What’s a piece of SF that you just couldn’t get into, even though you feel like you should?
I tried to watch Babylon 5, for instance, and just couldn’t connect to it. I know it’s popular and people love it, but it never hooked me.
Another is The Three Body Problem. I tried reading it after a friend’s glowing recommendation, but I couldn’t get past the first chapter. I even tried reading it in another language in case it was the translation I couldn’t connect with, but the same thing happened.
Both are things I feel like I should like, but just don’t.
Something about the Stargate franchise has simply never appealed to me. I saw the original movie as a kid and enjoyed it, with a distinct memory of the “Rainbow Road” travel effect feeling pretty intense because I was sitting closer to the screen than usual. It was fun, if a bit slight.
I’ve seen a bits and pieces of the shows here and there, and nothing about them is drawing me in. I might like them, but I just have zero desire to dive in. Seems like low-budget camp with a learning curve.
Honorable mention to The Orville, which I do like quite a bit, but I find the unadulterated love for it baffling; it’s a deeply flawed show that makes up for a lot with sheer heart and some decent scripts from the Star Trek slush pile.
I can’t seem get into Star Trek. I’ve seen several variations of movies and shows, but it’s just not for me
The original series is just god awful and I basically love everything else up until to the new movies. (Any trekies in the house wanna fight about Enterprise being the best trek series?)
Is Enterprise the best Star Trek series? No way.
Is Enterprise s4 arguably the best individual Star Trek season? Very possible.
Enterprise is a mixed bag for me. I very much disliked the temporal cold war and the season long Xindi war.
But, they had some of the best mirror universe eps. in all of trek and I think, a great cast.
My problem with the earlier seasons is that the human characters all behave like irrational over-emotional caricatures of humans, as if they were written by Vulcan logic absolutists expressly for the purposes of anti-human propaganda. A moderately intelligent human today wouldn’t behave the way they sometimes do, yet we’re to believe that the best and brightest of humanity in the 22nd century would.
By season 4 they had ironed out the kinks and finally told some great stories, but by that point too many people had switched off.
Foundation. I read I, Robot and loved it, but I couldn’t get into Foundation.
Foundation is probably the best harder scifi going right now, just the idea of the clone kings dawn dusk and day is worth it let alone the prime radiant and foundation itself.
Raised by wolves is a good one in a similar style, but it got cancelled before it was able to answer the bigger questions of the world building which is frustrating
Harder sci-fi? It leans hard on religion and philosophy and royal court intrigue.
I was coming to post Foundation for all those reasons. I wish there were more choices for people who want “hard” sci-fi.
The last decent one I came across was “Braking Day” by Adam Oyebanji.
Does anyone have recs for hard sci-fi that doesn’t lean on “magic”?
there was a conversation on here about Greg Egan the other day.
thats what i call hard scifi.
i used to read that at lot and was glad to be reminded to look it up again.
http://www.gregegan.net/
permutation city, all the short stories, diaspora, i started on quarantine, still think that’s a cool idea, even if it is improbable (thats a joke, it’s not a spoiler until you observe the story).i think i gave up around teranesia which might’ve started to go over my head.
but reading this group has inspred me to go back and revisit.damn ive got to start buying Interzone again.
edit >>>> link to actual thread: https://lemmy.world/post/1892921
maybe it was a different group . . .
Dhalgen. I know some people absolutely love this book but to me it was just a directionless ramble from one random sci-fi plot to the next with little-to-no resolution to any of them.
And come on one-shoe-guy: When somebody offers you a new pair of shoes, put the damn things on instead of saying you’re good and continuing to hobble around half shod / half barefoot.
Same here. I feel the same way about a lot of New Wave SF from that era. I like J.G. Ballard because he’s such a strong writer that he can pull off that sort of plotless “experimental” stuff, but the rest of them don’t do it for me. Why would I want to read an SF writer trying to write like William S. Burroughs when I can just read William S. Burroughs?
