What’s something you couldn’t get into, but feel like you should?

I read it.

I'll do it again. You can't stop me.

Not reading it

Ignored

What comment?

Same. It did nothing for me until I watched The Force Awakens. I actually really got into that and started to think this was what people who liked SW felt.

Then I watched the Last Jedi and the feeling was gone.

I grew up w/out a tv at home for most of my life--but Star Wars was also released a bit before I was born, and the prequels were released right as I hit adulthood, so I just missed being "the right age" for it completely.

It has been interesting encountering younger folk where the prequels were their childhood--because it's their beloved childhood, they have a completely different view of it than what was going on amongst grown SFF fans when the prequels originally aired. (And I'm not bashing beloved childhoods; it makes me thoughtful about my own childhood favorites.)

I agree that it has a lot of elements that SHOULD make me love it. But I actually encountered FIRST (due to no TV at home and friends not exposing it to me outside the home) the influences in literature that Star Wars arose out of. I read the book Dune before I saw Star Wars, and I read plenty of SFF action/adventure before I saw Star Wars. So even when I finally did see Star Wars--I had already been exposed to the substratum that it arose out of, so it didn't hit me as "unique".

maybe it's too much goodness... like having chocolate-dipped bacon covered in cheese. chocolate makes everything better, bacon makes everything better, and cheese, makes everything better... but they don't make each other better. funny, huh?

Ayup. Can't stand that show, and its (vocal) fan base makes it worse. Far worse.

I really like cool ideas in sci-fi, but with all of Asimov's works I could never get over how cardboard the characters were.

Given the trends of recent SFF, I think a lot of readers who turned into writers agree, since the characterization has massively improved across the genre even in SFF books that are pretty thinky.

As someone who’s read the entire Wheel of Time series multiple times, I get it. I love it, but I get it.

Mat and Rand would probably be able to explain it better though if they were on here

Yeah, I love these books but my wife can't get into the first book at all.

I get this... :)

I can't actually explain it in any sort of meaningful way, but I feel like it belongs here in spite of the obvious.

I tried multiple times to get into it myself, and couldn't.

I like Big Fat Fantasy. I like Kate Elliott and Robin Hobb and Lois McMaster Bujold's Chalion books. I like Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey. I like Name of the Wind, and I like The Traitor Baru Cormorant. I've read Melanie Rawn's books and C. S. Friedman's more fantasy-leaning books.

Just couldn't get into WoT.

For me, Stephenson is a hit or miss. I hated Snow Crash, I disliked the Cryptonomicon, but I absolutely loved Anathem. I can’t tell you why, just that that’s how it is.

I agree, Neil Stephenson is hard work for me too. I kind of enjoyed Snow Crash and didn't find it hard work.

But the other two I've read I've struggled with. Seveneves was amazing for the first 2 thirds but then I just couldn't finish it. I eventually completed the book when I got in to audiobooks.

Termination Shock was just soooo slllloooowwww, nothing happened I almost quit it too.

It took me two attempts to get through Stephenson's Cryptonomicon even though it was thematically up my alley. He includes so many tangents and explanations that it can be tedious at times, however interesting some of them might be. I'd almost prefer footnotes to the longer tangents so I could just get into them optionally if I choose.

I enjoyed Snow Crash, but I think he's better at world building than following a plot to a satisfying ending. It seems a common criticism that some of his books end a bit abruptly without enough investment in the conclusion, especially in contrast to the significant detail he puts in to the world building.

I think I've tried Snow Crash 2 or 3 times, but have never made it very far in. It's my friend's favorite book, so I may try again sometime, but I think it's just not for me, even though the subject matter is totally up my alley.

Oooh... Yeah, Stephenson is another one I should have added to my list. In fact I think I will!

I'm so close to finishing Dune... And I maybe always will be.

I really enjoyed the cultural revolution stuff - very interesting. The VR world or whatever I absolutely just couldn't care about. The folding and the desiccating were neat, once it became more real in the story, but in general I just found the writing or translation insufferable.

Omg. Star Trek and binging it when I was like six or seven when I visited my uncle as a kid. He had the then-entire collection on VHS and I found them and started watching.

Then, he found me watching trouble with tribbles and was like “ooh this is my favorite episode! Rewind it, I’ll go make popcorn.”

Yes. We binged the rest of everything else. Everyone else was either doing adult stuff (BORING.) or at my brothers soccer tournament (even more boring) all weekend.

Yes, this started my sci fi addiction. He also kicked off the fantasy addiction with the admittedly pulpy Belgariad.

I’m biased, so I say start with Next Gen. That’s what got me into it. I later went back and watched TOS. The other good starting point is Deep Space Nine.

I started watching star trek in my late thirties. Tried TOS, couldn't tolerate more than one episode. Then started TNG and fell in love half way through first season. Now I am on Voyager. According to me, it's a good replacement for me for TNG. Not sure what I will watch once I finish this.

I'm a very casual Star Trek enjoyer, and reckon the 2009 film wouldn't be the worst place to start.

Strange New Worlds is probably the best start. I like Discovery a lot, esp. since it kicked off this new age of Star Trek, but it is a different format than you'd usually expect from Trek, thus the outcry. Strange New Worlds takes the classic Trek formula (which is not a bad formula--there's a reason it has legs) and updates it with modern values/stories/special effects/etc.

Older Trek is massively nostalgic for many, but it's also massively uneven in quality as they were churning out seasons on a shoestring budget and it often shows. Also, they didn't always correctly predict how tech would go (esp. computer tech) so you can have things that are plot holes given what we know of technology today. If you want to start with older Trek, I think the Star Trek Next Generation movie First Contact might stand well enough on its own, esp. if you cherry-pick the Borg-related episodes (there's only a few) from the TV series and watch them first.

I started somewhere in the middle of Voyage, it was running on the classical channel. Absolutely loved it and was not at all bothered by starting in the middle. The channel also ran Deep Space Nine, but I never got into it. I could watch it to wait for the next program, but nothing more really.

I’m hoping the Netflix series will be good, despite the delay due to, um, a murder.

I also heard that there’s a Chinese series of it that’s already been released, and that it’s really good.

I read the first book for a book club so I just crunched it, but I'm listening to the audio book of the second and it's annoying the hell out of me.

The characters are horrible, the story is so so. Some of the ideas are interesting, but the books have been a slog.

I listened to the first book but wasn't hooked enough to carry on.

For me, it was that the science just seemed too out-there at times. I can't explain why it bothered me, I can enjoy science fiction with magical elements, or accept that some shows have bad science.

There was just something about this book that just completely failed to make stuff like the protons sound convincing.

I enjoyed the audio books, I'm on Death's End now. If you're into audiobooks I would say try that approach.

Is it the story and/or the gameplay you don't like about the souls borne games? If it is just the gameplay you can look at some lore videos and if you like them, you probably like the Berserk series.

To be fair, the Soulsbourne games seem to mostly appeal to the “get gud” type of masochist gamer. You have to like pain to really get into them, it seems like. I haven’t been able to personally because I want my games to be fun, not insisting you memorize attack patterns and are OK getting curbstomped until you do.

I can promise you that you definitely won't regret watching Stargate! Definitely one of those series that I wish I could experience for the first time again.

There are multiple Stargate shows, each with its own target market. So if you don’t like SG-1, give Atlantis and SGU a try. Atlantis is fun fluff, and SGU is darker sci fi. None of them rely on you watching any of the others — they are fairly self contained stories.

Stargate is one of the strangest and best sci-fi TV series.

It starts with humans just losing all of the time and a tone that is too serious for its content. As the show goes on there are episodes where everyone where there is a fake TV show of SG-1 and the villains are actively afraid of the US military.

Battlestar Galactica is the one I just can’t do. I didn’t watch it when it aired, but I borrowed the box set from someone around the time it wrapped up. I think I watched 3 very tense episodes, looked at how many remained, and bailed. If I ever try again I’ll pretend I’m watching them being broadcast and stick to one episode a week. I’m probably a wuss, but that show left me exhausted.

The Expanse is a little slow for the first couple of episodes, it picks up after that.

I can understand completely why you didn’t like The Three Body Problem. It is, especially at the beginning, very Chinese and incorporates outlooks and ideas that are utterly alien to the western mindset.

Oddly enough, that’s not what got me. I studied Chinese (I’ve sadly forgotten so much I wouldn’t even try to read it in Chinese), have been to China, and love a lot of Chinese movies, web novels and dramas. Plus, I’ve lived in Asia for nearly half my life at this point (yeah, countries all have their own unique cultures, but there’s a lot of influence and overlap). It was something about the writing style that I couldn’t get into, which was why I tried reading it in Japanese, to see if it was just the translation I wasn’t vibing with. lol but trying to read it in Japanese threw me for an entire different reason, because my brain switched to the Chinese reading the Chinese names and then it was just a linguistic nightmare inside my head as my brain struggled to pick a single language to read in. I’ve had to give up watching Chinese movies if the subtitles are in Japanese because my brain can not handle both languages at once.

Uh

What, exactly, do you find completely alien about Chinese POV?

I somewhat understand, because I can't read a lot of stuff written by South Koreans because, imo, they have this weird cultural heirarchy that often comes off as sycophantic to me, but that's not "alien."

I don't mind people going on and on and on. (I mean I loved Mervyn Peake!) What I hate about Stephenson is how he:

1. Can't write people. At all. His "characters" are "concepts with a name attached". Ugh.
2. He often goes on and on and on about stuff he's absolutely wrong about at a fundamental level. (Like his bizarre take on Chinese culture in that one with the nanotech; I've forgotten the title. The Diamond Age?)

One or the other above I can cope with. Both together made me cringe every time I set eye on a page.

Me too. Tried the first. Didn't make much progress.

I tried it on audiobook and couldn't finish it. It didn't help that it was one of the ones with 500 different readers for different characters (and very distinctive voices like Scott Brick were different characters in the second book or part or whatever than the first), but while the world was kind of interesting, I really couldn't be grabbed by the story at all.

And I finish almost everything. Especially on audiobook.

I like Dune a lot, but you definitely have to have a certain mindset to get into it. Barsoom and Tremors are really...I don't want to say "not the same genre"...but kinda "not the same genre"?

Dune is NOT an action/adventure book. It has the trappings of one, but you're more likely to get into it if you love anthropology, religious studies, sociology, and philosophy.

Barsoom is pulp sci-fi (which is fine--there's a reason pulps are popular!), and Tremors likewise isn't in the same wheelhouse as Dune either. That's not to say those two can't have aspects of anthropology/religious studies/sociology, etc. as a lot of SFF mixes it up, but Dune is pretty heavy on the intellectual/academic side of things. It is taking theoretical concepts and putting them into motion on a stage via the characters. It's a very measured book that plays out high level concepts with pawns on a stage.

When I think of "books like Dune" I tend to think more of Ursula K. LeGuin or Octavia Butler, in that they start out with a philosophy, and then the characters are set on a stage to play out those philosophical/sociological/etc. musings for the reader.

Seconding Red Rising. I managed to finish the first book, but throughout nearly the entire book it felt like a fantasy rather than a science fiction. They are in a science fiction setting, but then intentionally remove all technology or futuristic elements for almost the entire story. From what I am told the rest of the books continue this similar theme somehow despite no longer being in the extremely specific situation of book 1.

I don’t feel like it’s worth getting into, the writing is just too poor… but that’s my opinion. I finished it, just because it was so Ashley I was hoping it would get better. I did not try out the second one.

I didn't like the first few episodes of The Expanse either, I thought they were so focused on the world building that they didn't flesh out the characters well enough for me to care. But they figure out a better balance about halfway through season 1 and by the end of the season I was all in. I consider it one of my favorite Sci Fi tv series now.

For The Expanse, the first few episodes are definitely not the most inviting (although they get better once you've seen the whole show once already). Very much worth pushing through with it though

As I said elsewhere in this thread, the first couple of episodes of the Expanse are kinda slow. It picks up if you stick with it :)

I'm still mad they ended it early :(