What’s something you couldn’t get into, but feel like you should?
What’s something that you feel like you should like,, but for some reason can’t get into, no matter how many chances you give it?
For me, it’s The Three Body Problem. It should be right up my alley from everything I’ve heard about it (especially the second book, which looks at the Fermi Paradox and the Great Filter!), but for the life of me, I can’t get past the first chapter at all. I even tried reading it in another language to see if it was the translation that kept me from getting into it, and nope.
It’s got everything I enjoy: big ass spaceships brawling it out and a long history of lore. But for some reason, I’ve never been able get into it. I should be a huge fan, but I’m just not, I cannot bring myself to care less about it.
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.
…it is so wild to me that I’m getting downvoted for saying I liked something. This is another reason I ran screaming from Star Wars fandom. Y’all are wild.
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?
Watched the first season but I just can't get past how awful Rick is. All the constant burping and how much of an asshole he his really puts me off the whole thing.
Foundation stopped me from finishing for 20 years until I could get it on audiobook, and even then it was a slog. All the politics in that book are simply not what I'm after when it comes to sci-fi, even if I can acknowledge that it's a fantastic piece of work.
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.
I read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson earlier this year. It took me around 5 months because I was determined to finish it but HATED reading it. There's some good world building and ideas going on, but it was just a slog. I'm normally a kind of slow reader, but it doesn't take me half a year to finish a book.
And so the direct answer to the question would be: Neal Stephenson. Just doesn't seem to be for me.
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 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.
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 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.
That series ruined fantasy for me. I used to live sci fi and fantasy both. I got half way through that series (book 7 I think, the one where nothing happens in 4000 words) and I was just done.
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.
Im sorry but Star Wars. Some stuff is freaking cool, like the whole smuggler side, but it's something about mixing magic and scifi that rubs me the wrong way. Also, lightsabers are so.. toylike.
The beginning of 3BP is very, very dry and slow. There's a lot of exposition, and a massive amount of footnotes (which I personally found very helpful as like many westerners, I have extremely limited knowledge of Chinese history).
I highly recommend persevering and soldiering on, there's a reason why it's very highly rated. One of my favourite series and totally made me do a 180 on my opinion of SETI.
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.
That first season of TNG is... rough. Although, that's kind of an issue with most trek and it can easily put people off. Only TOS, Lower Decks, and Strange New Worlds were birthed with beard full grown
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 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.
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 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 know this thread is about science fiction, but dark fantasy is kinda like sci-fi if you squint really hard. And close your eyes.
Anyway, I really wanna be into the Soulsborne game franchise (Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Elden Ring, etc.) but every time I try playing one, it simply doesn't spark my interest like I feel like it should, as I love fantasy and darkly themed stories.
So now I wanna read the Berserk series, which is widely regarded as the greatest manga of all time. But then I hear the Soulsborne franchise is directly inspired by Berserk, so now I'm worried that it won't spark my interest once I start reading it. I really wanna like these franchises, both are regarded as some of the greatest of their medium and I'd love to enjoy them as much as other people do.
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.
This is the contradiction for my taste. I like the dark themes and some of the aesthetics, but not the masochistic game play. I play as much for the narrative or even moreso than the gameplay, so games that make the player get better rather than the character get better are just frustrating because they're punishing me for not spending more time on the least interesting aspect.
Spending 20 more attempts before I defeat a boss doesn't give me a greater sense of accomplishment, but rather a greater sense of wasted time when I could have been enjoying interesting details of the narrative or the aesthetics.
I never got into Battlestar Galactica when it was airing, I don't remember why. Perhaps young me thought it was a Star Wars knock-off or something?
Anyway, after reading some discussions on Lemmy, I started watching it yesterday (began with the miniseries) and it's very promising!
I never got into StarGate either. I liked the movie, but was annoyed that in the show Kurt Russel was recast by MacGyver. StarGate is now the next on my watchlist.
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.
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.
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.
The Expanse did it for me. I couldn't read the books. I couldn't watch the show past two episodes.
The oft-praised Honor Harrington books also fall into this camp. It seems I'm completely allergic to David Weber's writing, because I can't read any of his other series either.
Anything billed as "Young Adult". I just find them off-putting in their formulaic structures and find the way they talk down to their readers a bit insulting. I read a lot of adult books as a child (pre-teen, not even "young adult"), though, so perhaps I'm not the target market.
edited to add
Neal Stephenson. I hatehatehate his writing. I think if he wrote essays I might find them readable, but his fiction is atrociously bad. (It doesn't help that he spouts gibberish on topics he knows little to nothing about—e.g. Chinese culture—with dogmatic authority.)
P.S. 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.
And we all know the first thing writers are taught is "bore the audience to death in the beginning of your story because they'll stick around for the possibility of things finally picking up".
No, wait.
They're taught the exact opposite. They're taught to hook the audience early to induce the interest that keeps people going over the slow parts because they're already invested.
A TV show has 3, sometimes 4, episodes to hook me. If I'm not hooked, I'm out. A book has 50 pages to hook me. If I'm not hooked, I'm out. Life's too short to slog through boring crap on the off chance it gets better. Because it rarely does.
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.
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've read a few different people sound off on Neal Stephenson in this thread, complaining specifically about how he goes on and on. I friggin LOVE reading him, and it's because of how he plays with language. His sentences are so wild, and so fun for me to read. They're not driving the plot--they're just cool thoughts written in interesting ways that reliably catch me off guard. Maybe it's because English isn't my first language, but for whatever reason I just love reading the ridiculous ways he has of saying sometimes very mundane things.
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:
Can't write people. At all. His "characters" are "concepts with a name attached". Ugh.
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.
Hopefully I won't get crucified for this take, but Dune. I love the Barsoom series, I love Tremors, but Dune did nothing for me. I tried reading it near the end of spring semester in high school, which is arguably a bad time as I was dealing with track semi-final/finals as well as school finals, and after a month of reading less than a page a day, I gave it back to the friend who loaned it to me. That was 12 years ago, though so maybe I should give it another shot.
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.
Not sure what it was. Maybe expectations were too high. Tried the first two books and they were fine, just didn't really trigger anything in me that made me want to keep going.
I like the first but it is very heavy on world building at the expense of anything else - I guess in some respects you could apply that to the series as a whole to an extent.
I haven't read the whole series btw, just guessing that from the ones I have read
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 agree with you on this. According to me the writing and character work is subpar and so I have stayed away from other works by the author. But this series is very popular and I don't get why that is the case.
I actually got stuck on the second book in the Three Body series. I found the first a page turner. Though it is an unconventional book and I can easily see why some would not be into it.
As far as TV shows: The Expanse and Foundation. I really want to like them but the first 3-4 episodes left me quite meh. Someone tell me it’s a slow start and gets better?
I tend to put more priority to story line vs special effects or action scenes.
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