Prefer soaps ? how sad. Prefer romance ? yuk. Prefer documentaries ? ok ish. But sci fi rocks, it opens the mind to possibilities, gives us hope that one day humans will be better people.
If you define "better" as faster starships and more lethal weapons Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Blakes Seven RULES! (*runs for cover*)
With very few exceptions, SciFi is dull and poorly written, in my opinion. I'm willing to keep an open mind, however. I challenge someone to post a very well written, insightful snippet of SciFi.
I think they should make one where the main characters are bad guys...like space pirates or something.
Seriously cheesy (set and budget-wise) Brit SF TV series. Mainly political. Ran for many years. The fans' favourite was a guy called Kerr Avon who was an out and intellectual snob interested only in his own agenda but spent the entire series supporting the leader Roj Blake.
Asimov has written some good things, but his SciFi borders on the realm of Fantasy. Overall, SciFi is written by geeks and reads like it.
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http://www.lib.ru/ZELQZNY/ARoseforEcclesiastes.txt Roger Zelazny's "Rose for Ecclesiastes" my all-time favourite short. But I would recommend anything by this guy. Extremely well-read and my favourite quote from him is to the effect that in general he preferred English readers to American. "An American reader who doesn't understand my stuff decides I'm a bad writer, an English reader just decides to broaden his education so that he can understand it". Or words to that effect. One of my few genuine regrets is that I never wrote a fan letter to the guy just to let him know how much pleasure his books gave me. But what the hey, he got royalties when I bought them.
Then SciFi geeks should learn how to write properly. Neil Gaiman is a geek and an excellent writer - he just doesn't happen to write SciFi. Warren Ellis is also a geek and an excellent writer, but it would be a far strecth to call Transmetropolitan SciFi.