While I can definitely enjoy most of the fairly cheesey popular sci-fi like stargate and star trek, I really like it more when sci-fi is written so that it seems like it could actually happen one day, at least in not breaking any physical laws. Especially as the scale of what is depicted starts getting a bit extreme. Like, portraying a star empire that is basically just a historical maritime empire with the population scaled up a couple orders of magnitude, living on a few planets mostly with a couple modern cities each with starships that travel across the stars in a few hours to weeks is cool and all, but so unrealistic as to not be super exiting. On the other hand, portraying what an actual interstellar spaceship would probably have to be like, based on known physics, complete with the kind of size it would probably be and the sheer length of time it would take to travel, and the scale and age of the kind of civilization that would have the economic capacity to build and use them, while much harder to get right due to the needed attention to detail, results in something that is made all the more awe-inspiring by the knowledge that it isnt impossible for something like it to exist one day, or might even exist already, somewhere very far away.
If you haven’t already, read yourself some Arthur C Clarke. He wrote speculative futurism based on known science. If you pick up later editions of some of his books, they’ll sometimes include forewords by him going over the effect on the story and premises therein of evolutions in scientific understanding that happened since first publishing.
I’ve read several books of his actually, namely the space Odyssey series, Rama series, the songs of distant earth, and childhood’s end, tho I didn’t like that last one as much as the former ones.
Same. The Outter Limits and The Twilight Zone hits both of those spots. Multiple short stories that are either completely futuristic, all the way to, relatable to today.
i loved seeing a missile in space in the expanse. You see it reorient itself backwards and fire its thrusters to cancel out its forward velocity, smoothly changing orientation during the manoever to end up accelerating towards, and pointing to the target (the target was to the side of the direction it was launched at). Very cool touch.
While I can definitely enjoy most of the fairly cheesey popular sci-fi like stargate and star trek, I really like it more when sci-fi is written so that it seems like it could actually happen one day, at least in not breaking any physical laws. Especially as the scale of what is depicted starts getting a bit extreme. Like, portraying a star empire that is basically just a historical maritime empire with the population scaled up a couple orders of magnitude, living on a few planets mostly with a couple modern cities each with starships that travel across the stars in a few hours to weeks is cool and all, but so unrealistic as to not be super exiting. On the other hand, portraying what an actual interstellar spaceship would probably have to be like, based on known physics, complete with the kind of size it would probably be and the sheer length of time it would take to travel, and the scale and age of the kind of civilization that would have the economic capacity to build and use them, while much harder to get right due to the needed attention to detail, results in something that is made all the more awe-inspiring by the knowledge that it isnt impossible for something like it to exist one day, or might even exist already, somewhere very far away.
If you haven’t already, read yourself some Arthur C Clarke. He wrote speculative futurism based on known science. If you pick up later editions of some of his books, they’ll sometimes include forewords by him going over the effect on the story and premises therein of evolutions in scientific understanding that happened since first publishing.
His stories are also hopeful and filled with wonder at the universe in a way that I feel is lacking in a lot of contemporary sci-fi.
I’ve read several books of his actually, namely the space Odyssey series, Rama series, the songs of distant earth, and childhood’s end, tho I didn’t like that last one as much as the former ones.
Same. The Outter Limits and The Twilight Zone hits both of those spots. Multiple short stories that are either completely futuristic, all the way to, relatable to today.
i loved seeing a missile in space in the expanse. You see it reorient itself backwards and fire its thrusters to cancel out its forward velocity, smoothly changing orientation during the manoever to end up accelerating towards, and pointing to the target (the target was to the side of the direction it was launched at). Very cool touch.