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What aspects do you enjoy most about your favorite sci fi or fantasy novels? Obviously it’s a mix of everything but what consistent themes do you find yourself returning to frequently?

To give an example, I tend to like complex and internally consistent magic systems or “hard magic” systems, eg Brandon Sanderson. He basically invents an alternative physics in a given series and there’s a whole set of stories around that.

I also put a lot of weight on complex characters, eg Game of Thrones. You know it’s good writing when someone can push a kid out of a window in the first episode and then somehow kind of make you almost like the guy later on.

If you don’t like sci fi and/or fantasy, what is it about the genre(s) that you dislike? And do you like one but not the other, or both or neither?

ButtercupRoberts 1y ago 💬 1

Those are such interesting questions :)

I enjoy both fantasy and sci-fi, and I always love to find in them the echoes from current reality that reverberate in those imagined fictional worlds; as kinds of mental simulations.

On the sci-fi side, kinda like Ursula K. Le Guin ’s The Dispossessed

or Malka Older’s Infomocracy

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Discussion

Greg 1y ago 💬 1

I’m a bit past halfway through the dispossessed and ive been loving it. It’s not surprising coming from a nostr user since it really explores a decentralized society without a central authority (but still encourages a capitalist society, through incentives and not coercion).

How is Malka Olders Infomocracy?

ButtercupRoberts 1y ago

The Infomocracy series doesn’t take such a great leap in time jump, but it’s a thoughtful experiment as well and gives a peak of what a post-democracy-as-we-know-it society could look like. More of an opt-into your preference society.