Best HFY Sci-Fi Stories: The Pretty Rock In The Corner 

A Siliconian who spent way too much time around humans: "They see me rollin. They hatin, ..."

I love this and I want more stories about rocks. I need a story about rock space marines. "Sir we are under fire! The projectiles are boarding us!"

The humans have a special relationship with rocks after all

I have had a pet rock for 47 year's, been to 3 states of Australia with me, at the moment it is on my work bench watching me play on my PC Here in Western Australia.

Was waiting the whole story for "teaching rocks to think." Glad I wasn't disappointed lol.

A living boulder sounds like it would be a pretty cool friend to have!

So a rock,a hard, and a place walk into a bar...

In this day and age when finding employment is so full of anxiety, this story must strike home to so many readers.

Good enough for part two Please!

I love the ones where it's just humans interacting with aliens, rather than fighting with them. (With the exception of when it's kicking slave owner buts)

I want an episode 2! desperately! Also re: the stairs/ramp thing, surely these ships have artificial gravity generators... I'm just imagining Zrrk getting themselves a micro grav belt thing which they can use to shift the gravity field so they can just roll up the stairs :D

This reminds me of a book I'm writing. There's a species of amorphous crystals called the Bentners. They live mostly underground on their home planet. We didn't know they were sapient or sentient as we mined them as natural processors until we put them in an android. Naturally, a bunch of people died before the thing calmed down from its understandable berserker rage. After the misunderstanding was cleared up they began buying mech bodies with minerals and metals, as well as their body waste - shards of crystal they left behind as they morphed and flowed through their planet's crust. They became indispensable as core computers on vessels, usually with a collection of mobil units they can transfer into via telepresence. The first officer on the main ship in the story is a Bentner who is legitimately married to the ship. A human made vessel and AI named Star Forge because she was used to study star and planet formation by making them artificially. After all, if you can warp spacetime enough to travel FTL, you can collapse a gas and dust cloud with half the energy it would take to travel across the resulting solar system. After they got married, they went all Magrathean and started selling custom stars, planets, and star systems. They are supporting characters, but they're there. First Officer Whoominimeer and his wife Star.

I mean, come on dude! You *literally* rock! AND ROLL!!

Imagine how much fun humans would have designing and building mech harnesses for siliconians. There's already people irl who have built mechanical legs and wheels for their pet snakes and fish just for the hell of it. I'm imagining a harness with Doc Oct tentacles for basic tasks and mobility, and an antigrav device to lower the siliconian user's mass to the point they can easily get around using said tentacles. And let's throw in a multi-tool arm for jobs needing lots of small tools and a modular arm for jobs needing larger, more specialized tools. And an interface jack as well so they can connect directly to external systems even if the system itself hasn't been configured to accept their static pulses directly. Lastly, some manuvering jets for zero-g space walks.

This is exceptionally good writing.

Despite being against the idea of "sentient rock" I will admit that this is a interesting concept of a story. Minus the, "man, and guy" bit.

"Zzrk. Did you know that humans throw rocks? Yes? Good. I'm sure we'll be great friends."

I'm in a rock & a hard place trying to find a job

He should be careful of the Googlie eyes.

I'm usually prettyontent with these as shortories,but I very much want more of this.

Heh im getting flashbacks from the 19th century, the living rock

So.... a beautiful Siliconian would be rock candy?

I seriously thought it was all about how they could likely change nuclear fuel rods without a massive lead suit, only to die on their way out.

HEH Golems!!!

The author wrote another 3 chapters so far that is available on Reddit It would be nice if they were narrated as well

You can get any idiot with manipulator digits to replace a wire. Finding the correct wire takes the skill. Besides I doubt it would be all that hard to make a robotic manipulator that would work well with the described body of that rock. They can modify their geology and electric field at will and therefore a magnet field. Make a "hat" that slides around the siliconian like one of those bb8 droids and put a manipulator on it. It can move the thing around with a magnet field and control the manipulator arm like it would any computer.

I hope there will be a longer story/series about these dudes.

I wonder if Siliconians enjoy Rock n' Roll... Or maybe heavy metal? Electro?

You seem to pick the best stories. Also the best readings.

Just have to watch the Geologist to make sure they don't lick them

Thank you for the reading

I love how science fiction can create the strangest of things. Thank you author and NN. UKUK

If Star Trek's Horta joined the ODST.

Please let this be a series.

As a mountain of flab myself, i felt seen in this story

Im imaging the Siliconian looking a bit like Yaphit from The Orville when it's not in boulder or sphere forms

I love Karen's stories.

Don't let the Marines findout about the living rocks...

Cool. Story about Horta. :D

I had a pet rock just because and I have pretty rocks on every window sill they hang out with me and that amuses me and confuses the unimaginative

This needs more chapters they could make him a suit to mimic human movement

hey rock friend, you wanna help me in this fight? Also, Engineer.

Maybe in the future, dude will finally transcend gender. Unfortunately, it's still in the process of changing its connotation.

I once had a pet rock but it died :(

Cue can’t stop the rock by Apollo 440

Rock on

Organic robots?

Woodfire pizza oven. In 2 hours. So people don't get scared, what color do we paint it? Will it scrape off over time? ....... I will throw anyone out the airlock who buys or wears an Indiana Jones outfit!!!. Rock: I'm sorry? An Indiana what? Captain: pays a credit. .... So what color are we painting them? Googly eyes? Gets a new paint job of the planet they are going to.. .....

6 seasons and a movie!

Part 2, when? :D

Humans would immeadiately have them as the tip of the spear in all boarding parties 😂 And thinking in code... GTA 6 gonna get a release date!!!

Im a dude. Hes a dude. Shes a dude. Were all dudes. Hey!

Are you going to make the next parts, too?

Fixing to hook up zrrk to the power supply for free energy

I wounded if the rock would like Doom.

mech suit.mp4

Best ending. A

am here

How the fuck is that 22 minutes

The way that Valenzuela was pronounced seriously confused me

Woke pronouns C ya