I liked Terra Nova and wish it didnt get cancelled after one season even though it wasn't a great show. I loved the premise of humans going back in time when Dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
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Now there's a show I haven't thought about in a long time! That was such a fun, escapist one. Beautiful actors too
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I've got 3 of them...
- I liked Prometheus. I had no issues with Covenant, enjoyed it as well.
- I'd like to see more original sci-fi shows than just yet another time-travel or evil alien/AI destroys humanity scenario. I enjoy them, but I'd like to think there's a lot more to the future than just those two possibilities.
- I've never seen Firefly or Serenity and have no interest in doing so.
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My unpopular sci-fi opinion is that Discovery is an amazing adaptation of the Star Trek universe into the gritty, modern sci-fi paradigm.
I love it and I love that it is in the Star Trek franchise.
For perspective, my favorite Trek series is TNG.
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I like the Total Recall remake with Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, and Colin Farrell more than the original with Arnold. The original is overhyped gibberish, in my opinion.
Also, perhaps a premature unpopular opinion: If - IF - it continues to present the same level of quality for the length of its run, Silo will be better than The Expanse.
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Teleporters kill you and clone you. The person walking out of the teleporter may look like you and have your memories, but you are dead and that is a clone.
The process is likely incredibly painful, but because the memories of the clone are copied from just before the process started no one actually knows.
Heh. I just mentioned this one in another comment in this thread a short distance further up.
My response to this philosophy is... so? The end result is the same, it makes no difference to me.
Though we do know for a fact that it isn't painful, there was an episode where we saw Barkley go through a very slow transport sequence and he was aware through the process. He was nervous but not in pain.
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The newest Robocop movie was actually REALLY good,
as probably the best prediction of how we will start with autonomous robots in the battlefield being sidekicks to a prime human operator,
and that there will be a public push back about them being deployed in a police manner, but a political push to deploy them in a civilian theatre.
And when the majority of someone's body is replaced by artificial limbs/organs/etc. At what point are they still human.
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This should make some people mad... I thought The Dispossessed was an awful book. The characters were flat and the way Le Guin explored the themes had all the nuance and subtlety of a Garfield comic. It's the only book of hers that I've read, put me off exploring the rest of her work.
I really liked it when I was a teenager, but I'm forced to agree, I re-read it a couple years back while I still enjoyed it overall, there were a few aspects I found didn't age super well.
"Left Hand of Darkness" was way, way better. "Earthsea" too, actually (here's a bonus fantasy hot take: LOTR is at least as good as Earthsea). "The Dispossessed" gets hyped because left-anarchists like the depiction of anything close to what they're into, but in many ways it's not actual a very strong novel for the reasons you mention.
My point is, some of her other books are much better if you ever feel inclined to give her another try. IMO She developed a lot both as a writer and in terms of the depth of her personal philosophy. "Always Coming Home" is an extremely ambitious scifi project that is IMO underappreciated in expanding the idea of "worldbuilding" as a thing that authors share with audiences rather than do behind the scenes. It's less of a novel and more of an anthropological survey of a fictional future culture. Also it's the only scifi novel I know of that comes with a bangin soundtrack.
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Shared universes between franchises are a bad idea. I don't mean commercially. They're a great idea if you want to make a billion dollars. But they're bad for storytelling.
Reason 1 is that the story being told is always in service to some other story. By which I mean, the writer has to make decisions that aren't about making this story the best it can be, but about making it make sense in context with everything that's come before it. For example, Batman can't just be a story about a smart, athletic vigilante in a costume. He has to be the smartest, most athletic human being who has ever lived, because he has to compete with, and remain relevant amongst, actual superheroes and supervillains.
Reason 2 is that it undermines the impact of each story because, again, the stories have to be considered within a massive context. In Watchmen, we can imagine the awe and horror people felt about Dr. Manhattan because, like in our world, nothing like him had ever existed. If you put him in the same universe as Superman, he's just another superhero.
Obviously I'm talking about large comic-book style shared universes with multiple authors and largely independent stories. I have nothing against franchises that use other works to expand on previously introduced concepts and do it in a coherent way.
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I didn't love The Martian. It wasn't a bad book, but I got bored in places. I was more engaged by Project Hail Mary (which is probably another unpopular opinion).
EDIT: Guess I should mention I'm referring to the books. Never saw The Martian movie.
Project Hail Mary was SO good. One of the times when the audiobook really added to the experience, too.
The Martian is one of the few times where I feel strongly that the movie was "better" than the book, though I think we do well sometimes to question whether maybe we just like books better than movies. :-)
Weir is never going to be Tolstoy or Faulkner, but as of the time he wrote The Martian, it was clear he only had the skill and/or interest in making his author-insert anything like a real human being. Most scenes without him are some combination of tedious, juvenile, and unbelievable. A couple of rounds with a screenwriters and then professional actors to deliver the lines improved them dramatically. Throw in that Matt Damon was absolutely in his wheelhouse and that they didn't cut out too much until the rover trip, and there you go.
Artemis was Weir trying to grow as an author, partly succeeding and partly very much not, and Project Hail Mary was him settling in and evolving what he does best without exceeding his grasp.
The vast majority of Star Wars, new canon and legends, is poorly written trash, but the cringe ass campiness is what makes it a star war.
Rey isn't the problem, revisionist history is.