Be sure to check out the extension mod: Hots Custom Map support on NA and EU, Despite the name it greatly expands the roster of options for the default 3 races and is updated all the way to NCO.
Games: I really only play Starcraft. I love Civ V, but thats pretty weak on the Sci-Fi Side.
Books: I love Dan Simmons and his Hyperion Books as well as Illium and Olympos. Asimov's Foundation Books forever!! Basically any Sci-Fi books that deal with a large chunk of time and a crazy expanded universe. Niven's Ringworld!!
Movies/Shows: Prometheus, Alien, Aliens, Serenity and Firefly. I can never seem to get into Battlestar Galatica, but maybe one day...it seems like I should be obsessed. I loved all the Matrix stuff back in the day, but now...
Series:
Star Trek Voyager season 2+
The Outer Limits
The Twilight Zone (I hate there are no series like these anymore, where each episode is a new story)
StarGate (yeah the original was the best and each year it got a bit worse as there were less and less episodes which wasnt related to the whole story line)
Firefly
Fringe
Lexx (though only the start of it and first season was really good)
Space: Above and Beyond (I just love military science fiction)
Futurama
Courage the Cowardly Dog (I watched it in my younger age, maybe thats why I got to be so crazy now)
Movies:
Donnie Darko (best movie ever)
Contact (Carl Sagan rocks)
Dune (the first movie adaptation)
Dark City
Pandorum
The Man From Earth (this how you make a good zero action film)
Starship Troopers
Books:
The Stars Are Cold Toys and Star Shadow - Sergey Lukianenko (2nd book just blows your mind after the first)
The Forever War - Joe Haldeman (yay for military science fiction)
There are tons of scifi shorts that I love, specially from Isaac Asimov, like most of his robot shorts.
Be sure to check out the extension mod: Hots Custom Map support on NA and EU, Despite the name it greatly expands the roster of options for the default 3 races and is updated all the way to NCO.
For one, I'm not able to compare different platforms of science-fiction with eachother so I'll keep it to games and series. For the former, it's hard to say. I love a lot of sci-fi games (Mass Effect, StarCraft, Portal), but most of these games are just games I like that 'just so happen to be' sci-fi. For series, I'm a bit of a Trekker. All Star Treks are good in some way, though I can narrow it down to The Next Generation and Voyager (not because I think those are the best, but I because I think they're the most interesting for the general modern audience). I also like Fringe, Eureka, and Supernatural, though I'm not sure if that last one can really be considered science-fiction.
It's an interesting point. I don't think anyone would call Supernatural 'traditional sci-fi' and a more correct genre-name would be something along the lines of 'mythological-fiction'. Still, I wouldn't say that "it's as far from sci-fi as you can get" (though I can see why you would) - the label 'fantasy' makes me think of more extreme things 'otherworldly' universes like Lord of the Rings or Avatar where the notion of 'our earth' simply doesn't exist or is otherwise so vague it barely matters, and in the end I'd say Supernatural is a hell of a lot closer to sci-fi than those two universes, or perhaps something like Spartacus or The O.C.
It makes me wonder how to define 'science-fiction', really. If you simply go with "fiction that has a basis in science" then half of the traditional sci-fi series can be disregarded just as easily as non-sci-fi series can receive the label, while if you go with "fiction that claims to have a basis in science" you get pretty much all the traditional ones but have to include a whole bunch of other stuff as well. Perhaps it'd be easier to make a bullet list with ten points of which a series needs at least five to be considered sci-fi :P
I knew from the beggining Fringe was just something else but I was entirely conviced it was THE series when sentences like "I do not remember, because this conversation has not yet happened to me" and you consider them to be completely normal even when they just don't make sense at all.
THAT said,
I like mostly sci-fi games, but yeah, like someone said, it just happens that the games I like are sci-fi, them being Starcraft, Star wars games in general, and mainly things that have spaceships inside them :P
Next is completely weird, because I hate sci-fi books. I just find it's pointless to read something that will not contribute to your actual real knowledge, for books I like mostly science-intense books, and I rarely enjoy reading novels because a lot of the novels are just made up crap. even when they fall in a real world.
And this is compeltely weird because my favourite movie genre is sci-fi, I love that I am able to visualise different world in them. I like almost everything with ships on them (again) or movies that have post-apocalyptic societies or dystopian societies, mainly because I love visualising the writer's or director's mind on how a society would work in certain X conditions. I like the hunger games, I liked that crappy justin timberlake movie about time being currency because of that, and many more like this.
Books:
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (more for the humor than the sci-fi)
Ender's Game
Surprisingly, that's all I have.
Actually, I've got two starcraft books (had to DL the third one as an ebook, DT saga) and a book called "The Lost Art" which I liked.
(I've got some books with advanced tech, but no spaceships or far future shit, so I wouldn't consider those any more of a sci fi than some TV serie where they randomly have holograms for no reason)
Series:
Stargate (Didn't watch too much of SG1 - Was a little kid back then, watched with my parents every now and then. Watched all of Atlantis and Universe, both of which I quite liked)
Battlestar Galactica (Watched only first couple of seasons, not actually sure how far I got)
Doctor Who (Kinda obvious... Although its often not that sci fi and the actual future bits aren't as great as other series lately imo)
There's Eureka and Continuum for series set in our time with sci fi bits attached, I like those, but I want fucking spaceships :(
I'm sure I'm forgetting some great serie :(
Games:
Mass Effect
Starcraft
Star Wars Battlefront 2 (Was it called that?)
Sanctum 2
Space Pirates and Zombies
Starbound
Sins of a solar empire was decent
I'm sure I'm forgetting something here as well.
Not gonna go into movies. Only ones I can think of atm are the two Star Trek ones. I watched and liked a lot more movies than those two, I just can't remember shit :)
All books for me. Isaac Asimov's books, but unlike most people I've read his books about other things not robots. Jules Verne is also very good. Arthur Clarke too. H. G. Wells' books. Douglas Adams' Hitchiker's Guide, although I don't consider it a "true" Sci Fi, more like a mixed and funny story.
And no, I wouldn't include any Star Something in my list, I like Star Craft universe, and Star Wars is Sci Fantasy to me (Attack me as you will for saying that, I don't care, I like Star Wars but I also like LotR and nobody would call it Sci Fi).
To me a good sci fi uses a few fictional things to develop its story. Games, movies and series usually dont go that route and that's why my favorite sci fi list is made of books. H. G. Wells was a master of this style, he invented the alien invasion genre, and his 4 classic books: War of the Worlds, Invisible Man, The Time Machine and The Island of Dr Moreau are all a sci fi cover for heavy social criticism, and this is something I love about these books. The same is true for Asimov's Gods Themselves and End of Eternity and Arthur Clarke's Childhood's End.
EDIT: I totally forgot to mention Frankenstein. For anyone who only knows it through modern pop culture and thinks of it as another horror creature I suggest reading the book, because it is sci fi at its best.
(I've got some books with advanced tech, but no spaceships or far future shit, so I wouldn't consider those any more of a sci fi than some TV serie where they randomly have holograms for no reason)
All books for me. Isaac Asimov's books, but unlike most people I've read his books about other things not robots. Jules Verne is also very good. Arthur Clarke too. H. G. Wells' books. Douglas Adams' Hitchiker's Guide, although I don't consider it a "true" Sci Fi, more like a mixed and funny story.
And no, I wouldn't include any Star Something in my list, I like Star Craft universe, and Star Wars is Sci Fantasy to me (Attack me as you will for saying that, I don't care, I like Star Wars but I also like LotR and nobody would call it Sci Fi).
To me a good sci fi uses a few fictional things to develop its story. Games, movies and series usually dont go that route and that's why my favorite sci fi list is made of books. H. G. Wells was a master of this style, he invented the alien invasion genre, and his 4 classic books: War of the Worlds, Invisible Man, The Time Machine and The Island of Dr Moreau are all a sci fi cover for heavy social criticism, and this is something I love about these books. The same is true for Asimov's Gods Themselves and End of Eternity and Arthur Clarke's Childhood's End.
EDIT: I totally forgot to mention Frankenstein. For anyone who only knows it through modern pop culture and thinks of it as another horror creature I suggest reading the book, because it is sci fi at its best.
Hum. You just literally summed up everything I've seen so far in the 'Prophets of Science-Fiction' documentary series.
(I've got some books with advanced tech, but no spaceships or far future shit, so I wouldn't consider those any more of a sci fi than some TV serie where they randomly have holograms for no reason)
Those are exactly the ones I consider sci fi. Sci fi isn't just "we have spaceships and we go from planet to planet as people would drive from city to city". The original focus of sci fi was to take some liberties and imagination about a scientific discussion that was unsettled back then. Totally different from modern sci fi.
Ohh and that Bones series is the perfect example of "random use of holograms". Well, I think C.S.I. could be another one considering how much they lie about what C. S. I.s are supposed to be able to do. Ohhh and holograms aren't worse than the weird technology of zooming pictures without any loss in resolution or even recovering lost resolution, seriously, why this shit has become so mainstream?
Hum. You just literally summed up everything I've seen so far in the 'Prophets of Science-Fiction' documentary series.
Then it must be a good documentary for everyone who wants to know classic sci fi.
And to make some justice, I said that usually movies don't follow this concept but some do, and do it very very well. District 9 is one that came to mind as I wrote. The thing is most people tend to think of space opera movies/games when talking about sci fi, but there are thousands of sci fi movies that aren't space operas.
Games:
Irrelevant Other Games
Star Wars Battlefront 2 (Was it called that?)
Other Games
I know this is a tad off topic here but Star Wars BF 2 and the original pretty much summed up my life in college. Freaking best games ever. Dice (the guys making battlefield) started making a 3rd withing the last year or so and plan to release it with the upcoming star wars movies.
With the "no spaceships" stuff, I meant more of... Well, you know, some neat tech, like holograms and shit, but there's little focus on the new tech and it doesn't really feel too far off from what we have now. Just because someone has a laser/energy gun in an otherwise modern setting doesn't really make the entire thing feel sci-fi to me :/ Spaceships aren't necessary, but any setting that does have them already feels very futuristic and advanced. The books I was thinking of really don't feel like sci-fi: there's some neat advanced tech, but... well, those books even have a lot of fantasy mixed in, that kinda kills the sci fi feeling as well. It's kinda the reason why I didn't want to list Xenocide and Speaker for the Dead - Even though there's a tiny bit of spaceship and some AI involved, it focuses really heavily on social stuff and the technology and things like that are secondary. It's definitely sci-fi, it did cross that imaginary line where I consider it as such, despite the settings being quite similar to what we have today (except for the fact that its on another world and there's more than one intelligent species, but if those count then middle earth and elves/dwarves/orcs make LotR sci-fi), it's just a bit more about social stuff/morals/ethics/not-entire-sure-what-the-right-word-here-is than... Well, futuristic shit.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
as the title says, state your favorite scifi (s) and why you like it(them).
personally for me, i have multiple , the top 4 are star wars, babylon 5 , starcraft and star trek
star wars i was brought up on, ever since i was 3 ive liked it same type of deal with star trek
b5 has a good story, and the ships/tech are powerfull but realistic, and it is focussed on all sides of war; physical , and pollitical
starcraft is due to how good of a job blizzard did on the first game, and even sc2,
http://www.sc2mapster.com/assets/nolanstars-textures/
Be sure to check out the extension mod: Hots Custom Map support on NA and EU, Despite the name it greatly expands the roster of options for the default 3 races and is updated all the way to NCO.
@nolanstar: Go
You didnt state why you like the choices you listed. ?
Edit: Matrix, Starwars, Stargate, and something else or two
@nolanstar: Go
Games: I really only play Starcraft. I love Civ V, but thats pretty weak on the Sci-Fi Side.
Books: I love Dan Simmons and his Hyperion Books as well as Illium and Olympos. Asimov's Foundation Books forever!! Basically any Sci-Fi books that deal with a large chunk of time and a crazy expanded universe. Niven's Ringworld!!
Movies/Shows: Prometheus, Alien, Aliens, Serenity and Firefly. I can never seem to get into Battlestar Galatica, but maybe one day...it seems like I should be obsessed. I loved all the Matrix stuff back in the day, but now...
Series:
Star Trek Voyager season 2+
The Outer Limits
The Twilight Zone (I hate there are no series like these anymore, where each episode is a new story)
StarGate (yeah the original was the best and each year it got a bit worse as there were less and less episodes which wasnt related to the whole story line)
Firefly
Fringe
Lexx (though only the start of it and first season was really good)
Space: Above and Beyond (I just love military science fiction)
Futurama
Courage the Cowardly Dog (I watched it in my younger age, maybe thats why I got to be so crazy now)
Movies:
Donnie Darko (best movie ever)
Contact (Carl Sagan rocks)
Dune (the first movie adaptation)
Dark City
Pandorum
The Man From Earth (this how you make a good zero action film)
Starship Troopers
Books:
The Stars Are Cold Toys and Star Shadow - Sergey Lukianenko (2nd book just blows your mind after the first)
The Forever War - Joe Haldeman (yay for military science fiction)
There are tons of scifi shorts that I love, specially from Isaac Asimov, like most of his robot shorts.
@EternalWraith: Go
fixed
http://www.sc2mapster.com/assets/nolanstars-textures/
Be sure to check out the extension mod: Hots Custom Map support on NA and EU, Despite the name it greatly expands the roster of options for the default 3 races and is updated all the way to NCO.
Battlestar Galactica - best battle scenes in space ever.
FARSCAPE!
Muppets + Space + Insanity + Harvey = amazing! had a amazing ending also.
@Hookah604: Go LOLZ, are you listing every sci fi ever or just your favorits?
For one, I'm not able to compare different platforms of science-fiction with eachother so I'll keep it to games and series. For the former, it's hard to say. I love a lot of sci-fi games (Mass Effect, StarCraft, Portal), but most of these games are just games I like that 'just so happen to be' sci-fi. For series, I'm a bit of a Trekker. All Star Treks are good in some way, though I can narrow it down to The Next Generation and Voyager (not because I think those are the best, but I because I think they're the most interesting for the general modern audience). I also like Fringe, Eureka, and Supernatural, though I'm not sure if that last one can really be considered science-fiction.
@SoulTaker916: Go I wouldnt call that lot. I didnt even tried to list my favorite books, just the 2 that always comes in to my mind.
BSG, Farscape, StarGate, StarCraft, and Firefly.
Spn is awesome, but it's as far from sci-fi as you can get.
@Gradius12: Go
It's an interesting point. I don't think anyone would call Supernatural 'traditional sci-fi' and a more correct genre-name would be something along the lines of 'mythological-fiction'. Still, I wouldn't say that "it's as far from sci-fi as you can get" (though I can see why you would) - the label 'fantasy' makes me think of more extreme things 'otherworldly' universes like Lord of the Rings or Avatar where the notion of 'our earth' simply doesn't exist or is otherwise so vague it barely matters, and in the end I'd say Supernatural is a hell of a lot closer to sci-fi than those two universes, or perhaps something like Spartacus or The O.C.
It makes me wonder how to define 'science-fiction', really. If you simply go with "fiction that has a basis in science" then half of the traditional sci-fi series can be disregarded just as easily as non-sci-fi series can receive the label, while if you go with "fiction that claims to have a basis in science" you get pretty much all the traditional ones but have to include a whole bunch of other stuff as well. Perhaps it'd be easier to make a bullet list with ten points of which a series needs at least five to be considered sci-fi :P
@Mozared: Go
I like wiki's definition: "Exploring the consequences of scientific innovations is one purpose of science fiction, making it a "literature of ideas"."
Fringe. Epic. Period.
I knew from the beggining Fringe was just something else but I was entirely conviced it was THE series when sentences like "I do not remember, because this conversation has not yet happened to me" and you consider them to be completely normal even when they just don't make sense at all.
THAT said,
I like mostly sci-fi games, but yeah, like someone said, it just happens that the games I like are sci-fi, them being Starcraft, Star wars games in general, and mainly things that have spaceships inside them :P
Next is completely weird, because I hate sci-fi books. I just find it's pointless to read something that will not contribute to your actual real knowledge, for books I like mostly science-intense books, and I rarely enjoy reading novels because a lot of the novels are just made up crap. even when they fall in a real world.
And this is compeltely weird because my favourite movie genre is sci-fi, I love that I am able to visualise different world in them. I like almost everything with ships on them (again) or movies that have post-apocalyptic societies or dystopian societies, mainly because I love visualising the writer's or director's mind on how a society would work in certain X conditions. I like the hunger games, I liked that crappy justin timberlake movie about time being currency because of that, and many more like this.
@xcorbo: Go
Seems like you have never read a good scifi book.)
Dont know what you mean by "science-intense" books btw.
Books:
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (more for the humor than the sci-fi)
Ender's Game
Surprisingly, that's all I have.
Actually, I've got two starcraft books (had to DL the third one as an ebook, DT saga) and a book called "The Lost Art" which I liked.
(I've got some books with advanced tech, but no spaceships or far future shit, so I wouldn't consider those any more of a sci fi than some TV serie where they randomly have holograms for no reason)
Series:
Stargate (Didn't watch too much of SG1 - Was a little kid back then, watched with my parents every now and then. Watched all of Atlantis and Universe, both of which I quite liked)
Battlestar Galactica (Watched only first couple of seasons, not actually sure how far I got)
Doctor Who (Kinda obvious... Although its often not that sci fi and the actual future bits aren't as great as other series lately imo)
There's Eureka and Continuum for series set in our time with sci fi bits attached, I like those, but I want fucking spaceships :(
I'm sure I'm forgetting some great serie :(
Games:
Mass Effect
Starcraft
Star Wars Battlefront 2 (Was it called that?)
Sanctum 2
Space Pirates and Zombies
Starbound
Sins of a solar empire was decent
I'm sure I'm forgetting something here as well.
Not gonna go into movies. Only ones I can think of atm are the two Star Trek ones. I watched and liked a lot more movies than those two, I just can't remember shit :)
All books for me. Isaac Asimov's books, but unlike most people I've read his books about other things not robots. Jules Verne is also very good. Arthur Clarke too. H. G. Wells' books. Douglas Adams' Hitchiker's Guide, although I don't consider it a "true" Sci Fi, more like a mixed and funny story.
And no, I wouldn't include any Star Something in my list, I like Star Craft universe, and Star Wars is Sci Fantasy to me (Attack me as you will for saying that, I don't care, I like Star Wars but I also like LotR and nobody would call it Sci Fi).
To me a good sci fi uses a few fictional things to develop its story. Games, movies and series usually dont go that route and that's why my favorite sci fi list is made of books. H. G. Wells was a master of this style, he invented the alien invasion genre, and his 4 classic books: War of the Worlds, Invisible Man, The Time Machine and The Island of Dr Moreau are all a sci fi cover for heavy social criticism, and this is something I love about these books. The same is true for Asimov's Gods Themselves and End of Eternity and Arthur Clarke's Childhood's End.
EDIT: I totally forgot to mention Frankenstein. For anyone who only knows it through modern pop culture and thinks of it as another horror creature I suggest reading the book, because it is sci fi at its best.
Hum. You just literally summed up everything I've seen so far in the 'Prophets of Science-Fiction' documentary series.
Those are exactly the ones I consider sci fi. Sci fi isn't just "we have spaceships and we go from planet to planet as people would drive from city to city". The original focus of sci fi was to take some liberties and imagination about a scientific discussion that was unsettled back then. Totally different from modern sci fi.
Ohh and that Bones series is the perfect example of "random use of holograms". Well, I think C.S.I. could be another one considering how much they lie about what C. S. I.s are supposed to be able to do. Ohhh and holograms aren't worse than the weird technology of zooming pictures without any loss in resolution or even recovering lost resolution, seriously, why this shit has become so mainstream?
Then it must be a good documentary for everyone who wants to know classic sci fi.
And to make some justice, I said that usually movies don't follow this concept but some do, and do it very very well. District 9 is one that came to mind as I wrote. The thing is most people tend to think of space opera movies/games when talking about sci fi, but there are thousands of sci fi movies that aren't space operas.
I know this is a tad off topic here but Star Wars BF 2 and the original pretty much summed up my life in college. Freaking best games ever. Dice (the guys making battlefield) started making a 3rd withing the last year or so and plan to release it with the upcoming star wars movies.
@SoulFilcher: Go
With the "no spaceships" stuff, I meant more of... Well, you know, some neat tech, like holograms and shit, but there's little focus on the new tech and it doesn't really feel too far off from what we have now. Just because someone has a laser/energy gun in an otherwise modern setting doesn't really make the entire thing feel sci-fi to me :/ Spaceships aren't necessary, but any setting that does have them already feels very futuristic and advanced. The books I was thinking of really don't feel like sci-fi: there's some neat advanced tech, but... well, those books even have a lot of fantasy mixed in, that kinda kills the sci fi feeling as well. It's kinda the reason why I didn't want to list Xenocide and Speaker for the Dead - Even though there's a tiny bit of spaceship and some AI involved, it focuses really heavily on social stuff and the technology and things like that are secondary. It's definitely sci-fi, it did cross that imaginary line where I consider it as such, despite the settings being quite similar to what we have today (except for the fact that its on another world and there's more than one intelligent species, but if those count then middle earth and elves/dwarves/orcs make LotR sci-fi), it's just a bit more about social stuff/morals/ethics/not-entire-sure-what-the-right-word-here-is than... Well, futuristic shit.