It’s a slightly click-baity title, but as we’re still generating more content for our magazines, this one included, why not?
Unpopular opinions from last time include:
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My Sci-fi unpopular opinion is that 2001: A Space Odyssey is nothing but pretentious, LSD fueled nonsense.
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I could not get into the expanse at all.
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My unpopular opinion is that I don’t like space operas.
What’s yours?
Frank Herbert had no clue what to write after Dune and the rest of the Dune series is just an exercise in trying to one-up himself in weirdness.
Star Wars is a fantasy series, not sci-fi.
Id agree about Dune. The first book is great. The rest feel like they were handed off to someone else to write.
Well, after the first four they were handed off to someone else to write: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Herbert#Posthumously_published_works
Smaller stakes are better.
They’re more personal, interesting, and relatable.
All these movies that are about the ends of worlds or civilizations… it’s too much.
The Terminator? Yeah ostensibly it’s about the end of the world due to AI run amok but it’s really about one woman fleeing from a seemingly unstoppable force.
The last Star Wars movie? Oh no, the planet destroying weapon now kills stars and is smaller. yawn
Yup, agreed - that’s what I’m doing in my novels …
There’s way too little sci-fi w/o FTL
All I want is a sci-fi series (any medium) that just plays in our solar system, without FTL, magical rocket drives, or aliens.
Just “what can humanity achieve in the far future, realistically?”
Cause even in 10000 years, we’re not going to have a star-system-spanning civilization (we may colonize other stars with hibernation or generation ships, but they’ll all be isolated by the distance). We’re not going to have much better rockets (cause the only way to move forward in a vacuum is to push stuff out the back).
But we could terraform and live on or around all planets in our solar system even with current tech, given enough time.Expanse is very close, and I loved it, but it did have physics-breaking aliens which I didn’t care for much.
sounds like you’d be interested in For All Mankind
I don’t consider Star Wars to be sci-fi. It’s a futuristic space fantasy.
Also, Star Trek Enterprise is one of the best Trek series, IMO. Top 5.
I don’t consider Star Wars to be sci-fi. It’s a futuristic space fantasy.
Is that an unpopular opinion? Most sci-fi/fantasy fans I know would probably agree with this. I love Star Wars, but in the same way I love Lord of the Rings.
Also, Star Trek Enterprise is one of the best Trek series, IMO. Top 5.
I would say the final season of Enterprise is arguably the best single season of any Star Trek show so far. But it was a long road getting there…
The human crew (particularly Archer and Trip) were difficult to warm to in seasons 1 and 2 - I found them so much more emotional and overdramatic than an intelligent professional human would be today, and that it made it difficult for me to accept them as the bridge from today to the 23rd/24th century Starfleet we know.
Season 3 was tough for different reasons - maybe it played differently in America, but watching from outside the US a lot of it felt like post-9/11 revenge fantasy. Very proto-‘America First’.
But it was a long road getting there…
I see what you did there.
Do you know why I stuck with it through s1-s3, even though I couldn’t know if it would get better?
'CAUSE I’VE GOT FAAAAAIIITH OF THE HEART!
Re: season 3: it very much was. But it was good TV.
The entire first season of The Expanse should have just been one episode. It took me multiple tries to get into that show because the first season is so boring.
This trend of drip feeding mysteries started with Lost back in the 2000s and I find it incredibly frustrating.
Upvote because it’s unpopular. But the first season in the best in my opinion.
I barely knew what the story was until you learn about it in the last episode. The rest of the show then moves forward with the significant discovery of that episode.
I was just taking in the slice of life bits and world building. It’s like the “we should talk about the bonus situation” piece of Alien. It just immerses you in that vivid, gritty, and real universe.
I really enjoyed it, the hard scifi world building. I started to fall off in the later seasons with thr wormhole and shit
Foundation holds up.
Edit: I missed part one. I imagine this was already hashed out.
Almost ALL aliens in sci-fi have human form.
Fantasy fiction should not be categorized near sci-fi AT ALL. Unless it is some sort of cross-over or hybrid, keep it away from the sci-fi.
Old school sci-fi (Niven, Asimov, etc.) is WAY BETTER than this newfangled stuff.
Dune and Star Wars blow.
Really looking forward to the Project: Hail Mary movie adaption because of your first point. Can’t wait to see the little guy
Fist my bump.
Preach!
2001: A Space Odyssey is a fantastic Asimovesque sci-fi exploration of what happens when an entity that believes itself infallible discoveres a flaw in itself, sandwiched in the middle of a fever dream with little relevance to the story itself.
Hand waving the precise how of advanced technology is better than drafting full mechanisms unless you have extensive practical knowledge and don’t mind dating your work
I love pretentious, LSD fueled nonsense. EEAAO is amazing.
Engorged Elephant Anteater Androids Oceanography?
Everything Everywhere All At Once.
I was honestly hoping a few people would have to think about it before they figured out what I was referencing. But it seems I was obtuser than I intended.
EE what now?
The whole Star Wars thing is all Obi-Wan Kenobi’s fault… if he just would have let Anakin grow up to be a poor space mechanic in the ghettos of whatever the place… nothing bad ever would have happened and everything would have been fine, but Obi-Wan Kenobi decided to be a selfish spoiled brat and ruined everything for everyone and abused a child relentlessly into adulthood. No wonder Anakin was so fucked up… it’s all Obi-Wan’s fault.
I don’t think you have seen like any star wars if you have such a bad take. It was Qui-gon jinn that found anakin. And what makes you think obi-wan is selfish or spoiled. If you paid attention or actually watched the movies you would know it was anakin’s fear of loosing padme that drove him to the dark side. Also what abuse did obi-wan do to anakin? They were pretty much brothers. As obi-wan put it “you were my brother, anakin. I loved you” Anakin became “fucked up” when he couldn’t control his anger and hate when confronted with loss, then the Sith Lord abused his fear and drive anakin to the dark side with promises of knowledge to save padme from death.
There were lots of factors in Anakin’s fall. His early life as a slave, being separated from his only family, being brought up in the ranks of a religious bureaucracy that forces their members to shove down any and all emotion just to be a part, the constant psychic pressure from Palpatine, his relationship with Padme is just the final straw. The wedge that Palpatine uses to push him to the dark side.
Neuromancer is a pretentious pile of wank that people only like because they read it when they were 15.
I think you’re thinking of Atlas Shrugged - Neuromancer is literary acid-house and is quite literally one of the best novels ever written. You have to read it about 4 times before you actually get it.
maybe you just don’t GeT iT, mAn…!
I listened to neuromancer on Audible earlier this year, I remember nothing haha
Not sure if unpopular, but “Space: 1999” was a good show.
It’s time for a reboot of Lexx.
Who could possibly play a loser well enough to replace Brian Downey as Stanley? David Cross, maybe?
And is Misha Collins too old to play Kai?
My unpopular opinion is that I don’t like space operas.
I would argue against you here but I have seen Farscape so I can only view you as a reasonable person with a valid opinion.
As a big fan of Farscape, your opinion is invalid.
Kidding aside, I realise it’s an acquired taste.
Three Body Problem is probably the worst trash to ever win a Hugo. And that’s saying a lot when Redshirts won it as well.
