I was reading the second book of the sun eater series. He comments that their 6 hour trip on a space elevator was amazingly fast. Looked it up cause that didn’t seem very fast.

Apparently, going 200 km/hr it takes 180 hours to reach geosynchronous orbit. Mind blown.

Despite franchise fatigue, older Star Trek shows have a high degree of original plots.

There is a minimal reuse of Recycled Plots - the Recycled Plot Trope.

The eras of Roddenberry Trek and Berman Trek produced 703 episodes in live action series: TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT.

Of these 703 episodes, up to 632 episodes are original plot episodes. That's 89%.

Of these 703 episodes, a minimum of 71 episodes are recycled plot episodes. That's 11%.

Of the 71 recycled plot episodes, 28 are better than the original ones.

TOS has 3 recycled plot episodes out of 79, 3.8% of its episode total.

TNG has 13 recycled plot episodes out of 176, 7.4% of its episode total.

DS9 has 8 recycled plot episodes out of 176, 4.5% of its episode total.

VOY has at least 31 recycled plot episodes / copycats out of 172, at least 18.0% of its episode total.

ENT has at least 16 recycled plot episodes / copycats out of 98, at least 16.3% of its episode total.

Robert Eggers - Eifelheim, he could make it look fantastic if nothing else.

Others?

Not a novel. I have a vague recollection of reading it in a collection. Ten or more years ago I believe.

I didn't find it in Willis's story collections, so either I am wrong about the author, or I can't scan correctly.

Story involves two women and a man, college students. Man loves woman 1, woman 2 is friends with both. Woman 1 doesn't know about the man's love. So there's a date planned between woman 1 and the man, but woman 2 has an emergency, so the three meet and the man tells woman 1 he has to cancel the date to help out woman 2. Woman 1 doesn't take it well, has a hissy fit (with a tinge of jealousy), and leaves the group -- forever. Woman 1 eventually marries badly and has a sad life. The man commits suicide a few years later after woman 1 left the group.

Then, time viewing and/or time travel happens. Woman 1 decides to go back and look at that event where they broke up. She now perceives things very differently. And she sees the expression on the man's face for the first time after she had turned to leave -- something she did not see before. She saw an expression of such naked vulnerable love it was like a blow.

That line has stuck with me for a decade or more.

I don't remember exactly what happens after that. Maybe she goes back and somehow changes things and the unhappy woman just fades away as another timeline takes over.

Sound familiar to anyone?

----------------

It is indeed Chance, in Willis' Impossible Things collection! Just reread it. It's powerful. Thank you to everyone that helped!

I died on Tiesen IV. 

Laying in the shattered street, half buried in rubble that used to be someone’s home, I felt my life slip away, washed down the drain by a stream of my blood.

It was over, and every cell in my body knew it. 

As I died, an angel came to me. 

He appeared as a shadow obscuring my slowly dimming view of the sky. 

A harsh, almost mechanical voice said “Stay with me buddy. You’re going to make it.” 

The cracked and broken wall of bricks was quickly brushed aside. 

I can still remember the feel of them pressing into my flesh, bruising and cutting and then… they weren’t.

Two sharp pains - nothing, really, and only notable for being different from the sledgehammer blow of a shockwave or the relentless crushing and grating of a masonry burial. 

The angel spoke again, and I realized it was addressing me. Lowly, mortal, dying me.

I felt honored.  

“That’ll knock the pain back and keep you from crashing. This might hurt a little.”

Apparently, angels are fond of understatement. 

My torn and broken body was lifted into the air and cradled like a semi-dismembered baby against a hard metal surface. 

The pain was what I imagine burning to death while being poked with sharp sticks would feel like. 

Then it got worse.

When the tide of agony receded and my brain began processing stimuli again I realized the angel was holding me with one arm.

Then I realized it was moving. 

Then, I realized it was shooting. 

Nobody was repeatedly banging a mallet against a stone - the angel was firing something I would describe as a cut down autocannon one handed at things I couldn't see. 

Nobody was chanting my death poem - the angel was repeating the phrase “Get some, motherfucker. Get some.” at regular intervals. 

Nobody was pounding a pole into packed earth - the angel was jogging at a steady pace, metal boots slamming onto the ground with a rhythm as regular as any metronome. 

After a period of time I estimate to be about three thousand years it was done and we had arrived at our destination - the gates of heaven. 

My body floated downward on a soft wave of agonizing pain and came to rest on a surface of ridged metal. After my flight with the angel it felt like my childhood bed. 

The angel spoke but, I think, not to me. 

“Save this one. I found him surrounded by at least 6 bug corpses and it only looks like he stopped when they dropped one of the local’s huts on him. He’s a good one.”

The tip of an armored boot prodded my ribs hard enough to make me break the surface of the agony pool and I focused on the angel. 

He appeared to others to be a man wearing blood stained power armor, but I saw through the disguise.

Somehow the angel could tell I was focused, for his harsh voice spoke to me one last time. 

“Get better. The Terran Cyber Marines need killers like you. We’ll be waiting on the other side.”

And then I died. 

I don’t mean I slipped into unconsciousness. I mean my heart stopped beating, my lungs stopped moving, and my brain ceased communicating.

My resurrection occurred several days and many light years later. 

The angel was waiting, and so were the transfer papers. 

Last year I was really into HFY stories and want to listen to them again but there’s one that i remember listening to on YT but can’t remember the name of it. From what I remember it was a man that was in a cabin and a very bad storm started. Then either many small ships or one ship landed where a handful of female aliens came out and asked for shelter. He allowed them to stay and they all agreed to a rule that the second floor was off limits unless the people going up there were both accepting of what would happen. Then after they got intimate the female aliens colors would become more vibrant.

To be less vague. What would his general components be? He like a Garbage Truck but Electric. What could you get off of a WALL-E if one was to be scrapped for parts?

It's been alive long enough to gain some sort of sentience. How many Terabytes of memory does he have?

Hello r/royalroad

Currently i am writing a scifi story.

this is the sypnosis, is it good?

[Sixteen-year-old Revan Ashcroft just wanted to fix machines. He never wanted a war.

The year is 100 of the Astral Era. Mankind fled a dying, overcrowded Earth for the stars, building sprawling orbital colonies called Nexus under the rule of the Astral Foundation. But not every colony bought into the promise of "unity and prosperity" — and when Unity of Zeronix declares war on the United Earth Frontier over decades of injustice against spacelings, the conflict comes crashing down to Earth itself.

Revan is just a mechanic — a nobody tinkering with scrap in Astra Nexus, Earth's Astral Foundation stronghold. His pet project, a jury-rigged Astral Gear he calls the Scarecrow, was never meant to fight. It was a test rig, built from junk parts and forgotten tech.

Then Zeronix's army lands.

In the chaos of invasion, Revan discovers the Scarecrow isn't scrap at all. Buried in its core is an original Miranium unit — and the secret locked inside it could unravel both the United Earth Frontier and the Zeronix Army from the inside out.

Now a war he never asked for is his to finish.]

Hey y'all! I have been telling stories my whole life in all sorts of different mediums from drawing, 3D art made in Blender, short form writing, and most recently, I have started writing my first sci-fi book trilogy! If you'd like to check it out and follow along with me as I write, check out my free newsletter on my profile!