All the stories on the FP are about labor relations and corporate shenanigans. So anyway, do you like Star Trek or Star Wars better? Anybody still ike to read old school sci fi, for example I really love Poul Anderson’s Polesotechnic League stories - the swashbuckling adventures of intersteller trador Nicholas van Rijn and his Solar Spice and Liquors company, David Falkayne, et al. Good old basic space opera.
I just started reading the dune series, after watching the movies, and I’m having a great time with it! Somehow the books do a better job of detailing the conversations between all the different characters, and setting the stage for movie 2.
seveneves was a banger, if you haven’t read it just go in hot.
I’ve tried star wars. Just didn’t like it like I do star trek
Love TNG and DS9, currently reading the Ringworld series
Not a fan of either but I did enjoy watching Lost in space recently. Also enjoyed reading Neuromancer
New age sci-fi, but you have GOT to read the Murder Bot books. They are absolutely incredible. They’ve also won Nebula and Hugo awards.
Also: children of time series, as well as the bobiverse series
I haven’t read Children of Ruin yet, but Children of Time was awesome.
Ruin is awesome. The story is like going on an adventure.
People are split on Memory, but I like it. It’s just written differently
Is social media not technology? If you don’t want to see it, there are text filters.
By “social media” you must mean “echo chamber”. Criticism is completely appropriate.
By “social media” you must mean “echo chamber”.
Why…would you ever think that? Is everyone here echoing your sentiment?
Criticism is completely appropriate.
I wasn’t saying it was inappropriate, just inaccurate.
I feel like in a post-global pandemic world, where we have AIs that can pass the Turing test, VR world’s where we can do global virtual raves, and if one cobbles enough cutting edge tech together one can say “earl Grey, hot” and a 3d printer can print up a model of a tea cup… I think scifi writers have to come up with what is NEXT.
No more “Oh this logical robot which can either be a metaphor for autism or enslaved people want to be free and human”. Give us projections on our current technology and social evolution. Shows set in the year 2200 shouldn’t just be dealing with the emergence of AI and still have only straight nuclear families.
True, most sci fi about the future just overlays fancy gadgets on top of present-day culture, and every robot is Pinocchio and wants to be a real boy. But if an author tried hard to speculate about future life it would probably be too unfamiliar and unrelatable to sell a lot of books - and I don’t really blame them for not wanting to put readers in a too-unfamiliar world, they’re trying to entertain not write white papers. Also consider the reaction to a writer who made it okay for an robot to get fulfillment out of just functioning perfectly. OMG no, we can’t give that toxic idea any breathing space. Every entity must long for Freedom like an angst-ridden teenager or the writer will be accused of shilling for the system.
Star Trek for the technology and exploration (both of space and the human condition). Star Wars because WOW that dude just moved that shit with his FREAKIN’ MIND!
Think about the technology we have now - a lot of it was inspired by Star Trek technology. Communicators -> smartphones/watches, shuttle -> Rovers, non invasive medical diagnosis, large screens, video calls. And that’s just from TOS. And I’m pretty sure people are still working on creating Transporters.
Poul Anderson mentioned 🗣️ 🗣️🗣️
He and H.Beam Piper are my favorite SF writers, be sure to check Three Hearts and Three Lions, the book where the hero solves fantasy problems with Science™.
I’ve never heard of HBP, will take a look.
The Little Fuzzy books are some of my favorites.
He’s fun reading, though being a woman I also find his stuff kinda sexist. It’s basically cowboys in space.
I mostly read sci-fi from the late Golden Age and the New Wave, so I have a lot of practice in glossing over questionable bits!
Cowboys in space sounds fun.
DS9 > TNG > BSG
I’d put ‘The Expanse’ at the head of the line
The Expanse is great
Back in the days of Star trek the next generation, Voyager and Deep Space 9, I Would say Star Wars is not really Science Fiction but Science Fantasy.
But unfortunately that’s become true for Star Trek too.As Science Fiction I clearly prefer old school Star Trek, but as Science Fantasy Star Wars does it way better IMO.
I hadn’t heard about Poul Anderson’s Polesotechnic League stories before, they look very interesting, I’ll bookmark that for when I feel like some old school SciFi. 👍 😀
To be fair, Star Trek always had its fantasy element as well. They dressed it up with Treknobabble a lot, but many of the episodes had fundamentally fantasy elements as well. Like, remember the time Kirk gets beamed down to a planet where the inhabitants use literal, actual magic and it turns out the Salem witches were actual witches?
You are absolutely correct, I’d also argue Q is more fantasy than SciFi, it’s probably more correct to say Star Trek was MOSTLY SciFi, while Star Wars had more fantasy elements as a fundamental part of the Universe that are the basis for the stories.
Personally I consider time travel as absolutely a fantasy element, I see no reason to believe the past and future exist at the same “time” as the present. Which makes time travel basically nonsense.
All time travel speculation quickly ends out in either infinities or paradoxes. Only a very careful author, who set up strict limitations prevent that.
To be honest I’m extremely tired of all the time travel babble Star Trek has turned into, where time travel is a key element of the stories.
‘War Of The Wing-Men’ is a good one to start with.
Thanks. I just found the entire series, 😋 but with some odd numbering?:
Anderson, Poul - Polesotechnic League - 01 - The Trouble Twisters
Anderson, Poul - Polesotechnic League - 02 - War Of The Wing-Men
Anderson, Poul - Polesotechnic League - 03 - Trader To The Stars
Anderson, Poul - Polesotechnic League - 04 - Satan’s World
Anderson, Poul - Polesotechnic League - 05 - Mirkheim
Anderson, Poul - Polesotechnic League - 06 - The Earth Book Of Stormgate
Anderson, Poul - Polesotechnic League - People in the WindCompletely different numbering than for instance the recommended here?
https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/polesotechnic-league/
Which would you recommend?
By publication date or chronological story line?I always try to go by publication.
Someone put it this way [they were talking specifically about the Conan stories]. If you meet someone and get to chatting you don’t tell your story in chronological order. Maybe the first story you tell is about what happened at work, or your most recent vacation. After you’ve known them a while you talk about grade school.
That’s my opinion.
Thanks. 😀
Everything I needed to learn about SciFi I learned from watching Prisoners Of Gravity on TVO. The host Rick Green was always interesting to listen to. I learned there was far more scifi than just TrekWars
What boggles my mind is that there have been about fifty movies based on Philip K. Dick and zero based on Poul Anderson.
Anderson has galactic empires, roguish heroes, dozens of alien species, strong females, etc etc.
I think that it because Dick could write short stories that could get made into movies. A lot more of the sprawling book series are only done justice with multi movie series or TV series.
Poul did a throwaway story that I’d love to see expanded into a series.
A group of time travelers from 4,000 AD travel back to Renaissance Italy. They run into an evil baron and his henchmen, including one very learned monk. A little torture and the Italians have their own time machine. They set up a base in 10,000 BC and raid across time. They know that the Time Patrol can only use things in the historical record, so as long as they keep a low profile they’ll never get caught.
PKD is special somehow. He’s the one author where, I think, the movies are better than the books pretty consistently. Maybe it’s luck or my flawed opinion.
I think Dick was writing to be read in a particular time and place. Take Dashiell Hammett. ‘Red Harvest’ works a century later. there are some references that are dated [wearing a red tie] but overall you can give the novel to a modern person without a great deal of explanation needed. ‘The Thin Man’ requires a ton of annotation to be understood.
imho.
Agreed. Partly because the movies have actual endings…
I have just read one Poul Anderson (when I was a teenager) and the most important thing I remember was people fucking each other all the time.
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
iirc, it was in "War Of The Wing Men’ where a princess has been traveling through the galaxy looking for a human male to sire her child. She ends up picking a fat, boorish space trader over the hero-type because the trader actually knows how to get things done.
It was “The Avatar” in a German translation. I read it twice or so at that time - and it’s many years since, so I have only a dim recollection of all the details, but a lot of politics, and (if I don’t mix it up now) questionable physics regarding light speed and mass, a lot of sex and some weird gaelic inspired poetry.
Maybe I’ll find a copy one day again, to have a new look with my now old eyes and different woldview.
From what I’ve seen on goodreads or so I had a bit of misfortune as The Avatar isn’t known as his best work. But beggars can’t be choosers, at that time I got my sci fi fix by browsing the one bookstand with scifi in the central station’s bookstore next to my bus stop home after school… they threw me out once or twice “This is for buying books, not for reading”
Here are some old school paperback writers you might not have heard of. I present them in no particular order, just off the top of my head. I found them all on wire racks in drug stores, lo these many years ago…
Robert Beck aka Iceberg Slim. If you ever wondered why there were so many rappers with ‘Ice’ in their name, it’s because Iceberg Slim was the author most widely read in the US prison system. I particularly liked ‘Trick Baby’ the story of a Black conman who could pass for White.
Donald Westlake aka Richard Stark. The other most widely read prion writer. Stark’s ‘The Hunter’ has been filmed about a dozen times. His crooks are unemotional professionals.
Tanith Lee. The Goddess-empress of the hot read. ‘Night’s Master’ has Satan as the hero. Every night he flies from his palace to seduce and/or terrorize mankind.
Enjoy.
I have a soft spot for star wars but only the first 3, probably because I was young and it was so breathtaking.
So now I roll with star trek, especially the older ones.
But back on track, Where are the robots? The DIY? The fun stuff. Where are posts about a new ESP32? Some portable 3D printer (probably garbage, lets have a flame war!), how to use phone chargers to get 20 vilts to your led strip, funky homelab setups and deals, better network stuff, even retro computing I’d say.
Yeah, block all the boardroom chatter and bring back real tech!
