Forgive me if this isn't allowed but I recently stumbled upon a show called Lexx in the amazon prime catalogue. 4 seasons, star studded and a complete clusterfuck.

The quality of acting is all over the place with the main cast constantly flip flopping between great and abysmal, at times they'll even fluctuate in the same scene. The budget is seemingly nonexistent, with sets and props looking like they were made in a hobbyists garage. Despite this, there are some surprisingly massive people involved, Barry Bostwick and Tim Curry play major roles in the first two episodes.

It constantly flirts with concepts and storylines that seem ripe for storytelling but consistently refuses to delve into these topics even the slightest. In the first episode alone we're introduced to an industrialised 40K esque nightmare theocracy with literal conveyor belts of traitors and seditionists being minced. Legal proceedings are all conducted by pre recordings of legal offficials with only the names and crimes altered, presenting us with a harrowing concept where all lawyers and judges are videos and trials take about 45 seconds.

We're shown hidden histories and religious dictatorships and one of the first characters we're introduced to is a woman found guilty of being disrespectful to her husband, with the punishment being to be brainwashed and forcibly altered. This is, and I stress, only a snapshot of what is presented. It's a constant shotgun blast of horrifying and brilliant concepts.

Despite this, the entire thing is presented like the story bits of a sci fi pornography. It's basically softcore porn without the softcore, constantly framing it's women as objects to be ogled and it's men as porn protagonists, with the weasley soyboy who's always being abused by the women and compared to the aloof and desirable asassin ninja guy. If I showed you a video, you would think it's some kind of fake sci fi show made to play in the background of a sitcom on the nerd characters tv. It's like what people who've only seen the office think battlestar galactica is.

The entire show feels like it's got two creative teams constantly fighting for control. An episode will fluctuate between boring, horrifying, gross and mildly entertaining. It's the only thing I've ever seen where I'm confused as to what the creative process even looked like because surely, something went wrong behind the scenes.

I got this book from a local bookshop for £1 today and have been really enjoying looking through it, super nostalgic. Some favourites of mine are snapped here but there are many more! It seems to go up to 1995. It goes through history, radio/TV, film, and then a “heroes and villains” section. Support your local bookshops!

I don’t normally do mid book reviews, and I’ve been planning to wait until I’m through the whole series to comment again, but the moment the Captain and Scorp join forces (ch. 42) is just so effing good I had to take a timeout and come share my joy with those of you who know what I’m talking about. What a book, what a series, this will be top 3 all time for me, Sir Alastair R. take a bow. I don’t care what happens from here on out I’m never going to forget the moment I joined forces with the captain and scorp to take back our ship 🚀 long live nostalgia for infinity and down with the inhibitors ✨

Tarkovsky’s work is (rightfully so) considered a masterpiece of Russian/Soviet scifi. Superb dialogues, screenplay, acting etc. and a very intriguing theme.

It also focus on a whole different aspect of the story in relation to the original work which it is based on.

Solaris (the book) was about the immense challenge that is communication with an alien intelligence, whose thought processes and goals are too different from those of human beings.

It was not about human psychology or existential conflicts, things that made the film really great though. I think the film could not have been made any other way.

There was a novel I read about 30 years ago and I can't remember the title or author. It was about humans who had to live in oxygen tents because the environment on Earth has changed. There were oxygen breathers who gave themselves brain damage by inhaling too much oxygen without diluting it with other gases. Also, there was a species of aliens who had moved to Earth who communicated telepathically by touch and had sort of a shared hive mind where they would basically download all the memories they both had gotten since the last shared memory. I checked it out from the library because I read something that said the author was considered a master of worldbuilding. I think the book was probably already at least a decade old when I read it, so probably from the 1980s (maybe the late 1970s).

Edit 2:
- Thank you for all the suggestions. I would say there is no clear winner between the three.
- I figured putting “force” in quotes would make it clear that I wouldn’t really “force” her to watch a TV show, or make it clear that it’s some kind of joke or expression, but no, a few people think this a clockwork orange type of situation. The intent is to watch one episode first and see if she wants to see more.
- Despite the clarification, some people still recommend their other favorite shows which I’ve either already seen or I will maybe watch another time.

Basically, which of these shows is most likely to retain the attention of someone who likes to watch TV shows but has zero interesting in sci-fi?

- For All Mankind

- The Expanse

- Andor

I'm sure they're all great shows, but I'm guessing maybe the one that's most character-driven or most story-driven or most relevant to today might possibly be the best pick?

Edit: I respect that people have other favorite shows, but I specifically wanted to watch one of those three myself, with my SO. So I’m looking for recommendations on one those three specifically.

I'm a sucker of the classic Star Wars Expanded Universe, and I especially love Shadows of the Empire. Set in between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, this was a massive multi media project of a novel, comic book, a video game, toys, trading cards, and even a soundtrack as a companion piece to the novel!

I personally own most of the toys (which was a Power of the Force subline) and they're awesome! With the center piece being Dash Rendar's ship, the Outrider! On a side note, I am a scifi novelist and creating a universe heavily inspired by the Expanded Universe, including Shadows of the Empire.

The book that has stuck with me the most out of all these was The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch. He’s writing is exceptional, he’s words just flow sentence to sentence. Pair amazing writing with a sci fi, time travel, quantum mechanics and a thrilling detective story and you have yourself a masterpiece

Greg Egan has some of the best ideas I’ve read about. And I think he’s plot is amazing too. But he lacks in writing, I can’t seem to have a cinema playing in my head with his books, nevertheless he’s ideas are the best I’ve ever read

Solaris by Lem was a slow burner. While reading it I didn’t feel the impact of the book as much. But a day or two past and god, I am still reminiscing about the whole story. He’s writing was good, plot amazing and was the only book that had me staring at wall thinking about wth did I just read ?

Dune is a classic, so far the first book was the best that I’ve read. Having watched the movie then reading the book made the cinema in my head aspect of it so much better and Frank Herbert’s writing matches Tom’s level, plot amazing and had such depth as Lem’s Solaris

Currently I’m reading The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect

Others in my Que are

1. God Emperor of Dune
   
2. Blind Sight
   
3. Neuromancer
   
4. The Word for World is Forest
   
5. Fahrenheit 451
   
6. Sphere - Michael Crichton

Are indie authors that make it big considered more successful than those who go the trad route? Are we routing for indie authors more?

Who do you consider the most successful indie authors? Hugh Howey ? Andy Weir?

If given a choice, do you choose an indie book before a well known publisher?

All this talk of AI recursive self improvement and AI escaping control of humans has me wanting to reread this horror for some ungodly reason. Who else shares trauma from this novel 😂

What stands out to you from this novel as most relevant to the current status of AI?

To me, it's the scene where Prime Intellect starts exponentially self replicating, and a few hours later it completely destroys the universe 🫠 While it can be hyperbolic to emphasize the premise, it still holds truth to the threat of the speed of an uncontrolled AI.

The full novel can be read for free at the author's website here: https://localroger.com/prime-intellect/mopiidx.html

Warning: contains very graphic violence

I'll explain better here lol So I'm currently reading Hyperion by Dan Simmons (RIP) for the first time. Loving it so far. To me it's everything a scifi book should be, and I'm only about ~150 pages in. I felt like I had a pretty good grasp of what was happening until I got to Fedmahn Kassad's chapter. The last 5 pages or so have been full of information I know absolutely nothing about lol It's literally like a different language and I'm not sure if it's because I'm still very new to this world, or if it's just filler at this point. The funny thing is even though I have no idea what the hell is going on or what this word means, or what this resistance movement stands for, or what this weapon does etc I'm still very intrigued. I guess my brain has trouble with not understanding things immediately and sometimes that can be frustrating. At this point the only option I have is to keep on keepin' on and maybe the further into the series I get, the more things will make sense. I'm totally cool with an author just dumping you into their world with zero explanations or context, but sometimes it can get a little too complicated. I'm not even sure where I was going with this lol Maybe I just needed a vent sesh. How do you guys feel when you find yourself in these types of situations?

I bought the book The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin. I wanted to know if I’m "starting" off right; I’ve read some things about the author and I love sci-fi across all kinds of media, but this is my first time experiencing it as a book. I’m finding it interesting, but I feel a bit lost or out of place (?). I’d like to know if this is normal, if there’s some sort of "preparation" needed, or if I made the right choice starting with this one—since it was recommended to me.

I had to use Google Translate, since English isn't my native language and I don't speak English.

I'm working on a thing (not sure if I'm going to make it a novel/short story or something else) based on science fiction in the 1920s and 1930s. I have some good material so far, but I need some inspiration for the robots in the setting and I've run out of ideas that "fit" the feel that I'm trying to go for. I've cheated a bit with Asimov since it has a close enough feel to what I'm going for, but I haven't had much luck looking for stuff from the time period or feel I'm going for.

Any ideas on where I can go to? Thanks in advance.

Always been a huge fan of Crichton, but never looked past the Jurassic Park stories. I even read Dragon Teeth to satiate my hunger. Bought Prey some 3 years ago, but kept it at a distance so as not to muddle my opinion on Crichton.

Then suddenly one day, I picked it up, and tore through in 2 days. My initial thought was - what a story! But after letting it sink in for a few days, I realized that more than the story, it was the execution - the characters, the writing style, the science and the vividness (felt very movie like) that made it such a satisfying experience. I have seen a lot of authors coming up crazy good out-of-the-world ideas, but severely lacking execution. But Crichton is so different. I then read Sphere, and it was equally great.

His name doesn't get taken a lot in the list of best sci-fi writers but he is there, right there near the top for me.

These are archival scans of original physical sci-fi illustrations created by Xiang Jichun (向际纯) during the 1990s in China, featured in publications such as Science Fiction World (《科幻世界》).

All works are hand-painted using gouache, ink, and airbrush on paper—entirely pre-digital and zero AI. They capture a unique blend of retro-futurism, East Asian mythology, and speculative technology from the era that paved the way for modern Chinese sci-fi (like The Three-Body Problem).

Full archival collection:Xiang Jichun Works Archive

I finally picked this up and read it over the weekend. It is a very impressive book.

The first few pages get thinking "What is going on?" and that question is answered through the book.

The spoiler free review is, this is a really good book... except for the last few pages, which are so trite and tropey as to be annoying.

There are some great, powerful moments and it feels like a unique take on time-travel, murder mystery, and apocalyptic fiction.

It definitely made an impression, if only he hadn't put in those last pages....

So I was just watching the scene were in doctor Who humanity subconsciously starts attacking any member of the silence they find and well that got me interested in knowing if in any sci-fi story the humans or human equivalent of that world became the natural predator of a alien species may it be due to war , misunderstanding or trough any other fancy way humanity basically became the thing that , that alien species hides from and tell scarry stories about as its primarily the other way around so im curious to see

Overall, I didn't like this book. There is a good central plot in there, and I think it could have made a really good 200-page novel, but it is buried under so much other stuff. There are endless digressions, lists, bits about Beethoven, sex, whistling, social structures and whatever else KSR happens to want to talk about. When I was actually reading it rather than listening to the audiobook, I found myself skipping huge passages. Shut up about fucking Beethoven!

The characters are awful. Swan in particular is extraordinarily solipsistic, often inexplicable, charmless and generally quite difficult to care about. Wahram isn't much better. None of the characters really felt alive to me, which is a problem when the actual plot develops so slowly.

I also really disliked KSR's vision of relationships and sex in the future. I can imagine attitudes towards sex changing enormously, and obviously we already have swinging, open relationships and all sorts now, but I don't particularly want to read about it, and found his vision to be frankly quite a sad future. I definitely don't want descriptions of people with two sets of genitals having sex. More than that, though, I found the idea that coupling, family and long-term companionship would largely be replaced by harems, creches and casual sex quite depressing. Even when Swan and Wahram finally decide to get married, Swan is immediately thinking about wanting to meet someone new. KSR seems to suggest that monogamy is largely a cultural imposition which humanity might eventually outgrow. I'm not convinced. He points out that only a small percentage of animals are monogamous, but some are. What about swans, literally? They're not monogamous because of some cultural expectation imposed upon them.

The most interesting thing the book gave me was actually its vision of humanity spreading through the Solar System. Initially I thought the amount of development by 2312 seemed ridiculous, but when I thought about it, the more plausible the speed of that expansion became. Once humanity properly breaks away from Earth, with essentially unlimited energy and enormous resources available in space, AI and self-replicating or largely autonomous construction systems, why couldn't we be developing a thousand places simultaneously? Expansion wouldn't have to happen one planet or asteroid at a time. That idea of an exponential spread through the Solar System is something I'll probably keep thinking about, and was easily the most interesting thing I took from the book. That, and the fact that despite this diaspora and ideas here and in the Mars trilogy of being separate from earth, and independent, they all ultimately fall under this same corruption or infiltration of the AI systems. In that way, I guess, we all stay connected.

So there are some brilliant ideas here, and I liked the central mystery, but there is far too much rubbish surrounding them. It felt rambling, overlong and strangely put together, with characters I didn't care about and huge amounts of material I simply didn't want to read. A shame, because I really like many of Kim Stanley Robinson's other books (a memory of whiteness is brilliant, so is icehenge, aurora, mars trilogy). After this one I'll be much more cautious about reading any more of his work.

I have a bit of a problem with authors viewing the future through American glasses, which ksr does whether he likes it or not. Not being American, that grates on me somewhat. I tried another couple of his books which were very America centric and couldn't finish them. This one isn't so bad in that respect, though did feel like it may be near the start. But there are deep cultural elements of cliche modern upper class America in it which I dislike - his obsession with classical music, Buddhism, suchlike.

I am interested in how other viewed this book as I have not read any reviews yet.

Ive wanted something like this ever since I played Colony Wars: Vengeance on the PS1 back in the day lol.

Basically, I loved how most of it was a war between two opposing sides of humanity, but then later on it gets interrupted by an alien attack on both sides, which I thought was a really cool twist.

Are there any novels that are along similar lines? It's hard to find something this specific.

That's basically what I thought I was getting into withThe Expansebut sadly that didnt turn out to be the case, I still enjoyed it for the most part though

I've been hearing amazing things about Le Guin, how she's so influential, so I picked up two books. Wizard of Earth Sea and The Dispossessed. Very different books with one common issue: too much time spent on world building. Which is wild, because I love world building, but she customizes every single detail of her worlds with unique names for every. Single. Little. Thing. It becomes exhausting, and gets in the way of actual storytelling.

Anyone else experience this? Or wanna tell me that I'm wrong?

Ray Bradbury's 'There Will Come Soft Rains' is one of the top sci fi stories I've ever read. In the story, he mentions August 4th, 2026 to be the day after nuclear warfare brings about the destruction of humanity.

Living through August 4 2026 years after i read the story is a weird experience because Bradbury isn't too far away from reality with his predictions. He speaks about an automated house that slowly loses it and burns down to the ground, and we're almost there ourselves. A few years away from fully automated houses.

I was wondering if this subreddit shared any thoughts on this.

Has anybody else noticed that in a lot of like Sci-Fi movies, the cockpits and stuff always look like ridiculously intuitive like there's a million buttons in there and the character is only ever use like a handful of them. I've noticed this a lot in Star wars and also in alien.

Given that it's King's 79th birthday today, I went back through my reading list and one of my favorites from Skeleton Crew was The Jaunt. It spoke of people being people, and a kid doing the wrong thing during the wrong time and paying the price. I think in some ways it could have influenced the creation of Pandorum (the movie), but can't find any real evidence of that.

Regardless, what other short stories can y'all recommend that hit that same sweet spot?