Science Fiction

Has anyone seen this metaphysical sci-fi flick?

As I understand it, it did terrible at the box office. The trailer is amazing to look at, so I’m wondering if there is anything of substance to be found. I’ll be watching it tonight or early this week.

https://youtu.be/VCTen3-B8GU?si=nMXxPE5toRzRxM5G

I’m sure I’ll enjoy the heck out of it, but after Minus 1… Everything else just looks like fluff.

(But, hey… I like fluff!)

https://youtu.be/lV1OOlGwExM?si=DJg8Mg9UPgSDCQp9

Happy 60th anniversary to Doctor Who!

https://youtu.be/2V_xYubUJFo?si=3bVT57IbUkEjoexo

What does everyone think about this attempt at a new franchise from Disney? I remember seeing it in the theater and I really enjoyed it! I had hoped we would see more in the 'John Carter' universe, but that was not to be. Poor marketing is often blamed, as is critics suggesting it was "derivative".

It follows a crew of a damaged deep space freighter who are stranded on a beautiful but dangerous planet.

Beautiful animation and wildly imaginative. The story probably won't blow your mind but the alien world might! I certainly enjoyed it and consider it one of the more interesing SciFi shows released lately.

Pantheon focuses on Maddie, a bullied teen who receives mysterious help from someone online. The stranger is soon revealed to be her recently deceased father, David, whose consciousness has been uploaded to the Cloud following an experimental destructive brain scan. David is the first of a new kind of being: an "Uploaded Intelligence" or "UI", but he will not be the last, as a global conspiracy unfolds that threatens to trigger a new kind of world war.

Probably one of the best sci-fi shows created in the last few decades. It's smart, deep and engaging.

If you haven't tried it, you are missing out.

OK, so first off, as the title says, there will be spoilers in here. So if you’re planning on reading it and haven’t yet already, please stop.

I read the series as a teenager and absolutely love them. Recently, I have taken the time to reread all five of them, and have to say I was slightly disappointed. I still thought that the writing was very amusing, the social commentary was good and the lightly touched philosophical discussions were good as well. My main problem concerns character development, or better said, the complete lack thereof in my opinion. I found that most disturbing into different aspects:

The lack of real, meaningful friendship between characters

As an example, Arthur and Ford are supposed to be friends, but from the interaction in the book it seems more like they tolerate each other and don’t really appreciate each other’s presence or influence on their adventures. Every time they get out of touch, they don’t appear to feel sorry about it, and when they see each other again, they are extremely British about it. This also applies to the other characters in my opinion.

the complete abandonment of the relationship between Arthur and Fenchurch

So, in the first three books, Arthur is like this maladjusted guy, who really doesn’t know what his place in the universe is. This also applies to his personal relationships. Then, he meets a woman that is presented as his soulmate, someone that finally understands him and respects/likes him the way he is. All of a sudden, she disappears into thin air, and she’s only mentioned one more time in the book series. Arthur seems happy to just make sandwiches and doesn’t seem to mourn this loss too much after the initial search. To me, this makes the character rather shallow. I appreciate the author was not trying to write a novel about love in space, or whatever, but still, it feels a bit lacking to me.

I will end my rant here, I am very curious as to your opinions on this matter. Do you feel like I’m just expecting too much from these books or do you tend to agree with these criticisms?

I have never read the book for the Foundation trilogy or any of the books in the series. I’ve seen fans of the book be critical of this adaptation for not being faithful to Asimov’s original intent. I am unsure if I am better off having not read it yet and enjoying this TV series in ignorance or if I should have read the book first so I can properly understand the point Asimov was trying to make. None the less I cannot change the past and it is what it is. I enjoyed this show if for nothing else than the spectacular visuals for much of it. The very first episode had a beautiful depiction of an extremely large space elevator as well as its amazing destruction. A space elevator of this magnitude falling to the planet such as Trantor with its many layers of civilization and the entire planet being covered with a single city was truly incredible.

However, from then on the show has this stark contrast between all of the scenes featuring the Empire and everything else on Terminus. This is where our protagonists Gaal Dornick and Hari Seldon were sent to build the foundation that would reduce supposed dark ages following the inevitable collapse of the Empire. All of the scenes featuring the plot on Empire I found exciting and really well done while all of the scenes on Terminus and with Gaal, Hari and Salvor to be quite bland and stereotypical. Which is curious considering the Empire plot is mostly content written for the show and the plot on Terminus is vaguely resembling the plot Asimov wrote in the original trilogy.

My biggest gripe with the show might be that the plot from my understanding is often contradictory. The way Hari originally described the concept of psychohistory and its mathematics was that it takes a sufficiently large population to make any accurate predictions about future trends. No mere individual is significant enough to make any deviations in those trends. Yet rather consistently we see Gaal and even Hari himself make statements that they absolutely need to do some urgently as the fate of the galaxy depends on it. I don’t see how this can possibly be the case if the concept of psychohistory is to be taken as legitimate.

Despite some glaring inconsistencies I still enjoyed my time watching this show and look forward to the likely season 3 that is coming. In the meantime I might have to read the book to finally see the story as it was originally intended by Asimov.

3.5 / 5 Stars

What the title says, I'm tired of the trope where humans are the least advanced in the universe.

I'd like to read something different where we're the more advanced ones (not necessarily the most advanced). As an example I quite enjoyed the Ender's Game sequels and the angle of us being the more advanced ones was quite interesting.

Do you have any recommendations?

"Farscape features a diverse ensemble of characters who are initially escaping from corrupt authorities in the form of a militaristic organization called the Peacekeepers. The protagonists live inside a large bio-mechanical ship called Moya which is a living entity."

I'm looking for sci-fi books that are (partially or fully) about environmentalism, preserving nature or the consequences of not doing so.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/42666

I recently discovered Bookwyrm and am really liking it. It's not quite as full-featured as The Storygraph or Goodreads but it covers all of the most important functionalities and it's federated which I appreciate. Something that it is missing Vs either The Storygraph or Goodreads at the moment is volume of reviews (ie. Volume of users.) However, your review won't get lost in the sea so much and I've found that it's been quite easy to find readers with similar interests.

Anyway, who here is using Bookwyrm? What's your account so we can all follow each other? (Mine is Unfreeze4257@books.theunseen)

For me in SciFi I've been trying to hit some classics so I've read 'The Iron Dream' by Norman Spinrad, 'A Time of Changes' by Robert Silverberg and also the (recent release) 'Out of the Ruins' anthology.

Of those three I enjoyed 'The Iron Dream' the most since I didn't enjoy Silverberg's potraryal of women (and it doesn't seem to have literary intent like in 'The Iron Dream'.) 'Out of the Ruins had some bangers but it was a fairly inconsistent collection for me that mostly hasn't been memorable.

So, what are you currently reading or have recently read?

A couple of others that I really enjoyed are The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang and Diaspora by Greg Egan.