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Slashdot Asks: What Are Some Sci-Fi Books, Movies, and TV Shows You're Looking Forward To?
Even as Hollywood studios report fewer footfalls in theaters, the last few years have arguably been impressive if you're a sci-fi admirer. Last year, we finally got to watch the Blade Runner 2049, and the The Last Jedi and Logan also found plenty of backers. In 2016, Arrival was a home run for many. Star Trek: Discovery, and Stranger Things TV shows continue to receive positive feedback from critics, and the The X-Files is also quickly winning its loyal fans back.
"Artemis" by Andy Weir and "New York 2140" by Kim Stanley have found their ways among best selling books. "Borne" by Jeff VanderMeer, and "Walkaway" by BoingBoing's Cory Doctorow have also been widely loved by the readers.
On that note, what are some movies, TV shows, and books on sci-fi that you are waiting to explore in the next two to three years?
"Artemis" by Andy Weir and "New York 2140" by Kim Stanley have found their ways among best selling books. "Borne" by Jeff VanderMeer, and "Walkaway" by BoingBoing's Cory Doctorow have also been widely loved by the readers.
On that note, what are some movies, TV shows, and books on sci-fi that you are waiting to explore in the next two to three years?
Especially the spin off where they fight with giant mech robots in space
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I want more people to make movies like Interstellar. Interstellar wasn't perfect, but it was visually appealing and much of the Science they show was accurate. I would love to see more people explore this territory.
It's both a great TV show and a great novel series that is on the same level as A Song of Ice and Fire IMO.
Everything has happened before, and everything will happen again.
Nonaggression works!
With all the interesting sci-fi out there, I'm mostly looking forward to more of The Orville. After a really lame trailer and the first couple of episodes being kind of forgettable, it improved quickly - and by the end was actually thought-provoking at times.
And of course, Ready Player One. I hope Spielberg's adaption doesn't change too much from the book (mild spoiler alert: the method of earning the copper key looks like it has changed some, per the trailer, and I hope the Rush references get left in at least partially), but it looks really promising. And casting the bad guy from Rogue One as the CEO of IOI was a great choice, IMO. Like Alan Rickman before him, that guy seems like he was born to play aristocratic, evil antagonists.
Besides which, almost any film can be improved by simply adding "vs Godzilla" to the end of it.
etc., etc., etc...
'Social justice' is an amplification of the bigotry of the past. The leftists pushing 'social justice' are the ones who are fixated on classifying people into extremely fine-grained groupings based on physical traits or other attributes. They have even managed to take it to a level never seen in the past, continually introducing new ways of dividing people into smaller and smaller groups. The people who are supposedly decrying things like racism, sexism, prejudice, and intolerance often end up being the ones who engage in such behaviors the most egregiously.
If you haven't read it - it has some of the greatest 'moments of awesome' of any book, combined with an overarchning plot that is a hilarious take on cyberpunk (halfway mocking, halfway loving). Think the Tick, for cyberpunk, with a less purely absurd basis.
The main character is named 'Hiro Protagonist", basically one of the guys who invented the 'metaverse' virtual reality simulation of the story, who carries around katanas IRL, and delivers pizzas for the mob. Oh, and the entire world is owned by corporate nation-states, also in a clever half-parody of cyberpunk stories.
As a bonus, it illustrates how bonkers crazy early religion is in one of its sub-plots, though that may get skipped in the series, understandably. The author kind of has a thing for illustrating the crazier side of indoctrination in the middle of otherwise crazy good stories - see the Diamond Age for a sequel of most of these aspects.
But anyway - it's a superb storyline - it'll be really interesting to see how they adapt it.
Ryan Fenton
I can not wait! Snowcrash is a close second but still second. All Ringworld swag will be MINE! Posters, figures, soundtracks, pet Kzin. Mine!
The book Ready Player One is more of an MMORPG fantasy than proper Sci-Fi but I enjoyed it quite a bit. I've waiting for the movie to come out. If you've ever been sucked into an MMORPG like I have (Diablo 1, then Ultima Online, then EverQuest) then you'll likely enjoy the book. I'm hoping the movie will live up to the book. Lately Hollywood has been mostly good at bringing books to the screen (Harry Potter, Twilight, The Hunger Games, etc.).
'Social justice' is an amplification of the bigotry of the past. The leftists pushing 'social justice' are the ones who are fixated on classifying people into extremely fine-grained groupings based on physical traits or other attributes. They have even managed to take it to a level never seen in the past, continually introducing new ways of dividing people into smaller and smaller groups. The people who are supposedly decrying things like racism, sexism, prejudice, and intolerance often end up being the ones who engage in such behaviors the most egregiously.
STTOS and STTNG were great at showing us a different path. A way of living where, simply, no one cared about race - at least among Earthlings. People were judged on the content of their character, not the color of their skin. To me, that's part of the appeal of good SF - it presents a world where we're just beyond that shit, and have different problems.
Contrast that with STD. The only way STD could be redeemed as Star Trek is if it were revealed the show was set in the mirror universe (at which point it would become the coolest "twist" ever).
In general I've just about had it with "Dark Version of Thing from your Childhood". Let's have something inspiring - what SF used to be!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
He certainly doesn't crank things out quickly, but most of it is eminently worth waiting for. His last novel was a bit of a misfire, but he's talked about a couple of other things in the queue from the Zones of Thought universe, and I'd love to see something entirely new from him as well.
'Social justice' is an amplification of the bigotry of the past. The leftists pushing 'social justice' are the ones who are fixated on classifying people into extremely fine-grained groupings based on physical traits or other attributes. They have even managed to take it to a level never seen in the past, continually introducing new ways of dividing people into smaller and smaller groups.
By "dividing people into...groups" do you mean "describing different groups?" Talking about different demographics and how policies might affect them differently isn't dividing them, it's simply recognizing them. Society has always been comprised of different groups of people, some large and some small. Have you ever talked about your family vs someone else's family or families in general? You're "dividing people into groups." Almost everyone I've ever talked to who rails against this kind of practice is also likely to blame talking about racism for racism ("there wasn't all this racism before Obama"), but what that argument ignores is that society has already done these divisions and is already treating people differently based on their physical traits or other attributes. What you have issue with isn't the division, but merely talking about it. You want to ignore society's unfair treatment of some groups because they're not your groups. That's your prerogative but don't pretend you're the victim of leftist propaganda when all you have to do is not watch or read those stories and you still get to not care.
"Social justice" and activists looking at how certain populations are underserved and/or underrepresented is how we got the 19th Amendment. It's why Jim Crow laws aren't legal anymore. And in the future it'll be why nobody raises a fuss when a trans woman uses the women's bathroom (if separate bathrooms even still exist). Discrimination in sci-fi is generally not treated as a good thing, but there's an entire subgenre of dystopian sci-fi you can read to get your fix of the powerful stepping on everyone else. But I should warn you that even in most of those books your side loses.
The people who are supposedly decrying things like racism, sexism, prejudice, and intolerance often end up being the ones who engage in such behaviors the most egregiously.
Citation needed