Most of my favourite books/movies/TV shows are Sci fi - I love Mary Shelley, slaughterhouse five, annihilation (both the book and the movie), The Thing, x files, the invasion, and the OA. This feels like a pretty wide variety of writing styles when I line them up but 90% of the sci fi I read/watch I just don’t enjoy at all. It’s a shame because when I love something sci fi I feel like it’s changed my whole life, but when it comes to finding new things I can just enjoy its easier to go through other genres. Is anyone else like this? Does anyone have reccomendations based on what I do like?
The common factor seems to be more grounded Earth-based sci-fi with a smidge of horror and perhaps some mystery, rather than space battles.
In that case, films and TV:
- Early Cronenberg up to eXistenZ (perhaps Crimes of the Future, if you really like that)
- Society
- The Faculty
- Save the Green Planet
- Under the Skin
- They Live
- The Mist
- A Quiet Place
- Cube series
- Slither
- Splice
- Splinter
- The Reanimator series
- From Beyond
- Phantasm series
- Tetsuo
- Cloverfield (and 10 Cloverfield Lane)
- The Host
- Predator series
- The Void
- Fringe TV series, as you liked The X-Files. I presume you have watched Millennium?
- BrainDead (2016 TV series)
- The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker TV series
- Truthseekers (2020 TV series)
- Lovecraft Country - book and series
- Eerie Indiana
- Ultraviolet (1998 UK TV series)
- Tokyo Gore Police and others by the same team, like Meatball Machine and Machine Girl
- Gantz
- The Girl With All the Gifts - book and series
- Timecrimes
- Pi
- Bad Taste
- Grabbers
- Body Melt
- Wild Zero
- Pontypool
- The Objective
- District 9
- Firebase and have a look at the others they have done, especially Zygote
- Love, Death and Robots
- Matango
- Xtro
- John Dies at the End - read the books first
- Frankenstein’s Army
- Overlord
- Quatermass and the Pit, as well as other Quatermass films and series
- The Deadly Spawn
- The Man With X-ray Eyes
- Village of the Damned (1960)
- The Illustrated Man (1969)
- Take Shelter
And one with spaceships in it: Starship Troopers
That goes a little too hard into horror, so also try:
- The Truman Show
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
- Looper
- Source Code
- Minority Report
- 12 Monkeys
- Donnie Darko
- Vanilla Sky
- Dark City
- Being John Malkovich
Although they are all pretty obvious. Might have to ponder this more.
edit: also:
- The Arrival (1996) - instead of Arrival that I’ll assume you’ve seen
- Resident Alien - TV series and comics
- How to Talk to Girls at Parties
- Rupture (2016)
- The Watch (2012)
- Alien Raiders (2008)
- Threshold (2005 TV series)
- Invasion (2005 TV series)
- The Forgotten (2004)
Read the expanse series if you haven’t. It’s good. Bio of a space tyrant is pretty good too, but definitely less hard sci-fi.
If you want something very different, try Malazan Book of the Fallen. It’s fantasty, but the world building is outstanding.
Malazan Book of the Fallen is one of the best brick walls I’ve ever put my head through.
Lmao.
It’s a lot, that’s for sure. I’m on my first time through, and on book 5.
My friend got me hooked on them after my 3rd read of the Wheel of Time (speaking of brick walls)
Have you read any Iain M Banks’ The Culture novels? Incredible writing. Most of his books have interesting twists in them, some of which will fuck you up. They are the type of books that you wish you could read again for the first time. The author died in 2013 so there are no more coming.
- Consider Phlebas
- The Player of Games
- Use of Weapons
- The State of the Art
- Excession
- Inversions
- Look to Windward
- Matter
- Surface Detail
- The Hydrogen Sonata
Other SF books by Banks:
- Against a Dark Background
- Feersum Endjinn
- The Algebraist
Looks to me like you’re in the sci fi/thriller genre. There’s a lot in that category. Seems you like the classics too. Have you tried Phillip K. Dick? Dracula might be your cup of tea also.
I didn’t personally enjoy Blade Runner or do androids dream of electric sheep, maybe I should give some of his other works a go though. I know he’s considered an OG. I subscribed to the Dracula mailing list thing so have been reading it for about half a year now haha
Look at Richard K. Morgan. He wrote the Altered Carbon books. The first season of the tv show is ok, the second not so much. The animated one is pretty good. However the books are outstanding. There’s two other books not in the Altered Carbon world that you might like better: Thin Air and 13teen.
If you want to give him another shot, I’d actually recommend his short story anthologies. I feel like Dick excels with bringing an interesting idea or twist to a story, but is weaker with character development. In a short story, his strengths are accentuated and his weaknesses are diluted or eliminated.
Two titles to look for are “The Father-thing” and “I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon”.
In fact, many of his stories that turned into feature films started as shorts. “Minority Report”, “Total Recall” (originally “We Can Remember it for You Wholesale”), and “Paycheck” were all short stories originally, and hit all the harder for being shorter and more focussed.
slaughterhouse five
If you like S5, all of Kurt Vonnegut’s works are great. Try Sirens of Titan.
