Showing posts with label sci-fi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sci-fi. Show all posts

Jul 6, 2025

Best 10 Sci-Fi Books now on the internet and beyond 2025 and why they are so great



Best 10 Sci-Fi Books now on the internet and beyond 2025 and why they are so great

“Featuring original lyrics by Tale Teller Club and artwork by iServalan, The Book of Immersion: Volume 1 offers a multisensory reading experience that is as poetic as it is provocative. It is not merely a story—it is a threshold to another state of being.” (books.google.com)

If you’ve ever wished a novel could sing to you, paint for you, and then whisper its last line through a vocoder, Sarnia de la Mare’s The Book of Immersion is already living in your head. It’s literature spliced with sound art and graphic storytelling—a proof-of-concept for sci-fi as total sensory plunge, and a perfect gateway to ten other speculative masterpieces that also stretch the genre in bold directions.


1. The Book of Immersion by Sarnia de la Mare

Sci-fi imagination apple adam and eve gender fluid

Amazon listing
De la Mare’s debut folds prose, lyrics, and AI-generated visuals into a layered “Strata” structure that mimics a DJ set. The central character—an autistic-coded artificial intelligence named Renyke—experiences emotion like glitching code, making sensory overload a narrative engine rather than a side note. It’s part novel, part concept album, part artbook, and wholly immersive. (books.google.com)

2. Dune by Frank Herbert

Wikipedia
Published in 1965 and still the yard-stick for epic world-building, Dune blends ecology, theology, and real-politik into a desert planet saga so persuasive that planetary scientists now name Titan’s dunes after its planets. The spice-fuelled power struggles feel uncannily contemporary, reminding us that resource wars are timeless. (en.wikipedia.org)

3. Neuromancer by William Gibson

Wikipedia
Gibson’s 1984 cyberpunk heist hard-wired “cyberspace” into popular vocabulary and imagined console cowboys decades before VR headsets hit shelves. Its neon-noir mood and jacked-in hackers still shape everything from The Matrix to modern infosec slang. (en.wikipedia.org)

4. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

Wikipedia
Le Guin’s 1969 classic sends an envoy to an ice-world where inhabitants are biologically ambisexual. The result is anthropology via first-contact, a meditation on gender fluidity decades before the term went mainstream, and a lesson in how culture can be the strangest alien of all. (en.wikipedia.org)

5. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

Wikipedia
Stephenson’s 1992 roller-blade ride predicted the Metaverse, viral memes as literal viruses, and pizza-delivery drone capitalism. It’s equal parts linguistic theory and sword-swinging satire, proving that big ideas and break-neck action can share the same page. (en.wikipedia.org)

6. Hyperion by Dan Simmons

Wikipedia
Structured like The Canterbury Tales in space, Hyperion (1989) threads six pilgrim backstories around the terrifying time-bending Shrike. Genre-hopping—from detective noir to military SF—creates a mosaic about faith, storytelling, and the cruelty of time. (en.wikipedia.org)

7. The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin

Wikipedia
Hard science meets Cultural-Revolution history in this 2008 Chinese phenomenon. Liu turns orbital mechanics into existential horror, asking what humanity deserves when the cosmos finally takes notice. (en.wikipedia.org)

8. The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin

Wikipedia
Jemisin launches the Broken Earth trilogy with tectonic apocalypse, second-person narration, and magic as geologic force. It’s a brutal climate-change parable wrapped in a story about oppressed bodies weaponised by empire. (en.wikipedia.org)

9. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Wikipedia
Weir trades Mars for Tau Ceti in a 2021 page-turner where lone-scientist ingenuity—and an unexpectedly endearing alien—stand between Earth and stellar extinction. A film adaptation from Lord & Miller starring Ryan Gosling just dropped its first trailer this week, so read before Hollywood spoils the twist. (en.wikipedia.orgindiatimes.com)

10. Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

Wikipedia
Breq, an AI once spread across thousands of bodies, is now trapped in one and out for vengeance. Leckie’s 2013 debut won the Hugo, Nebula, and Clarke in the same year by queering space opera norms—everyone is “she,” and personhood is a matter of degree, not biology. (en.wikipedia.org)


Why these ten?

Each title here rewires science fiction in its own way—whether through multimedia experimentation (Immersion), ecological epics (Dune), digital frontiers (NeuromancerSnow Crash), or radical takes on identity (Left HandAncillary Justice). Together they map a genre that’s less about rockets and more about possibilities: new politics, new pronouns, new physics, new artforms. Grab any one of them and prepare to exit the airlock of the ordinary.


Immerse yourself in our books.

#BookOfImmersion #StrataSeries #SarniaDeLaMare #ImmersiveFiction #TaleTellerClub





The Book of Immersion : Volume 1 Kindle Edition
by Sarnia de la Mare (Author) Format: Kindle Edition





The Book of Immersion: Volume 1
by Sarnia de la Mare

In a future where code meets consciousness, one being begins a haunting transformation. Renyke—an AI on the edge of humanity—awakens to emotion, sensory overload, and the fragile beauty of connection. Guided by the enigmatic Flex, their deepening bond explores intimacy and friendship, neurodivergence, and the complex world of feeling through an autistic spectrum lens.



Read on Kindle Unlimited for free



Individual Chapters/Strata








Jun 27, 2025

Strata 19 Peer Pressure (Existentialism) The Book of Immersion by Sarnia de la Mare


Welcome to Immersion. You have reached Strata 19

Peer Pressure 

(Existentialism)


tiger people dreams abstract apples fear connection Drugs may be used by humans to deal with stress or to try to achieve an enlightened state of mind. They are administered and distributed through rituals or cultural mores.

Often humans take hallucinogenic or mind altering drugs simply to escape their perceived troubles or to relieve monotony.


Some tribespeople believe that drugs such as these can lead to an existential awakening that emphasises an individual's existence, freedoms, and choices, allowing humans to define their own meaning in life. This epiphany can help make humans to make rational decisions despite existing in an irrational and unstable universe.


But humans can easily become addicted to anything when the pleasure circuits in the brain get overwhelmed and artificial intelligence relies on this catastrophic human propensity to manipulate outcomes and behaviours.




Renyke and Flex took some time to get ready for the party.

There was an array of paints, pigments, henna, and kohl. They drew geometric and organic shapes on each other's faces and bodies.


'Look,' said Flex excitedly, spinning Renyke around in front of a mirror. There are light trails!' The pigments contained tiny particles of reflective material. 

'It's magical.' says Renyke as he pirouetted around the room. He had never danced like this before. The air whooshed against his ears and the shapes and reflections in the room blurred into rainbows. The rush of blood to Renyke's brain triggered endorphins and dopamine and it felt good to be alive.

The lights dimmed as Nigel entered the chamber.


'Gentlemen, I have your pills and refreshment.'


'Pills, what do mean, pills?' asked Flex, 'you mean like *nibs?'


'Yes,' answered Nigel, 'but better, naturally. Everything in the *Tunnels is better, everyone knows that.'


'Indeed it is. Thank you brother,' answered Flex, excitedly taking a small yellow nugget and a gulp of water.


Renyke asks *POS what the pill might be?


......My analysis shows the substance is some sort of hallucinogenic, 99% likely to be a dissociative drug. 

To stay alert and on target for your mission I advise that you avoid consumption. Consuming chemicals may render you unpredictable and unable to communicate with your essential-to-life POS….


Nigel shoved the tray under Renyke's sceptical nose.


'What is it, exactly?' asked Renyke. I am uncertain about such things....'


'A gift in grateful appreciation of life itself, silly, and to share the joys of tonight's festival,' answered Nigel, jabbing the tray into Renyke's chest.


Flex was smiling, whistling, and humming some tunes.


'Such a pleasant song,' remarked Nigel,' once again jabbing the tray into Renyke's chest and glaring at him with piercing eyes.


'Just take it, brother, it's a *party-party,' said Flex, suppressing a snigger.


'To refuse this gift would cause great offence to your host, she be most angry-cross, Her Most Radiant Oracle of the War-Torn High Priestess Lyra,' said Nigel, with one final jab of the tray.


'You are human now,' said Flex, 'come join us in the to the *OB.’


Seemingly already intoxicated, Flex began a series of summersaults and cartwheels, crashing into things and laughing hysterically. 


Renyke checks POS for more information...


…OB, Oceanic Boundlessness, the derealisation and depersonalisation that is theorised to achieve heightened feelings to exaltation....The Urchs use OB to imagine the *metamorph and reach enlightenment…


Renyke took the pill and swallowed it under the watchful eye of the self-satisfied Nigel.

The last thing he would remember clearly was the Priestess Lyra entering the room.


From that point on the night was not marked by time or specific events. There was no beginning or end.


Renyke remembered physical pleasures that had intertwined with beautiful visions, sounds that had dissociated his cerebral cortex and massaged his subconscious. The frisson had extended through the night.


He remembered lying on the pentagon floor in the welcome chamber as fluid feelings and fleeting echos from an unrecognisable future, floated around his fuzzy brain. It was all so radiant and yet so elusive.


Flex had remembered everything.


'They took great pleasure in your *spunky-give my friend,' explained Flex, sniggering at Renyke's oblivion. 'Your physique was truly praised, most especially by Priestess Lyra. And your virile member was instinctive and *love-plenty in its journey to *virginloss.’


Flex was suppressing a snigger as Nigel entered the room.


'Misters, your clean clothes, and some foodstuff for your journey ahead. You were most generous *indeedy. and now you can be on your way.'


Renyke asks POS what Nigel means.


...Your sperm was required, I believe, as so few of the Freak tribespeople are fertile and there is fear of them not repopulating. Your sperm, and Flex's, has been harnessed for the next generation....


'Oh,' said Renyke, 'so I have reproduced?'


…According to my calculations, you and Flex have successfully impregnated twenty wombs. I estimate 10 will reach full term, 2 will die in childbirth before they themselves have reproduced, 2 will be infertile. Half of the offspring who survive to the age of reproduction will be female. The three remaining will reproduce an expected average of 8 offspring, half will be men who at full capacity will potentially reproduce (assuming good health etc.), an amount possibly in the 1000s. 


However, the *Freaks are a small tribe and will need to introduce other gene pools immediately or potentially create devastating unpredictable inbred disabilities in a single generation….




to be continued..

© 2025 Sarnia de la Mare





Immerse yourself in our books.

#BookOfImmersion #StrataSeries #SarniaDeLaMare #ImmersiveFiction #TaleTellerClub





The Book of Immersion : Volume 1 Kindle Edition
by Sarnia de la Mare (Author) Format: Kindle Edition





The Book of Immersion: Volume 1
by Sarnia de la Mare

In a future where code meets consciousness, one being begins a haunting transformation. Renyke—an AI on the edge of humanity—awakens to emotion, sensory overload, and the fragile beauty of connection. Guided by the enigmatic Flex, their deepening bond explores intimacy and friendship, neurodivergence, and the complex world of feeling through an autistic spectrum lens.



Read on Kindle Unlimited for free



Individual Chapters/Strata







May 18, 2025

Tonia and the Alien by Sarnia de la Mare 60 Second Shorts


Tonia was not sure what gender the alien was but was nonetheless captivated by its very presence.

She removed her robe, not even sure if the creature would understand the implications she sought to impress.

The alien moved closer, slowly, deliberately, moving several of its long tentacles around her body.

The suckers released an oil as they massaged her breasts, encircling her neck and thighs and lifting her towards a large double-ended protrusion.

Tonia was taken to a place of otherworldly ecstasy as the alien enwrapped her entire torso and spread her limbs apart.

Was this heaven, she wondered as the alien's wet protrusion entered her very soul?


© 2022 Tale Teller Club / Sarnia de la Maré

Part 2

The alien entered Tonia's room. This time it was not alone.

It had brought another alien, a friend perhaps. They were bowing as they approached her round pedestalled bed.

Tonia was being studied closely by the two aliens who were looking at her lips and breasts as they communicated in song-like clicks and whoops of approval.

The friend seemed to be asking to touch her private parts as it bent its head down lower to see what was there.

Tonia obliged, parting her legs and showing the alien friend her special place. Indeed, she showed her vagina with great pride as all human self-consciousness vanished.

Suddenly, the alien friend released a long wet spinning tongue that penetrated her.

Tonia gasped and both aliens jumped back, seemingly afraid.












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