I was lucky enough to read it young before I knew it was "a thing".
I loved the stream punky Sci fi stuff (yes I loved bioschock when it came out).
I enjoyed the rugged individualism stuff, but like, in the same way I enjoy James Bond committing extra judicial killings, Indiana Jones, cheesy ghost movies , or Hell in a Cell.
I was really confused when I found out it's got a cult. I just enjoyed my nifty train story.
The writing is dry, voluminous but not really good. I personally enjoyed getting lost in that much volume, but that's not going to be everyone. The philosophy stuff isn't bad or wrong within it's own universe, it's just not really applicable to real life. Basing a world view on it is like reading/watching the silo series and thinking that's how you should live in present day, rules about going outside and all. The conclusion isn't totally wrong, but the premise its valid under is so narrow it's useless, and that's how it got it's cult.
I hear you on the "ten episode" bit. I HATE that that became standard. It's some real garbage and has hurt a lot of different shows. The Last of Us was generally amazing, but suffered from rushing a bit. Without spoilers, there's an episode where they expand on a minor gay character from the game, and the main characters aren't in it much. The episode is amazing, and also got a ton of hate because the internet is awful, but one very valid critique is that in spending the entire episode in that wonderful little vignette, you had to rush beats of other episodes. That could have been fixed by simply having more episodes in the season.
Point is, somewhere shrinkflation hit our TV shows and I hate it lol.
I hear you. The new trek is definitely not all amazing. There's decent things to find in all of them but SNW is that one that gives me faith they're back on track.
I just really hope the Orville gets to keep doing it's thing.
So I respectfully disagree with this. I love the show, and it pre-dates the startrek revival, but its very much it's own thing. There's clearly a lot of love there, but it's not the same. Closest you get is lower decks, which ate a lot of Orvilles lunch but still toned down a ton of riff and grosser comedy.
It's weird, it's wonderful, it kept the flame burning when there wasn't much else there yet and probably played a role in showing there was a market for a lot of the newer trek we have now.
MacFarlene loves trek. I hope he's proud of the show, keeps some of the more serious and weird genuine sci-fi elements, but he shouldn't do trek. Trek is fine now. Seth can do his own damn thing. He's got the chops for it. He needs to work on making the gear shift from "real sci-fi" to "family guy in space" a little less abrupt and a bit more blended, but it's great to have out there and I'll never miss an episode.
I actually loved the bad autotune for the same reason you mentioned thatd you'd like the bad singing lol. It was kind of fun going "whelp, that actor is an actor not a singer". I guess auto-tune has been around enough it's in that "charm" category for me: "eh, they got the spirit".
I hated it, because I hate musicals, but I love that it happened. I loved watching it and hated every godamn second.
Please... no more... but I'm glad this happened and I'm glad people that like musicals seemed to more or less have enjoyed it.
Just... I'm begging.. no more.
edit: it was incredibly charming. I still hate it. It's cannon and I wouldn't have it any other way, but I hate it. There is no way I am the only person like this.
THANK YOU. This was bugging the crap out of me. I live in the country now so it's doubtful if I setup the hardware it would even be of utility, but I was just curious what became of it. There's another comment that goes into all the different varieties.
Glad to see the NYC mesh. For a while I lived in an area that was basically that but paid. It was small "city", and someone bought rights to tap into a giant line that happened to go through the city. They set up radio broadcasters, and to get service you'd use one of their radio modems. It wasn't free, but very community based. You'd see the business owners out and about. You'd see "Bob" at the bar, then might see him climbing your neighbors buildings roof to put up a repeater. Prices and speeds were great but mostly service was awesome. It was "your friendly neighborhood ISP". I got the impression the business was doing well but probably wouldn't like, list on the stock market or anything. It was just really cool to see an ISP have the character of say, a solid restaurant that everyone in town knows.
Basically, but I swear I remember a push that amounted to "What if we made a HUGE mesh". Based on other comments though it looks like I may be misremembering a developing IoT protocol.
You can also protect colors. Like there is a defined "target red" and "home depot orange" (probably a twitter blue that I guess will be up for grabs soon). You could use that orange to open, say, a day-care, hair salon, or auto-shop, but not a hardware store. Basically if you can show it would cause consumer confusion you can protect it.
Project Hail Marry, Andy Weir. He did "the Martian", similar tone of semi-hard sci-fi with a healthy dose of cheeky humor. Much bigger and more interesting scope.
Seveneves, Neil Stevenson. Absolutely amazing read. Pretty heavy at times.
The wool ombinus and shift, Hugh Howly. It's the series the silo show is based off of. Absolutely fantastic. They're doing a great job with the show but I love the books. One comment: The first book, the wool "omnibus" started as some short stories that Howly just kind of did out of passion. For better or worse, the series tends to get a bit lighter as it goes on because Howly started finding success and I think was just in a better place in life. Those first few chapters of the omnibus (which used to be their own stories) hit like a freight train. When reading remember originally you didn't have the benefit of feeling how many pages were left in the in the book; that gut punch was the end. That was it. There was no more.
For series:
Startrek strange new worlds is perfect if you like trek. It's exactly the right level of camp, but still gets weird. It's hard to explain, and it might not be your cup of tea, but they really captured some of what made TOS magical.
The expanse show is amazing. Especially if you like it when people treat space realistically. I mean, it's still fiction but they put a lot into what both surviving and commuting in space would be like. It's like when Europeans started coming to the Americas: You could do it, the boat could handle it, but it was pretty rough.
If you liked the Anhelation move, American Gods might be worth a try for you. Same kind of dreamy feel. I don't know if I'd really call it "sci-fi" but it's weird and wonderful and visually amazing.
For all mankind is fantastic, but different seasons may be divisive for some viewers lol. I loved them all in different ways
Fringe was an absolutely modernized x-files for a while
Legion is trippy as hell and one of those "you'll love it or hate it" shows.
Pennyworth is a weird romp through steam-punk through 50s/60s London and a lot of fun (it's barley connected to anything batman)
Doom patrol is another fantastic odd one that you'll know pretty quickly is or isn't for you
Severence. I would have been happier if they told the story as a 1 season shot but it's a great ride
edit: wanted to add some love for my boo Stargate. It's campy at times. It's corny at times. But I loved all of them, SG-1, Atlantis, and yes even SGU. You should be aware though that SG-1 and Atlantis are tonally pretty easy breezy, and SGU made a hard right in quasi-grimdark territory. I loved it but it's divisive for that reason.
Movies:
Moon. The one with Sam Rockwell. Absolutely fantastic.
Contact, with Jodi Foster. Not exactly obscure but doesn't get the mentions it deserves.
AI is worth a re-watch with some context. It's best viewed as Kubricks last film. Movies with Mikey did a great episode on it that had me appreciate it way more
Ex_Machina is really well done, even if the central point had a much shorter shelf life than anyone expected when it came out.
Gattaca, if only because it absolutley nailed an uncomfortable amount of things.
predstination
The newer planet of the apes trilogy. There's no shortage of praise for this one but I feel like it still flys under some peoples radar as another popcorn schlock cash grab
Sunshine. An absolutley brutal and beautifully done hard sci-fi watch.
Vivarium. If you like the feeling of being in liminal space this is a feature length film that will give you that.
In this order: "resolution" (2013), "The endless" (2018),
They NAILED it. They, somehow, took the loving but self aware fan service of lower decks and jammed it into SNW which has been the most consistent reboot back to the core of this series. This was absolutely some of the best show writing I've seen in a very long time.
Thanks! and agree. I'd be happy with more content but but all my reddit subs were niche things. I went out of my way to get rid of the "dopamine drip" memems and what not. Funnily enough I've left those on here for now because it's not endless they way it was at reddit.
I used RIF on mobile and RES at my desk (plus a bunch of ad blockers). So I didn't have to deal with the noise but absolutely it is nice when the layout is about the end user and not pushing for attention.
So I don't think the protest was fruitless. Sure the 48 hours blackout or whatever it was (I don't remember) may have been dumb, but that's how I wound up here.
Angry, I started a community for carnivorous plants, a weird niche thing I loved reddit for. Posted a side bar talking about how it was a placeholder, forgot about it, and lo and behold, people started posting.
I don't think any of that would have happened without the blackout. The power mods might have had delusions that the protest would even things out and then things would return to normal, but I think the protests opened up peoples view to the fact it doesn't need to be the way it is, and it wasn't always that way.
I'm also a member of an old school kind of forum around a specific kind of car that always beat the pants of the comparable subreddit.
I was lucky enough to read it young before I knew it was "a thing".
I loved the stream punky Sci fi stuff (yes I loved bioschock when it came out).
I enjoyed the rugged individualism stuff, but like, in the same way I enjoy James Bond committing extra judicial killings, Indiana Jones, cheesy ghost movies , or Hell in a Cell.
I was really confused when I found out it's got a cult. I just enjoyed my nifty train story.
The writing is dry, voluminous but not really good. I personally enjoyed getting lost in that much volume, but that's not going to be everyone. The philosophy stuff isn't bad or wrong within it's own universe, it's just not really applicable to real life. Basing a world view on it is like reading/watching the silo series and thinking that's how you should live in present day, rules about going outside and all. The conclusion isn't totally wrong, but the premise its valid under is so narrow it's useless, and that's how it got it's cult.