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Sci-fi and Futurism - venam - 02-09-2020

Hello fellow nixers,
There are two intertwined topics that keep resurfacing on IRC: sci-fi and futurism. Let's have a thread about that to share all the interesting content and ideas we have.

I'll start, here's my list of favorite sci-fi books:
  • Childhood's end by Arthur Clarke
  • Artemis by Andy Weir
  • Arrival/Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang
  • 1984 by George Orwell
  • irobot by Isaac Asimov

I got a list of apocalyptic-survival/alternative-societies ones:
  • Station Eleven by St.John Mandel Emily
  • The stand by Stephen King
  • The Book of M by Peng Shepherd
  • The handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
  • Lord Of The Flies by William Golding

Series that are interesting:
  • The Outer Limits
  • Serial Experiments Lain
  • Star Trek
  • Stargate SG-1

Some youtube channels:

Nothing else comes up to my mind right now but I'm really looking forward to all your recommendations.

RE: Sci-fi and Futurism - neeasade - 02-09-2020

When I was a little younger the Enders game book series took me through some nice SciFi adventures (the latter 3 books get very fun with concepts, I think)

Also of course I would be remiss not to mention Battlestar Galactica (I've only seen the new one, but it's a great trip)

edit: adding "Battlefield Earth" (the book)

RE: Sci-fi and Futurism - venam - 03-09-2020

Obviously, there's The Matrix movie.
Other than that, I can think of, Anhilation which was kind of a good sci-fi movie, it streched some topics that normally no movies would have attempted to touch, which is nice.
A.I. Artificial Intelligence was not bad either, it tackled the topic of the
uncanny valley and humanization in a great way.
Black Mirror and Westworld need to be mentioned because they're popular but I feel like they diverted from sci-fi and focused on making shows, so I can't vouch for them as good sci-fi in my opinion.
There's the Truman show which can be said to be a bit of sci-fi scenario, at least in relation to a 1984-ish scenario.
Akira is definitely a classic.
There was a small clip called Wanderers that was well executed.

RE: Sci-fi and Futurism - pyratebeard - 03-09-2020

Sci-fi is such a broad genre in both literature and film. Some of my favourite sci-fi novels are a bit more "near-future" and Earth-bound instead of the vast sweeping space fantasy from the likes of Arthur C. Clarke (although I enjoy his work as well).

Obviously I enjoy things like The Sprawl Trilogy and Snow Crash, but a few less obvious examples are:
  • The Laundry Series by Charles Stross - James Bond meets Lovecraft
  • When Sysadmins Rules the Earth by Cory Doctorow - after the Apocolypse, who keeps the internet running?
  • Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton - dinosaurs... 'nuff said.

Here are a couple of movie recommendations as well:
  • "One Point O" or "Paranoia 1.0" (2004) - a cyberpunk story of subliminal advertising and paranoia
  • "Dark City" (1998) - a neo-noir film with themes of memory loss and the nature of human identity


RE: Sci-fi and Futurism - jkl - 03-09-2020

I find Sci-Fi incredibly boring, to be honest.

RE: Sci-fi and Futurism - fre d die - 04-09-2020

Quote:I find Sci-Fi incredibly boring, to be honest.
I'm not sure if thats a fair statement to be honest. To me Sci-Fi is less of a genre and more of a setting for a story. A lot of Sci-Fi i've seen i do find boring but authors such as Ursula K. Le Guin can turn the genre into something that uses the setting of the future to represent the clashing ideologies of people today (in her "The Dispossesed".)
More Philosophy than Sci-Fi but Rosi Braidotti's "The Posthuman" is a great book about ways that the line between human and machine is being blurred with the advancement of technology.
it also stems in a way from the cyberpunk movement of the 90s, with such films as the matrix, mentioned earlier, ghost in the shell and the book neuromancer by William Gibson.
Sorry for the ramble...

RE: Sci-fi and Futurism - mcol - 04-09-2020

Lots of good things to watch/read here.

I'll add another one, one of my favourite movies, Metropolis (1927) by Fritz Lang. Super intense silent movie, pretty weird. The original score is great, but there was a techno score done in the 2000s (I think) that is also really good.

(02-09-2020, 08:33 AM)venam Wrote:
  • irobot by Isaac Asimov

This book was really good, but I didn't think the same of his Foundation, despite it being more known as his 'big book'. It didn't age well.

RE: Sci-fi and Futurism - ckester - 04-09-2020

One of my guilty pleasures is reading any of Larry Niven's "Known Space" or "Man/Kzin Wars" books.

I've also read and enjoyed space operas like Alastair Reynolds's "Revelation Space", but hesitate to get started on some of the ones that run on for 1000+ pages in each volume of a multi-volume series.

And I love that techno-scored remake of Metropolis! https://youtu.be/iOkaYhAkhIU

What movies do you recomend? - pfr - 15-02-2021

EDIT: I started a new thread but it's been merged with this one.

What movies to you recommend? Personally I'm info strange/weird/sci-fi/mindfuck type movies.

Some of my favs are:

RE: What movies do you recomend? - venam - 16-02-2021

Is this other thread Related?

RE: What movies do you recomend? - pfr - 16-02-2021

(16-02-2021, 02:41 AM)venam Wrote: Is this other thread Related?
I suppose so, but this thread isn't limited to "Sci-fi & Futurism" movies only... But if you think it's best I'm happy to take my post over to that thread (unless your admin powers can do it for me?)

RE: Sci-fi and Futurism - stratex - 16-02-2021

The Matrix is my most favorite movie, but I must admit that I didn't fully understand it for the past 20 years, only recently I saw a guy on yt did so deep analysis of it, it blew my mind completely, the second time, 20 years later... Unfortunately it is not in English. If you think that Matrix 2/3 are bad you are most likely fall to the same category, your comprehension of them is too shallow.

RE: Sci-fi and Futurism - movq - 22-02-2021

(16-02-2021, 11:19 PM)stratex Wrote: Unfortunately it is not in English.
What language is it in? Can you link it anyway? :)

RE: Sci-fi and Futurism - stratex - 22-02-2021

(22-02-2021, 08:39 AM)movq Wrote:
(16-02-2021, 11:19 PM)stratex Wrote: Unfortunately it is not in English.
What language is it in? Can you link it anyway? :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plcaCamvQQg
If YouTube didn't kill community captions I bet It would have been subbed.