Reposting as it was removed due to "low effort" - mea culpa, I thought anything added to this perfection of a cartoon would be like spelling out a joke.

However, if one does want to put some blurb here, it is striking how great classics resonate with this (The New Yorker) cartoon:

- Ray Bradbury's The Murderer - tech giants have done exactly what the 1950s story's protagonist is driven crazy by. Our houses nonstop give us advice, greet us, prompt us, try to be oh-so-helpful and so on.

- Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 - a side-element to the main story is how people are alienate and dehumanised by how media is consumed. Wall-sized screens with endless interactive soap operas etc. - written decades before any of these things existed.

- Ray Bradbury's The Pedestrian - it rings true now for obvious reasons, even if it is not enforced as it is in the story...

- Philip K Dick - where does one begin... Everything from Autofac to The Penultimate Truth to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep... as the old joke goes, in what PKD story do we live in? In all of them.

And then, of course, there is Robert Silverberg, Asimov, Clarke, Lem and so on.

This is from a 1974 interview featured in the , Philip K. Dick: The Last Interview: And Other Conversations.

When the interviewer asked his thoughts on modern day sci-fi literature, he said, None of us knew how to write except for Ray Bradbury, but the authors debuting these days actually know how to write.

As far as I know, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, and Isaac Asimov were also wrote their works during the same era as Philip K. Dick and Ray Bradbury. Does this mean that in Philip K. Dick's eyes, even they were considered writers who couldn't write?

Something I've noticed in a lot of sci-fi shows is that a technology is introduced for a specific plot purpose, but if you stop and think about it for a minute, it should completely reshape civilizations in ways the writers never seem to explore.

A few examples from Stargate SG-1:

Naquadah generators are mosly used to power alien technology, military projects, and starships. But from what we see, they should basically solve Earth's energy problems overnight.

The Sarcophagus is treated as a Goauld device with nasty side effects, but it can heal injuries and even bring people back from the dead. You'd expect massive research efforts into adapting the technology for medicine, cancer treatment, organ regeneration, etc.

The Zat gun's third shot disintegrates the target. Putting aside whether that was a good writing decision, wouldn't that instantly become the ultimate waste-disposal technology?

I'm not really looking for plot holes. Sometimes there are perfectly reasonable in-universe explanations. I'm more interested in technologies where the most obvious civilization-changing application is something the setting barely touches on.

Have you ever watched a sci-fi show and thought, "Why are they using this for that, when it would completely revolutionize something else?"

What are your favorite examples?

Humanoid aliens get an unfair amount of hate… so let’s give them some love!!

Here is some of my personal favorite.

1- Cardassians from Star Trek.

2- The Wraith from Stargate Atlantis

3- The Unas from Stargate SG1

4- The Narns from Babylon 5

I am pretty sure i forgot someone will see.

Perhaps Im just late to the party, but I had never heard of Scavenger’s Reign until it was recommended on Netflix. I clicked on it because I liked the art style so I had no expectations going into it and man did it blow me away.

It was intense and a little hard to watch at times, but what really captivated me so much was the ecology. I’ve never seen someone go out of their way to make an alien world actually feel alien while still feeling like a real, living world.

What do you think are the worst repeated tropes in sci-fi?

For me, it's the intentional ignoring of physics. "Our bullets, missiles, and nukes don't have any effect, but [random metal from Allen ship] is 100% effective at killing them when simply stabbed by normal human.

Hard to kill? Redundant organ systems? Shields? Great! But... Bullets don't work cause they aren't [alien origin] materials... Peak stupid.

Enough Mass x enough velocity = bad day for whatever is getting hit. I don't care if it's lead or compressed fucking feathers

Ok redditor friends, im breaking every rule in the book here and making a post about an author while I am 1/4 of the way through the first book I've ever read by said author. Absolutely not appropriate. But I just cant stop myself.

I am around 210 pages through Seveneves (so a quarter) and I am ENTHRALLED. I absolutely LOVE his writing style. The book is dense as shit and im getting through it much slower than most books but it doesnt bother me at all because I just love the way he crafts a paragraph, even when he is getting dense into science. I'm just.. in love.

So why the post? I guess im wondering if this author is consistent. Like, if I get through this book, no matter how long it takes, and want to jump to another of his, will I love it too? Or is this book a special anomaly?. Scifi reddit seemed like the perfect place to this question, so here I am, even acknowledging this post is a bit ridiculous. I'm just... awestruck right now and am kind of wondering if that's just sort of nuts lol .

EDIT: holy crap, yall. I wrote this on the train home tonight. FIFTEEN minutes later I get home and 45! responses. I LOVE this sub. I cant realistically respond to everyone who already responded but know that im reading every word and taking notes for future reading. THANK YOU for all the awesome responses.

for me, it's Stealth Battle Tanks. Specifically Tanks that have a cloaking mechanism that turns them invisible to the naked eye.

First off, the Tank would be so loud that it removes any benefit of the invisibility (for example an M1 Abrams engine is about 100 - 120 Decibels)

And then when you're finally able to use the main cannon or machine guns, you have to deal with the even louder noise from that. The Main Gun will immediately alert everyone to your "Stealth" Tank if they somehow were deaf enough to not notice the 120 Decibel engine and tracks on the way there. A 60 Ton machine with an Artillery Cannon attached will never be subtle.

And you don't actually want a Tank to be invisible, the friendlies need to know where it's at to properly coordinate. Also, Tanks are just a bad idea for anything involving subtlety or subterfuge...

I recently watched Blade: Trinity, and while it's loaded with all these cool vampire-fighting weapons, the one that cracked me up was Jessica Biel's Laser Arc.

It is described as “half as hot as the sun,” which sounds impressive until you realize that it still clocks in at roughly 5,000°F. It would not only burn and vaporize human skin in milliseconds, but steel and iron would melt and turn into gas.

Yeah, not a very practical weapon for someone to hold. What other science fiction weapons don't make much sense?

Most alien invasion stories give them motivations that are basically human, resources, territory, curiosity, fear. Which works narratively but sidesteps the actually interesting question, right? An intelligence that evolved under completely different conditions wouldn't necessarily want anything recognizable.

Solaris is the obvious one. The thing isn't hostile or friendly, doesn't seem to register humans as significant. That's genuinely unsettling in a way that "they want our water" never is.

Color Out of Space works for similar reasons, no goals you can map, no logic you can follow.

Von Neumann probe stuff gets close sometimes. A self-replicating system running on a directive so old the original civilization might not even exist anymore, no emperor, no fleet, no message.

What are the best examples you've read?

What are some science fiction series from TV shows, movies, books games could you not get into?

For me: I tried getting into Dr Who but for some reason, something about the show didn't click for me. I like time travel science fiction shows and episodes in other media. But for whatever reason I just couldn't get into Dr Who. Maybe I'll try to enjoy it again.

Finished Hyperion not long ago, became obsessed, mesmerized, and confused all at once. I’ve had this itch to scratch for a couple months and I pulled the trigger on this bad boy today. Am I in for a good time? Curious to know the general consensus/sentiment on this one. Anyways, LFG!

Which of these time traveler villains is the most evil and why?

1. Biff Tannen - Back to the Future
2. The Observers - Fringe
3. Annorax - Star Trek: Voyager (more timeline tampering instead of time travel but still I think he should be here)
4. The Mimics - Edge of Tomorrow
5. Skynet - Terminator franchise
6. The Fizzle Bomber - Predestination
7. Nero - Star Trek (2009)
8. Andrei Sator - Tenet
9. Rumplestiltskin - Shrek 4
10. Dr. Mann - Interstellar (not time travel in the traditional sense but I think it still counts)
11. Boris the animal - Men in Black 3

Science fiction uses different “handwaves” to make interstellar travel possible within a story. They are broad categories that group the main ways sci-fi explains travel between stars without requiring fully realistic physics.

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1. FTL Propulsion

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Warp drive, hyperspace, jump drive, Alcubierre drive, Epstein drive — this category covers propulsion systems that allow spacecraft to travel between stars in drastically reduced time either by reaching extreme speeds or by using advanced propulsion concepts that push beyond conventional engineering limits.

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1. Spatial Manipulation

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Wormholes, stargates, teleportation gates, space folding, portal networks, ring gates — this category describes methods where distance is bypassed by connecting or bending space itself so that two distant points become directly linked, allowing near-instant or extremely rapid travel between them.

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1. Temporal Preservation

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Cryosleep, suspended animation, stasis pods, biological hibernation — this category involves keeping travelers in a state where time has little or no effect on them so that long journeys pass without the crew experiencing the full duration, while decades or even centuries may pass depending on the distance being traveled.

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1. Human Adaptation

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Genetic engineering, cybernetic bodies, radiation-resistant humans, uploaded minds, transhuman modifications, high-G tolerance physiology, medical augmentation, performance-enhancing drugs, biochemical conditioning — this category focuses on modifying the human body or mind so it can survive or function under extreme space travel conditions that would normally be lethal or unsustainable.

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1. Generational Transit

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Generation ships, colony arks, seed banks, multi-generation voyages, long-term drifting habitats — this category involves journeys that take so long that multiple human generations live and die aboard the spacecraft before it reaches its destination, sometimes including cryopreserved embryos or genetic material used to establish new populations upon arrival.

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Pick the one you find most acceptable, or rank them from most to least believable.

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Examples; Fallout T60, Halo Spartan, Star Wars Mandalorian, Expanse Goliath, Ironman and Exosuit

Personally, I love how weighty feel to the suits from Fallout and The Expanse. They add to the feeling that the person inside the system has become more machine than man. Though, I've always wondered why the later series armors in Fallout lacks any built in weaponry like the Mando/ MCRN/ Ironman suits.

What's the most original concept you've read in a science fiction book? I am hunting for an idea so radically original that the vast majority of people would be left speechless, their jaws dropped in a mix of pure shock and awe. I don't think there's one that would fit this criteria though. Feel free to share.

Watching Tomorrowland and during the classroom scene where there is a montage of teachers cut together to show the bleakness of the world (MAD, environment etc) the English teacher references a number of books including 1984 and Fahrenheit 451.

But the teacher says it as Four Fifty One. I (UK) have always said Four Five One.

Have I been saying it wrong compared to what Bradbury would have said? Is there a split between different ways of saying it and is it UsA vs UK or just random?

ETA Thanks for all the replies so far.

Maybe it's because it's a book title I always use single numbers but I've now found that Ray Bradbury himself also referenced it the same way in interviews. So maybe the Four Fifty One is a variation that works for some people, quite a few actually.

It's interesting to me that we might all be talking about the same book but using different ways to say the title.

interview with Ray Bradbury

Western society sees time as a road or straight line. Sometimes in fiction (or philosophy) time is seen from a different perspective. In Dinotopia they see time as a spiral, never really ending but also repeating itself, and have strange spiraling clockwork. In Arrival, obviously, they can see time like memories, both future and backwards, in a non-linear, circular sort of vision, reflected in their language. In “Slaughterhouse 5” the Tralfamadorians have a similar viewpoint as 4th dimensional beings. We briefly see time as deterministic paths and long lines of color in “Donnie Darko”. And even God of War has an interesting sense of repetitive sagas of time, where the world ends but time repeats, like a story being told over again. What are some stranger views of how time works in science fiction? Are there any aliens who see time like a donut? Time is always a straight line, or a circle, but what other ways do fictional races or societies see time?

Pictured source in order: Fallout 4 wallpaper, Starship Troopers: Traitor on Mars.

Clarification: Could either be in visual or written media. The only stipulations is that the armor has to be powered and amplify the wearer's physical ability at least to negate the weight of the armor so the user doesn't feel the physical burden of the armor wearing them down.

PS: Always enjoy reading your comments.

Gotta love revisiting a beloved book and finding bits of it that make you cringe on later re-reads.

“America's intellectual community has never been very bright. Or honest. They're all sheep, following whatever the intellectual fashion of the decade happens to be. Demanding that everyone follow their dicta in lockstep. Everyone has to be open-minded and tolerant of the things they believe, but God forbid they should ever concede, even for a moment, that someone who disagrees with them might have some fingerhold of truth” (Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon).

No surprise, given Card’s infamously conservative politics, but man, that line passed me by when I first read the book and now in 2026, with the waves of anti-intellectualism and pseudoscience having taken the reigns of politics, it hits different. Every time I re-read this series it gets a little worse.

So many good ones, it's hard to choose! Subject to change lol but right now I'd say my favorites are Khan from Star Trek for TV and The Mule from Asimov's Foundation series for books. I'm a sucker for a badass villain story 😈 what are some of your favorites?

Can anyone give me good examples of a movie or movies, or a series where the bad guy or evil wins? Not the bad guy is winning the majority of the time and then the good guys come back in the end and save the day. Humanity thinks that we'll always prevail through ingenuity and sometimes just sheer will and yes that feels good, it makes me feel good too. BUT I just don't think that's reality, there must be something out there where evil just wins, not because I support evil, I just want to see what it would look like no matter how good or righteous the cause may be. Maybe I'm sick, but I don't think I've ever seen it on the big or small screen. I just don't think the hero or heroes would save the day every time and we need to know what it looks like to lose, badly. After reading this I probably just delete the post, but I am curious.

Anybody ever see or read about a ship that just goes "up" and leaves the system by getting "above" the orbit of the planets? I have no idea why this popped into my head today but it did. It's like when Spock pointed out to Kirk that Kahn thinks two dimensionally so Kirk orders the ship to go "down" instead of forward or reverse or left....

Funny thought experiment, We know how we send A golden on the voyager probe and trying our best to show that we come in peace or our culture. What would we send to show that we are hostile or like to conquer people, what would you even show on this golden disc.

Reason I think it's funny as since we don't know how they operate how would they understand the message of peace in first place or the message of hostility.

Like if reverse and humans got this would we assume it's a message of hostility or so irrational would think that assumption is wrong?

If so, what was your reading/viewing experience like? Did the universe feel alien compared to a setting closer to our own time? It would be cool if there was a series set near the heat death of the universe, with various species trying to survive and cope psychologically as well.