As the title says: what's the most realistic (in terms of military effectiveness, logistics, or anything really) reason to use mechs in combat that you've seen used?

Reason I'm asking is that I've failed to find anything that would justify the existence of mechs other than:

A) They're cool and handwaved away or

B) Humanity has regressed to a feudal stage and needs war mounts for its knights (read: it's politics and handwaved away.)

Neither of these actually solve the problem that mechs are large, expensive, valuable, and very, very vulnerable.

Have you seen/read/played something that gives a good reason for why armies use mechs?

Could be books, movies, video games, etc.

For me:

1. Star maker by Olaf stapledon

2. Childhoods end by Arthur c Clarke

3. The last question by Isaac Asimov

I haven’t read any George Alec Effinger yet and was wondering where to start. Any recommendations?

Every time I wanted to remember what a planet from a novel actually *was*, I got one of two things: a fandom wiki with forty paragraphs of in-universe trivia and no sense of why the place mattered, or nothing at all. Lem, Le Guin and Simmons especially — their worlds are the whole argument of the book and they're barely written up anywhere.

So I started writing them myself. 1-3 paragraphs per planet: what it is, and what it does to the story. It turned into a site — link in the comments since I'm not sure about the self-promo rules here.

https://www.fictionalplanets.com/

141 planets, 22 universes so far. Star Wars and Star Trek are the biggest sections because they're the easiest, but the ones I actually enjoyed writing were Gethen, Anarres, Hyperion, Regis III from The Invincible, and Rakhat from The Sparrow.

It's mine, it's free, there are no ads and nothing to sell. Mostly I'm posting because I want to argue about what's missing.

So: which planet do you think about most? Not the coolest one — the one that stuck. Mine is Solaris, which I'm still not convinced counts as a planet at all.

🎙️ [AUDIO LOG TRANSCRIPT — UNAUTHORIZED EXTRACTOR JOURNAL]

ISSUER: Extractor Elias [Class A - Sector 7]

TIMESTAMP: Four months prior to "The Virus Incident"

CASE REFERENCE: Tactical Extraction 219-F / Illegal Hardware Tampering

(The click of a thermal lighter is heard, followed by a deep inhalation. Elias’s voice sounds raspier than usual, with a slight tremor hitting the hard consonants.)

"My jaw hurts.

Acute bruxism has hypertrophied my masseter muscle. The ward physician prescribed muscle relaxants, but I don’t dare take them.

If I do, the chemistry will drop my guard, and I’ll taste the blood again.

Case 219-F. A structural maintenance worker from Ring Nine.

The widow of an industrial accident.

Her husband was crushed to death two months ago by a defective pneumatic blast door.

Protocol dictated the widow receive standard compensation, but Praxis deducted funeral expenses and the cleaning of the blast door from her balance.

She went into the red.

Tier Two Debt.

Qualified for a 60-month Preventive Cull.

She barricaded herself inside her residential module.

When Security overrode her magnetic locks and I walked in with the Lethe-X console, I found her sitting on the floor, clutching a grease-stained work shirt.

She didn't try to run.

She didn't scream.

She looked at me with a calm that felt ridiculous at the time, and said:

'Wipe my parents' names. Wipe my childhood. Wipe how to walk if you want to. But the last five years are the only ones I have with him. If you take them, you kill him twice.'

I explained to her, with the clinical patience drummed into me at the Academy, that the Corporate algorithm does not negotiate with sentimentality.

The last 60 months are extracted en bloc.

It’s the physics of data.

The two security Hounds strapped her into the chair.

I prepped the console's spinal needle.

I stepped behind her neck and jacked the 256-fiber tether into her Kael-V port.

I initiated extraction at maximum capacity.

Twelve Petabytes per second.

The system error was instantaneous.

The holographic screen flashed boiling red.

[SHORT CIRCUIT ALERT. REVERSE DATA-FLOW DETECTED].

I didn't have time to disconnect the console.

The woman had self-mutilated before we arrived.

She had melted copper filaments from a broken motor and injected them directly inside the connectors of her own cortical port.

A suicide jam.

When I initiated the magnetic extraction, the copper acted as a resistance amplifier and triggered a 'Cross-Flashback.'

The current didn't pull the memory out into the machine.

It bounced the trauma backward, straight up the tether and into me.

It was less than two seconds before my biometric suit’s firewall severed the physical connection, ejecting the needle from her neck.

But two seconds in neural cyberspace is an eternity of torture.

In those two seconds... I wasn't Extractor Elias.

I was her.

(Elias’s breathing stutters on the recording. Five seconds of absolute silence pass.)

I felt the freezing steel under her knees when they told her that her husband was puree beneath a two-hundred-ton door.

I felt the sharp agony in my chest, like a block of ice expanding through my ribs.

I cried her tears.

And the worst part...

I felt the love.

A love so sickeningly dense, so warm and desperate for a man with callused hands, that my brain, injected with stolen oxytocin, didn't know how to process it.

When the tether disconnected, I slammed backward against the module wall.

I bit my tongue so hard during the electrical shock that blood flooded my throat.

I stayed there, sprawled on the floor, spitting blood and weeping for a dead man who wasn't mine.

The widow, slumped in the chair, had smoke rising from her neck.

The copper had fused from the overload and cooked her brain stem.

She was dead.

She boiled her own brain in her skull just to protect her husband's memories.

The guards hauled me up, wiped the blood from my mouth, and called a janitorial crew to haul the biomass to the incinerator.

They asked if I was okay.

I told them the tether had malfunctioned.

Since that day, the taste of copper and blood has been stuck to the roof of my mouth.

At the Academy, they teach us that debtors lie.

That emotional attachment is a chemical fallacy, a primitive instinct humanity outgrew through data economics.

They teach us that memory is just a bank balance.

But if it’s just a bank balance...

why did that woman prefer to boil her brain rather than let me touch her grief?

There is something wrong with me.

I am processing data incorrectly.

Every time I look at my Lethe-X console, I don't see a financial tool anymore.

I see a screwdriver digging into the open wound of an animal.

I have to request a cache wipe.

If the corporation realizes that widow’s memory left an empathetic footprint on my cortex...

they’re going to hollow me out.

End log."

END OF AUDIO FILE.

That tech level is from a role playing game called Traveler, which is basically like D&D for sci-fi.

TL6 is more or less 1940s-1950s technology on earth.

I’d like to create a setting in a sci-fi story that is set in that tech level, but instead of using internal combustion engines, I’d prefer to depict engines as electric. And because the story would have a military dimension, the electricity can’t be generated and accessed at fixed points like the charging station for an electric car. It needs to be more easily accessible to an army in the field. (That’s not possible on earth — that’s why there are no electric tanks for instance.)

The problem is, where is the electricity coming from? I don’t think this would have been practical on earth in the 1940s to 1950s — it’s just too difficult to generate all that electricity and store it in batteries.

But what would need to change about the planet to make it more electricity rich? So that it is available to run the engines? The planet itself needs to have an atmosphere similar to ours, it can’t be some dead world.

Is there potential for such a planet? Or is this an impossibility?

As the title says, I'm posting my first fiction on RR next week so I took the placeholder page live today. I do worry the description is more than needed and the What to Expect section may go overboard.

Then again, I may be wrong and overthinking things.

Objective input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance for anyone willing to take a peek!

The Ouroboros Experiment: What If We Were the Apes?

What if human civilization existed millions of years ago… and we simply don't remember it? Not Atlantis. Not aliens. Not some lost continent buried underneath the ocean. Something stranger. What if there was once a civilization almost exactly like ours, scientists, laboratories, cities, books, religions, wars, skyscrapers, technology, questions about existence itself, and somehow, it disappeared so completely that the civilization that came after it believed it had always been here?

Now imagine that civilization had reached the point where humans could manipulate biology itself. They could alter DNA. They could study evolution. They could modify animals. They could cure diseases, change physical traits, and perhaps even influence intelligence. And then one day, they made an experiment that changed everything.

Humans already shared an enormous amount of genetic material with apes. So scientists began asking a dangerous question: What would happen if we could give another species the same cognitive abilities that made humans unique? They created an experiment.

And it worked.

The apes became intelligent. Not merely trained. Not merely capable of using tools. They began to understand. They learned language. They learned mathematics. They began asking questions. Why are we here? What is the universe? Where did we come from? The same questions humans had been asking for thousands of years.

But there was one problem. The experiment didn't create another version of humanity. It created a competitor. The apes learned from humanity. They inherited its technology. They inherited its knowledge. They inherited its mistakes. And eventually, they inherited something far more dangerous: the ability to question their creators.

The two species eventually went to war. And humanity lost.

But the apes didn't simply destroy humanity. Something much stranger happened. The experiment continued.

Over generations, the intelligent apes began changing. They adapted to the environments humans had created. Their bodies changed. Their behavior changed. Their culture changed. They began using clothing instead of relying on natural protection. They built shelters instead of adapting entirely to the climate. They developed tools. They developed agriculture. They developed cities. They developed science.

And eventually… they began to look more and more like the humans who had created them.

Meanwhile, the surviving humans were pushed in the opposite direction. Without civilization, technology, medicine, and artificial protection, humans began adapting to environments in different ways. Generations passed. Then thousands of years. Then hundreds of thousands. Then millions. The distinction between the two species disappeared.

The descendants of the apes became what we call humans. The descendants of the humans became something else. And eventually… nobody remembered.

Then came religion.

But perhaps religion wasn't created from nothing. Perhaps it was a corrupted memory.

Imagine that someone discovered an ancient piece of writing. It was damaged. Half the words were missing. Most of the context was gone. But some phrases survived: "Do not kill your own kind." Thousands of years later, it became: "Thou shalt not kill."

Another fragment described humanity's first biological experiment. A garden. A forbidden source of knowledge. A choice. An injection. A transformation. But nobody remembered that it was a laboratory.

So the laboratory became a garden. The scientists became something resembling gods. The experiment became the forbidden fruit. The moment the apes gained human intelligence became the moment they "ate from the tree of knowledge."

And the knowledge came with a price.

Because intelligence wasn't simply a gift. It brought consciousness. Self-awareness. Fear. Morality. Curiosity. Conflict. The ability to understand death. The ability to ask whether existence has meaning. The ability to look at the universe and wonder: Why?

Knowledge didn't create paradise. It created civilization. And civilization created everything that came afterward. The good. The bad. The beautiful. The horrifying. The icky. The sticky. And the goodie.

Now fast-forward millions of years.

The new civilization looks almost exactly like ours. They build skyscrapers. They launch spacecraft. They create artificial intelligence. They study DNA. They study fossils. They study evolution. They dig into the ground looking for evidence of their ancestors.

And eventually, their scientists discover something strange. Their DNA is remarkably similar to another species: an ancient species of ape.

They examine fossils. They reconstruct skeletons. They analyze genetic similarities. And they reach the same conclusion we have reached: "We evolved from apes."

They write textbooks about it. They argue about it. They make documentaries about it. People create conspiracy theories about it. Religions debate it. Scientists continue searching for missing pieces.

But nobody asks the obvious question.

What if the apes didn't become us?

What if we became them first?

What if the fossil record is telling the truth… but we're interpreting the direction incorrectly?

What if evolution isn't a straight line?

What if it's a circle?

Imagine civilization eventually reaches the same technological level as its ancient predecessor. They create laboratories. They study human DNA. They discover that humans and apes are extraordinarily similar. And one scientist proposes the same experiment: "What if we could make apes intelligent?"

The experiment begins. The apes become intelligent. The apes learn. The apes inherit civilization. The apes eventually replace humanity.

Millions of years pass. The civilization disappears. The new species evolves. It forgets. It discovers the fossils. It discovers the DNA. It studies evolution. And eventually… it creates the same experiment.

Again. And again. And again.

Until the beginning and the end are the same event.

Humanity creates the ape. The ape becomes humanity. Humanity becomes the ape. The ape creates humanity. And the cycle continues.

Not a line.

A loop.

And that's where the thought experiment gets uncomfortable.

Because if this cycle were true, we wouldn't be able to prove it. Every civilization inside the cycle would inherit evidence pointing backward, but never far enough backward to reveal the entire circle. The civilization would always believe: "We are the result of evolution."

And technically… it would be correct.

But perhaps evolution isn't telling us where the story began. Perhaps it is only telling us what happened between chapters.

Maybe the beginning was erased because the beginning was the end of the previous cycle. Maybe our ancestors didn't disappear. Maybe they became us. And maybe "us" is simply the latest version of something that has happened before.

Now imagine someone millions of years from now discovering an ancient human skull. They hold it in their hands. They study it. They wonder what kind of creature it belonged to. They reconstruct its face. They analyze its DNA. They call it primitive. They put it inside a museum.

Children visit it. A guide points toward the glass and says: "This is one of the species that came before us."

And nobody realizes they're looking at themselves.

Not literally.

But historically.

They are looking at the civilization that created the civilization looking back at it.

The past is studying the future. The future is studying the past. And neither recognizes the other.

Perhaps that's the strangest part of the experiment.

Maybe the scariest thing isn't that humanity could disappear. Maybe it's that humanity could disappear without anyone knowing it ever existed.

No grand ending. No final announcement. No monument saying: "We were here."

Just time. Weather. Evolution. Decay.

And eventually, a new civilization standing on the ruins of the old one, looking at the remnants and wondering what they meant.

They would create their own religions. Their own gods. Their own science. Their own theories about creation. Their own theories about evolution. Their own questions about consciousness.

And somewhere inside their mythology, fragments of our civilization might survive.

A story about a garden. A forbidden fruit. A creature gaining knowledge. A fall from innocence. A commandment against killing. A mysterious creator. A world where knowledge changed everything.

Perhaps those stories would no longer describe what actually happened. They would be metaphors for something nobody remembered. A distorted echo of an experiment. A memory that survived after the civilization that created it didn't.

And then comes the final question.

If you could travel millions of years into the future and meet the civilization that replaced us… what would you tell them?

Would you tell them, "You came from us"?

Or would you ask, "Did you come from us… or did we come from you?"

Because perhaps they would look at our fossils and say, "These were our ancestors."

And perhaps we would look at their ancestors and say, "Those were ours."

Both could be true.

And both could be wrong.

Maybe we're not the beginning. Maybe we're not the end. Maybe we're simply somewhere in the middle of a story so old that nobody remembers who wrote the first page.

And perhaps somewhere, millions of years from now, another civilization will sit in a laboratory and ask the exact same question we are asking now: "What if human civilization existed millions of years ago… and we never knew?"

They'll laugh at the idea. They'll call it impossible. They'll create theories. They'll search for evidence. They'll find our ruins. They'll find our bones. They'll find our DNA.

And then one of them will eventually look at the evidence and wonder:

"Wait."

"What if we're not discovering our ancestors?"

"What if we're rediscovering ourselves?"

And the experiment begins again.

That's the theory.

Not a claim. Not history. Not science.

Just a strange little possibility to hold in your mind for a moment:

What if the first human wasn't the beginning of humanity?

What if the first human was simply the last one to remember?

And if evolution is a circle rather than a line… then somewhere behind us is something that looks like our future.

And somewhere ahead of us… there may be something that looks exactly like our past.

Maybe we were the apes. Maybe we were the humans. Maybe we're both. Maybe we've been both before.

And maybe the one thing civilization has never been able to discover… isn't where we are going.

It's where the cycle actually started.

Good morning!

I was stumbling around online trying to find some media that related to some stuff that I have been thoroughly enjoying recently, and thought why not broaden my horizons a bit and find a new form of media to enjoy.

I've been really getting into Warframe lately and the story in it has just had me wrapped around it's finger (as well as the gameplay, but I'm here for new stories). It feels like a minute since I've been this wrapped up in a story with these kinds of concepts and thought "why not look for other media with stories like it?"

So here I am, asking for your recommendations :)

If you have any, I'd love to hear them!

Media that I typically consume are games, manga, and movies, but I really want to get back into books; I find them hard to really stick to unless they really grasp me like House of Leaves did (and even then, I still have yet to finish it).

Thank you all in advance!