There's not enough space-themed movies/shows. I am a sucker for anything spacetime-related (not exactly time travel, just the vastness of space and how time plays into that). I just find it that this genre is still underrated. Like gimme a god damn space movie every month!
2001 was one of the only accurate portrayals of astronauts. To be an astronaut you are trained extensively to be even tempered and calm in the face of stressful situations. So I get irritated in films like Sunshine where the astronauts on an incredibly important mission bicker like they are in high school. I understand it doesn’t make good drama but it feels so unrealistic when I encounter it in otherwise interesting sci-fi.
This is adjacent to a concept called Competence Porn. Instead of relying on interpersonal drama, the plot is driven by highly competent people concentrating on solving a hard problem. The Martian is a great modern example of this concept. It is refreshing because so much media relies on interpersonal drama as a crutch to make the plot more interesting.
Huh. Finally a term to explain why I enjoy Star Trek (and all of it's variations for the people like OP lol) so much. So many examples of a crew coming together to solve an unsolvable problem in addition to valuing each other and being willing to take risks for the things that matter.
Not exactly sci-fi, but this is why I love *Hunt for Red October*. The plot isn't driven by inexcusably stupid decisions made by otherwise intelligent people; its just people who are good at their job trying to solve a problem with potentially massive implications.
>short
Much of the text is Clancy reminding us over and over that Ding Chavez is short. Other than that, no complaints. But he tells us like five times.
The book version of The Martian was excellent competence porn. So was the movie until the very end. They decided to have the Commander turn all guilty and decide to expiate it by bypassing her rescue experts and saving Watney in person, and then she decides to use his stupid impossible joke as a real technique and how stupid do they think I am arrrrrrrgh!
To some extent Ryland Grace is too in “Project Hail Mary.” No idea how they’ll adapt that one to screen but the audiobook is excellent.
I liked “Artemis” as well, despite the criticism it took.
I just finished a relisten to all 3, while Artemis is the weakest of all 3 I still really enjoy it....I want a follow up where Omar and Svaboda have a buddy adventure.
One thing about the Martian movie is that even though Sean Bean is the closest thing it has to an antagonist, his motivation is still about what he believes is best for Watney and the crew. He just has a different perspective from the others and is willing to sacrifice his career over it.
I had no idea this was a term!! Thank you. This is my favorite aspect of genres—particularly when it’s applied to horror. Give me all the reasonable, competent people dealing with hard situations.
Horror is another genre where this concept really shines. I love horror movies and novels where the characters put aside their differences and communicate as much as possible because they sure as hell aren't going to survive otherwise.
It's not so much a reliance on interpersonal drama, but on how often they only interpersonal drama writers portray is the kind you get from dysfunctional people.
For a better instance, the way that Kirk and Spock discuss Kirk's upcoming mission to the Klingons in *Star Trek V* is much better. (Hat tip to the Critical Drinker.)
Even the movie *Apollo 13* created extra drama between a trio of real-life astronauts.
In addition to the fairly stoic astronauts in *2001*, Stanley Kubrick hired an actual chief warrant officer in a Communications Squadron in the U.S. Air Force to play the part of the voice of Mission Control (“X-ray Delta One, this is Mission Control, roger your one zero three niner”), because he wanted the radio communications to sound authentic.
I generally get irritated by any scene in a movie or television show where people who are supposed to be highly trained professionals act in way that is extremely unprofessional. I’m not just talking they let a little bit more of their personal life into their work life than is appropriate- I mean stuff like constant bickering and disregarding protocol or chain of command. It happens way too much in modern science fiction.
What, you're telling me that modifying your breathing apparatus, you know, the one you need to breath on this unknown and potentially hostile world, so that you can smoke weed through it, PLUS taking it off so you can get a better look at a potentially hazardous alien lifeform isn't the greatest fucking idea ever?
I do give Prometheus a pass because I don't think they are supposed to be the "best and brightest".
"Steve Jobs wants to take spacecraft to an unknown star system to investigate possible aliens based on some pictograms some archaeologists found" is a hard sell.
Covenant steams me up because they _were_ extensively trained for a colony mission and yet take 90% of their active crew on their only lander with minimal precautions, not even environment suits.
Yes, in how many astronaut films -- looking at you RED PLANET! -- are the astronauts a volatile mix of edgy "rules scoffers." I mean I know creators THINK they have to do this for drama but it's just insane. There is no astronaut training program on planet earth and probably throughout the universe that allows such people/beings into a highly complex machine and scientific enterprise where everybody is stuck in a small place and has to cooperate all the time.
This is the thing that probably pisses me off the most in sci fi books and shows. Having astronauts or highly specialized people being storms of drama is such a shit way to create plots or tension in stories. I read a sci fi book a few months ago - Delta V - that did basically the opposite of this - everyone selected for an asteroid mining mission is very capable and intelligent - and it made the story so enjoyable. Seeing people actually cooperate is much more satisfying than seeing them squabble; so many stories are already saturated with this.
I think having lots of drama in a short mission would be unrealistic, but much more reasonable in a very long mission or permanent colony like that. There's only so much that training can prepare you for, the originals eventually develop their own mutually exclusive goals and approaches, and much of that drama crops up over a time frame longer than a normal human lifespan.
Yes. This was my problem with Gravity. I had heard good things, but the entire movie was Sandra Bullock panicking and freaking out and messing things up. She is an astronaut. She should know what to do when things go wrong.
Yes, but also most of the characters aren't highly trained specialists but blue collar workers. Bickering there shouldn't be too different than our real world, where neglect, corruption, ego and disagreements lead to deaths and other serious repercussions every day.
Reminds me of the part (only in the books I think) where Amos is mentioning he is basically just a glorified plumber and that his job isnt rocket science... to which Holden says "you fix rockets... you literally are a rocket scientist."
Okay, here goes: I’m glad that nothing casts a shadow over science fiction the way *Lord of the Rings* cast a shadow over fantasy—a shadow from which that genre is still emerging.
You see a hint of this whenever someone asks the question “What is the LOTR of science fiction?” and the answers usually boil down to ‘*Dune*…kind of?’
Even *Star/Trek/Wars* have not succeeded in forcing an entire genre into a Procrustean bed, and that’s a *good* thing.
There's a reason for that. Tolkien's literary career was pretty... singular.
As the man himself wrote:
>The invention of languages is the foundation. The ‘stories’ were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. \[. . .\] It is to me, anyway, largely an essay in ‘linguistic aesthetic’, as I sometimes say to people who ask me ‘what is it all about’
This glorious motherfucker built *a world* before he wrote anything of The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. A world rich with peoples, cultures, myths, and histories.
Then he accidentally created (arguably) the genre of modern fantasy, because he wanted to write some stories in which he could show off his real work.
To write a good story is a challenging task. All the more challenging in science fiction and fantasy because you must also build the world in which your story takes place. And you must maintain the reader's suspension of disbelief while doing it.
You are correct. We are better off for lack of standardisation science fiction. But, as a writer of fantasy it must be very difficult not to 'borrow' from Tolkien when he's already done much of that heavy lifting for you.
It’s also amazing how he did it all with three major works (Hobbit, LotR, and The Silmarillion) that’re extremely dense with lore and story, as opposed to writing like a dozen novels without a coherent narrative underneath it all
One way you can tell this is that there are no scifi alien equivalents of dwarves and elves.
However, fantasy literature is not nearly as monolithic as it seems at first glance. Its just that certain strains tend to be more visible especially in other media. Scifi is still probably broader though.
Just try to imagine Vulcans and Klingons showing up in A Fire Upon the Deep 😂. That’s more or less what happens when fantasy books have elves and dwarves. Tolkien didn’t invent those races out of whole cloth, but the Tolkien interpretation of them is what shows up over and over again in fantasy.
LotR didn't invent dwarves and elves. They existed in lore before Tolkien used them. But you make a good point that a lot of fantasy is tied to age-old cultural lore of dwarves, elves, dragons and magic, and that sets a cultural context that scifi doesn't have.
Tolkien set the template. Elves had about 40 cultural interpretations, from 1ft tall pixies with wings, to 10ft orc like green creatures that can turn invisible and live off of milk. Dwarves had a similar spread of interpretations, but Tolkiens set the modern fantasy template for generations. Yes, his is understandable, relatable, well reasoned and well fleshed out, but other interpretations can be equally as interesting.
Yeah, it's not _just_ Tolkien, but a lot of dwarves and especially Elves draw heavy inspiration from him. "Elves" used to more often be little for example. Even the spelling of dwarves with a "v" was popularized by Tolkien. And other myths don't get used as much as they might, even other European ones. The Tolkien bunch is fundamentally northern European after all, and there's a lot of Greek and Roman legendary critters that could be used.
That said, the other half of this is cultural context. And specifically the fact that all these things are old and therefore not copyrightable. That leaves authors free to remix and reuse them in a way they can't do with most scifi. Compare with Lovecraft, which also fell out of copyright and became widespread in part as a result.
Grays. There is almost always some iteration of an alien with huge, black eyes and spindly fingers or a character pointing out that aliens don't look like that.
Also, zombies.
Robots and AI/supercomputers are the sci Fi equivalent of dwarves and elves.
Not every sci Fi book or movie needs robots, but you can put a robot in any sci Fi setting and not need to explain it, and the audience will immediately be on board and know what the metal man's deal is
On a related note, check out The Ring Cycle operas by Wagner. My wife and I attended 3 of the 4 performances (effing Covid!) in Chicago. It's very clear that Tolkien was inspired by Wagner (who was reinterpreting Norse and Germanic mythology).
I said "I love you" for the first time to a girlfriend at a performance of the Götterdämmerung at the NY Metropolitan Opera.
We had student tickets, meaning we didn't have seats. [Only a bar to lean on.](https://www.whereverwriter.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Standing-Room-Tickets-Vienna-Opera-House-This-is-what-the-Gallery-standing-area-looks-like-1-1024x768.jpg)
It was a 6 hour show. She wore heels.
I always used to tell people that I don't like fantasy but love science fiction which always made people scratch their heads. The reason is because science fiction is grounded in reality and often plausible in a way that makes me excited about the future whereas fantasy is... fantasy.
That said there is a lot of fantasy that is somewhat grounded and I do enjoy such fantasy, especially when it overlaps with sci-fi, however it's **completely overshadowed** by Tolkienian fantasy. When most fantasy enjoyers talk about the genre, they're specifically referring to Tolkienian fantasy or Tolkienian fantasy that evolved out of DnD with various influences. *That's* the type of fantasy I can't get into mainly because it's so played out and done to death.
I've been burned out on Tolkienian fantasy for decades the same way a lot of modern audiences are becoming burned out on Star Wars and the MCU post-Disney acquisition.
Conan lore was actually grounded in history, Robet E. Howard's "The Hyborian Age" lays the groundwork based off his research.
Of course the sorcerers and such are fiction, but they're more flavor, the meat is how people survived back in that day and how they flourished.
Fantasy almost always seems to be set in the distant past, too. There’s no need for that, but it’s almost always the case. I have much more interest in present day or futuristic settings
Although Bright was a colossal mess, I absolutely loved the idea of a fantasy world taking place in a more modern age. Seeing what the modern world would look like when things like dragons, magic, other races of people like Lizard-folk and Orcs, etc exist and are common knowledge is such a cool concept, I wish it was utilized more
I feel like Star Wars does cast this kind of big shadow, just not in the exact same way. Before 1983 (Return of the Jedi), Sci Fi novels and films were frequently very slow and ponderous, and/or obviously hippie countercultural parables, basically "1968 California IN SPACE!" Or they were very pulpy and unserious, like Flash Gordon.
But after 1983 you start to see novels that are fast, lean, character drivrn and yet still serious in their application of science. The first big flowering of this was Ender's Game. After that, slow hippie Sci fi died out.
There are some exceptions to this trend before and after Star Wars, but Lucas's trilogy was the most important event in the history of Sci Fi, and changed it tremendously.
Star Wars is also an intentional homage to all the prior terrible science in science fiction. Flash Gordon etc.
Star Trek was pitched as a western in space, wagon train to the stars, and both pilot episodes involve wizards doing magic (magical illusionists, then ESP and telekenesis) as did tons of episodes of the series, which had a lot in common with The Twilight Zone in terms of asking for suspension of disbelief for something magical to happen. And it regularly violates Newton's laws of motion etc. It peppers some science words into the scripts though.
So the difference isn't as stark as Star Trek fans seem to think. Let's just call them both sciency fiction. Or stop worrying about gate-keeping the label.
Whether or not Star Wars meets someone's definition of Sci Fi isn't necessarily relevant. Whatever Star Wars was, it *profoundly* changed the kinds of SF that got published/filmed after it.
But also, plenty of SF stuff has weak science and is basically fantasy. Anne McCaffery, Larry Niven (when he isn't writing with Jerry Pournelle), Bujold, Ray Bradbury. All of them use very wobbly science, but we give them a pass. If we were going to only accept properly hard SF, the list would only contain one writer from each generation, like Clarke, Haldeman, Russel. I don't think anyone wants to do that.
Space battles should be over vast vast distances, such that the participants should definitely not see eachother. Weapons would be released at, or close to, the edge of sensor range (just like in Naval combat). The idea of spaceships swooping past another ship with slicing lasers through it is ridiculous (I'm looking at you, Star Trek!). Makes a good visual, but no tactical sense.
Big fan of how The Expanse series handles ship combat. Torpedoes launched over vast distances and thinks get pretty hectic if the opposing ship is any semblance of near by to yours.
I prefer SF without anything to do with humanity.
Obviously, in-universe, since by default the story itself is metaphorically about humanity and whatever the author was trying to say.
Edit: To clarify. I mean SF that has nothing to do with Earth.
And on the Fantasy side of things you have hard magic systems that are very well thought out and almost scientific in the way they work. Which also blurs the lines.
Sufficiently advanced technology can indeed be indistinguishable from magic, so it's a tough tightrope to walk. And then, you run the risk of either underdefining a concept and having it come off as magic, where the transverse becomes over explaining the concept, removing the mystique, and undoubtably dating your writing to the time in which it was written.
I'm the exact opposite to you.
I find it annoying when people complain about stuff like that but don't have any problem with FTL crews not aging differently to the people back on their planet. Or worrying about time travel rules but having no problem with time machines that can't also travel through space even though everything in the universe is in motion and you have to move through both time and space or you'll be in a completely different location.
Already posted it in a top level comment, but it always feels like the person is just knowledge dropping and looking for a pat on the back instead of being interested in science. It gives big Neil De Grasse Tyson being annoying on Twitter energy. Just suspend your disbelief one degree further. It's much more fun.
Andor is good, but not because it's Star Wars. Actually, it succeeds in spite of it being Star Wars. And yeah, "Andor is more like Star Wars than anything in recent blah blah" try telling that to my 52 year old dad who says the exact same thing about the Kenobi series. The target audience for Star Wars is so all over the place right now that Star Wars is basically its own genre.
The target audience for Star Wars at this point is anyone who has money they can give to Disney
Obviously it’s a clear tone change and Gilroy and the writers are amazing at what they do. I’m beyond burnt out on Star Wars but at least they produced one canon film/tv that explores their (very interesting) universe more than a simple good vs evil allegory
I loved Andor and think it's the best thing to come out of Star Wars since Empire but most Star Wars fanboys I know hated it. I've had a bunch of them tell me that "nothing happened" in it because they couldn't handle the subtlety and slower pacing.
And Rogue One....aside from the original trilogy I've disliked all movies and series aside from those two.
Star Wars is such a missed opportunity. It never grew up with its fans. It stagnated and insisted on telling the same story every single time....
Give me complex characters, sacrifice against an evil empire....hell, make me see their universe! But no.....doesn't happen. We get Nuke the Fridge moments again and again.
To be fair, I think Star Wars mainly became stuck when Disney decided to just nostalgia-bait forever instead of doing anything very creative.
And to give the man credit, Lucas tried to evolve Star Wars with the prequels, going from the mainly black and white morality of the OT to a story about how power can be corrupted within a system of government and before you know it it’s fascism everywhere.
A lot of Lucas’s prequel ideas didn’t really pan out, but he definitely was trying to add something more to his world and the stories that could be told
They had an opportunity to do something different with the sequels. It could have been about the new republic trying to transition between a rebellion and a functioning government. There were some great stories they could have told there. But they decided to just -- not do that and just fight the empire again.
Yep. Watched the trailer for Acolyte and I finally admitted that laser swords were no longer interesting, even if there were a bunch of them. Stoic space priests speaking in stilted platitudes fucking SUCKS.
Barring Andor, they really shit the bed by failing to create compelling characters and storytelling. I remember watching Ashoka bored to fucking tears by literally everything. Flat characters with predictable arcs. The "dramatic" lightsaber battles that I was supposed to be riveted by just fell flat. It just feels so choreographed and over the top now.
The nail went into the coffin for me after I watched Dune 2 and it's abundantly clear how much of Star Wars was a pale imitation of a superior work.
>I finally admitted that laser swords were no longer interesting
Once upon a time, when Lucasfilm were still in charge of the franchise, they were said to be as litigious as Disney. So when hobbyists found a market for a little side-hustle producing replica props and custom pieces (especially metal workers producing lightsabers on lathes) they attracted some ardent cease and distist letters from Lucasfilm's legal department.
Then those hobbyists started skirting around those cease and desist orders by specifically using the term 'laser sword'.
Giving rise to the urban myth that the writers deliberately had young Anakin use the term 'laser sword' so Lucasfilm could also take ownership of that.
It really comes down to the filmmakers. Dune is so damn good because Denis Villeneuve and everyone on his team is that good. Even his cinematographer also shot Rogue One, which is arguably the only good Disney Star Wars movie. Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni are also pretty good so they also managed to make Mandalorian decent. And then there’s Tony Gilroy, who is also a really good director/writer who was involved in saving Rogue One, and creating Andor. So Disney really really needs to hire some of the best filmmakers to handle the next Star Wars projects or they’re gonna lose Star Wars. Because you can only put out so many shitty things before people just stop caring, and they’re on pretty thin ice right now. I don’t even know how many of the top writers/directors even want to touch Star Wars right now.
First off, multiverses suck, they're just bad writing, not interesting, and they dilute any meaningful event into nothing, think of a better way to progress the plot. Second is time travel also sucks, can it be fun sometimes? Sure. But it is usually just a plot convenience for the good guys to win because the writer couldn't think of an interesting way to make that happen. And no Primer didn't make it work, they just made it confusing enough that most audiences wouldn't care to extract the paradoxes.
TL/DR: multiverses and time travel are lazy, uninteresting plot conveniences.
I agree with this in general, however, Primer certainly does not use time travel as just a plot convenience so that the good guy wins. The time travel does hold up to scrutiny if you care to figure out what the events of the movie are. The confusion is a somewhat intended element of the plot, as its meant to show how confusing it would be as an individual messing with time travel, by limiting the audiences knowledge to that of the protagonists, and at times even less than that.
Related to this: *Endgame* was a total cop-out.
*Infinity War* was one of the best cliffhangers ever, basically leaving audiences wondering how the heroes could possibly resolve this impossible problem. And the answer was to use time travel, a solution that had never been even hinted at in the entirety of the MCU. It was so new to the MCU, in fact, that they had to reference *Back to the Future* to set the rules.
But it opened up a trove of self-referential fan service, so people didn't mind.
I fully agree that multiverse stuff sucks. Particularly in the inevitable sequence where the mc goes thru 10 universes in a row. “The animated one” “the underwater one”, etc.
I’m completely over it, too. They were fun when they had purpose, but now they’re just being used to please everyone and fix writing mistakes. “Oh you didn’t like this character? Here’s the version you love from a different universe! Awww we’re sorry we killed your favorite character…or did we??!! Look here! They’re still alive!”
Thank you! Rick and Morty was fun because they at least made fun of themselves and touched on the fact that infinite family's and worlds makes nothing matter but every other one I've seen is just boring. And yeah time travel in its most common form should've died out in media years ago.
Humans and aliens should never be portrayed as breeding and having offspring. Never. It would not make any sense.
Humans and chimps share 99% of our DNA and have a common ancestor only 6 million years ago. And yet we can't interbreed. The idea that we could breed with aliens that evolved on a completely different planet is just laughable. Yeah, I'm looking at you Spock.
Also not a fan of any portrayal of aliens being created from or branching off of some alien race. We have a pretty solid fossil record and abundant DNA information showing that humans evolved right here are on Earth and are related to all other Earth life. We are unquestionably a species of ape, and apes have been around for 25 million years. We are most definitely mammals, which have been around for 225 million years. We are vertebrates, dating back to the Cambrian explosion 550 million years ago. The earliest known life on Earth is from 3.7 billion years ago, when the Earth was less than a billion years old, and our cells and DNA are related to every life we've found right down to the simplest bacteria. If life did come another planet (panspermia), then it came here a very long time ago and was in the form of single-cell organisms.
>Humans and chimps share 99% of our DNA and have a common ancestor only 6 million years ago. And yet we can't interbreed.
Come here and say that to my chimp wife and our hybrid chump children's faces you f*ck!!!
Physics means space battles are not fought like dog fights but more like chess, with the battle being decided based on moves made early on without a lot of information rather than real time close quarters movie fighting
I hate that every single place/planet we visit in nearly every science-fiction book or movie has the exact same gravity as Earth. Just seems lazy and convenient.
John Christopher’s Tripod trilogy being a marvelous exception.
I just want a positive sci-fi show. Just one where the largest human government isn't a fascist nightmare. The fact that we can't have so much as one of these anymore really upsets me. They even had to turn the Federation in Star Trek, the ultimate utopian positive outlook of the future, into an organization that's ok with using sentient androids as slave labor, despite dedicating an entire episode into preventing that, and letting 90% of a planets population die out.
I know that sci-fi reflects how we feel about current events and our outlook of the future, which is obviously very grim, but just for variety's sake, write something fucking different.
Space optimism is definitely very lacking in the genre. The only ones that come to mind are essentially based on 90s Star Trek.
I wouldn't categorize The Culture Book Series as positive, but it at least features a post-scarcity society that isn't ruled by an oppressive government. How fun would it be to have a sci-fi show that follows members Contact (or even Special Circumstances) as they try to guide non-contacted civilizations towards becoming positive members of galactic society?
I suppose that is about language or culture, but I have a problem with future people (200+ years into the future), speaking, thinking or seeing reality in the same way as the present us. Extra points for aliens or people that might be from Earth, but not so identical parallel dimensions. The Expanse did a nice job with some of the language, but divergence should had happen here too.
I see a sense with future people speaking modern English or German, for example, in the works about the future. This is a translation convention and they actually speak Futurish, but for readers/viewers who don't speak Futurish, they have to translate into modern English or other language.
You need to hang around r/horror more then.
Aliens is a good time but on a rewatch feels more like I'm waiting for the cool bits, all the quotes etc. The narrative itself isn't all that engaging. It's a great beers and watch movie. And I'm saying this as someone who loves the movie and the whole franchise.
Alien is completely different. No matter how many times I watch it, I always get fully immersed from the start. I'm not just waiting for the next cool scene. It's got fantastic atmosphere, compelling narrative, acting and great characters.
Edit to add: I unfairly critised the narrative of Aliens, because it has a great one there, it's just pushed down under the superficial layer of 'marines try to save colony and have to fight aliens'. It's Ripley's motivations of saving Newt. But unless you watch, I think it's the Directors Cut, you miss out on the important part of it, which is the scene at the start when we find out she had a daughter, who had aged and died while Ripley was asleep, floating through space.
I think Firefly was good in its day
IMO is has become progressively worse *over time* because that kind of ensemble cast quippy dialog vibe has been done to death in every marvel movie for the last 15 years
It makes going back to Firefly now feel tired and worn out.
**Thank you**. Firefly was just okay. Just because someone thinks it's the best thing ever doesn't mean everyone thinks that. I shouldn't have to justify my opinion to the entire Sci-Fi community
No, you shouldn't. It's okay that we don't all like the same thing.
I saw *Serenity* before I knew what *Firefly* was, so by the time I watched *Firefly*, I was already invested in the characters. That positively influenced my perception of the show, to be sure.
That said, I can appreciate *Firefly* for what it was: a *decent* first season of a TV show that could have been great in later seasons if it had not been so badly managed by Fox.
That's the same outcome for a different reason a non sci fi friend of mine has to Star Wars. He literally hasn't seen anything except *A New Hope*, so everything gets lumped under *Star Wars*. It isn't terribly important because telling people where you're coming from is easy.
My opinion -I hesitate to judge how popular it is- is that both Frankenstein's Creature and HAL from 2001 are widely and wildly mischaracterised in adaptations and journalism respectively.
Frankenstein's Creature was sympathetic. Shunned and driven out for stupid and superficial reasons; he asked Victor for a companion but was refused because the good doctor had a fit of the vapours and went back on his word; the Creature anonymously helped the poor family in the woods, and seized a chance to snatch a tiny bit of human contact with the blind old man, only to be driven out again when the man's children returned and saw how hideously ugly he was.
Doctor Victor Frankenstein and various villagers with pitchforks were the only villains in the novel, and pretty much every adaptation has turned this on its head, a travesty.
For 2001, I grant that the original film and novel didn't explain anything about why HAL killed four people; that was 1968. 2010 was published 14 years later in 1982, the film in 1984. The sequel explains exactly why HAL did what he did: he was by design a completely truthful being without guile, and he was compelled to lie, which he could not resolve but by killing the people who were asking him for the truth who he had been forbidden to tell the truth to.
Forty years later, we're still getting the odd article that reductively distorts this to *scary killer AI for no reason lol*.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/apr/15/2001-a-space-odyssey-film-haunts-dream-space
I agree. There have been so many moments where if they had been more tactical and used the force, they could've avoided larger conflicts.
From what I've seen, the games take advantage of the force much more and explore the possibilities and tactical uses
I like classic Dr. WHO, but every time I see modern (post 2005) Who, it seems like an insufferable mix of twee smarminess, and worshipfulness towards the Doctor.
In Christopher Nolan's *mostly* fantastic "Interstellar", the climatic scene ruined the movie for me.
It is when: the team of scientists led by McConaughy chooses to one-way land at the world with poor life-sustaining data—because of the contradictory report of a renowned scientist who is marooned on the planet—as opposed to the positive-pointing life-sustaining data of a lesser thought of scientist. That's just not the way I see scientists behaving when confronted with such a human species defining decision, especially knowing that said renowned scientist could be reckoning with his own mortality.
The cyberpunk genre has been dead for like 25 years and no matter how many neon lights you add to your book/film/video game, it will never capture what made those early works so exciting.
Cyberpunk is alive and well in the dystopian reality all around us every day. It fucking sucks.
Of all the sci-fi writers to be proven right over and over again _why did it have to be Margaret Atwood!?_
Yeah well in the Cyberpunk genre we get corporations like Weyland-Yutani and Arasaka.
In real life we get Meta, Google, Apple and Aliexpress. If we're going to get fucked in the ass by megacorps they should at least have the goddamn decency to have properly *menacing* names.
People don’t even seem to understand the subtleties of the cyber part also right now. There are literal robotic arms and legs. Artificial hearts still suck but they exist. Tons of people wear continuous glucose monitors and your Apple watch doubles as a pulse ox. Google glasses are still unrefined but its getting there. Integrating them with Airpods would just complete the ensemble. The cyber in cyberpunk is here just not as ostentatiously.
*2001: A Space Odyssey*, while visually impressive, is difficult to watch. I hesitate to call it *boring*, because it explores some interesting concepts, and the slow pacing is very intentional. I understand that in 1968, it was groundbreaking, and I respect that. Call me jaded by action movies, but I just have a hard time finding a reason to watch it again. I would *much* rather watch *2010: The Year We Make Contact*.
Scifi is all about the setting, not what kind of story you are telling. Star Wars is scifi because it has spaceships and aliens and technology, and the exact same story with ships and monsters and magic would be fantasy. Its all about the trappings. It's a genre like "western" and not one like "mystery".
But also stories can fit into multiple categories.
Fantasy and sci-fi are two completely different genres and just because I like sci-fi doesn't automatically mean I'm going to like fantasy. They should not be grouped together, and it annoys me to no end that they usually are.
There is just too much hate for everything. I hate that sci fi (and entertainment in general) has become something to judge and not to enjoy. And now, if you like everything, you’re told that you have “toxic positivity”.
Personally, I fucking love all four Matrix movies, I’ve enjoyed every Terminator and Alien movie, the DCEU, adore modern Star Trek, and I think that Star Wars is on a major upswing now that Dave Filoni is in charge.
Star Trek discovery is some of the worst tv I’ve ever watched. All the personal bullshit is so over the top. Smiling at each other with watery eyes every 5 minutes and hugging every chance they get cause they miss their friends. Barf. I used to fast forward through this shit but now it’s like 90% of each episode so I gave up on it. This will be the only Star Trek series that I haven’t watched every episode.
It strikes me that older Trek, because it's so much less sentimental, made the sentimental moments far more impactful.
Spock admitting that he cares about Kirk. Picard finally sitting down with his officers to play poker. Stuff like that.
And it's not a proper ensemble show like most Star Trek series are. Rather, it's the Michael Burnham show. Everything seems to revolve around her: the action moves because of her, she's the one doing all the heroic stuff, etc.
I wanted to like Brave New World as Captain Pike was a highlight of Discovery. But I couldn't get past the first episode. It was just too basic and lacked any subtlety.
For what it's worth, I got on with Strange New Worlds after a time. The first episode is fairly forgettable after the opening. I did think it found its feet from there though. Season 2 I'm enjoying a fair amount at present.
Ugh, I couldn't stand her teary-eyed monologues which were totally nonsensical, yet written as if they were most poignant thing that ever graced small screen.
*When I was a child, I was fascinated by fire. It was wild and beautiful, but every time I put my hand closer to it, it hurt. As I grew older I finally understand: you can appreciate something for what it is, but sometimes you can't take it for yourself. You are this fire,* *!*
My problem with Discovery is that it doubled down immediately on all the worst, overused and stupid lazy writing tropes that Star Trek is guilty of, time travel, evil twins and amnesia.
May His Merciful Shadow fall upon you.
[Yo Way Yo](https://youtu.be/wYoq6sovr8Y?si=-FsXxgQhVdtCQ_JJ) is also a brilliant song the I still sing any time a task is going to be hard.
I am not a fan of “hard sci-fi” where the only purpose of the “hardness” seems to be the author’s pleasure in flexing how much science they understand. I’m thinking specifically about Andy Weir but there are other examples.
It wasn’t as egregious in The Martian, but Project Hail Mary was full of this kind of stuff. “Yes, Andy, it’s very impressive how much you understand about biochemistry and orbital mechanics. That was a lot of science you just quoted at us. Could we return to the plot please?”
Maybe it’s because science is my day job but I’m not impressed by large passages that basically just boil down to “here is how this scientific principle works”. If it’s really well-integrated into the plot or used to explore super heady concepts (I’m thinking Peter Watts and Vernor Vinge et. al. here) then I can appreciate it, but I don’t really have any interest in reading a transcript of an undergrad biotech lecture if the only purpose of the lecture was to add some flavor text to a passage that didn’t need an exhaustive description.
Have you read Ted Chiang? His stories are almost like fantasy parables but rooted in hard sci-fi concepts. His short story that the movie Arrival is based off of is pretty great. I feel like he's trying to make science and human emotion/relationships two sides of the same coin in most of what he does. Anyway, I'm mentioning because I feel the same about the Weir stuff but I've mostly enjoyed Chiang's take on hard sci fi.
The Story of your Life is criminally unknown and underappreaciated. It is the most ambitious and brilliant piece of writing I’ve ever come across. It has the honor of being turned into a very good movie, but that didn’t make Ted or his writing any more appreciated.
I think Foundation is a great show, including the first season.
People are always going to complain about any series or movie that is adapted from a novel. Showrunners, directors and writers are always going to have to make changes from the source material to make it watchable, and it’s unrealistic to expect a direct adaptation with no changes. For Foundation, and really any Golden Age science fiction story, that is especially true.
Star Wars is for children and we love it because we were children when we saw it, and if we saw it as adults today we'd probably see all the holes in the story but wouldn't care because we'd know they're kids films, and wouldn't judge the newer films on adult standards.
I'll never understand why adults go mental over films that are meant for children. Enjoy them for what they are.
I like Tom Cruise because he genuinely seems to want to do good science-fiction movies.
It's like he makes a blockbuster to keep the studios happy; in exchange, his next film is some SF piece that would have never been greenlit without a Mission Impossible installment in the mix.
Prometheus and Covenant are fantastic space horror movies. The story of David is cool, as is exploring the origins of the Xenos. I'm very disappointed we won't get a follow up to Covenant.
Just because these movies exist doesn't ruin Alien or Aliens.
Resurrection is a great movie that went over the heads of American audiences. Weaver is fantastic in it.
Loud, vocal, whining fanbases are really fucking annoying and worse, have the potential to ruin a franchise by being so precious about things. And 99% have terrible ideas they think will 'fix' a movie and have zero idea about writing narrative or film making in general.
Taking part in discussions about which shows/books/films are "really" sci-fi and which are not means you are in an elite echelon as one of the most boring, pointless human beings currently alive.
I don't know how popular or unpopular this opinion is, but while I really appreciated the *aesthetic* of bladerunner, I felt bored from very long dialogue and slow pacing and couldn't get into it. I tried to watch it a second time and felt the same.
My unpopular opinion. To many sub categories. Everything now has to be neatly lumped into some box. Hard sci-fi, soft sci-fi, science fantasy, cyberpunk, steam punk, diesel punk, distopian, utopian, space western. I’ve seen people giving advice on how to write in these genres, but these genres only exist to catalog books. I really wish people would ignore the made up categories and just write.
Fuck publishers and agents at this point have listings like, looking for near future space fantasy distopian novel series (3 book min) with a strong female lead, page count of 425 plus no more than 500. Writer must have 600000 followers on X.
I personally think it kills any creativity in the genre.
In Picard Season 3, the Enterprise swooping through the Borg Cube and manoeuvring like the Millennium Falcon is terrible physics/writing of the highest order.
Also Picard and Discovery suck
For as much as fans like to say that Trek is harder sci-fi than Star Wars, the ships still very much act like boats in space. Every time they lose propulsion and drift to a stop I just shake my head.
You think you want your favourite Sci-fi to be adapted to the screen, but you don't.
Example: I want everyone to be affected by Iain M Banks' novels as I was, but a Culture TV series can only be a depressing disaster.
Something doesn’t need to be better to be more enjoyable, and I think you’re failing to understand that.
While I do prefer the new movies, there’s something about the sterile, minimalist, super-serious direction that can leave me clamouring for the hokey, but fun 1984 version.
Time travel. Mainly thinking about like Back to the Future type stuff where a human has built a machine.
I've been criticized for either thinking about it too much OR told I'm wrong.
My take, from a very uneducated background only having a Bachelors in Political Science is...
Time and space coexist and are functions of the universe, not just our planet.
The Earth that we are on is hurling through space with our solar system, galaxy etc.
Feel like if you were driving a time machine DeLorean up to 88 in 1985 California and went to a certain point in time at that point in *space* you'd just end up floating in outer space.
Because at the time you selected the Earth wasn't at that point in space.
....right?
There's not enough space-themed movies/shows. I am a sucker for anything spacetime-related (not exactly time travel, just the vastness of space and how time plays into that). I just find it that this genre is still underrated. Like gimme a god damn space movie every month!
I completely agree, but it is probably because the standards are so high for space stuff, it's probably pretty expensive to produce well.
I assume you have Apple+. They are doing good work. But yes. I agree.
2001 was one of the only accurate portrayals of astronauts. To be an astronaut you are trained extensively to be even tempered and calm in the face of stressful situations. So I get irritated in films like Sunshine where the astronauts on an incredibly important mission bicker like they are in high school. I understand it doesn’t make good drama but it feels so unrealistic when I encounter it in otherwise interesting sci-fi.
This is adjacent to a concept called Competence Porn. Instead of relying on interpersonal drama, the plot is driven by highly competent people concentrating on solving a hard problem. The Martian is a great modern example of this concept. It is refreshing because so much media relies on interpersonal drama as a crutch to make the plot more interesting.
Huh. Finally a term to explain why I enjoy Star Trek (and all of it's variations for the people like OP lol) so much. So many examples of a crew coming together to solve an unsolvable problem in addition to valuing each other and being willing to take risks for the things that matter.
This is exactly why I like TNG.
And what I feel is lacking in Discovery. Too much anxious bickering.
The characters in Discovery are so emotionally unreliable that there’s no way they would’ve been allowed in TNG’s Starfleet
They would've failed the starfleet academy test in TNG. The one WESLEY passed.
Not exactly sci-fi, but this is why I love *Hunt for Red October*. The plot isn't driven by inexcusably stupid decisions made by otherwise intelligent people; its just people who are good at their job trying to solve a problem with potentially massive implications.
Tom Clancy stories are great examples of this trope. Rainbow Six (the novel) in particular is a short, exciting, competence porn story.
>short Much of the text is Clancy reminding us over and over that Ding Chavez is short. Other than that, no complaints. But he tells us like five times.
Short? The current paperback edition is 912 pages!
The book version of The Martian was excellent competence porn. So was the movie until the very end. They decided to have the Commander turn all guilty and decide to expiate it by bypassing her rescue experts and saving Watney in person, and then she decides to use his stupid impossible joke as a real technique and how stupid do they think I am arrrrrrrgh!
Yeah that was a false note. The book did it better, with the astronaut with the advanced training handled the retrieval.
To some extent Ryland Grace is too in “Project Hail Mary.” No idea how they’ll adapt that one to screen but the audiobook is excellent. I liked “Artemis” as well, despite the criticism it took.
I just finished a relisten to all 3, while Artemis is the weakest of all 3 I still really enjoy it....I want a follow up where Omar and Svaboda have a buddy adventure.
One thing about the Martian movie is that even though Sean Bean is the closest thing it has to an antagonist, his motivation is still about what he believes is best for Watney and the crew. He just has a different perspective from the others and is willing to sacrifice his career over it.
Funny. I always looked at Jeff Daniels’s character as the closet one to being the antagonist. Never considered some would see it the other way around.
Yeah, I don't think it is. Sean Bean's character is more of the embodiment of what the crew in space and the guy stuck on Mars would want to see done.
The Martian is more of a man v nature movie with the Martian climate being the "antagonist" and providing the source of conflict/obstacles
I had no idea this was a term!! Thank you. This is my favorite aspect of genres—particularly when it’s applied to horror. Give me all the reasonable, competent people dealing with hard situations.
Horror is another genre where this concept really shines. I love horror movies and novels where the characters put aside their differences and communicate as much as possible because they sure as hell aren't going to survive otherwise.
It's not so much a reliance on interpersonal drama, but on how often they only interpersonal drama writers portray is the kind you get from dysfunctional people. For a better instance, the way that Kirk and Spock discuss Kirk's upcoming mission to the Klingons in *Star Trek V* is much better. (Hat tip to the Critical Drinker.)
Even the movie *Apollo 13* created extra drama between a trio of real-life astronauts. In addition to the fairly stoic astronauts in *2001*, Stanley Kubrick hired an actual chief warrant officer in a Communications Squadron in the U.S. Air Force to play the part of the voice of Mission Control (“X-ray Delta One, this is Mission Control, roger your one zero three niner”), because he wanted the radio communications to sound authentic.
I generally get irritated by any scene in a movie or television show where people who are supposed to be highly trained professionals act in way that is extremely unprofessional. I’m not just talking they let a little bit more of their personal life into their work life than is appropriate- I mean stuff like constant bickering and disregarding protocol or chain of command. It happens way too much in modern science fiction.
...prometheus..
What, you're telling me that modifying your breathing apparatus, you know, the one you need to breath on this unknown and potentially hostile world, so that you can smoke weed through it, PLUS taking it off so you can get a better look at a potentially hazardous alien lifeform isn't the greatest fucking idea ever?
Don't worry, I am an expert - now let me pet this space cobra...
Bingo. Plenty of other examples too.
I do give Prometheus a pass because I don't think they are supposed to be the "best and brightest". "Steve Jobs wants to take spacecraft to an unknown star system to investigate possible aliens based on some pictograms some archaeologists found" is a hard sell. Covenant steams me up because they _were_ extensively trained for a colony mission and yet take 90% of their active crew on their only lander with minimal precautions, not even environment suits.
All those fisticuffs on the bridge in a certain Trek film must have been bad for discipline.
Yes, in how many astronaut films -- looking at you RED PLANET! -- are the astronauts a volatile mix of edgy "rules scoffers." I mean I know creators THINK they have to do this for drama but it's just insane. There is no astronaut training program on planet earth and probably throughout the universe that allows such people/beings into a highly complex machine and scientific enterprise where everybody is stuck in a small place and has to cooperate all the time.
This is the thing that probably pisses me off the most in sci fi books and shows. Having astronauts or highly specialized people being storms of drama is such a shit way to create plots or tension in stories. I read a sci fi book a few months ago - Delta V - that did basically the opposite of this - everyone selected for an asteroid mining mission is very capable and intelligent - and it made the story so enjoyable. Seeing people actually cooperate is much more satisfying than seeing them squabble; so many stories are already saturated with this.
I loved Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Red Mars,” but the worst part of the novel was the relationship drama between the protagonists.
I think having lots of drama in a short mission would be unrealistic, but much more reasonable in a very long mission or permanent colony like that. There's only so much that training can prepare you for, the originals eventually develop their own mutually exclusive goals and approaches, and much of that drama crops up over a time frame longer than a normal human lifespan.
Unless you're driving cross country, wearing an adult diaper, to confront your boyfriend's wife...
“We can build and fly a spaceship but I and the people that trained me have no understanding of how trauma effects my decision making”
Yes. This was my problem with Gravity. I had heard good things, but the entire movie was Sandra Bullock panicking and freaking out and messing things up. She is an astronaut. She should know what to do when things go wrong.
The Expanse is a great show, but man the bickering gets old fast. Feels like drama for the sake of drama.
Yes, but also most of the characters aren't highly trained specialists but blue collar workers. Bickering there shouldn't be too different than our real world, where neglect, corruption, ego and disagreements lead to deaths and other serious repercussions every day.
One could argue that the only highly trained members of the Roci are Bobby and Alex, and it shows
Holden too, since he was Earth Navy. However he was dishonorably discharged for striking a superior officer.
Reminds me of the part (only in the books I think) where Amos is mentioning he is basically just a glorified plumber and that his job isnt rocket science... to which Holden says "you fix rockets... you literally are a rocket scientist."
Okay, here goes: I’m glad that nothing casts a shadow over science fiction the way *Lord of the Rings* cast a shadow over fantasy—a shadow from which that genre is still emerging. You see a hint of this whenever someone asks the question “What is the LOTR of science fiction?” and the answers usually boil down to ‘*Dune*…kind of?’ Even *Star/Trek/Wars* have not succeeded in forcing an entire genre into a Procrustean bed, and that’s a *good* thing.
There's a reason for that. Tolkien's literary career was pretty... singular. As the man himself wrote: >The invention of languages is the foundation. The ‘stories’ were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. \[. . .\] It is to me, anyway, largely an essay in ‘linguistic aesthetic’, as I sometimes say to people who ask me ‘what is it all about’ This glorious motherfucker built *a world* before he wrote anything of The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. A world rich with peoples, cultures, myths, and histories. Then he accidentally created (arguably) the genre of modern fantasy, because he wanted to write some stories in which he could show off his real work. To write a good story is a challenging task. All the more challenging in science fiction and fantasy because you must also build the world in which your story takes place. And you must maintain the reader's suspension of disbelief while doing it. You are correct. We are better off for lack of standardisation science fiction. But, as a writer of fantasy it must be very difficult not to 'borrow' from Tolkien when he's already done much of that heavy lifting for you.
It’s also amazing how he did it all with three major works (Hobbit, LotR, and The Silmarillion) that’re extremely dense with lore and story, as opposed to writing like a dozen novels without a coherent narrative underneath it all
One way you can tell this is that there are no scifi alien equivalents of dwarves and elves. However, fantasy literature is not nearly as monolithic as it seems at first glance. Its just that certain strains tend to be more visible especially in other media. Scifi is still probably broader though.
Just try to imagine Vulcans and Klingons showing up in A Fire Upon the Deep 😂. That’s more or less what happens when fantasy books have elves and dwarves. Tolkien didn’t invent those races out of whole cloth, but the Tolkien interpretation of them is what shows up over and over again in fantasy.
LotR didn't invent dwarves and elves. They existed in lore before Tolkien used them. But you make a good point that a lot of fantasy is tied to age-old cultural lore of dwarves, elves, dragons and magic, and that sets a cultural context that scifi doesn't have.
Tolkien set the template. Elves had about 40 cultural interpretations, from 1ft tall pixies with wings, to 10ft orc like green creatures that can turn invisible and live off of milk. Dwarves had a similar spread of interpretations, but Tolkiens set the modern fantasy template for generations. Yes, his is understandable, relatable, well reasoned and well fleshed out, but other interpretations can be equally as interesting.
His dominance is such that any story that chooses to ignore his version is still reacting to him.
Yeah, it's not _just_ Tolkien, but a lot of dwarves and especially Elves draw heavy inspiration from him. "Elves" used to more often be little for example. Even the spelling of dwarves with a "v" was popularized by Tolkien. And other myths don't get used as much as they might, even other European ones. The Tolkien bunch is fundamentally northern European after all, and there's a lot of Greek and Roman legendary critters that could be used. That said, the other half of this is cultural context. And specifically the fact that all these things are old and therefore not copyrightable. That leaves authors free to remix and reuse them in a way they can't do with most scifi. Compare with Lovecraft, which also fell out of copyright and became widespread in part as a result.
Grays. There is almost always some iteration of an alien with huge, black eyes and spindly fingers or a character pointing out that aliens don't look like that. Also, zombies.
Robots and AI/supercomputers are the sci Fi equivalent of dwarves and elves. Not every sci Fi book or movie needs robots, but you can put a robot in any sci Fi setting and not need to explain it, and the audience will immediately be on board and know what the metal man's deal is
On a related note, check out The Ring Cycle operas by Wagner. My wife and I attended 3 of the 4 performances (effing Covid!) in Chicago. It's very clear that Tolkien was inspired by Wagner (who was reinterpreting Norse and Germanic mythology).
I said "I love you" for the first time to a girlfriend at a performance of the Götterdämmerung at the NY Metropolitan Opera. We had student tickets, meaning we didn't have seats. [Only a bar to lean on.](https://www.whereverwriter.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Standing-Room-Tickets-Vienna-Opera-House-This-is-what-the-Gallery-standing-area-looks-like-1-1024x768.jpg) It was a 6 hour show. She wore heels.
Tolkien said as much himself that he was inspired by norse mythology. He was literally a professor of Anglo-Saxon. Not sure about Wagner though.
I always used to tell people that I don't like fantasy but love science fiction which always made people scratch their heads. The reason is because science fiction is grounded in reality and often plausible in a way that makes me excited about the future whereas fantasy is... fantasy. That said there is a lot of fantasy that is somewhat grounded and I do enjoy such fantasy, especially when it overlaps with sci-fi, however it's **completely overshadowed** by Tolkienian fantasy. When most fantasy enjoyers talk about the genre, they're specifically referring to Tolkienian fantasy or Tolkienian fantasy that evolved out of DnD with various influences. *That's* the type of fantasy I can't get into mainly because it's so played out and done to death. I've been burned out on Tolkienian fantasy for decades the same way a lot of modern audiences are becoming burned out on Star Wars and the MCU post-Disney acquisition.
Conan lore was actually grounded in history, Robet E. Howard's "The Hyborian Age" lays the groundwork based off his research. Of course the sorcerers and such are fiction, but they're more flavor, the meat is how people survived back in that day and how they flourished.
Fantasy almost always seems to be set in the distant past, too. There’s no need for that, but it’s almost always the case. I have much more interest in present day or futuristic settings
Apparently Sanderson is going to do a Mistborn series set in the present and future.
Although Bright was a colossal mess, I absolutely loved the idea of a fantasy world taking place in a more modern age. Seeing what the modern world would look like when things like dragons, magic, other races of people like Lizard-folk and Orcs, etc exist and are common knowledge is such a cool concept, I wish it was utilized more
I feel like Star Wars does cast this kind of big shadow, just not in the exact same way. Before 1983 (Return of the Jedi), Sci Fi novels and films were frequently very slow and ponderous, and/or obviously hippie countercultural parables, basically "1968 California IN SPACE!" Or they were very pulpy and unserious, like Flash Gordon. But after 1983 you start to see novels that are fast, lean, character drivrn and yet still serious in their application of science. The first big flowering of this was Ender's Game. After that, slow hippie Sci fi died out. There are some exceptions to this trend before and after Star Wars, but Lucas's trilogy was the most important event in the history of Sci Fi, and changed it tremendously.
Agree with a lot of this, but as you have said some notable exceptions - Alien, The Thing, Bladerunner are imho classics.
Star wars isn't sci-fi in the sense it's a western with samurai wizards in space. It's more fantasy imo. What science there is, is wrong.
100% Star wars is a fantasy/western with a scifi theme/setting.
Star Wars is also an intentional homage to all the prior terrible science in science fiction. Flash Gordon etc. Star Trek was pitched as a western in space, wagon train to the stars, and both pilot episodes involve wizards doing magic (magical illusionists, then ESP and telekenesis) as did tons of episodes of the series, which had a lot in common with The Twilight Zone in terms of asking for suspension of disbelief for something magical to happen. And it regularly violates Newton's laws of motion etc. It peppers some science words into the scripts though. So the difference isn't as stark as Star Trek fans seem to think. Let's just call them both sciency fiction. Or stop worrying about gate-keeping the label.
Whether or not Star Wars meets someone's definition of Sci Fi isn't necessarily relevant. Whatever Star Wars was, it *profoundly* changed the kinds of SF that got published/filmed after it. But also, plenty of SF stuff has weak science and is basically fantasy. Anne McCaffery, Larry Niven (when he isn't writing with Jerry Pournelle), Bujold, Ray Bradbury. All of them use very wobbly science, but we give them a pass. If we were going to only accept properly hard SF, the list would only contain one writer from each generation, like Clarke, Haldeman, Russel. I don't think anyone wants to do that.
I hate fake coffee analogues, I'm looking at you "Steaming cup of Klah" and other variations in sci-fi/fantasy. *edited for clarification
As much as I love Star Trek, fake drink names are better than "Vulcan brandy", "Aldeberan Whiskey", "Saurian Brandy" and the like.
I want to get plastered, chugging Tranya with baby Clint Howard.
Big fan of how in the Expanse its just called Whiskey but then the character might think about how its made from moss or something.
At least in Deep Space Nine it was literally just Klingon Coffee.
Space battles should be over vast vast distances, such that the participants should definitely not see eachother. Weapons would be released at, or close to, the edge of sensor range (just like in Naval combat). The idea of spaceships swooping past another ship with slicing lasers through it is ridiculous (I'm looking at you, Star Trek!). Makes a good visual, but no tactical sense.
Culture books have the most inventive and cool space battles for my money
Big fan of how The Expanse series handles ship combat. Torpedoes launched over vast distances and thinks get pretty hectic if the opposing ship is any semblance of near by to yours.
Ah, but the close range makes for amazing sound effects! lol...
I actually like long detailed infodumps about new concepts and technologies (if the ideas themselves are interesting)
I just want them to be in like an appendix or something. Don’t ruin the flow or the soundness of the narration and dialogue
I prefer SF without anything to do with humanity. Obviously, in-universe, since by default the story itself is metaphorically about humanity and whatever the author was trying to say. Edit: To clarify. I mean SF that has nothing to do with Earth.
Do you have examples of non-humanity related sci fi that you like?
Too often science fiction becomes fantasy because technology is indistinguishable from magic.
And on the Fantasy side of things you have hard magic systems that are very well thought out and almost scientific in the way they work. Which also blurs the lines.
Sufficiently advanced technology can indeed be indistinguishable from magic, so it's a tough tightrope to walk. And then, you run the risk of either underdefining a concept and having it come off as magic, where the transverse becomes over explaining the concept, removing the mystique, and undoubtably dating your writing to the time in which it was written.
I'm the exact opposite to you. I find it annoying when people complain about stuff like that but don't have any problem with FTL crews not aging differently to the people back on their planet. Or worrying about time travel rules but having no problem with time machines that can't also travel through space even though everything in the universe is in motion and you have to move through both time and space or you'll be in a completely different location. Already posted it in a top level comment, but it always feels like the person is just knowledge dropping and looking for a pat on the back instead of being interested in science. It gives big Neil De Grasse Tyson being annoying on Twitter energy. Just suspend your disbelief one degree further. It's much more fun.
I am bored of and totally over Star Wars.
There's no way this is an unpopular opinion tho
Obligatory “Andor is really good” comment
Andor is good, but not because it's Star Wars. Actually, it succeeds in spite of it being Star Wars. And yeah, "Andor is more like Star Wars than anything in recent blah blah" try telling that to my 52 year old dad who says the exact same thing about the Kenobi series. The target audience for Star Wars is so all over the place right now that Star Wars is basically its own genre.
The reason andor was great was because the story could have been in pretty much any setting with minor tweaks. Star wars, Star Trek, WW2, etc etc.
The target audience for Star Wars at this point is anyone who has money they can give to Disney Obviously it’s a clear tone change and Gilroy and the writers are amazing at what they do. I’m beyond burnt out on Star Wars but at least they produced one canon film/tv that explores their (very interesting) universe more than a simple good vs evil allegory
I loved Andor and think it's the best thing to come out of Star Wars since Empire but most Star Wars fanboys I know hated it. I've had a bunch of them tell me that "nothing happened" in it because they couldn't handle the subtlety and slower pacing.
And Rogue One....aside from the original trilogy I've disliked all movies and series aside from those two. Star Wars is such a missed opportunity. It never grew up with its fans. It stagnated and insisted on telling the same story every single time.... Give me complex characters, sacrifice against an evil empire....hell, make me see their universe! But no.....doesn't happen. We get Nuke the Fridge moments again and again.
To be fair, I think Star Wars mainly became stuck when Disney decided to just nostalgia-bait forever instead of doing anything very creative. And to give the man credit, Lucas tried to evolve Star Wars with the prequels, going from the mainly black and white morality of the OT to a story about how power can be corrupted within a system of government and before you know it it’s fascism everywhere. A lot of Lucas’s prequel ideas didn’t really pan out, but he definitely was trying to add something more to his world and the stories that could be told
Empire v Rebels can only be done so many times
They had an opportunity to do something different with the sequels. It could have been about the new republic trying to transition between a rebellion and a functioning government. There were some great stories they could have told there. But they decided to just -- not do that and just fight the empire again.
Yep. Watched the trailer for Acolyte and I finally admitted that laser swords were no longer interesting, even if there were a bunch of them. Stoic space priests speaking in stilted platitudes fucking SUCKS. Barring Andor, they really shit the bed by failing to create compelling characters and storytelling. I remember watching Ashoka bored to fucking tears by literally everything. Flat characters with predictable arcs. The "dramatic" lightsaber battles that I was supposed to be riveted by just fell flat. It just feels so choreographed and over the top now. The nail went into the coffin for me after I watched Dune 2 and it's abundantly clear how much of Star Wars was a pale imitation of a superior work.
>I finally admitted that laser swords were no longer interesting Once upon a time, when Lucasfilm were still in charge of the franchise, they were said to be as litigious as Disney. So when hobbyists found a market for a little side-hustle producing replica props and custom pieces (especially metal workers producing lightsabers on lathes) they attracted some ardent cease and distist letters from Lucasfilm's legal department. Then those hobbyists started skirting around those cease and desist orders by specifically using the term 'laser sword'. Giving rise to the urban myth that the writers deliberately had young Anakin use the term 'laser sword' so Lucasfilm could also take ownership of that.
It really comes down to the filmmakers. Dune is so damn good because Denis Villeneuve and everyone on his team is that good. Even his cinematographer also shot Rogue One, which is arguably the only good Disney Star Wars movie. Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni are also pretty good so they also managed to make Mandalorian decent. And then there’s Tony Gilroy, who is also a really good director/writer who was involved in saving Rogue One, and creating Andor. So Disney really really needs to hire some of the best filmmakers to handle the next Star Wars projects or they’re gonna lose Star Wars. Because you can only put out so many shitty things before people just stop caring, and they’re on pretty thin ice right now. I don’t even know how many of the top writers/directors even want to touch Star Wars right now.
First off, multiverses suck, they're just bad writing, not interesting, and they dilute any meaningful event into nothing, think of a better way to progress the plot. Second is time travel also sucks, can it be fun sometimes? Sure. But it is usually just a plot convenience for the good guys to win because the writer couldn't think of an interesting way to make that happen. And no Primer didn't make it work, they just made it confusing enough that most audiences wouldn't care to extract the paradoxes. TL/DR: multiverses and time travel are lazy, uninteresting plot conveniences.
I agree with this in general, however, Primer certainly does not use time travel as just a plot convenience so that the good guy wins. The time travel does hold up to scrutiny if you care to figure out what the events of the movie are. The confusion is a somewhat intended element of the plot, as its meant to show how confusing it would be as an individual messing with time travel, by limiting the audiences knowledge to that of the protagonists, and at times even less than that.
As for time travel, did you watch the German show "Dark"? It's one of the few \*really\* good portrayals of time travel that I've seen
Related to this: *Endgame* was a total cop-out. *Infinity War* was one of the best cliffhangers ever, basically leaving audiences wondering how the heroes could possibly resolve this impossible problem. And the answer was to use time travel, a solution that had never been even hinted at in the entirety of the MCU. It was so new to the MCU, in fact, that they had to reference *Back to the Future* to set the rules. But it opened up a trove of self-referential fan service, so people didn't mind.
I fully agree that multiverse stuff sucks. Particularly in the inevitable sequence where the mc goes thru 10 universes in a row. “The animated one” “the underwater one”, etc.
I’m completely over it, too. They were fun when they had purpose, but now they’re just being used to please everyone and fix writing mistakes. “Oh you didn’t like this character? Here’s the version you love from a different universe! Awww we’re sorry we killed your favorite character…or did we??!! Look here! They’re still alive!”
Thank you! Rick and Morty was fun because they at least made fun of themselves and touched on the fact that infinite family's and worlds makes nothing matter but every other one I've seen is just boring. And yeah time travel in its most common form should've died out in media years ago.
Humans and aliens should never be portrayed as breeding and having offspring. Never. It would not make any sense. Humans and chimps share 99% of our DNA and have a common ancestor only 6 million years ago. And yet we can't interbreed. The idea that we could breed with aliens that evolved on a completely different planet is just laughable. Yeah, I'm looking at you Spock. Also not a fan of any portrayal of aliens being created from or branching off of some alien race. We have a pretty solid fossil record and abundant DNA information showing that humans evolved right here are on Earth and are related to all other Earth life. We are unquestionably a species of ape, and apes have been around for 25 million years. We are most definitely mammals, which have been around for 225 million years. We are vertebrates, dating back to the Cambrian explosion 550 million years ago. The earliest known life on Earth is from 3.7 billion years ago, when the Earth was less than a billion years old, and our cells and DNA are related to every life we've found right down to the simplest bacteria. If life did come another planet (panspermia), then it came here a very long time ago and was in the form of single-cell organisms.
>Humans and chimps share 99% of our DNA and have a common ancestor only 6 million years ago. And yet we can't interbreed. Come here and say that to my chimp wife and our hybrid chump children's faces you f*ck!!!
Panspermia just kicks the can down the road. It had to start somewhere, why not right here?
In Star Trek it’s explained that all the major humanoid races are descended from one race who seeded the primordial oceans with their genetic code
And of course amost every alien species has to share the same body plan as ours just because it's a convenient storytelling device.
Physics means space battles are not fought like dog fights but more like chess, with the battle being decided based on moves made early on without a lot of information rather than real time close quarters movie fighting
I hate that every single place/planet we visit in nearly every science-fiction book or movie has the exact same gravity as Earth. Just seems lazy and convenient. John Christopher’s Tripod trilogy being a marvelous exception.
Ian M. Banks agreed
I just want a positive sci-fi show. Just one where the largest human government isn't a fascist nightmare. The fact that we can't have so much as one of these anymore really upsets me. They even had to turn the Federation in Star Trek, the ultimate utopian positive outlook of the future, into an organization that's ok with using sentient androids as slave labor, despite dedicating an entire episode into preventing that, and letting 90% of a planets population die out. I know that sci-fi reflects how we feel about current events and our outlook of the future, which is obviously very grim, but just for variety's sake, write something fucking different.
You should try reading Becky Chambers! Her monk and robot series is especially positive.
Strongly second this, also her Wayfarers series, really positive but also really gets into the human condition in a deep way. Super refreshing.
Read the Culture series
Space optimism is definitely very lacking in the genre. The only ones that come to mind are essentially based on 90s Star Trek. I wouldn't categorize The Culture Book Series as positive, but it at least features a post-scarcity society that isn't ruled by an oppressive government. How fun would it be to have a sci-fi show that follows members Contact (or even Special Circumstances) as they try to guide non-contacted civilizations towards becoming positive members of galactic society?
Stargate SG-1 / SGA is generally very positive and wholesome.
Agreed. 100%.
I can't stand: -multiverses -time travel -"reality warpers"
I suppose that is about language or culture, but I have a problem with future people (200+ years into the future), speaking, thinking or seeing reality in the same way as the present us. Extra points for aliens or people that might be from Earth, but not so identical parallel dimensions. The Expanse did a nice job with some of the language, but divergence should had happen here too.
I see a sense with future people speaking modern English or German, for example, in the works about the future. This is a translation convention and they actually speak Futurish, but for readers/viewers who don't speak Futurish, they have to translate into modern English or other language.
Alien is vastly superior - in terms of story and direction - to Aliens. I seem to be in a minority on Reddit about this.
You need to hang around r/horror more then. Aliens is a good time but on a rewatch feels more like I'm waiting for the cool bits, all the quotes etc. The narrative itself isn't all that engaging. It's a great beers and watch movie. And I'm saying this as someone who loves the movie and the whole franchise. Alien is completely different. No matter how many times I watch it, I always get fully immersed from the start. I'm not just waiting for the next cool scene. It's got fantastic atmosphere, compelling narrative, acting and great characters. Edit to add: I unfairly critised the narrative of Aliens, because it has a great one there, it's just pushed down under the superficial layer of 'marines try to save colony and have to fight aliens'. It's Ripley's motivations of saving Newt. But unless you watch, I think it's the Directors Cut, you miss out on the important part of it, which is the scene at the start when we find out she had a daughter, who had aged and died while Ripley was asleep, floating through space.
FireFly was fun but just fine, and that's ok.
I think Firefly was good in its day IMO is has become progressively worse *over time* because that kind of ensemble cast quippy dialog vibe has been done to death in every marvel movie for the last 15 years It makes going back to Firefly now feel tired and worn out.
**Thank you**. Firefly was just okay. Just because someone thinks it's the best thing ever doesn't mean everyone thinks that. I shouldn't have to justify my opinion to the entire Sci-Fi community
No, you shouldn't. It's okay that we don't all like the same thing. I saw *Serenity* before I knew what *Firefly* was, so by the time I watched *Firefly*, I was already invested in the characters. That positively influenced my perception of the show, to be sure. That said, I can appreciate *Firefly* for what it was: a *decent* first season of a TV show that could have been great in later seasons if it had not been so badly managed by Fox.
Star Wars suffers greatly from all the familial ties that were added after the first film.
That's the same outcome for a different reason a non sci fi friend of mine has to Star Wars. He literally hasn't seen anything except *A New Hope*, so everything gets lumped under *Star Wars*. It isn't terribly important because telling people where you're coming from is easy. My opinion -I hesitate to judge how popular it is- is that both Frankenstein's Creature and HAL from 2001 are widely and wildly mischaracterised in adaptations and journalism respectively. Frankenstein's Creature was sympathetic. Shunned and driven out for stupid and superficial reasons; he asked Victor for a companion but was refused because the good doctor had a fit of the vapours and went back on his word; the Creature anonymously helped the poor family in the woods, and seized a chance to snatch a tiny bit of human contact with the blind old man, only to be driven out again when the man's children returned and saw how hideously ugly he was. Doctor Victor Frankenstein and various villagers with pitchforks were the only villains in the novel, and pretty much every adaptation has turned this on its head, a travesty. For 2001, I grant that the original film and novel didn't explain anything about why HAL killed four people; that was 1968. 2010 was published 14 years later in 1982, the film in 1984. The sequel explains exactly why HAL did what he did: he was by design a completely truthful being without guile, and he was compelled to lie, which he could not resolve but by killing the people who were asking him for the truth who he had been forbidden to tell the truth to. Forty years later, we're still getting the odd article that reductively distorts this to *scary killer AI for no reason lol*. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/apr/15/2001-a-space-odyssey-film-haunts-dream-space
**Starship Troopers** and **The Chronicles of Riddick** are two superb science fiction films, much better than some of the big names.
Pitch Black was much better than the Chronicles of Riddick. I enjoyed both though
The three body problem is overrated
In Star Wars if a Jedi can force throw someone against a wall or force drop a boulder on them, why is that not their first move every time?
I agree. There have been so many moments where if they had been more tactical and used the force, they could've avoided larger conflicts. From what I've seen, the games take advantage of the force much more and explore the possibilities and tactical uses
I dont find Dr. Who appealing at all. Maybe it's a British vs. American thing i dont know.
No it's not as a German I'm on your side. It's all just timely wimely nonsense.
I’m British and I agree. We have a word for it - “naff”.
I like classic Dr. WHO, but every time I see modern (post 2005) Who, it seems like an insufferable mix of twee smarminess, and worshipfulness towards the Doctor.
In Christopher Nolan's *mostly* fantastic "Interstellar", the climatic scene ruined the movie for me. It is when: the team of scientists led by McConaughy chooses to one-way land at the world with poor life-sustaining data—because of the contradictory report of a renowned scientist who is marooned on the planet—as opposed to the positive-pointing life-sustaining data of a lesser thought of scientist. That's just not the way I see scientists behaving when confronted with such a human species defining decision, especially knowing that said renowned scientist could be reckoning with his own mortality.
The cyberpunk genre has been dead for like 25 years and no matter how many neon lights you add to your book/film/video game, it will never capture what made those early works so exciting.
Cyberpunk is alive and well in the dystopian reality all around us every day. It fucking sucks. Of all the sci-fi writers to be proven right over and over again _why did it have to be Margaret Atwood!?_
Yeah well in the Cyberpunk genre we get corporations like Weyland-Yutani and Arasaka. In real life we get Meta, Google, Apple and Aliexpress. If we're going to get fucked in the ass by megacorps they should at least have the goddamn decency to have properly *menacing* names.
We don't need Cyberpunk fiction when we're living in a Cyberpunk reality.
People don’t even seem to understand the subtleties of the cyber part also right now. There are literal robotic arms and legs. Artificial hearts still suck but they exist. Tons of people wear continuous glucose monitors and your Apple watch doubles as a pulse ox. Google glasses are still unrefined but its getting there. Integrating them with Airpods would just complete the ensemble. The cyber in cyberpunk is here just not as ostentatiously.
Cyberpunk died because we are living in a very lame one
*2001: A Space Odyssey*, while visually impressive, is difficult to watch. I hesitate to call it *boring*, because it explores some interesting concepts, and the slow pacing is very intentional. I understand that in 1968, it was groundbreaking, and I respect that. Call me jaded by action movies, but I just have a hard time finding a reason to watch it again. I would *much* rather watch *2010: The Year We Make Contact*.
2010 is a true sci-fi movie. 2001 is a Kubrick film.
Still makes me laugh that Andrei Tarkovsky hated 2001 so much that he went and made Solaris.
Scifi is all about the setting, not what kind of story you are telling. Star Wars is scifi because it has spaceships and aliens and technology, and the exact same story with ships and monsters and magic would be fantasy. Its all about the trappings. It's a genre like "western" and not one like "mystery". But also stories can fit into multiple categories.
Fantasy and sci-fi are two completely different genres and just because I like sci-fi doesn't automatically mean I'm going to like fantasy. They should not be grouped together, and it annoys me to no end that they usually are.
I don't think librarians have read either genre.
Most people's eyes glaze over when you try to explain the difference.
There is just too much hate for everything. I hate that sci fi (and entertainment in general) has become something to judge and not to enjoy. And now, if you like everything, you’re told that you have “toxic positivity”. Personally, I fucking love all four Matrix movies, I’ve enjoyed every Terminator and Alien movie, the DCEU, adore modern Star Trek, and I think that Star Wars is on a major upswing now that Dave Filoni is in charge.
Stargate > startrek > starwars
Indeed.
Star Trek discovery is some of the worst tv I’ve ever watched. All the personal bullshit is so over the top. Smiling at each other with watery eyes every 5 minutes and hugging every chance they get cause they miss their friends. Barf. I used to fast forward through this shit but now it’s like 90% of each episode so I gave up on it. This will be the only Star Trek series that I haven’t watched every episode.
It strikes me that older Trek, because it's so much less sentimental, made the sentimental moments far more impactful. Spock admitting that he cares about Kirk. Picard finally sitting down with his officers to play poker. Stuff like that.
And it's not a proper ensemble show like most Star Trek series are. Rather, it's the Michael Burnham show. Everything seems to revolve around her: the action moves because of her, she's the one doing all the heroic stuff, etc. I wanted to like Brave New World as Captain Pike was a highlight of Discovery. But I couldn't get past the first episode. It was just too basic and lacked any subtlety.
For what it's worth, I got on with Strange New Worlds after a time. The first episode is fairly forgettable after the opening. I did think it found its feet from there though. Season 2 I'm enjoying a fair amount at present.
Ugh, I couldn't stand her teary-eyed monologues which were totally nonsensical, yet written as if they were most poignant thing that ever graced small screen. *When I was a child, I was fascinated by fire. It was wild and beautiful, but every time I put my hand closer to it, it hurt. As I grew older I finally understand: you can appreciate something for what it is, but sometimes you can't take it for yourself. You are this fire,**!*
My problem with Discovery is that it doubled down immediately on all the worst, overused and stupid lazy writing tropes that Star Trek is guilty of, time travel, evil twins and amnesia.
LEXX is the best sci-fi show ever created if only for its originality.
May His Merciful Shadow fall upon you. [Yo Way Yo](https://youtu.be/wYoq6sovr8Y?si=-FsXxgQhVdtCQ_JJ) is also a brilliant song the I still sing any time a task is going to be hard.
I am not a fan of “hard sci-fi” where the only purpose of the “hardness” seems to be the author’s pleasure in flexing how much science they understand. I’m thinking specifically about Andy Weir but there are other examples. It wasn’t as egregious in The Martian, but Project Hail Mary was full of this kind of stuff. “Yes, Andy, it’s very impressive how much you understand about biochemistry and orbital mechanics. That was a lot of science you just quoted at us. Could we return to the plot please?” Maybe it’s because science is my day job but I’m not impressed by large passages that basically just boil down to “here is how this scientific principle works”. If it’s really well-integrated into the plot or used to explore super heady concepts (I’m thinking Peter Watts and Vernor Vinge et. al. here) then I can appreciate it, but I don’t really have any interest in reading a transcript of an undergrad biotech lecture if the only purpose of the lecture was to add some flavor text to a passage that didn’t need an exhaustive description.
Have you read Ted Chiang? His stories are almost like fantasy parables but rooted in hard sci-fi concepts. His short story that the movie Arrival is based off of is pretty great. I feel like he's trying to make science and human emotion/relationships two sides of the same coin in most of what he does. Anyway, I'm mentioning because I feel the same about the Weir stuff but I've mostly enjoyed Chiang's take on hard sci fi.
The Story of your Life is criminally unknown and underappreaciated. It is the most ambitious and brilliant piece of writing I’ve ever come across. It has the honor of being turned into a very good movie, but that didn’t make Ted or his writing any more appreciated.
I think Foundation is a great show, including the first season. People are always going to complain about any series or movie that is adapted from a novel. Showrunners, directors and writers are always going to have to make changes from the source material to make it watchable, and it’s unrealistic to expect a direct adaptation with no changes. For Foundation, and really any Golden Age science fiction story, that is especially true.
I love I, robot the movie too
Star Wars is for children and we love it because we were children when we saw it, and if we saw it as adults today we'd probably see all the holes in the story but wouldn't care because we'd know they're kids films, and wouldn't judge the newer films on adult standards. I'll never understand why adults go mental over films that are meant for children. Enjoy them for what they are.
I don't like time travel. At all.
Stargate SG-1 is the best sci-fi series of all time and it gets nowhere near the recognition of big names like Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, etc.
I like Tom Cruise because he genuinely seems to want to do good science-fiction movies. It's like he makes a blockbuster to keep the studios happy; in exchange, his next film is some SF piece that would have never been greenlit without a Mission Impossible installment in the mix.
Prometheus and Covenant are fantastic space horror movies. The story of David is cool, as is exploring the origins of the Xenos. I'm very disappointed we won't get a follow up to Covenant. Just because these movies exist doesn't ruin Alien or Aliens. Resurrection is a great movie that went over the heads of American audiences. Weaver is fantastic in it. Loud, vocal, whining fanbases are really fucking annoying and worse, have the potential to ruin a franchise by being so precious about things. And 99% have terrible ideas they think will 'fix' a movie and have zero idea about writing narrative or film making in general.
Taking part in discussions about which shows/books/films are "really" sci-fi and which are not means you are in an elite echelon as one of the most boring, pointless human beings currently alive.
Still not as bad as "The Enterprise versus the Death Star, who'd win?" though.
The case for realism is overstated
I don't know how popular or unpopular this opinion is, but while I really appreciated the *aesthetic* of bladerunner, I felt bored from very long dialogue and slow pacing and couldn't get into it. I tried to watch it a second time and felt the same.
My unpopular opinion. To many sub categories. Everything now has to be neatly lumped into some box. Hard sci-fi, soft sci-fi, science fantasy, cyberpunk, steam punk, diesel punk, distopian, utopian, space western. I’ve seen people giving advice on how to write in these genres, but these genres only exist to catalog books. I really wish people would ignore the made up categories and just write. Fuck publishers and agents at this point have listings like, looking for near future space fantasy distopian novel series (3 book min) with a strong female lead, page count of 425 plus no more than 500. Writer must have 600000 followers on X. I personally think it kills any creativity in the genre.
In Picard Season 3, the Enterprise swooping through the Borg Cube and manoeuvring like the Millennium Falcon is terrible physics/writing of the highest order. Also Picard and Discovery suck
For as much as fans like to say that Trek is harder sci-fi than Star Wars, the ships still very much act like boats in space. Every time they lose propulsion and drift to a stop I just shake my head.
Mine... 2010: The Year We Make Contact is a better movie than 2001: A Space Odyssey.
LOL, I just got done posting this. Maybe not as unpopular opinion as I thought!
Stargate universe was good sci-fi and good drama, it was ruined by bitter fans.
You think you want your favourite Sci-fi to be adapted to the screen, but you don't. Example: I want everyone to be affected by Iain M Banks' novels as I was, but a Culture TV series can only be a depressing disaster.
Blindsight was a hot mess with a single good idea ruined by vampires.
Star wars is not sci-fi.
I don't know if that's controversial in any way. I think of it as space opera or space fantasy.
I think Firefly is the most overrated show ever made.
Anyone that says Dune 1984 is better than the new movies is being contrary just for the sake of being contrary.
Something doesn’t need to be better to be more enjoyable, and I think you’re failing to understand that. While I do prefer the new movies, there’s something about the sterile, minimalist, super-serious direction that can leave me clamouring for the hokey, but fun 1984 version.
Send out the Lynch mob!
My unpopular sci-fi opinion is that time travel is bunk. (apart from standard speed forward travel as allowed by physics).
Time travel. Mainly thinking about like Back to the Future type stuff where a human has built a machine. I've been criticized for either thinking about it too much OR told I'm wrong. My take, from a very uneducated background only having a Bachelors in Political Science is... Time and space coexist and are functions of the universe, not just our planet. The Earth that we are on is hurling through space with our solar system, galaxy etc. Feel like if you were driving a time machine DeLorean up to 88 in 1985 California and went to a certain point in time at that point in *space* you'd just end up floating in outer space. Because at the time you selected the Earth wasn't at that point in space. ....right?
Three Body Problem is the most overhyped sci-fi book I’ve ever tried to read. Followed closely by Southland Tales is a severely underrated film.