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[Hangedman]

John Brunner.

Not quite high sci-fi, much more political commentary and speculative fiction, but vivid and futurist enough to roll with the best of them.

Stand on Zanzibar, The Shockwave Rider, The Sheep Look Up, so on.

Read before it's too late

[Μarkham]

quick book recommendation quick list

Larry Niven

- Ringworld series, Integral Trees

I also thought his comet-apocalypse story, "Lucifer's Hammer," was pretty good.

1984 and Brave New World were also interesting/depressing.

[moi]

Any opinions about the series "Fringe"? Have only seen the first ep and it seems to copy the X-Files model almost as-is, but nonetheless seems like an ok watch with menacing secret organisations, conspiracies within conspiracies and unexplainable technologies and events.

It has it's up and downs, but I quite like it. Toward the end of season 2 it becomes less conspiracy and more overt science fiction. The end of season 3 looked well like the end of the show, actually I'd have prefered it like that because knowing j.j abrams capacity to ruin good things, I'm affraid for season 4.

quick book recommendation quick list

Vernor Vinge

- A Fire Upon the Deep. and A Deepness in the Sky (huge)

this, best contemporary scifi writer.
Also: greg bear and david Brin.

older favorite authors: van vogt,Lem

[Mikademus]

Ok, the topic is drifting to books, so for culturally speculative scifi, everything by C.S. Friedman is a required read. For hard-core scifi Greg Egan is a required stop, in particular Diasphora and Permutation City. For trippy everything-goes scifi Niel Stephenson's Snow Crash is non-stop reading. For classics read anything you can get hold of by Vernor Vinge: even though A Fire Upon the Sky might be his best he has written much more, and all of high quality. And for the ultra-classics Orson Scott Card, by whom the Ender series has already been mentioned iirc,

[Dragonmaw]

david brin is a dolphin sex fetishist

[Christian Knudsen]

Surprised nobody's mentioned Arthur C. Clarke yet. 2001 and 2010 are both excellent books (the later Odyssey books are garbage).

[Smithy]

The best adaptations are the ones that don't stick strictly to the source material. Movies tend not to make good books and vice versa. What works in a movie (like Blade Runner's dense visual style) don't work well in books, and what works in books (holy shit dialogue) doesn't really work that well in movies.

Good adaptations take what makes a book or movie interesting and converts it into the other format.

Yeah, but have you actually read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Blade Runner is so different I wouldn't even call it an adaption. That was the point. They're two completely separate works based on the same concept imo.

Yeah...
While I agree that the best movie adaptations of books play to the strengths of the movie format and take liberties, it actually is pretty hard to say blade runner is an adaptation. It crosses the gap into the area where the words "inspired by" are usually used to replace the words "adaptation of."

@Markham: isn't "Lucifer's Hammer" Arthur C. Clarke?

edit: Wait, no, you're right. I was thinking of "Hammer of God." Read it when I was really little and didn't like it, but can't remember enough of it today to recommend it or not.

[Greg]

quick book recommendation quick list

Larry Niven

- Ringworld series, Integral Trees

I also thought his comet-apocalypse story, "Lucifer's Hammer," was pretty good.

I still need to read that.

[Gizmonicgamer]

Stargate Universe is probably one of the most worth-while scifi shows in recent years. It flounders a little bit in delivering conclusions to its stories occasionally, but its promise is so deeply embedded within its very setting and lore and characters that it doesn't really hurt my opinion of the show all that much.

[AMAZON]

been reading through the Postmortal, i'm not quite finished yet but its a great speculative fiction story.

also, almost certainly been said already, but anything philip k. dick.

[xhunterko]

Hey, it is one of the best films in your list! A little bit of cheeze just lends flavour! :D

It's a good thing I didn't mention 'The Cat From Outer Space' then.

[ithamore]

More animation:

I liked the anime adaptation of "Metropolis" as a mix of steampunk and high-tech and for its style.

"Memories" is also enjoyable enough to watch at least once.

René Laloux's "Fantastic Planet" ("La Planet Sauvage") is worth checking out if you're into dated, cheesy sci-fi from the 70's.

[Fission Mailed]

I just remembered "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" is a good sci-fi/drama anime. I think it won some awards to.

[dEnamed]

It has it's up and downs, but I quite like it. Toward the end of season 2 it becomes less conspiracy and more overt science fiction. The end of season 3 looked well like the end of the show, actually I'd have prefered it like that because knowing j.j abrams capacity to ruin good things, I'm affraid for season 4.

I can second that.
Personally I'd say the first season is the worst in a way. There isn't that much of an underlying plot and most of the episodes have that "gadget of the week" feeling to me. The second season quickly pulls itself together and makes the plot more central to the story. From that point on, I was very satisfied with Fringe, up until the beginning of Season 4. Which I haven't even bothered watching so far since to me, it ended with Season 3. Seems like viewers tanked in general.

Anyways, what's really making Fringe shine is the characters and their interactions. Especially Walter, who's portrayed by John Noble. It's such an interesting character, with so many layers to him. I have the deepest respect for Noble, for portraying such an utterly broken, sometimes insane and evil, character while invoking sympathy for him at the same time.


/edit:
Concerning Stargate Universe, I know, opinions and stuff. But I really, really hated that show and couldn't bear it for long. A rather disgusting amount of plot holes along with an overabudance of people bloody fricking crying all the time. Seriously, if they ain't showing the Starship, you'll see someone crying their eyes out. All the bloody time. Made it entirely an unbearable experience to me, since it pissed me off so much.

[1982]

Everything's explained in the novelization (which was written concurrently with the screenplay). It's really not as trippy as you might think.

I've read the books, nothing special there. But there is lots of stuff going on in the 2001 film version.