Ex Nihilo, Nihil Supernum (Original Hard Scifi with Superpowers!)

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

Dr. Adat Sen has been having abadweek.You think you have it good, after the sudden appearance of superpowers into the world revolutionizeseverything.Especially when your wife is a one in a billion teleporter, it's a cushy gig right until the draft notice arrives and she's forced into a war of apocalyptic proportions under alien suns.

The same star system where, every day, hundreds of trillions of dollars and the lives of millions of normal humans and metahumans alike are destroyed in a meat grinder, barely managing to hold the line against the K3 civilization that a superpowered research experiment accidentally brought to our doorstep.

Let's not forget that his promised pay raise didn't come through, or that someone's out for him to the extent of trying to trying to fry his brain with a Basilisk hack. Who would have thought that being a a cyborg psychiatrist for the UN could be this stressful?

Then there's the matter of publish or perish, handling nasty cognitohazards on a daily basis, convincing suicidally depressed superhumans not to take everyone else with them, all while living under the shadow of the hostile advanced aliens building a Nicoll-Dyson laser in the solar system next door. Oh, and the one Superhuman AGI that humanity produced might be out to get them.Welcome to the world of ENNS, where superheroes haveactualjobs and don't run around in costumes fighting muggers, humanity faces existential threats around every corner, and Adat has the bad luck of finding himself fighting threats way above his pay grade.

Information

Status: Hiatus
Year: 2023
Author: AlphaAndOmega

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.5/ 5.0
Followers: 341
Views: 151,147

Reviews

No reviews yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!

Community Reviews(10)

Chaotic_EvilRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Came from r/rational. It's the first book I've read with this many ideas from the future thrown in, all in a pan, spiced together and cooked to perfection. It's devilishly good fun and just a great read all around. The world building isn't as close to perfect as one can get and still have a plot (AGI would go brrrr) and picking up the context is fun as hell. The ideas around info hazards and whatnot are fun as well.
Doctor ZeroRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
This book is really good, up there with the best Royal Road has to offer. It's strong sci-fi packed with lots of awesome ideas mixing into the kind of original story that fucks up your brain. Reading it gives me the same kind of excitement I got from reading Dune for the first time.
The writing style is also incredible. Every paragraph has a chapters worth of ideas. The brevity of the descriptions, and the glut of novelty, make my brain tingle. It's good.
My one note is there's too many intialisms that wreck an otherwise excellent flow. Especially because they are used in place of ST, SFT, TSTTB, PL, PN, and CE. Every couple sentences you have to stop reading to do a WP. It's AAF.
But yeah, other than that minor quibble, I fucking love the book. Please keep writing.
Ralph CerchioneRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Ex Nihilo, Nihil Supernum is some of the best science-fiction I've read featuring runaway technological development and humanity - or rather transhumanity, at this point - adapting to incredible change while also being attacked by an incredibly advanced coalition of alien species.
Those species discovered over eons of bitter experience that AIs always turn against them, and discovered the human race not only used AIs everywhere, but had developed our first truly artificial superintelligence (ASI).
Which we promptly lost control over. The superhumans in the plot are clearly some product of the ASI's, whether from intentional meddling or a side-effect of another project.
The limited AIs we do control combined with the more-powerful of these superhumans are the only reason our species is holding out against the aliens intent on taking us over or wiping us out to end our AI experimentation, which they see as a threat to the entire universe.
"Humans" almost invariable have some kind of cybernetic upgrades, ranging from minor, cheap ones to elegant, subtle upgrades to full-body replacements enabling elite troops to match moderately powerful superhumans.
The story is dark... But really emphasizes character development and relationships in the midst of all the action. Early chapters mix action with worldbuilding, but the plot and stakes rapidly accelerate.
The whole piece is extremely well written, though, in a few places, dark and disturbing. These moments feed the perception of a universe which is, despite the veneer of civilization, ultimately out of control. You also get a sense of how many of the worst injustices taking place are inevitable for a civilization fighting for its survival when it simply refuses to surrender.
The story is on hiatus, but hopefully the author will return to this and finish it, or at least bring the two main storylines to some kind of conclusion.
But even in its present state, this is a terrific story to read, as few authors mix plausible, hyp
Sang RealRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I love this book. It has very hard science, everything feels possible grounded in reality. Powers are introduced well, their origin both well written and works well in universe. Very interested in where this will go. Also enjoy the memetics in the story, if you like reading about meme warfare this has good content.
Winged ThingRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
An interesting read. Follows a singular main character as they go about their job, as a United Nations employee.
The key feature of this story is gradual, realistic exposure to the mainstay: The Worldbuilding, which is excellent. If you were bothered, you'd have no trouble using the current chapters to make a coherent, and compelling TTRPG setting for a scifi campaign.
That said... This novel is grim. It isn't on the scale of 40k, but horrors lurk in this novel. All of them however, are realistic, and explained properly. Nothing sticks out in a "Dude! That's just stupid" way. It all makes sense, and is coherent.
If you're looking for Scifi, go no further.
bigreadRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Do you like hypersonic railguns? Speedsters? Thinkers? Anti-Memetics? Do you think superintelligent AIs should be classified by spheres of capability? Do you wonder what it would look like if a post-singularity humanity went against the janitors of a species that finished the tech tree?
Well boy howdy, have I got the story for you.
The saintly writer gets basically no praise for a story that is somehow Altered Carbon meets Ra meets Worm meets the heyday of SCP. Humanity fills warships with munchikined supes to kill biological warmachines with built-in mass drivers that paste giant robots.
I get it, you've been burned by stories, I have too. This isn't some xianxia/isekai/etc slop (I love that stuff, not hating, it's why I'm here), this is something that is several tiers above what you usually find on royal road.
Read this story. Leave some damn comments. Write this guy a review. He has been doing this for YEARS and he still won't quit and this story is SO GODDAMN FUCKING GOOD so all of my fellow lurkers (check my account), please fall in and at least give this thing a try.
Seriously.
NrrRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
A parade of fascinating ideas, all given due treatment. Relentlessly modern conception of AGI-rich future, of appropriate scale, full of post singularity contradictions. Thoughtful, brilliant, serious, and yet consistently plain fun.
Entirely different caliber from what Royal Road seems to offer, pearl in a sea of slop. If there is anything on here that remotely approaches this work, please do recommend.
I'm hesitant to give any feedback without rereading the story, but here goes:
I do understand short timelines are no accident, and still, attempts to directly tie depicted world to ours almost all felt out of place. In visual medium, you can place NVIDIA logo on appropriate equipment without making this the center of attention. How to be comparably subtle here, no idea.
Adat is the weakest part of the story. Characterized as too relatable for him to make offhand remarks about brilliant contributions to cutting edge technology and theory, again and again. But impressive you manage to keep him relevant without resorting to jarring tricks, considering the scope of the events.
askeriRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
A sarcastic, commentary-filled weary look at superheros, the existencial crises which face humanity, and the terrifying potential of human evil and hard-eyed calculations. The story is a bit hard to follow sometimes with the narrative going back and forth between the past and present, and this book is part of an ecosystem of sci-fi books which use terms like 'memetic attacks' which might make some plot arcs harder to follow.
TNTeadybearsRoyal Road
★★★★ 3.5
I really appreciate that while the story has a bunch of crazy stuff happening it takes power scaling into account and doesn’t leave massive plot holes. This is also a book that I always want to read more of because of how it does a unique take on aliens and superheroes.
Normal7615Royal Road
★★★ 3.0
I've been looking for a book about superpowers and I finally thought I had found the one. The ratings were good and I started to read only to find out that this book was completely different from what I was expecting. A cyborg psychiatrist. Basically it. He gets called in to evaluate people, analyze them and that is all. I really was expecting more but I'm already losing hope.
Edit:
Since I did not feel good leaving a review when I did not at least try to catch up to the current chapter, I came back and did just that. Honestly, there may be progress along the way for the mc but I think the mc is going to remain primarily a doctor and that is unfortunate for me. I had to change my rating from a 2.5 to a 3 though. The Author has put in effort and it shows. It is just not the premise I'm looking for.