Good sci-fi has always been few and far between. I love sci-fi, but I also dislike a lot of it because a lot of it's not well written from a prose craft or character depth point of view. When it is, it's probably my favorite genre.
I feel like we're lucky to get one outstanding sci-fi book or series per decade.
I'll rattle off some notable books and films/TV (or in some cases both) from the last 20 years. Some of these overlap with other genres like horror, lit-fic, etc., but I consider them all sci-fi to some degree. Some are well known and some are obscure.
The Expanse, Europa Report, Moon, Primer, The Arrival, Never Let Me Go, For All Mankind (the unofficial Expanse prequel), Sleep Dealer (indie film that stuck with me), The Color Out of Space (2019 film of Lovecraft's story), Banshee Chapter, The Peripheral, Blindsight, Annihilation, I'm sure I could keep going...
Maybe recommendations are harder than we think because our tastes are too arbitrary and unpredictable. Maybe overlapping with someone else's tastes actually predicts nothing about whether there are any more places we will overlap, so it's not the simple data processing problem that we wish it to be.
I've tried all sorts of "people who liked X also enjoyed Y" book and movie lists and it never seems any better than a generic list of decent books and movies.
One of my favorite movies is The Arrival. To me, it's one of the best love stories ever told. Yet when I meet other people who really liked the movie, that wasn't the main draw for them. Perhaps it was the intrigue of the time travel or watching interesting characters navigate a complex conflict or perhaps they liked the provocative questions that it explores.
Perhaps two people liking The Arrival says little about what they have in common at all, thus there's actually no data to go off beyond recommending both parties more critically acclaimed movies. I suspect that this might be the cold reality of recommendations.
> "On the other extreme are degrees that, like GP identified, were never meant to be economically sound. They focus on intellectual ideas and curiosities, rather than skills actively needed by the economy. Government subsidy here would be little more than subsidizing hobbies and other activity that do not provide economic returns."
The risk of defunding these programs is that you can't confidently say whether many of these subjects might become useful in the future.
Many research areas in linguistics, for example, may not have direct economic benefits right now, but could be useful far in the future if humans have alien contact (like the film "The Arrival"). Less speculatively and outside of science fiction, many pure math discoveries have ended up as useful in cryptography and computer science. Astronomy and astrophysics could yield commercial applications far into the future, along with other fundamental scientific research.
Outside of science and more into the arts, history has been influential in recent times to the decision-making of various political leaders. Social science research can be important for the welfare of a country, in the creation of effective evidence-based policy. The support of artists and writers can improve the political influence of a country, when influential works spread to other countries. Focusing on economic returns right now is too narrowly focused on the short term, and ignores the longer-term benefits for a country.
Saw The Arrival the other day and it was constantly blaring this at me. Kind of off putting. When I was at all taken into any moment throughtout the film I was jarred out immediately by this.
So, first it stretches the definition of sci-fi beyond reason (how on earth is The Witch science fiction??), and then to add insult to injury it leaves one of the purest sci-fi movies of the year (The Arrival) off the list (though, I suppose to be fair it's trying to list movies folks may not have heard of... of course then they went and stuck Cloverfield and Midnight Special on the list).
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Good sci-fi has always been few and far between. I love sci-fi, but I also dislike a lot of it because a lot of it's not well written from a prose craft or character depth point of view. When it is, it's probably my favorite genre.
I feel like we're lucky to get one outstanding sci-fi book or series per decade.
I'll rattle off some notable books and films/TV (or in some cases both) from the last 20 years. Some of these overlap with other genres like horror, lit-fic, etc., but I consider them all sci-fi to some degree. Some are well known and some are obscure.
The Expanse, Europa Report, Moon, Primer, The Arrival, Never Let Me Go, For All Mankind (the unofficial Expanse prequel), Sleep Dealer (indie film that stuck with me), The Color Out of Space (2019 film of Lovecraft's story), Banshee Chapter, The Peripheral, Blindsight, Annihilation, I'm sure I could keep going...
Maybe recommendations are harder than we think because our tastes are too arbitrary and unpredictable. Maybe overlapping with someone else's tastes actually predicts nothing about whether there are any more places we will overlap, so it's not the simple data processing problem that we wish it to be.
I've tried all sorts of "people who liked X also enjoyed Y" book and movie lists and it never seems any better than a generic list of decent books and movies.
One of my favorite movies is The Arrival. To me, it's one of the best love stories ever told. Yet when I meet other people who really liked the movie, that wasn't the main draw for them. Perhaps it was the intrigue of the time travel or watching interesting characters navigate a complex conflict or perhaps they liked the provocative questions that it explores.
Perhaps two people liking The Arrival says little about what they have in common at all, thus there's actually no data to go off beyond recommending both parties more critically acclaimed movies. I suspect that this might be the cold reality of recommendations.
> "On the other extreme are degrees that, like GP identified, were never meant to be economically sound. They focus on intellectual ideas and curiosities, rather than skills actively needed by the economy. Government subsidy here would be little more than subsidizing hobbies and other activity that do not provide economic returns."
The risk of defunding these programs is that you can't confidently say whether many of these subjects might become useful in the future.
Many research areas in linguistics, for example, may not have direct economic benefits right now, but could be useful far in the future if humans have alien contact (like the film "The Arrival"). Less speculatively and outside of science fiction, many pure math discoveries have ended up as useful in cryptography and computer science. Astronomy and astrophysics could yield commercial applications far into the future, along with other fundamental scientific research.
Outside of science and more into the arts, history has been influential in recent times to the decision-making of various political leaders. Social science research can be important for the welfare of a country, in the creation of effective evidence-based policy. The support of artists and writers can improve the political influence of a country, when influential works spread to other countries. Focusing on economic returns right now is too narrowly focused on the short term, and ignores the longer-term benefits for a country.
Saw The Arrival the other day and it was constantly blaring this at me. Kind of off putting. When I was at all taken into any moment throughtout the film I was jarred out immediately by this.
So, first it stretches the definition of sci-fi beyond reason (how on earth is The Witch science fiction??), and then to add insult to injury it leaves one of the purest sci-fi movies of the year (The Arrival) off the list (though, I suppose to be fair it's trying to list movies folks may not have heard of... of course then they went and stuck Cloverfield and Midnight Special on the list).
I'm baffled.