"Dark" Well Written Sci-fi

Leah

The Culture Series

"Use of Weapons" and "Surface Detail" are both incredibly dark and leave you with a sense of dread, or foreboding at times. For instance "Use of Weapons" in the Culture series by Iain M. Banks made me feel physically unwell at times, and several others in the series are pretty dark as well.

Yet, even as dark as "Use of Weapons" is, I feel that "Surface Detail" is actually darker on the physical level. However, it did not make me feel as unwell as the first book. The tone of the book goes down a darker path, it is about people being sent to virtual hells, and in that context it is far more explicit, still "Use of Weapons" was darker on a psychological level for me. I think that one thing that you can say about "Surface Detail" is that there are aspects of the book that feel like they have more in common with a horror novel than "Use of Weapons" which is a at its very core a personal drama, and wartime fiction. Still I wouldn't classify it as horror novel as a whole, just that it certainly contains horrifying parts.

The Ender Series

Ender is a strange thing to categorize. I would say that on a whole, it does what it sets out to do. But there is a loss of quality across the board. And it suffers from a number of different flaws that I won't get into.

If it has flaws you ask, why did it make it on the list? Well, the thing is, all books, no matter how tight they are, have some flaws. So it isn't an aspect that excludes it in my opinion.

One flaw with the series is that it meanders around without an ender in sight.

But if you take the books out of their publication order you can avoid some of these issues. This is how I suggest you read the series.

You should read them in this order, staring with: "Ender's Game" (of course), "Speaker for the Dead", "Xenocide" and "Children of the Mind".

These are the best books in the series. Plus they are the closest you will get to serious sci-fi, and they offer the most interesting science fiction in the series.

Once you've read those books you can either stop there, since you have read the best books in the series, or you can pick up "Ender's Shadow" which, if you may find worthwhile. I ended up flicking through it, since it is mainly a Battle School book. I wouldn't call it a great read, and you can definitely tell that this is where the series starts to degrade.

I would call everything including "Shadow of the Hegemon" a sub par Tom Clancy-style which was written by a man with a laughably childlike view of how geopolitics actually work. It is essentially two thousand pages of very shallow, excruciatingly tedious, and something only really worth reading for those who need a sense of closure for the original Battle School team.

"Ender in Exile" should only be read if you decided to read the Shadow series, especially if you have read up to "Shadow Puppets" otherwise you will not have the final plot elements: Achillies/Petra/Bean, to name a few.

If I had the chance to do it over, I wouldn't recommend it, since I feel that it changes the Shadow series' finale more than is acceptable. While as a standalone work does not add anything of note to the plot.

If you somehow manage to reach "Shadows in Flight", you should just stop there. The reason is that, in my opinion, this book is the only installment in entire series with absolutely zero redeeming characteristics. It is also by far the most insultingly dull entry into the series. And that fact that fans of the series had to wait for more than twenty years for the book's release it is all the more unsatisfying. It is honestly so bad that it finally made me lose interest in, what was growing up my favorite sci-fi novel.

Listening to Books

Leah

Probably not what everyone would consider sci-fi, but if you can find the abridged versions (*stay with me) read by Tony Robinson, the Discworld audiobooks are really enjoyable to listen to.

Good Audio Sci-Fi

  • Snow Crash
  • The Martian (more fictional science than sci-fi, but still excellent)
  • Ringworld series
  • Daemon
    • Freedom
  • Gateway
    • Beyond the Blue Event Horizon

*Unfortunately, the unabridged versions were read by Nigel Planer and Stephen Briggs and neither of them capture the characters in the same way Robison does.

The Superhero Genre

Leah

Personally, I think superhero is and has been its own genre for quite some time now. While, you can loosely placed it under under the fantasy umbrella, this does not always work. Because as expected you will find pretty much any and all genres represented in the pages of a simple series like, Spiderman for example. If we look at comic books in general this is a common feature. They aren't self limiting, in fact it appears that the more mumbo jumbo a writter piles on, the better. Many of the comic books I read as a childtouhed on elements that were clearly fantasy, yet you also saw sci-fi, as well as supernatural spirituality.

Without a "clearly" defined path it is hard to classify specific works, let alone the medium as a whole. Because that is what it is.

A medium.

For a genre to be defined it at the very least needs a common unifing theme. And that is something that seems to evade the different comic offerings. Or does it?

If you dig deeper you will see some of the elements central to the superhero universe do provide a rough sketch of what they are about. One aspect, protecting the everyday you and I, is a common element that is found in all of the mainstream properties you will see in shops today. While the idea may seem nobel, people like us are often nothing more than collateral red shirts there to die in en mass.

So when you look, there is a central theme that binds them together forming a genre. It is interesting to look at the different media, how does it sell you on the idea of watching the movies when they are advertised? Rememer they are selling you on the idea so they need a way to tell you waht the film is about. They don't call Guardians of the Galaxy and Batman Vs. Superman a fantasy film, nor do they use sci-fi, rather they make it clear that it is a superhero film.

When you boil it down to its core principles science fiction is about things we think might be possible. On the otherhand, fantasy is about things we know are not. I understand that this is a rather blunt example, at times things are more obtuse than that and it can be hard to tell one from the other sometimes, and of course, there is the issue that science fiction does not always age well, but neither does fantasy. While this can be argued on the level of probable vs. inprobable with fantasy we know the answer. However, there are plenty of classic sci-fi works which were published long before their ideas even got much though, but are today now firmly in the realm of possible, or reality.

Yet, no matter how much they try and sell you the idea that Iron Man is possible, he's rich and smart after all, he is nowhere close to ever becoming a reality. Yet, this does not exclude him from one day being a reality. On the other hand, Doctor Strange is magic and there is little that will ever change that. But yet they have interacted on numerous occasions so what would those stories be categorized as?

It is this ambiguity that leaves many people confused, yet they are two rather clearly defined cases.

What about other offerings in the superhero genre?

Let's take Superman for instance. He is somewhere in between, his backstory, his excuse that "he's an alien" is a very weak explanation for why he has the powers that he has powers.

Does this limit his ability to being categoried into a sci-fi genre? No matter how much it pains me, poorly researched sci-fi is still sci-fi.

And most superhero pieces are just that.

Poorly researched, no matter if the topic is sci-fi, fantasy, or reality. The question is less "is this possible" and more "does the writer think this is possible". Even then, there's soft sci-fi that bends the rules a bit in their favor and hope that the reader does not notice, or at the very least mind too much. One good example of this is Back to the Future. I'm sure the writers knew that a time machine like that is impossible, but it's still sci-fi.

And it is still fun.

And so for those reasons, any form of superhero is never going to fit in a box, unless that box is redefined and named something unique. Thus superhero, as a whole is a genre no matter what subject matter is being touched on.