.
Department Of Truth comics are based around the idea “what if what we believe becomes true?”. So cryptids, UFOs, and conspiracies exist because enough people believe in them.
The depth and mechanics of Orogenes in N.K. Jemisin’s Fifth Season / Broken Earth. It’s not just “I cast frost”, it’s heat and energy manipulation, with sense, direction, and geometry.
To Be Hero X (2025) is an anime with a similar concept to department of truth and was done really well. Peoples Trust (and fear) in someone can grant people powers according to their followers faith/desires.
Big ups for Jemisen. Read the trilogy in 2023 and again in 2025 and I don’t think I’ve met its match since (and not for lack of trying either).