this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
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Science Fiction
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My unpopular opinion is that I don't like space operas. I'd rather read pages of explanation of technology and world building. I don't care that the star princess in exile has to assemble a rag tag bunch of fringe worlders to take back the throne from the cruel council of the galactic core. How dat engine work tho?
Seriously most of these stories might as well be written by AI for how original they are. I am trying to read scifi and fantasy for the originality that just doesn't exist. Authors will even accidentally add great ideas to the books on background characters or in random world details and do absolutely nothing with them. They instead will repeat the most generic trope driven story every. They might aswell be plagiarizing for how little their stories add to the genre at least then I could just throw their book away without trying to read it.
Have you read the Three Body Problem or Children of Time?
Those are the most imaginative Sci Fi works that I can think of.
I think the Expanse also does a really good job of bridging the gap between space opera and hard Sci Fi.
Also, Blindsight by Peter Watts is amazing as well!
In that case I highly recommend the bobiverse
Yeah, I initially thought it was a kinda silly premise of a guy being hit by a bus and turned into an ai to explore the universe, but Dennis Taylor really hit it out of the park.
Popular-unpopular opinion - Space opera hits a lot of tropes that have been constanly re-told since ancient Babylonia and Greece, and people like when a story hits familiar beats.
Unpopular-unpopular opinion - Worldbuilding is important for the story to be grounded and coherent, but if there is no story to be told atop of it you end up with a catalogue of author's personal anthropological and technological obsessions.
I definitely agree. I just end up dropping off of series after the second book because I'm off to other worlds. I don't begrudge people who want more of what they like. To each their own.
Also, I'm a hypocrite because I find a lot of Kim Stanley Robinson's stuff too dry because there's not enough character building for me.