Your favourite Sci-FI

[Dr Roberts]

What are your top 5 favourite Sci-Fi Franchises and what would you recommend watching, playing, reading?

[Crateria]

1) Star Wars
2) Star Trek (pre-Voy and Ent)
3) Warhammer 40k
4) Sins of a Solar Empire
5) Believe it or not, I find the showa Godzillaverse to be a fascinating place. One well done report IMO explored the possibilites of all the Showa aliens being from our solar system as well as filling in the blanks. (http://www.angelfire.com/ego/g_saga/Den ... ticle.html)

[Imperial528]

1. Star Wars.
2. Stark Trek, TOS and TNG.
3. Ender's Game Series. (Although I do not like the author very much, since in his later works his political opinions start to bleed through, and they hurt the quality of the books at times.)
4. I, Robot.
5. Most classic sci-fi that I have read bits of but never really delved deep into. I need to be more focused in my reading, really.

[Ahriman238]

1.) Stargate Sg-1.

2.)Star Wars.

3.) Babylon 5.

4. Warhammer 40,000.

5.)Star Trek.

For things to play, I'd recommend SW Jedi Knight and sequels, SW Battlefront, Halo, Dawn of War, and CthuluTech. There's a fun online card game, Hidden Dimensions you may wat to look into as well.

[Panzersharkcat]

1. Fallout
2. Star Wars
3. The Stainless Steel Rat
4. Futurama
5. Star Trek: TOS

The Stainless Steel Rat is hilarious. You should probably read Bill the Galactic Hero as well.

EDIT: On second thought, I'll dump Titan A.E. out of my top five. It's still up there, though.

[Count Chocula]

1. The Lensman series by E.E. "Doc" Smith;
2. Robert A. Heinlein up to and including The Number of The Beast, before he became a horny-I'm-gonna-die-but-I-want-to-live-forever author (and Number is the inflection point IMO);
3. Star Wars. Duh;
4. Babylon 5;
5. Star Trek TOS.

I like my sci-fi liberally laced with personality and coolness.

[Ahriman238]

Firefly should probably have made my top five somewhere, displacing Trek from the list. Not that Trek isn't awesome in it's own way.

[Batman]

Firefly has the distinct problem of there being so little of it. I rank SG-1/SGA and B5 above Firefly, not because they were that much better, but because there was so much more of them to be good while Firefly got one season (of course, maybe we should call that a blessing, look at what happened to Andromeda).

And not a single mention of The Doctor? For shame

Oh what the hell-
TV SciFi
SG-1/SGA
B5
Firefly
NewWho 1,2,4
TCW

and then TNG and TOS

Movie SciFi
OT
TOS movies (except 5)
Titan A.E.
The Last Starfighter
Terminator 2

Written SciFi
Okay, here it gets complicated. I generally love there being a Wars EU, but a lot of it makes you want to travel back in time and force George to hand authority over what is and isn't allowed into it to you at turbolaserpoint, so while I liked a lot of it, I can't actually recommend the Wars EU as a whole.
Honorverse-love it or leave it. Might actually be getting interesting again now the interminable Havenite war is finally over. It's telling when towards the (so far) end of the series, the actually interesting books are the ones which don't involve your prime protagonist.
HHGTTG. Skip Mostly Harmless, it's totally undone in the sequel anyway.
Timothy Zahn-while mostly known for his Wars stuff, he's done a lot of interesting works of his own (COBRA, Blackcollars, the Conquerors trilogy etc)
The classics-Heinlein/Asimov. Somewhat hit and miss, but overall both of them have done some pretty good work.
Oh, and I rather like the old Captain Future novels. Not particularly sciency, but space adventure galore.

[Count Chocula]

A little OT, but I second Batman's take on Honorverse. I'm anticipating the faceoff between Earth and [Manticore/Grayson/Haven/Torch] the fringers. It could be a really entertaining quantity vs. quality showdown with missile spam and pew-pew for the bonus!

[Number Theoretic]

1) Revelation Space novels
2) Culture novels
3) Firefly
4) Warhammer 40k
5) Starcraft 1 and 2

Honorable Mentions are "Fiasco" and "Solaris" by Stanislav Lem, Star Wars, the Neuromancer and the Idoru (or Bridge) trilogy by William Gibson.

[Panzersharkcat]

Hurray for more love for Titan AE. I always wondered if the Drej would return. I seem to remember the novel mentioning that there are more of them out there.

[Eternal_Freedom]

All rated in no particular order

TV:

-Doctor Who
-SG-1/SG:A
-Battlestar Galactica (old and new)
-ST: TOS
-Andromeda (up to mid-season 3)

Film:

-Terminator series
-SW
-SW II, IV, VI, VIII and XI
-2010
-Independence Day

Written:

-Elements of the SW EU
-W40K (Horus Heresy especially)
-Atrocity Archives/Jennifer Morgue/Fuller Memorandum by Charles Stross
-ST novels, but highly dependent upon which ones (The Mirror Universe collections, Federation, the Vanguard books etc)
-2010/2061/3001

Games:

-Homeworld/Homeworld 2
-Halo

[The Romulan Republic]

What are your top 5 favourite Sci-Fi Franchises and what would you recommend watching, playing, reading?

My top five sci-fi stories are something like this:

1. 1984.
2. War of the Worlds.
3. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
4. Children of Men.
5. Star Wars.

Since you specified franchises, though, the list for franchises would be more like:

1. Star Wars.
2. The X-Files.
3. Star Trek.
4. Doctor Who.
5. Terminator.

Note: I make a distinction between Sci-fi and Fantasy. If I included Fantasy, Lord of the Rings would win.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Hrm. Of course I like a great deal of individual stories and authors (I love Arthur C. Clarke), but in terms of actual franchises:

1. Warhammer 40,000 (shocking, right?)
2. Star Wars
3. Stargate
4. Terminator
5. Alien

And in the interest of providing some actual content...

Warhammer 40,000: My top pick, ironically, was something I originally found very unappealing. I got into it when I was around 13, and a huge Star Wars nerd at the time, and only really cared about the miniature wargame aspect of it. I thought Space Marines were just plain goofy and the setting's aesthetic and art style too repulsively gothic. In hindsight, I've heard it called "gothic punk-fantasy in space" or something to that effect, and that's reasonably accurate even if it's moved away from that image in recent years. In any case, the universe eventually grew on me. I came to like its darker tone and its Britishness. On the surface, it is clichéd and derivative, and intentionally so: It took a bunch of stereotypical fantasy races (elves, undead, orcs, etc) and threw them into a horrifically bloody meat-grinder of a sci-fi 'verse, and then tossed in a lot of sci-fi clichés in the vein of Aliens and other 80s space violence. Underneath that superficial theme, however, is a much, much deeper science-fiction world.

The universe explores, in true science-fiction fashion, the necessary (and unnecessary) evils of a monstrous, tyrannical regime; the corrosive effects of religion; the stagnation of human development as a civilization; and a pessimistic, apocalyptic examination of humanity on the brink. I would also commend it for its portrayal of alien species: Again, it is superficially silly and clichéd, but many of those clichéd have been sufficiently fleshed out that they are a little deeper than their silliness would suggest.

Take the Orks, for instance: They are undoubtedly the "comedy option" of the universe and as much for humor as for anything serious, but their portrayal is actually far more alien than most popular sci-fi even dreams of for its aliens. The aliens of Star Wars, Star Trek, and so on are usually incredibly shallow and are defined by one or two human personality traits or behaviors. They are more akin to strange human cultural offshoots than actually alien. Not so with the Orks. The Orks have a truly alien mindset, and a lot of people, even many fans of 40K don't quite "get" them because of it. Orks don't have human dreams, desires, and failings the way a Klingon or a Luxan does. Worf wants to serve honorably and be proud of his son; D'argo is similarly obsessed with finding his son and wracked with misery over the death of his wife. How terribly human of them. An Ork would find any such thoughts completely irrelevant, and never think them in the first place. Many think that the Orks are stupid, but this is a mistake, because it is fundamentally judging them by human standards which simply cannot be applied to the way Orks think and live. Quite the opposite, Orks are quite intelligent, but that intelligence is not applied in ways that we humans would consider "smart"... because they're wholly alien with a wholly alien mindset.


Star Wars: I don't think this needs much introduction on this sight. It's fuckin' Star Wars. Pew pew. Psshhzzm, zzwoom, zwoom, zwum, crackle. My friends and I damn near have a language amongst ourselves almost entirely constructed out of Star Wars quotes and intentional misquotes. "I quote Star Wars in 12 systems!" "I'll be careful." "You'll be DEAD!"


Stargate: While the spin-off series, DVD movies, and even the original movie were not quite as impressive as the original show, Stargate still stands as a great ride through 10 damn seasons worth of SG-1. It was refreshingly self-aware and not mired in its own self-importance the way Star Trek was at the time, and it made light of the clichéd goofiness common to 90s sci-fi in general. It had simple, easily likeable characters who were unequivocally heroic; this show was about HEROES SAVING THE DAY! each and every week and it wasn't afraid to admit it. It also had a pretty cool premise: Let's take modern day Earth and actually throw them into this sci-fi galaxy full of alien bad guys. It was militaristic without turning into milwank, another refreshing change from Star Trek. It was practical, too, and kept the technobabble to a tolerable minimum. It even had a few digs along those lines: When ordered to repair the gate, Siler tells Hammond: "I'll have it fixed in 16 hours," and Hammond replies, "Get it done in half that time!" to which Siler responds, "It doesn't work like that sir, 16 hours is the best I can do."


Terminator: Killer death-robot travels back in time to kill mankind's leader before he is even born. Sweet. It's a great little time travel story with plenty of violence and bad-ass robots shooting each other. One of the greatest things about it, though, is the way the story is framed: John Connor, the HERO WHO SAVES THE DAY!... is simply a given, and then promptly ignored for 99% of the actual story itself. Instead, the story becomes about the people around the hero: his mother, Kyle Reese, the T-800, Cameron, and so on. It's about the heroism of the non-heroes. Plus, Arnold Schwarzenegger blows stuff up. Sweet.

As the franchise meanders around, it starts telling some interesting time travel related stuff, too. You have to ignore some of the contrivances here and there, as well as the inconsistency of some of the dates, in large part because the franchise has been produced over a span of 25 years or so now which naturally clashes with the originally given spans of time in-universe. But once you set those aside, they do some pretty cool stuff.


Alien: Alien and especially Aliens spawned a cliché. It's an archetype. The second movie in particular gave us marines-in-space shooting horrific alien lifeforms bent on murderizing everything in sight (arguably Starship Troopers did this first, but the blowing up aliens stuff was a secondary aspect of the story). The first two movies, at least, are just awesome. I mean, what's not to like? Dudes. In space. Shooting aliens. Aliens with acid blood who want to implant their larvae in you.

[inviz345]

doctor who
red drawft
mass effect
star trek
star gate

[CaptHawkeye]

Star Wars - Everything, even the prequels.
Star Trek right up to TNG. DS9 isn't awful, but it ain't great. Voyager and Enterprise sucked. The Abrams movie was cool by me as are most of the movies. I'm pretty merciful to the Trek movies honestly. I only hated Nemesis and Final Frontier. I even like TMP and Generations.
Halo - Call these a guilty pleasure. I've been a fan of the games since day 1 and am still a card carrying fan long after other shooter fanatics jumped to CoD.
Firefly - Liked what we had, was happy we didn't get more really. The trends the movie showed indicate things probably would have started going downhill sooner than we think.
The Thing - One of the best alien horror movies ever. Unfortunately stuck in the shadow of movies like Predator and Alien.

[Stark]

Everything written by Greg Egan.
UC Gundam.


I'm pretty sure everything else is at least 50% dogshit (B5, Doctor DW Who, Alien, Terminator, etc).

Oh, Ghost in the Shell I guess. It's hovering around 25% dogshit, which puts it up there.

[CaptHawkeye]

The movies are disposable, SAC was actually a very good show all around. You don't have to like a thing about anime to enjoy it.

EDIT: Speaking of anime, I can't believe I forgot Evangelion.

[Stark]

Most franchises are really uneven, and SAC is really only saved by the second season. Lots of stuff has really high high points, but are dragged down by years of complete horseshit (or mixing horrible crap in with every good episode, like B5). GITS will always suffer from the amazing, credibility destroying, plot-defeating mary sue that is the main character.

Aside from ZZ Gundam being extremely silly, I don't think there's anything about UC Gundam I didn't enjoy, and it's always good neat scifi crap going on. Greg Egan is just real actual science fiction and not pew pew pew swordfights.

[CaptHawkeye]

Yeah the Major always comes along with the writers whispering in her ear about everything that's about to happen.

Franchise's being uneven has a lot to do with constantly changing writing staff it seems. More often than not the difference between good and bad writing seems to be a crap shoot.

[Stark]

Yeah, but if you're talkng 'franchise', you need to judge success by how successful the brand has been over time. Some good things get driven into the ground (like DW), some good things get written by fat nerds and turned to dogshit (like Terminator), some things are 80% cash-ins (like Alien stuff). UC Gundam is thirty years old and I like about 90% of it, AND it manages to have plots driven by actual scifi concepts at times. Egan isn't consistent, but I've never read anything by him that is actually bad.

Unlike, y'know, any branded novels in the world.

[Knife]

Without hashing over stuff that's been mentioned already,

Farscape is awesome. Quirky and campy, but fun. You start to really pull for Chriton and Sun to get together.

Written? There were some campy novels back in the late 70's early 80's Jandar of Callistro, or some such, where some Garry Stu gets sucked out to fantasy land on a moon a Jupiter and does the whole Conan the Barbarian thing. It was fun and had flying sail ships.

[Adalia]

FallingFree

Barrayar

The Vor Game

Mirror Dance

Memory

[Ryag Han]

1. star wars.
2. stargate sg1
3. battlestar galactica-new one
4. babylon 5
5. farscape
6. star trek

not necessary in this order, i just put them in the order they came into my mind. their all very good series in their own way, i love them all. can't chose.

EDIT: oh, but how could i have possibly forgotten Firefly!?? DUM IDIOT! that show also rocked.

[Lord Pounder]

In no particular order:

1. Star Wars

2. Star Trek (DS9 and TOS mostly, some TNG. I ignore Voyager and Enterprise)

3. Dune (Only books with Frank Herbert's name on it, Brian and KJA's works are contemptible beyond words)

4. Warhammer 40K (The books and the games have been pretty good, sadly I lack the spare capital to play the table top game)

5. The Amtrak Wars (I read the books as a teenager and still read them every summer with out fail, I heard that there are plan to convert it to the silver screen and I am very much looking forward to seeing the Wagon Trains realised)

There are honourable mentions such as Firefly (yeah it was short, short enough to never suck), Nu Who, Classic V, Space Above and Beyond, Earth Final Conflict, Farscape, and more than I can name at the moment. I'm also facinated by the Riddick Universe, after reading the novelisation by Alan Dean Foster there seems to be a lot more to the place than the movies showed.