72 Replies to “I Used To Like Science Fiction”

  1. Entertainment industry has always been full of degenerate freaks and attention whores.

    Ignore them completely. They/them/fishself hate that more than anything

    1. Dr. Who Cares … it will be as popular as an all-female remake of Ghostbusters. A circle jerk of queers will be the only ones watching … meh.

  2. Climate change science fiction ended all interest in science fiction for me.

    1. It was dead before Sylvester McCoy took over more than 30 years ago. It had run out of ideas by that time.

      1. He almost saved it though! And if he’d had a longer run with better stories, I believe he would have…

        But the moment I saw that awful movie, I knew where they were headed; only they’ve exceeded my worst nightmares now. Apart from a few clever elements and one or two actors I rather like despite things, the series disgusts me now. It’s gone from ‘Dr. Who Lite’ to ‘Dr. Who Liter’ to ‘Dr. Who Crap’…

        1. He almost saved it though! And if he’d had a longer run with better stories, I believe he would have…

          The Beeb would have had to first pull producer John Nathan-Turner off the series. The decline in DW started when he took over about a decade earlier.

          By the time that multi-part McCoy episode, with the trial and all that, had aired, I knew that the original run of DW was long over. It was disjointed and, by then, I stopped caring. I just watched it to say that I did.

          But the moment I saw that awful movie, I knew where they were headed

          If you’re referring to the American TV movie made in the mid-1990s with Paul McGann as the Doctor and Eric Roberts as the Master, yes, it was pretty awful. I was glad when that didn’t go anywhere.

          1. Hmmm… JNT…

            Tricky. JNT came in at the blunt end of the Tom Baker era. The change in production standards from (thinking…) S17 to S18 was pretty obvious and ‘A Good Thing(tm)’.

            The Peter Davidson era suffered a bit because they decided to fill the TARDIS with multiple characters and then had no idea what to do with them all. Adric is a prime example. He started as a boy maths genius and degenerated into a guy who just ate all the time cause he cluttered up the plot. Then he blew up. Not from eating. Also, SPOILERS 😛

            McCoy got some rubbish to work with. First season is cringe. Last season had some very good stuff.

            Hard to say. I think some of the script editors should take more blame than JNT, but there is also the question of how long you should stay in producer role and if ‘term limits’ should be put in place (to borrow a phrase) in order to keep the show fresh with constant new drive.

          2. Correction… That was Colin Baker, worst of the ‘real’ Doctors, not Sylvester McCoy, for the Trial series… I hated him and his eps, only watched the show again when McCoy took over.

            There were some good J.N.T. stories, but the dross made them hard to spot. And yes, the stupid McGann movie and the series from 2005 was more akin to him than anything else (or better).

          3. That was Colin Baker, worst of the ‘real’ Doctors, not Sylvester McCoy, for the Trial series…

            Well, it was about 30 years ago since I saw those episodes and, by then, I stopped paying attention to certain details. I thought there was something like that with McCoy. Maybe it was because, if I recall correctly, the series sort of ended at that time with a lot of unfinished details left over.

            I agree with you about CB. It didn’t help that Nicola Bryant was irritating as his sidekick, not that Bonnie Langford was much of an improvement when she was in the McCoy episodes.

            Maybe I’ve become too particular in my old age…..

          4. Colin was probably a good (bad?) example of JNT starting to burn out.

            The theory was that after Mr Nice Doctor of Davidson, what if the new Doctor was random and mean?

            Yeah… that… didn’t really work.

            So they backed off on that and made him softer and then gave him some rubbish scripts to work with. Look, I am sure Pip and Jane Baker were nice people… but… yeah, they didn’t push out great scripts.

            Then they sacked Colin.

            From all I have heard Colin Baker is a very warm and approachable man, but year, a fair bit of cringe in his DW years.

            I’ve been watching on and off a YouTube reaction channel where the creator/host is watching classic DW cold. Rather fun. She has no idea of what the stories are and us people watching get to have massive nostalgia dumps in the comments.

            Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of rubbish in some of classic Who (cough – Underworld – cough) but there are some real high concept high production standard gems. You just have to pick and choose a bit.

            The main thing about classic Who is the writers very very rarely hated their viewers. Sure they pushed a few issues, but mainly as more of a ‘strong suggestion’ rather than a demand.

            Nu Who – when I finally decided my life was too short – started to openly hate major demographics. Support the military? You are scum. Soldiers are killers!. Work in heavy industry? You are greedy scum. Show not remorse over your nation’s back story? You are a bigot and a racist.

            So I just stopped watching mid season. And I LIKED Peter Calpaldi!!! Grud, I even liked Bill as a character.

            Not really sure what happened after that. I know they turned Bill into a puddle and had her hook up with a obsessive stalker woman/puddle she hardly knew, but after that? Some sort of non-canon spin off series with completely new unrelated characters I think.

  5. That’s hardly anything new. Shortly after the “new and improved” DW went on the air nearly 20 years ago, the series Torchwood (an anagram of “Doctor Who”) was spun off.

    I watched only one episode. I thought it was rubbish but it turned out to have an underlying poofy theme as well.

    Sydney Newman must be spinning in his grave.

  6. Can’t help but notice they’re bringing “diversity” to the podcast by featuring three white “women”, two of them transgenders. Stunning and brave!

  7. The gay and transgender mass psychosis is starting to make the COVID mass psychosis look like a comforting childrens’ story in comparison.

  8. I don’t know why it took me so long to figure this out, they don’t care if a show succeeds after they take it over. That’s not the point. The point is to destroy the cultural icon. That’s what the takeover is about. Not creation, destruction.

    1. Tom Baker (there were two with that surname, Colin succeeding the bland Peter Davison) left the series about a year after John Nathan-Turner took over as producer. I don’t know if that had anything to do with TB’s departure.

      After that, the series kept getting worse.

      I saw most of the earliest episodes with Hartnell, but didn’t see many of the Troughton episodes. I have to admit, though, that Pertwee added a certain flair to the show. In the first episode of The Three Doctors, the Hartnell Doctor describes his next two regenerations as “a dandy and a clown”.

      1. “a dandy and a clown”
        Fitting.
        I liked Pertwee, among other things, because he didn’t mind a bit of pugilism; “I warn you, I’m pretty spry for an old man!”
        A bit like an ancient and wise Kirk, if you will.
        I liked him all the more when they tried to cancel him for an old advertisement.

        1. One of his sidekicks, Jo Grant (played by Katy Manning), did a magazine spread after she left the show, complete with posing topless with a Dalek.

          2. Pertwee also added a comic touch to the show with the Third Doctor’s eccentricities. That’s not entirely surprising as I recall that he was in one of the Carry On movies.

            It was a clever bit of writing to have him exiled to England, only to be seconded to UNIT with the TARDIS being without its dematerialization circuit. Poor Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and Sergeant Benton were often on the receiving end of his schemes.

            I think he met his match with Sarah Jane Smith (played by Elisabeth Sladen).

            While on the subject of “Who Girls”, Jean Marsh (a former Mrs. Pertwee) was in, I believe, a Hartnell episode. (She was a creator of Upstairs, Downstairs, playing the maid Rose.) Tom Baker married the second Romana, Lalla Ward.

          3. I quite enjoyed the Carry On movies.
            I’ll never forget the brigadier saying “Tom Tit???!!!” in the same tone as Arthur Dent said “Slartibartfast???!!!”
            The British, for all the horror that they are currently living through, still an acute sense of the absurd.
            Are you familiar with Terry Pratchet?

          4. Are you familiar with Terry Pratchet?

            I’ve heard the name but I don’t recall ever reading anything by him.

          6. Met Katy at a con back in the day.

            Delightfully bonkers

            Just like her character in DW, eh? I thought Jo Grant’s predecessor, Liz Shaw, was far too stern.

  11. Dr Who….??
    Never watched it…
    It just did not appeal to me in any way, shape or form

    Sci-fi..??
    Outer limits was awesome for its time.
    2001 was excellent.
    BladeRunner 1
    Alien 1

    But for a series…??
    Best I’ve seen in 30 yrs has to be The Expanse. Technically brilliant with a pretty good storyline to boot.

    And gotta say, It’s too bad
    Altered Carbon got axed…I liked the premise.

    And strangely enough, I don’t mind Picard either…beats the hell outa The 5th iteration of Star Trek.

    1. I didn’t like 2001, turned into an acid trip after he fell into TMA2. The book was much better.
      I loved Total Recall and Zardoz.
      Planet of the Vampires was good, as was Angry Red Planet, and let us not forget Forbidden Planet.
      For series:
      Space 1999.
      The Starlost.
      I hate shows with long story arcs, they generally turn into soaps with ray-guns and spaceships.

      1. I didn’t like 2001, turned into an acid trip after he fell into TMA2. The book was much better.

        Many people didn’t get 2001: A Space Odyssey because they didn’t understand it. That was the point that Kubrick and Clarke were trying to make. If and when we finally meet an extraterrestrial civilization, chances are we won’t understand anything about it, assuming we even recognize its existence.

        The trip through the second monolith and what happened afterward were baffling. Then again, Dave Bowman didn’t understand it, either. Kubrick wanted it that way to get people to talk about it.

        Clues to what that was all about were in the final scene of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, where Kirk, Spock, and McCoy discuss what had just happened. Additional hints were in the “beach at the end of the wormhole” scene in Contact where Jodie Foster’s character encounters the alien disguised as her father.

        I agree that the book was better, partly because it allowed for more details and some explanations. The story I heard about the difference between the novel and the movie was that special effects director Douglas Trumbull couldn’t get the rings of Saturn to appear properly, so, instead, the movie ended the mission at Jupiter.

        Rumour had it that was the reason why Trumbull went on to make Silent Running and to set it around Saturn, just to show that he finally got it right.

        1. Well, “pretty colors, baffled Dave, a hotel room, an old man and mature embryo hovering over the Earth” doesn’t say much of anything IMHO. In the book, you know what happened to Dave, at least as much as Dave does.
          I’d call it a fail on the part of Kubric, and his only saving grace is the state-of-the-art of special effects at the time.
          One can be baffled and fail to understand what’s going on, but still understand something is happening to the protagonist, take the movie “The Objective” from 2008, for example.

          1. In the final scene of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy talk about what happened to Decker, Ilia, and V-ger. Kirk makes the statement that they may have witnessed “the next step in our evolution”. That is what the Star Child in 2001 is supposed to be.

            In the beach scene in Contact, Ellie Arroway asks her “father” (an alien appearing like him so that she could best relate to it) where it all came from and who built it. The response is “We don’t know” and that’s the answer Kubrick tells us in 2001 as to what the monoliths were, where they came from, and who built them.

            Although a lot of people believe that Clarke’s short story The Sentinel was the main inspiration for 2001, the novel borrows elements from his story Encounter at Dawn.

          2. Arthur C. Clarke joined the dark side towards the end.
            The last story in the 2001 series has the Builders trying to nova the sun because we humans are bad and warlike.
            At least he had the decency to have us stop it from happening.
            I don’t like Arthur as a man. I do like Laumer as a man.
            I hated Contact, and that more recent movie with the big egg and with the funny alien writing. Pure sap with a bit of progressive politics thrown in.
            Vernor Vinge was the first sci-fi author I know of to describe transcendence without sap and/or mysticism.

          3. As I believe I mentioned before, I actually read the excerpt from 2010 that was published in Playboy nearly 40 years ago. It didn’t impress me, particularly since it carried on from the movie instead of the novel. That’s the only part of the book that I read.

            As for the movie 2010, it’s not bad, but I didn’t think it was suitable as a sequel to 2001. Besides, it was filled with 1980s politics.

            I never read any of the following novels.

            I think the main reason I liked Contact wasn’t because it started with amateur radio but because it gave a good representation of what really happens in research, along with the various games of oneupmanship.

        2. Of Star Trek the Motion Picture, I will say only that its a more dramatic version of the TOS episode The Changeling”
          That poor bald chick, Ilya or whatever…she suffered a fate worse than death…being copied and used as a remote for a god…man, that would suck way more than oblivion.

          1. I recognized that STTMP was a reworking of the earlier episode, though V-ger was far nastier than Nomad.

    2. Dr Who….??
      Never watched it…
      It just did not appeal to me in any way, shape or form

      I liked Doctor Who ever since its first episode, An Unearthly Child, was shown on CBC on a Saturday afternoon. I was disappointed when it disappeared after a few months.

      It was only while I was finishing my first master’s degree more than 40 years ago when I heard the show was still running after some of the foreign grad students in my department were discussing it.

    3. Expanse.

      I gave up on the books about 1/3rd way in once I realised the authors had no idea how spall works.

      To be honest some of the other stuff was failing to grab me. I dislike the trope of a faction secretly levelling up twice and suddenly turning up with a super weapon that utterly trashes the pre-existing super weapon.

      But yeah, mainly the spall thing. If you are going to do hard sci fi, stick to it and do your base research.

      (sorry Expanse fans – just didn’t work for me)

    4. “And strangely enough, I don’t mind Picard either…beats the hell outa The 5th iteration of Star Trek.”

      I’m just about done with Picard. Can’t take much more of the “evil white man” crap being shoved in my face over and over.

  12. The best science fiction has always come in the form of the written word. Even the best sci-fi movies are but pale shadows of middle-of-the-road sci-fi stories.
    The movie-making talent to turn the best of sci-fi faithfully into a movie does not exist, and it never has, and the way things are going, probably never will.

    1. The Expanse series came close to the books.
      I’ve always been fond of the written SciFi novels.
      One in particular I have been fascinated with was a novel called ” The Mansions of Space ” by John Morressy.
      I would love to see that on the screen some time.

      1. ” The Mansions of Space “
        By John Morressy?
        Sounds interesting.
        You may find such stories as “A Planet Called Treason” and “Wyrms” by Orson Scott Card interesting.

        2. Hmm

          I read a fair bit of Sci Fi.

          Doing the Dune thing again..Prequels and Sequels. ~ 18 books..??
          One series I enjoyed very much was Raymond Weils Originator Series.

          As for the Expanse, folks can diss the story, but Technically, I’ve yet to see better…its stunning. And as far as I’m concerned, Only 2001 – the Space station scene comes close to that level…which is truly saying something for a film from the mid 60’s.

          And yea, I remember space 1999 was pretty good as well..!!

    2. The dirty little secret is that no SF TV has ever been very good until perhaps the last 20 years or so, when it started getting taken seriously as a genre. The 2003 BSG reboot I think is what started it, and The Expanse and Westworld are notable. Ditto Tales From The Loop.

      Just about everything prior – and yes, that includes every Star Trek series, Doctor Who, Babylon 5, Stargate and all the fan favourites – is just bad. Hamfisted writing, plots which are supposed to be deep but are in fact abbreviated and superficial, characters that are naked adolescent-viewer-projection. SF TV is beloved mostly because of nostalgia for childhood by fans (“The Golden Age of science fiction is 12”), not because it’s any good; my experience has been that the vast majority of F/SF fans don’t read or watch anything outside that genre so they simply don’t know what good writing looks like.

      1. The BSG reboot had a promising start, but about mid-way through its run, it started mutating into a soap opera, becoming nearly unwatchable by the end.

        Star Cops, produced by the BBC, was a good series. It looked ahead 40 years from when it was produced (using ideas for space settlements that were being considered at the time) and was based on a logical assumption. If there’s to be a permanent presence in space, crime would inevitably follow, and that included the Mafia as well as shady corporations.

        Unfortunately, due to internal show politics, only 9 episodes were produced.

      3. G’Kar and Londo naked adolescent-viewer-projections?

        What are we comparing 90’s/00’s tv sci fi to? Police procedurals? Sitcoms? Soap operas? There was no genre that produced anything of significantly better quality than what sci fi did. Hamfisted, shallow plots with cardboard cutouts for characters all around. And let’s not forget that one of the main darlings of the decade, ER, was created by sci-fi author Michael Crichton. Or did he magically become a good writer by switching genres?

        This is just silly. All that BSG did is smear grime and shaky cam over what was already there. And Farscape was better.

        1. In addition, Crichton wrote the novel which was made into one of the best SF movies of all time, The Andromeda Strain.

          Not only was the underlying premise intriguing but, as I mentioned earlier about Contact, it shows how research is really conducted. One of the scientists makes a mistake. There are quarrels in the group. There are politicians to deal with. Other researchers come under criticism for their methods.

    3. The best sci fi…

      Thinking… No.

      Books are not movies are not comics are not audio plays are not computer games are not… ummm… blogs… are not those tactile things who’s name escapes me at the moment.

      They are all different mediums and all can be used in their own way to tell stories. Sometimes there is cross over. Movies use audio, comics use visual, audio can still milk your interest with great cover art (The 70s War of the World with the tripod burning Thunderchild. First saw that cover art at my Aunt and Uncle’s place back in the day and was spell bound.)

      Metropolis – Fitz Lang – Would you read the novel of that movie?

      (also – as counter – Mortal Engines movie version… of Grud. What were they thinking? They couldn’t even get Hestor’s face right. Hestor is BRUTALLY UGLY from her facial scar. That is the point of her character. She is physically and mentally damaged goods, which is why her relationship with Tom is so important. ARRRRRR. Why, Movie, Why?!?!)

      (also also – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep vs Blade Runner (the movie). Compare and contrast 🙂 )

      The problem is not that the books are always best, it is that some stories are put down in the media their author clearly intended and were created to work to that media’s strengths.

      It is more a sign that the ‘entertainment’ industry is not necessarily also the ‘story telling’ industry. They don’t want to tell a story as much as they want you to be entertained long enough to tell your friends and be willing to come back and spend more money on the next product. Movies are formula because formula works for Lowest Common Denominator.

      So there can be good stand alone sci fi movies that were structured from the start to be movies. Don’t completely write them off.

      But yeah, the book is, 99 times out of a 100, better.

  13. If you’re into military scifi, you could do worse than checking out a fellow Canadian and army veteran who writes non-woke, non-SJW old style adventures. Guy by the name Eric Thomson. I found his stuff pretty based and with a familiar flavour.

    1. I’ll check him out.
      Keith Laumer served as a Major in WW2, then went on to work as a diplomat for for America, then retired and started writing sci-fi. He’s one of my favorites. Died in the 1990s, I believe, as did Jon Brunner and Roger Zelazny.

      1. I read a number of Laumer’s short stories when they were published as an anthology and also when they appeared in Analog around 50 years ago.

        The one about the robot detective, a mechanical Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe, which boozed and smoked throughout the story, and disguised itself as a bedframe, was hilarious.

        1. A boozing robot.
          Sounds like Bender from Futurama.
          ” Kiss my shiny metal azz “.

      2. Read most of Laumer’s stuff. Classic SF like no one does anymore. Retief is my kind of main character.

        1. Yup. I remember reading a number Retief stories when I was in high school.

        2. Retief is great:
          “I figured I’d get paper instead of action, so I took the liberty of making my own paper.”
          “Sometimes your attitude borders on insubordination.”
          “Yeah, and sometimes it borders on disgust.”

          “The Glory Game” was a great story, though it didn’t feature Retief.
          IMHO, it should be required reading for any officer.

  14. Look for this “masterpiece” of Dr. Who-ness to A) suck (that means it will be really bad) and B) win -all- the awards. The SF awards are all going to crap like this.

    There does exist good SFF, but these days you’ll find it mostly in the Indies. Amazon ebooks is where all the non-Woke authors went when we got kicked out of mainstream publishing.

    My own first effort can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Unfair-Advantage-Troubles-George-McIntyre-ebook/dp/B0848PX3TC
    Giant tanks and robot girlfriends save the world. Two things you can be sure of, it isn’t Woke and it isn’t depressing.

    I wrote it because I had nothing to read anymore.

  15. I’m not a Doctor Who fan but as I am made to understand, the show has been losing viewership like crazy.

    Indeed, most of these franchises have been on the bubble.

    Maybe this might herald in some fresh, non-woke blood?

    Who knows?

  16. Best way to find new good sci fi/fantasy novels to read?

    Step One – Look up most recent Hugo nominations.
    Step Two – Don’t read anything on that list or any of the listed author’s other works.
    Step Three – Don’t thank me, only doing my job 🙂

    1. Have you seen the most recent nominations? Almost a clean sweep for Tor. They’re not even trying to pretend anymore, since 2016.

      I wonder if the gay/trans/groomer focus will survive their immanent takeover by the Chicoms? And will there ever be another Non-Chinese Worldcon after Chengdu?

  17. Also – this ‘Podcast’

    They are realising new audio stories? (screw you Big Finish I guess)

    So the people involved are… what? Voice Actors?

    So why does it even matter who they are outside of the recording booth?

  19. I still like Science Fiction.
    I don’t like crappy movies.
    Nor retarded TV series.
    Read the book,you might get the concept the writer is offering you.
    Watch the TV/Cinema Adaption and you will never have a clue.

    Red Dwarf is funnier than most adaptations of a SciFi book or story..
    Original Star Trek was all about human nature.

    Screen writers mostly don’t get it and don’t care..
    The writers did,which is why their books became best sellers,which of course,is what attracted the soulless and imagination deprived Television mongrels..
    Most of the films and series are only tolerable,if you have NOT read the book.
    So Sci Fi ain’t the problem.
    TV producers with no talent,no ideas and no imagination might be.

  20. Doctor Who:

    Where quirky men are Doctors,

    Where even quirkier women are able assistants,

    And where evil, take-over-the-Universe Daleks that must be destroyed are truly evil, take-over-the-Universe Daleks that must be destroyed.

    Mess with that at your peril.

  21. TOR books lately are all woke BS. Luckily, there’s still lots of good indie sci fi on Kindle, especially on Kindle unlimited. And Mudcrab, above, nails it. Leftards and wokesters have taken over the Nebula and Hugo awards nominations. Do check out the Prometheus Awards (for Libertarian SciFi). Mining their list of winners and nominees is far more rewarding.

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