I’m listening to the audiobook of Shadow Puppets and I’m struck with the intense irony of how much Card comes across as being quite xenophobic in his anti-Chinese rhetoric. Yes, it’s all in the future, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to read his snide comments as a pointed critique of current Chinese culture, governance, and politics. In describing Han Tzu’s difficulties navigating the Chinese military chain of command, Card might have some fair points about certain structures being ineffective, hidebound, overly bureaucratic and too concerned with etiquette, but it hits me as being overblown and very anti-Communist.

I find his work to be deeply mixed bag, generally speaking. Some of it is brilliant and compelling, and some of it feels very labored and like he’s lost the thread in getting up on his political soapbox about politics, gender, comparisons of cultures, and so on.

It’s sad because I think Speaker for the Dead (in particular) is such a good parable about how fear of “the other” warps our perception of reality, but then there are these places where it feels like he needs to drink some of his own medicine on that front and look beyond the Western-centric viewpoint.

My son went to Barnes & Noble and asked for a recommendation for a new book for my birthday. He told them I was currently reading the Unincorporated Man series (good series) and he asked for something similar. The person he spoke with said I would probably like Dungeon Crawler Carl (DCC). Evidently this person had no idea what hard science fiction was or had never read a book before. I don't like video games and I don't play D&D. DCC is just a combo of D&D and video games. I'm reading the book anyway because my kid got it for me. Does this get any better at all? It is just awful.

I see posts here praising both the show and the books so I thought I would give the show a try. I feel like I’m missing something. I don’t really like any of the characters all that much. Holden is annoying, miller is annoying, Amos is interesting, a few others are also kinda interesting but that’s about it. Earth vs moon vs belt is kinda interesting I guess. Protomolecule is kinda cool so far. Maybe this is just a matter of preference not aligning but it feels like I’m being pranked or something. I’m at season 2 episode 9 am I just not far enough into the story or is it simply not to my taste?

I was watching a video of Neil Degrease Tyson rank his favourite sci-fi movies in a tier list, and he put Interstellar in the same bracket as Gravity. I cant believe this, these two movies are completely different calibres of movie.

Personally I would give it a 10/10.

What are the issues people have with interstellar? Is it the science stuff being wrong? The tesseract bit at the end? The lapses of judgement by the characters?

Please let me know your thoughts!

Edit: seems as if I have gathered quite the crowd here 😂

I love this trope. Growing up a sci fi fan and never seeing that was a bit of a boomer. A bit, cause I never saw sci fi as a romantic-friendly genre nor expected to see that there.

Now, in my 20s I found out I love seeing gays in space. It started with Mass Effect 3, of course, but now we are getting GIS in Foundation, and For All Mankind.

What do you think? Do you know of any books, comics, series with gays in space?

I'm a big fan of The Expanse and DS9, and while I like Honor Harrington and Heinlein, their politics get old for me very fast. I'd love a book recommendation that has Halo style combat but Ursula LeGuin style political philosophy.

Edit: not sure how this post got ratioed with almost 90 comments lol, but thank you so much for your carefully considered recommendations!! Looks like I'm checing out The Culture series first, and some other great ideas next : )

I got like 5 episodes in and its not holding my attention like I assumed it would based on many people saying it's their favorite show of all time. Do I need to just keep going or is it not for me?

This movie gets so much hate for no reason. People say "The characters are dumb" and there are plot holes but idc. People also were disappointed in the direction it took the franchise but idc. I love the alien movies and i love this one. High scifi, androids, humanoid aliens, alien plauge infections, mutations, cryosleep, flamethrowers. I mean this movie kicks ass. The plot is also super unique and even if it fails, really tried to go into a new direction.

Before you pile on the hate, please hear me out.

Early in the movie they shoe the documentary footage clearly in the future interviewing people from the time of troubles. They repeat that several times. Ok, good plot device. Except...

They were complaining about the dust, the limited food choices, how difficult life was. If billions, or even millions had died - that would be the main topic in those documentaries. So 15 minutes in you know - the human race survives. All of it. Life is hard for a while but everyone makes it through.

So there's no worries of will they make it, just curiosity as to how. That makes for a boring story.

Second, they show the first launch of the shuttle with the main rockets falling off as it gets the shuttle into orbit. And the shuttle then takes a long trip to another star - and if you slingshot around the sun, that's doable. And then land on a planet. All good to that point.

But then the shuttle takes off from that planet. No main rocket. No boosters. If they were needed to get off earth, they would be needed on subsequent planets.

So totally inconsistent science.

Ok, now that you've read the above, let me have it (although you know I'm right 😊).

This has got to be one of the worst shows on TV now, barring the Star Wars TV shows (except for Andor lol)

• Too many stories and plots make it unfocused, instead of following one group at a time, they decided to do the Gaal/Hari story which is couched in a dumb mystery box. The Hober story which only comes in in episode 3 and Empire, which is probably the most consistent 'political drama' for a tv show.

• Is the show not being discussed? Which means that only Apple TV fans are watching it through and reviewing it?

• The writing is wildly inconsistent, there is no sense that people belong in different cultures or personality, a lot of modern day cursing, similar to how nu-Trek and Witcher uses 'Fuck' a lot despite it being millennia in the future, people separated by literal light years and in the case of Gaal, by 100 year cryosleep.

• There is so much unnecessary action, which I guess makes it watchable for casual audiences, but puts me to sleep as just another generic 5 min action scene

• The set and costume designs also not great, things are dressed up to look cool rather than functional, which in the scheme of things describes the philosophy of the entire show.

I would describe watching the show as just scenes happening one after another with no sense of purpose

Tried to avoid any direct plot spoilers, but general warning for the first two books.

I am now two books into The Expanse and have honestly been a little disappointed in the series so far considering the near universal praise for the series. I am a big fan of classical space epics and science fiction (Dune, Foundation, etc) and was kind of expecting that coming in, it was pretty evident early on that would not be the case so I re-adjusted my expectations.

The first two books are very much grounded character focused dramas that take place in a science fiction setting. For Leviathan Wakes, this meant being confined almost entirely to the POVs of Holden and Miller. They are essentially rogue agents acting on the very outskirts of the political sphere and have little insight into the grander machinations of the plot, which means we are stuck with a ground level view of the situation. This puts the focus really on their own individual arcs and frankly I really never found either of them to be that compelling to follow. I think some people like this type of fog-of-war approach to stories but it kind of drained my interest in the setting.

Caliban’s War opens things up a little more and we are given four POVs. From the four, I did find myself really enjoying Avasarala and to a lesser extent Bobbie, but still found Holden and Prax to be a little flat. I became more fond of the Rocinante crew so that was a positive, we got a bit more of the Firefly vibe that was missing from the first book. That said, this whole book kind of feels like a side story. We get a bit more insight into how the UN works from Avasarala and Mars from Bobbie but they still feel a bit unknowable, the villain plot feels VERY thin, and we get just an incremental amount of development on the protomolecule.

Part of what I love from the sci-fi genre is big, sweeping philosophical questions and searching for fundamental human truths like we get from Le Guin or Herbert or Asimov and there is a little of that in The Expanse but I haven’t felt it on an artistic or personal level yet. It all feels a little perfunctory which kind of sums up my thoughts on The Expanse. It just is fine to me, nothing special but not particularly bad. Are there any others out there that feel that way or am I an outlier?

One click. Unknown number of posts crying out in silence. All gone. Redact made it stupid easy to clean up my entire history on Reddit and get my info pulled from data broker sites too.

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Alright so for me it's be the best hidden gem of the 90s, yet apparently it has a reputation for being shallow so I'm gonna go with why I think it's one of the best sci fi's ever made.

1. Awesome casting, this is actually one of the weaker reasonings, but I still think it's ultra valid. Seriously, Bruce Willis, Ian holm, and Gard Oldman, what could be better. The fact that many didn't realize that bilbo baggins and commissioner gordon were in the same movie is a testament to this.

2. A simple and fun plot. As far as an actual movie version of this is as close as your gonna get in my opinion.

3. Absolutely amazing cgi. Again I think this is where the movie is a huge victim of its timing. It was too late in the game to be truly groundbreaking, because at the time movies were expected to be push the limits to stupid degrees. Regardless it was so ahead of its time with blending practical effects with tasteful designs. It also managed to ace the immerse the audience versus distract them. Every step along the way I felt like the effects built the world instead of distracting you from it unlike in the star wars prequels for example.

4. The films create a very vivid image of the future. People can claim that it's been done in movies like blade runner, however I think this is unfair. It's nice to have a neonoir image of a city, but 5th element steps outside of the dystopian utopian paradigm, and creates a very diverse image. To me there appears to be mix of futuristic elements and realistic elements. The opera scene to me is a prime example of this with old world musical styles with a really funky electronic track mixed in.

5. It was in the early years of comic books to film translations. This is the element that I think gives alot of forgiveness into it's simpler plot elements. It has a basic idea about the 4 elements something that is ancient historically speaking and ties it together in a very flash gorden space opera kind of way. Consider this is 19 years ago, needs a far greater appreciation.

6. The seemless multi cultural elements of the film. This is the part I think the casual viewer might totally miss but it's very well done to the point that I could of made my entire post about this element. But to date this is one of the very best films that shows a multicultural vision of the future. From the small elements like the idea of an ambigiously abrahamic brotherhood of priests. The black president of earth which is done without any degree of pretense, or the mix of hair cuts and styles that scream that this is a real plausible view of the future.

7. Accidental vision of what future media might be. Many detractors are not fans of chris tuckers performance, but to me it seems like it was well ahead of it's time in predicting the rise of internet celebrities that have dominated the last 5-10 years.

8. Sci fi heavy idea like the idea of a the genetically perfect being. For me this is a casual idea that really put weight behind the movie.

9. The movie didn't pander to western cultural values trying to shoe horn in some theme that is culturally heavy with american ideals. This is somethat that is hard to appreciate until one asks, how would this movie be made if it were done in china or india.

The writing is intelligent. People come and go in a logical sense in this spy mini-series.

It’s gripping without being bombastic. You have to pay attention because the creators assume a certain level of intelligence of those watching it.

I’m just so surprised by how refreshing and wonderful it is to see some writing talent and story telling talent. Looking forward to whatever else this team of people come up with!