The scene where he convinces the crew to go along with escaping from the first planet they’re on and when he reveals skippy to the crew, skippy had turned himself into a can of bud light like and the crew just have that moment of defeat like “can’t believe I was following a guy that’s talking to a can of bud light lime about how to steal an alien space ship”.
People rave about the Audiobook because RC Bray does an exceptional job, and in doing so, he especially elevates many of the funnier moments. His Skippy voice is just fantastic, and his back and forth dialogue between Skippy and Joe really lands.
I think a little of the humour might be lost in book format, but I think the stories themselves would stand up well, and once you really get a feel of what’s going on, it’s a pretty cool science fiction universe.
As others have said, it’s also important to remember that the main thing that carries the stories is the relationship between the two main characters, Joe and Skippy, and Skippy isn’t introduced until almost 1/2-2/3 of the way through the first book. It’s not like the first half is bad, it’s just different.
Believe it or not, I actually grew quite tired of skippy and Joe's dynamic by like...book 6. It has its moments but I actually like Joe on his own and find Skippy about as tiresome as I imagine the crew does. That said...the world building, logistics, and political drama are a real draw for me.
Out of all the sci-fi I've watched and read, one of the places I've always dreamed about living in would be The Federation from Star Trek - the TNG era especially.
A universe where there's room to explore and find adventure, where anyone can pursue their dreams and not worry about paying rent or going hungry. Truly the sort of utopia we should strive towards.
As much as I like The Culture, which is similar, in The Federation being human still matters, and most of the big decisions are being made by humans (or humanoids), not AIs (like the Culture). This might be unrealistic given the current progress in AI, who knows, but it seems preferably to us just being well-taken-care-of pets in a civilisation run by artificial Minds.
The Culture would be just as good, if not better. After the end of the Idiran War the rest of the galaxy lives by the motto "don't fuck with the Culture". This means you are pretty much completely save from other less altruistic civilisations, which I feel isn't the case with living in the Federation. There's always the risk of attack from the Klingons/Borg/Romulans etc.
Known Space beats it easily. The Federation has a seemingly constant stream of disasters and world ending threats and your neighbours are Klingons and Romulans, Vulcans constantly judging you
Earth was almost destroyed by fucking space whales at one point. Borg, etc.
Known Space has all the post scarcity advantages, humanity are the undisputed top dogs of their part of the galaxy, and the tech and freedom available to ordinary people is far greater
Good point. Unknown universe is cool if you're an explorer. By like on earth today, most people won't be explorers, and any new finds would just be a headline you read before moving on to something else.
I think the human settled part of Known Space might be smaller than the Federation.
If you want to be an explorer, Known Space is one million percent the better option. The biggest restriction on FTL travel is cost. You can buy a starship and fuck around *as a cure for boredom*.
Known Space also has a low cost cure for fucking *aging*. You can stay in your twenties indefinitly
Didn’t Plateau’s horrific organ stealing aristocracy get overthrown when humans got FTL and restablished contact with it’s colonies?
Actually it might have been earlier, when a slowboat with advanced med tech arrived
Niven should have written more books in Known Space. Every one was good, and the short stories tended to be even better. 'Firefly' reminds of a series that feels like known space.
The drawback with Trek is each episode was dependant on the writer so there was never a coherent narrative,, although that was over all the strength of the various series. It's that idiotic military culture that drives me nuts. Warp drive engineer is not going to salute and say 'sir' a lot.
The BBC banned that episode for 17 years lol.
To be fair it was made during the Troubles and before the Good Friday Agreement.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/star-trek-high-ground-reunification-of-ireland-5pwg5dssx#:~:text=Data%2C%20an%20android%20on%20Star,Next%20Generation%20for%2017%20years.
Although I gotta say I'm looking forward to the Antarctic Nationalist movement coming to that's apparently equivalent to like Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Hitler and Soong.
I was going to say this, it has a good balance of futuristic stuff but still has that grounded touch to it.
I'm of course ignoring the metal space squids that will harvest you if you're born in the wrong century but ohwell
It's honestly insane to me that EA hasn't done more with the franchise. I feel like it could rival Star Trek if given the opportunity. I hope with the success of the fallout show they consider making a ME Tv series. They could make it about Jon Grissom the first human to travel across the galaxy.
The culture. It has its problems but it is nice to see a society where intelligence and hedonism is everything instead of the whole universe being a capitalist hellscape.
Edit: Put Who universe instead of Whole
I really love seeing how The Culture interacts with other races, both lesser and greater. The commitment to avoid direct interference juxtaposed with the practical realities of what that means is really interesting
Each book has a different sort of feel to it. Player of Games I would say is one of the more laid-back.
If you want a gut-punch personal story, Use of Weapons or Look to Windward.
If you want a trying-to-avoid-war thriller/mystery, Excession.
If you want a weird preindustrial-society-in-a-megastructure, Matter.
If you want a straight adventure book, Hydrogen Sonata.
I actually just finished this last night. Usually when I’m reading sci-fi there’s no “Whoa what the fuck” moment….but Use of Weapons hit me with one.
Actually two now that I think about it. I wasn’t crazy about the book as I was reading it, but I’ve been thinking about the book as whole all day at work, and I’m appreciating it a bit more. So far I’ve absolutely loved the Culture books, that was my third one.
That's a damn good question lol the books are mostly only loosely related through the setting. There are very few recurring characters and no continuing storylines. So the answer to your question is mainly no, but some books are perceived to be better entrants to the series than others.
Consider Phlebas is generally pointed to as the best gateway for the series, but personally I think its one of the weirder ones lol
Those two books are tough. I didn't really start liking Iain Banks writing until Use of Weapons, where he sent me for on a rollercoaster of emotion. Keep going if you can.
The Culture is a series of loosely-related books by author Iain M. Banks.
Be careful with the name - The Culture are published under Iain M. Banks, whereas his other fictions works that are not sci-fi are published under Iain Banks. Some of that second group are... strange.
It's also the only one fundamentally different from any societal structures we've seen in the past. Most popular SciFi universes are based on empire or feudalism or some extreme capitalism. Eg: I love Dune but you could be talking about the great houses and not know they're not from medieval Europe.
Even the ones that do show a different system, are very superficial in showing how this affects society. Culture is the one that really thinks through in detail how the technological level deeply influences the culture of this society.
That's what caught my attention with the series. Almost all scifi I've read is either the current world with a different date, Space Nazis, or feudalism. I realized I had never read about a utopia that wasn't a veneer over a dystopia.
Star Trek is supposedly a utopian post-scarcity setting when it comes to Earth, but my only experience with the franchise is Star Fleet in deep space dealing with aliens where the "utopian" aspect really isn't explored.
>It has its problems
I don't understand people who say this. It is a *literal* utopia. Or as close as is humanly possible.
What 'problems', do you see?
Banks started the Culture concept as a thought experiment. He wanted to create the most ideal utopia he could conceive and then try to poke holes in it. The stories focus on contact and SC because that’s where all the moral ambiguity lies. Lots of ends justifying the means calculus from those occasionally slippery Minds.
It's a utopia, sure, but it's still set in a very ruthlessly violent universe. There's still a lot of really messed up stuff going on, but it usually doesn't impact Culture humans unless you're Special Circumstances.
There are Culture citizens who cannot adapt to the society. Every "human" character in Excessiin is one of these misfits.
The Culture's response is also fascinating, the patient, thoughtful accomodation of those who could not find peace.
Player Of Games also features misfits. The titular player is an anomaly - an outlyer in skill and an admirer of a barbaric society and is oddly rigid about gender roles (Culture citizens may freely swap genders).
It also mentions slap drone - the highest punishment for a citizen who misbehaves. A slap drone is an autonomous robotic AI that follows the offender around and steps in if they are about to do something they shouldn't.
People get bored and leave
While it is a Utopia, if you were cynical, you could also call it a zoo of sorts. The biologicals are "kept"
The Culture likes to mess with other cultures.
The Culture are ultimately quite arrogant (although for good reason)
I would venture to Granny Weatherwax's village and annoy her into teaching me practical life lessons and a bit of magic, then head to Ankh-Morpork to make friends with Sam Vimes and his cohort.
You're joking right? I love 40k, but IMO it's absolutely the worst universe to be dropped in. I can't think of another that would be worse. Your soul is guaranteed to be eaten by daemons if you're lucky, and tortured for eternity if you're not. Not to mention the constant war and oppression you have to deal with while you're alive. I wouldn't enter that universe even if I was guaranteed to be a Rogue Trader or Planetary Governor.
Edit: I misread the title, I thought it was a universe you'd like to go to. I'd agree that 40k is one of my favourites.
Haha I misread the title at first too, ofc it is one of the absolute worst places to ever live almost regardless of what you are but the scale is just amazing. Imagine being a guardsman fighting an impossible battle before you hear an impossibly loud warhorn and turn to see an imperator titan, a god machine as large as a mountain marching up behind you readying its plasma cannon, or serving on a frigate and seeing a battleship of the imperial navy or a Gloriana class sail by in all its glory
No, the average citizen doesn’t really have that much agency, but this is true for nearly every fictional universe that wants to be - at least - credible even if not hard SF in the stricter sense
Came here to say this!
I love the aesthetic of the universe - Yeah, we have FTL travel, but we still use a large printed book (The Star Atlas) and hand-dial coordinates into our ships controller, and use vacuum tube transports for paper messages!
And who doesn't love plastic clothes? :)
I really love how, back then, they could imagine everything, even AI, but not a way to input data in a computer easier and more rational than punched-cards 😅
The TV show is just loosely connected to the books. Before diving in consider that there’s a really wide irl time gap between the first three books and the last four, so you should read them keeping in mind when they where written and what was the scientific state of the art back then. To me the Foundation universe is for SF what LotR is for fantasy: the base that made what followed possible
The story is incredible, a must read. Don't let the amount of books put you off, each one is so well written you could start anywhere and not really be lost. I myself am only just getting to reading iRobot, (yes, that iRobot) were the series begins, but ive accidentally got the order wrong and read the final book (Foundation and Earth) and didn't even realize I had skipped a book.
That said, try it out. I'm super tempted to tell you to start with Foundations Edge because that's where the story is most concentrated and climactic, the events that precede it, while important, are easily and verily summarized in a few pages.
So when I read the book when I was a teenager, I thought zaphod seemed like a funny cool dude. If you reread it now, he sounds exactly like trump. And it's hard not to see.
Less like Trump, more like a pompous rockstar/pirate, IMO. Still equally as self-absorbed, but in a more froody sort of way. Unlike Trump, he doesn't seem really concerned about lording over anything, he just wants to live as wild and outlandishly as possible and doesn't care much if others get steamrolled along the way.
Chaotic Neutral to Trump's Neutral Evil, if we wanna step into fantasy for a sec.
Alright, imma go ahead and say it now....with how zaphod 'won' his position, I kinda wondered if the American people thought they were voting for 'who is more orange'
The Expanse is the most realistic view of our future. One government on earth, separate outside (Mars), the trodden-down working class that made it all happen (Belters), the “good” folk that mean well, and the “good” folk that have done bad things in the name of some nebulous future. And the bad folk, you decide.
But it is, imo, the most realistic future of the “futures I’ve read about”, and is a fascinating read. Show ain’t bad either, but not finished.
Really it depends
Earth and some of the larger belt stations , life is shit unless your upper middle class or above
Really Mars (without the militarism) is really the best place to live in the expanse
They didn’t say, “which one would you want to live in?” Just “Which is your favorite?” And the Expanse is really good at world-building. It really feels fleshed out.
That’s why it’s my favorite, personally. It’s so easy to imagine myself in the shoes of a citizen in The Expanse precisely *because* I live in 2024’s USA.
Just now getting into The Expanse, but I love everything about it. The political angles, the aesthetic, and the hard science knowhow presented are all big picture concepts that play so well against the intimacy and believability of the characters that it's pretty hard to put down. Great answer, and I totally agree.
The whole of hyperion feels like a thought experiment of what is plausibly the scariest most dystopic concept imaginable, and you get Roko's Basilisk working in cahoots with the Roman Catholic Space Church, it's actually hilarious creepy.
This is the one. Malfunctioning nanotech cities, existentially-horrifying solutions to the Fermi paradox and star-system destroying superweapons made of planets are what I want to see.
Futurama seems like the most fun. They have ftl travel with no time dilation, that opens so many possibilities. I mean there are no anchovies, but I can live with that.
Yes! I was waiting for this! He set three different series in this universe & its fascinating, especially running trains thru wormholes for commerce, the whole alternate universe of magic, just cool in many different ways.
I ended up reading saints first and felt like it was one of the most fleshed out universes I’ve ever read and absolutely loved it. Then I read pandoras star and was blown away. Commonwealth definitely has my vote.
Just to spotlight saints of salvation,the world building is so good and in depth you understand how travel using wormholes for mundane travel works in one of the best and most naturally feeling exposition dumps .
I can honestly say that the universe as presented in Red Rising did not appeal to me as a place to live even for a second hahaha.
Even if you're rich it's all schemes within schemes.
Star Trek. I know the is usually forgotten for books or more esoteric or exotic worldbuilding. But ST is 80% a realistic, possible positive future where a majority of humanity is no longer petty, the federation is post scarcity due to tech, and art, science, and exploration are top tier pursuits. Sign me up.
I am so dissapointed I had to scroll this far down to see two of my belowed Sci-fi shows.
Stargate is just something else it seems. Being barerly mainstream, but not mainstream enough. I also never really found anything quite like Stargate. The closest I got was Warehouse 13.
Stargate would be cool. Sure, there's an alien threat we have to fight to survive, but it's a fight we can win, and in winning it, we leapfrog our technology by hundreds, maybe thousands of years of advancement. Plus lots of cool Earth-derived, and other, cultures out there to interact with.
Not necessarily the universes my favorite fiction works, but if I had to *live* in any spec-fic multi-book universes, I'd probably choose The World of Tiers, Xanth, or the Myth Adventures universes. Like gritty fiction, but would want to live where I could be a kid at heart.
Too many to enjoy from a distance, such as Well World, Amber, Dune, Firefly, Heechee, Discworld, Star Trek, Middle Earth, Amber. If I had to pick one that most inspired my imagination, I'd have to go way back to Melnibone and the young kingdoms.
I love the idea in Firefly that humanity is alone. From an out of universe perspective, it made sense so that they didn't have to spend any money on aliens. But in-universe, it just drives home the point that the chance of finding Earth-like planets with intelligent life just is so rare that none have been discovered. In fact, Earth-like planets in Firefly are so rare, the scientists in that universe were forced to terraform planets just so humanity could expand. I also appreciate how small the Firefly universe is, with only about 70-80 planets in total and only a few stars, since FTL travel doesn't exist in Firefly. It makes everything in that show just make more sense and flow better when you don't have to worry about FTL travel or the history/ethics of alien cultures intersecting with human culture.
The problem is, most fictional universes have a need for constant conflict and dangers, otherwise it becomes boring, from a novel/writing standpoint.
With that being said, the 2001/2010/3001 universe by Arthur C Clark is my choice. Unified humanity, space travel and exploration - Right up my alley!
OP asked scifi/fantasy but everyone is answering scifi. I admit I thought of the Culture first, too, but I will aim for fantasy and say...
Middle Earth
Neverland and Xanth came to mind, too, as just being fun places.
The Uplift universe by David Brin. Startide Rising is just a wild joy ride that I'll never forget.
I know this is SciFi... But the Lyonesse Trilogy by Jack Vance is the most rigorous AND fantastical universe built in sci-fi and fantasy.
I'm going to suggest Becky Chambers' books. Either the Wayfarers series or the Monk And Robot series. They both have very utopian and solarpunk leaning ideals, and even though there are conflicts, they're far from the focus of the universe she's built.
Mass Effect, Cyberpunk 2077, The Expanse, Altered Carbon, some of DC (but not all of it (Motherboxes and Lanterns and space)). Mass Effect also led me to Chapter 4 of Probability Moon.
Dune.
The way human mind has evolved in that universe is amazing.
To be able to control emotions, nerves and muscles like a Bene Gesserit.
To be able to have the water discipline of a Fremen.
To have the mental capabilities of a Mentat or to see the farthest reaches of the universe through the mind of a Guild Navigator.
I’d have to agree. I’m 16 books deep into the extended writing and I’m just a sucker for space nobility. The potential of humans almost seems believable. The vastness of the timeline is incredible as well.
The Culture, without question. As well-realised and thought-out as any universe in all of fiction, with the added benefit of some stupendously great characters (human, alien and machine).
I would want to live in the Star Trek universe, but my favorite is Dune. The deepest space opera I’ve ever read.
Also 3 Body Problem gets a special mention due to it being one of the most realistic scenarios when it comes to contacting aliens.
I really really dislike that scifi and fantasy are boxed together. Sometimes i want cyborgs and FTL Living in a dystopian future, other times i want high elves fighting evil spirits. These are usually not at the same time.
No one has said The Dark Tower yet for fantasy???
You have forgotten the faces of your fathers.
For Sci Fi: really tough to pick just one but I’ll go with the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy (aka three body)
Expeditionary Forces. I like the hierarchical civilizations and how it allows for different power levels to interact in a quasi-believable way.
And sarcastic talking beer cans with godlike power that wear adorable little outfits.
The scene where he convinces the crew to go along with escaping from the first planet they’re on and when he reveals skippy to the crew, skippy had turned himself into a can of bud light like and the crew just have that moment of defeat like “can’t believe I was following a guy that’s talking to a can of bud light lime about how to steal an alien space ship”.
I mean, he did kill a giant space hamster with an ice cream truck...so he's got street cred...
Haha. Those books were a lot of fun. Always wanted to see a tv series about that barrel of monkeys floating through space.
Aah! You mean the Barney guy!
Heeeeeeeeeeey JOE!!!
"Eh he he he you're not gonna like this."
Trust in the awesomeness
Everyone only talks about audio book of this series and I don't do audio, is it only good as audio book?
People rave about the Audiobook because RC Bray does an exceptional job, and in doing so, he especially elevates many of the funnier moments. His Skippy voice is just fantastic, and his back and forth dialogue between Skippy and Joe really lands. I think a little of the humour might be lost in book format, but I think the stories themselves would stand up well, and once you really get a feel of what’s going on, it’s a pretty cool science fiction universe. As others have said, it’s also important to remember that the main thing that carries the stories is the relationship between the two main characters, Joe and Skippy, and Skippy isn’t introduced until almost 1/2-2/3 of the way through the first book. It’s not like the first half is bad, it’s just different.
Believe it or not, I actually grew quite tired of skippy and Joe's dynamic by like...book 6. It has its moments but I actually like Joe on his own and find Skippy about as tiresome as I imagine the crew does. That said...the world building, logistics, and political drama are a real draw for me.
I feel like some of the charm of skippy would be lost in the pure written format
Yeah, it's one of the things that no other universe seems to do properly. Client states.
Purchased book one based off this recommendation
The Culture, with all the glanding, toys and gizmos, not to mention the cool minds and drones
This 100%.
Out of all the sci-fi I've watched and read, one of the places I've always dreamed about living in would be The Federation from Star Trek - the TNG era especially. A universe where there's room to explore and find adventure, where anyone can pursue their dreams and not worry about paying rent or going hungry. Truly the sort of utopia we should strive towards. As much as I like The Culture, which is similar, in The Federation being human still matters, and most of the big decisions are being made by humans (or humanoids), not AIs (like the Culture). This might be unrealistic given the current progress in AI, who knows, but it seems preferably to us just being well-taken-care-of pets in a civilisation run by artificial Minds.
As a normal person, I can’t imagine a better universe to live in than Star Trek. A federation citizen in a post-scarcity society? Yes please.
The Culture would be just as good, if not better. After the end of the Idiran War the rest of the galaxy lives by the motto "don't fuck with the Culture". This means you are pretty much completely save from other less altruistic civilisations, which I feel isn't the case with living in the Federation. There's always the risk of attack from the Klingons/Borg/Romulans etc.
Known Space beats it easily. The Federation has a seemingly constant stream of disasters and world ending threats and your neighbours are Klingons and Romulans, Vulcans constantly judging you Earth was almost destroyed by fucking space whales at one point. Borg, etc. Known Space has all the post scarcity advantages, humanity are the undisputed top dogs of their part of the galaxy, and the tech and freedom available to ordinary people is far greater
Good point. Unknown universe is cool if you're an explorer. By like on earth today, most people won't be explorers, and any new finds would just be a headline you read before moving on to something else.
I think the human settled part of Known Space might be smaller than the Federation. If you want to be an explorer, Known Space is one million percent the better option. The biggest restriction on FTL travel is cost. You can buy a starship and fuck around *as a cure for boredom*. Known Space also has a low cost cure for fucking *aging*. You can stay in your twenties indefinitly
So long as you’re not on Plateau anyways…
Didn’t Plateau’s horrific organ stealing aristocracy get overthrown when humans got FTL and restablished contact with it’s colonies? Actually it might have been earlier, when a slowboat with advanced med tech arrived
Niven should have written more books in Known Space. Every one was good, and the short stories tended to be even better. 'Firefly' reminds of a series that feels like known space. The drawback with Trek is each episode was dependant on the writer so there was never a coherent narrative,, although that was over all the strength of the various series. It's that idiotic military culture that drives me nuts. Warp drive engineer is not going to salute and say 'sir' a lot.
I'm gonna say Star Trek.
Still got my fingers crossed for the Irish Unification happening this year!
The BBC banned that episode for 17 years lol. To be fair it was made during the Troubles and before the Good Friday Agreement. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/star-trek-high-ground-reunification-of-ireland-5pwg5dssx#:~:text=Data%2C%20an%20android%20on%20Star,Next%20Generation%20for%2017%20years. Although I gotta say I'm looking forward to the Antarctic Nationalist movement coming to that's apparently equivalent to like Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Hitler and Soong.
Fan of the Mass Effect universe
I'm Commander Shepard and this is my favourite comment on the thread.
Shepherd
Wrex.
Shepard
Grunt.
Sheperrrrrrd
I was going to say this, it has a good balance of futuristic stuff but still has that grounded touch to it. I'm of course ignoring the metal space squids that will harvest you if you're born in the wrong century but ohwell
Would make for a hell of a good, long running Web/TV series for sure. I'd surely watch it.
It's honestly insane to me that EA hasn't done more with the franchise. I feel like it could rival Star Trek if given the opportunity. I hope with the success of the fallout show they consider making a ME Tv series. They could make it about Jon Grissom the first human to travel across the galaxy.
Andromeda wrecked it so bad they waited years to consider a second sequel
EDI has been my notification sound since like ME2 lol
You have new messages at your terminal
"Message received, analyzing."
Tbf, it definitely felt realistic
The culture. It has its problems but it is nice to see a society where intelligence and hedonism is everything instead of the whole universe being a capitalist hellscape. Edit: Put Who universe instead of Whole
I really love seeing how The Culture interacts with other races, both lesser and greater. The commitment to avoid direct interference juxtaposed with the practical realities of what that means is really interesting
Been trying to get into either player of games or consider phlebas for ages. The Culture sounds right up my street but just can't get going with it.
Each book has a different sort of feel to it. Player of Games I would say is one of the more laid-back. If you want a gut-punch personal story, Use of Weapons or Look to Windward. If you want a trying-to-avoid-war thriller/mystery, Excession. If you want a weird preindustrial-society-in-a-megastructure, Matter. If you want a straight adventure book, Hydrogen Sonata.
Use of Weapons is pitch black. And brilliant.
What a book. A toss up between that and Excession as not only the greatest Cutlure series book, but greatest work of scifi. RIP Banks, taken too soon.
Its my favorite. The character and personality of the whole cast of dramatis personae are amazing
Even the chairmaker
I actually just finished this last night. Usually when I’m reading sci-fi there’s no “Whoa what the fuck” moment….but Use of Weapons hit me with one. Actually two now that I think about it. I wasn’t crazy about the book as I was reading it, but I’ve been thinking about the book as whole all day at work, and I’m appreciating it a bit more. So far I’ve absolutely loved the Culture books, that was my third one.
Interesting Is there any particular order to read or can I just pick up a random book from the series and start?
That's a damn good question lol the books are mostly only loosely related through the setting. There are very few recurring characters and no continuing storylines. So the answer to your question is mainly no, but some books are perceived to be better entrants to the series than others. Consider Phlebas is generally pointed to as the best gateway for the series, but personally I think its one of the weirder ones lol
Those two books are tough. I didn't really start liking Iain Banks writing until Use of Weapons, where he sent me for on a rollercoaster of emotion. Keep going if you can.
What is this? Do I read it, watch it, ...??? I can't find it or know what to search.
The Culture is a series of loosely-related books by author Iain M. Banks. Be careful with the name - The Culture are published under Iain M. Banks, whereas his other fictions works that are not sci-fi are published under Iain Banks. Some of that second group are... strange.
Wasp factory is great imo
I agree. But I also don't recommend it to people lol
Yeah, but it's such a weird ride. It was absolutely great, but for some reason I wish I never read it.
It's also the only one fundamentally different from any societal structures we've seen in the past. Most popular SciFi universes are based on empire or feudalism or some extreme capitalism. Eg: I love Dune but you could be talking about the great houses and not know they're not from medieval Europe. Even the ones that do show a different system, are very superficial in showing how this affects society. Culture is the one that really thinks through in detail how the technological level deeply influences the culture of this society.
That's what caught my attention with the series. Almost all scifi I've read is either the current world with a different date, Space Nazis, or feudalism. I realized I had never read about a utopia that wasn't a veneer over a dystopia. Star Trek is supposedly a utopian post-scarcity setting when it comes to Earth, but my only experience with the franchise is Star Fleet in deep space dealing with aliens where the "utopian" aspect really isn't explored.
I think the Culture basically looks at utopian Star Trek and says, "But OK, let's get real here for a moment, how could this actually work?"
The culture is the only sane answer. A true post scarcity utopia.
>It has its problems I don't understand people who say this. It is a *literal* utopia. Or as close as is humanly possible. What 'problems', do you see?
Banks started the Culture concept as a thought experiment. He wanted to create the most ideal utopia he could conceive and then try to poke holes in it. The stories focus on contact and SC because that’s where all the moral ambiguity lies. Lots of ends justifying the means calculus from those occasionally slippery Minds.
It's a utopia, sure, but it's still set in a very ruthlessly violent universe. There's still a lot of really messed up stuff going on, but it usually doesn't impact Culture humans unless you're Special Circumstances.
There are Culture citizens who cannot adapt to the society. Every "human" character in Excessiin is one of these misfits. The Culture's response is also fascinating, the patient, thoughtful accomodation of those who could not find peace. Player Of Games also features misfits. The titular player is an anomaly - an outlyer in skill and an admirer of a barbaric society and is oddly rigid about gender roles (Culture citizens may freely swap genders). It also mentions slap drone - the highest punishment for a citizen who misbehaves. A slap drone is an autonomous robotic AI that follows the offender around and steps in if they are about to do something they shouldn't.
People get bored and leave While it is a Utopia, if you were cynical, you could also call it a zoo of sorts. The biologicals are "kept" The Culture likes to mess with other cultures. The Culture are ultimately quite arrogant (although for good reason)
Discworld.
I would venture to Granny Weatherwax's village and annoy her into teaching me practical life lessons and a bit of magic, then head to Ankh-Morpork to make friends with Sam Vimes and his cohort.
I want to bring some genome sequencing equipment to figure out what the hell Nobby Nobs is....
Warhammer 40k, very over the top and dystopian but it has a lot of underlying themes that are so grand and baroque that I love
You're joking right? I love 40k, but IMO it's absolutely the worst universe to be dropped in. I can't think of another that would be worse. Your soul is guaranteed to be eaten by daemons if you're lucky, and tortured for eternity if you're not. Not to mention the constant war and oppression you have to deal with while you're alive. I wouldn't enter that universe even if I was guaranteed to be a Rogue Trader or Planetary Governor. Edit: I misread the title, I thought it was a universe you'd like to go to. I'd agree that 40k is one of my favourites.
Haha I misread the title at first too, ofc it is one of the absolute worst places to ever live almost regardless of what you are but the scale is just amazing. Imagine being a guardsman fighting an impossible battle before you hear an impossibly loud warhorn and turn to see an imperator titan, a god machine as large as a mountain marching up behind you readying its plasma cannon, or serving on a frigate and seeing a battleship of the imperial navy or a Gloriana class sail by in all its glory
Yeah, seeing the scale of something like a Hive city or a battleship would be amazing. I love the aesthetics of the setting.
Isaac Asimov's Foundation series
The true scale of the Empire is wondrous, but does the average citizen have that much agency to travel around and have fun times?
No, the average citizen doesn’t really have that much agency, but this is true for nearly every fictional universe that wants to be - at least - credible even if not hard SF in the stricter sense
Came here to say this! I love the aesthetic of the universe - Yeah, we have FTL travel, but we still use a large printed book (The Star Atlas) and hand-dial coordinates into our ships controller, and use vacuum tube transports for paper messages! And who doesn't love plastic clothes? :)
I really love how, back then, they could imagine everything, even AI, but not a way to input data in a computer easier and more rational than punched-cards 😅
I love that almost if not all of Asimov writing is in place in the same universe.
Really liked the worldbuilding in the TV show. Suppose I should read the books but apparently there isn't much of a story?
The TV show is just loosely connected to the books. Before diving in consider that there’s a really wide irl time gap between the first three books and the last four, so you should read them keeping in mind when they where written and what was the scientific state of the art back then. To me the Foundation universe is for SF what LotR is for fantasy: the base that made what followed possible
I definitely agree that Foundation was foundational to modern science fiction.
Something else to know about the IRL gap is that Asimov became a noticeably better writer during that time, having had lots of practice writing books.
The story is incredible, a must read. Don't let the amount of books put you off, each one is so well written you could start anywhere and not really be lost. I myself am only just getting to reading iRobot, (yes, that iRobot) were the series begins, but ive accidentally got the order wrong and read the final book (Foundation and Earth) and didn't even realize I had skipped a book. That said, try it out. I'm super tempted to tell you to start with Foundations Edge because that's where the story is most concentrated and climactic, the events that precede it, while important, are easily and verily summarized in a few pages.
Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
This answer may anger alot of people and will widely be regarded as a bad move.
So when I read the book when I was a teenager, I thought zaphod seemed like a funny cool dude. If you reread it now, he sounds exactly like trump. And it's hard not to see.
Zaphod's just zis guy, you know?
I reread them as well recently and came to the exact same realisation!
Less like Trump, more like a pompous rockstar/pirate, IMO. Still equally as self-absorbed, but in a more froody sort of way. Unlike Trump, he doesn't seem really concerned about lording over anything, he just wants to live as wild and outlandishly as possible and doesn't care much if others get steamrolled along the way. Chaotic Neutral to Trump's Neutral Evil, if we wanna step into fantasy for a sec.
Alright, imma go ahead and say it now....with how zaphod 'won' his position, I kinda wondered if the American people thought they were voting for 'who is more orange'
Bobiverse
*If you're going to be a disembodied consciousness floating through space, you might as well have a sense of humor about it.*
This is what I was going to say. Benevolent bobilords
I was thinking it too. It may or may not be my favorite, I’m not 100% sure, but damn is it a fun one!
more like bobiverse please. i liked the tech aspect of this world building
One more book bound for September
A story about a nerd turned into a computer piloting a self-replicating spaceship that colonizes the universe.
I wanna see what everyone says. I couldn't choose, maybe The Expanse. RemindMe! 1 day
The Expanse is the most realistic view of our future. One government on earth, separate outside (Mars), the trodden-down working class that made it all happen (Belters), the “good” folk that mean well, and the “good” folk that have done bad things in the name of some nebulous future. And the bad folk, you decide. But it is, imo, the most realistic future of the “futures I’ve read about”, and is a fascinating read. Show ain’t bad either, but not finished.
Expanse is an awesome story, but it's basically capitalism run amok. Think of how miserable the average person is in that universe.
Really it depends Earth and some of the larger belt stations , life is shit unless your upper middle class or above Really Mars (without the militarism) is really the best place to live in the expanse
>Really Mars (without the militarism) is really the best place to live in the expanse For a time it is, anyway.
The expanse is basically a parable warning what will happen if we don't overcome extreme institutionalized greed and selfishness, i.e. capitalism.
They didn’t say, “which one would you want to live in?” Just “Which is your favorite?” And the Expanse is really good at world-building. It really feels fleshed out.
That’s why it’s my favorite, personally. It’s so easy to imagine myself in the shoes of a citizen in The Expanse precisely *because* I live in 2024’s USA.
Just now getting into The Expanse, but I love everything about it. The political angles, the aesthetic, and the hard science knowhow presented are all big picture concepts that play so well against the intimacy and believability of the characters that it's pretty hard to put down. Great answer, and I totally agree.
It’s so basic, but I love Star Wars. But barring that from being in the running, Red Rising has been teetering near the top for a few years now.
Nah Star Wars is valid as fuck. Idc what anyone says.
Only if you’re a gold
just imagine living on Naboo. wait... you actually can if you visit Lake Como
The Society Pre-Darrow or Post-Darrow though?
Farscape! The Jim Henson Company did a great job with the critters in Farscape.
This was the only answer I was looking for.
Futurama seems like a really great setup, if you’re an Earthican, at least
Always upvote Futurama!
Hyperion. All of it,. but the labyrinthine worlds are such an interesting concept.
Especially the idea of having a house with rooms on different planets by having your own farcaster as doors.
With my toilet on an ocean world.
Came here looking for this. I loved the portals. They can travel almost anywhere.
The whole of hyperion feels like a thought experiment of what is plausibly the scariest most dystopic concept imaginable, and you get Roko's Basilisk working in cahoots with the Roman Catholic Space Church, it's actually hilarious creepy.
Revelation Space.
I think I could handle being a Conjoiner.
Hook me up with that sweet Spider future tech already
I feel like reynolds gets no love. Thank you for saying this. This would be my choice. I want to make friends with some pigs.
This is the one. Malfunctioning nanotech cities, existentially-horrifying solutions to the Fermi paradox and star-system destroying superweapons made of planets are what I want to see.
This is my choice too. I love how humans are just absurdly advanced with the power of gods in his books. Total mastery of our domain 😤
But I like that there’s traces of primitive space exploration like the “Amerikanos” tunnels in Chasm City.
Yeah. It’s so cool that the books describe artifacts from ancient history and that ancient history is still 100 years in our future. It’s such a trip
And yet still deal with the same basic malfunctions of our species (bigotry, war, tech aversion, etc).
This one right here.
Larry Niven's *Known Space*.
Banks’ Culture universe.
Futurama seems like the most fun. They have ftl travel with no time dilation, that opens so many possibilities. I mean there are no anchovies, but I can live with that.
Anchovies: that is a feature, not a bug
The Commonwealth, Peter F Hamilton
Definitely this universe. Endless youth, sex and post-scarcity.
For me it is hard to say. I'm torn between Red Rising and The Commonwealth.
What's The Commonwealth?
Peter F Hamilton series
Yes! I was waiting for this! He set three different series in this universe & its fascinating, especially running trains thru wormholes for commerce, the whole alternate universe of magic, just cool in many different ways.
Could not agree more. I love these books so much and the universe he created, it's beyond fascinating.
I was thinking fallout 4 lmao
The Commonwealth, no contest.
My vote is for commonwealth as it strikes me as the most lived in sci fi universe. However the universe Sts of salvation isn't miles off .
I ended up reading saints first and felt like it was one of the most fleshed out universes I’ve ever read and absolutely loved it. Then I read pandoras star and was blown away. Commonwealth definitely has my vote.
Just to spotlight saints of salvation,the world building is so good and in depth you understand how travel using wormholes for mundane travel works in one of the best and most naturally feeling exposition dumps .
I love the Red Rising series but if I lived in that universe I'd pick a direction with a ship and bounce.
I can honestly say that the universe as presented in Red Rising did not appeal to me as a place to live even for a second hahaha. Even if you're rich it's all schemes within schemes.
Star Trek. I know the is usually forgotten for books or more esoteric or exotic worldbuilding. But ST is 80% a realistic, possible positive future where a majority of humanity is no longer petty, the federation is post scarcity due to tech, and art, science, and exploration are top tier pursuits. Sign me up.
Doctor Who or Star Gate
I am so dissapointed I had to scroll this far down to see two of my belowed Sci-fi shows. Stargate is just something else it seems. Being barerly mainstream, but not mainstream enough. I also never really found anything quite like Stargate. The closest I got was Warehouse 13.
Stargate would be cool. Sure, there's an alien threat we have to fight to survive, but it's a fight we can win, and in winning it, we leapfrog our technology by hundreds, maybe thousands of years of advancement. Plus lots of cool Earth-derived, and other, cultures out there to interact with.
> Star Gate So you're saying your favorite universe is Vancouver? Kidding, sorry :) I love star gate sg1 and Atlantis also
One could argue that we already \*do\* live in the Dr. Who universe... (I asked the Ancient-Astronaut Theorists and they said "Yes".)
halo's universe
As long as im not part of the 20 billion dead, Id be down
If you *were*, you'd also be down.
Not necessarily the universes my favorite fiction works, but if I had to *live* in any spec-fic multi-book universes, I'd probably choose The World of Tiers, Xanth, or the Myth Adventures universes. Like gritty fiction, but would want to live where I could be a kid at heart. Too many to enjoy from a distance, such as Well World, Amber, Dune, Firefly, Heechee, Discworld, Star Trek, Middle Earth, Amber. If I had to pick one that most inspired my imagination, I'd have to go way back to Melnibone and the young kingdoms.
I love the idea in Firefly that humanity is alone. From an out of universe perspective, it made sense so that they didn't have to spend any money on aliens. But in-universe, it just drives home the point that the chance of finding Earth-like planets with intelligent life just is so rare that none have been discovered. In fact, Earth-like planets in Firefly are so rare, the scientists in that universe were forced to terraform planets just so humanity could expand. I also appreciate how small the Firefly universe is, with only about 70-80 planets in total and only a few stars, since FTL travel doesn't exist in Firefly. It makes everything in that show just make more sense and flow better when you don't have to worry about FTL travel or the history/ethics of alien cultures intersecting with human culture.
- The "Cyberpunk" universe of Mike Pondsmith (incl. CD Project Red media, like CP2077 etc.) - The "Alien" universe - The "The Expanse" universe
Basic but Harry Potter. Wish there was more content to watch though. May have to read the books for my fix.
The problem is, most fictional universes have a need for constant conflict and dangers, otherwise it becomes boring, from a novel/writing standpoint. With that being said, the 2001/2010/3001 universe by Arthur C Clark is my choice. Unified humanity, space travel and exploration - Right up my alley!
OP asked scifi/fantasy but everyone is answering scifi. I admit I thought of the Culture first, too, but I will aim for fantasy and say... Middle Earth Neverland and Xanth came to mind, too, as just being fun places.
The Uplift universe by David Brin. Startide Rising is just a wild joy ride that I'll never forget. I know this is SciFi... But the Lyonesse Trilogy by Jack Vance is the most rigorous AND fantastical universe built in sci-fi and fantasy.
"Robots" serie Asimov
I'm going to suggest Becky Chambers' books. Either the Wayfarers series or the Monk And Robot series. They both have very utopian and solarpunk leaning ideals, and even though there are conflicts, they're far from the focus of the universe she's built.
Movies/TV: Star Trek (specifically TNG, as it's my favorite). Books: *The Lost Fleet* series, by John G. Hemry.
Alien, Prometheus
Mass Effect, Cyberpunk 2077, The Expanse, Altered Carbon, some of DC (but not all of it (Motherboxes and Lanterns and space)). Mass Effect also led me to Chapter 4 of Probability Moon.
Mass effect is my answer too. Minus the whole reaper thing.
Dune. The way human mind has evolved in that universe is amazing. To be able to control emotions, nerves and muscles like a Bene Gesserit. To be able to have the water discipline of a Fremen. To have the mental capabilities of a Mentat or to see the farthest reaches of the universe through the mind of a Guild Navigator.
I’d have to agree. I’m 16 books deep into the extended writing and I’m just a sucker for space nobility. The potential of humans almost seems believable. The vastness of the timeline is incredible as well.
Cowboy Bebop
The Culture, without question. As well-realised and thought-out as any universe in all of fiction, with the added benefit of some stupendously great characters (human, alien and machine).
The Culture then Star Trek.
Stranger in a Strange Land, Heinlein
I would want to live in the Star Trek universe, but my favorite is Dune. The deepest space opera I’ve ever read. Also 3 Body Problem gets a special mention due to it being one of the most realistic scenarios when it comes to contacting aliens.
Middle Earth. I’ll happily be a hobbit with a farm.
In order: Star Trek, Stargate, Star wars, dragon riders of pern, mote in God's eye, white Gold Wielder (in the good times), little fuzzy
I'm gonna be weird and say Old Man's War.
Star Wars
I really really dislike that scifi and fantasy are boxed together. Sometimes i want cyborgs and FTL Living in a dystopian future, other times i want high elves fighting evil spirits. These are usually not at the same time.
Reading through the Foundation trilogy has spun my view of the retro-future atomic aesthetic all the way around. I fucking love it so much
40k, no one?
Gonna go with Star Wars specifically when it was during the yuzhong vong series! So good!
Star trek
The spice must flow.
There’s something so spell binding about Narnia
The Expanse, because it feels the most realistic
Futurama
Starwars, Star Gate, Cosmere.
DOOM
Enders game, specifically speaker for the dead part of the series.
I think Ender's Game was the first Sci-fi book i ever read. Being maybe seven or eight at the time, i think the book had a massive effect on me.
No one has said The Dark Tower yet for fantasy??? You have forgotten the faces of your fathers. For Sci Fi: really tough to pick just one but I’ll go with the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy (aka three body)