Comforting science fiction
Which sci-fi titles (movies, books) do you consider comforting, cozy, something you come back to from time to time? For me, I guess it is The Matrix. Still holds up to this day, gets better with every re-watch, and gives me a sense of peace when I need it.
I'm at home in the chaotic universe of Douglas Adams.
I can see that. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy movie felt really comfy. I read the book, but it did not draw me in, for some reason. Any particular novel you like, other than obviously The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy?
I felt the same way. I got about 2/3 of the way through the book and just did not GAF about a single character, so I tried the movie and it was much better. I haven't read any of his others.
Try listening to the audiobooks narrated by the author himself. It's amazing IMO.
Still on my to-watch list
I don't know if I should upvote you for having it on your list or downvote you for not having watched it already...
Ok, don't downvote, I watched the movie!
The movie is great, but it makes more sense after you’ve watched the series.
But wasn't it cancelled? I'm not sure I want to watch something if the ending is missing.
Too soon!
I didn't feel a lack of closure. It was still a few years before mass serialization of TV so episodes are largely self contained. There's a movie that came out afterwards that gives some answers to a few questions that weren't wrapped up.
Agree. For me the problem with it ending too soon is mostly that I liked it and wanted more , but it wasn’t really a single overarching story that needed an ending.
Contrast it with Babylon 5 where the overall story arc was everything
Yeah this is my answer as well.
My wife and I have a Valentine's Day tradition of getting Chinese takeout and starting the series.
We have a child named after a character.
I've heard of this. is it scifi? it always sounded like a YA novel title.
oh shit is there a film version?? I can't read
10 episodes of a prematurely cancelled show due to the incompetence of Fox plus a movie called Serenity which wraps up what should have been the rest of season 1. It's about a crew that does odd jobs in a Rimworld/space cowboy-esque theme.
I just watched it again for like the nth time. It's still so good. It has Nathan Filion, Jewel Staite, Morena Baccarin and the fantastic Summer Glau!
The show is great, although i have noticed how it has a pretty high amount of shots of Summer Glau's feet. Just Summer Glau walking and the camera panning to her feet, over and over, almost every episode. It doesn't even make sense because the spaceship is made of metal grates and sheets, not carpet.
I'm guessing the show runner was into feet. But other than that, the show is pretty wholesome.
It has my all time favorite TV theme song too (ok, maybe tied with Trème).
For real. I always skip show intros, i find them a pointless waste of time and resources that I'm just going to skip anyway, but this show and Game of Thrones are the exceptions because of the cool songs. I am not familiar with Trème though.
It’s a docudrama about New Orleans right after Katrina. A great, but difficult and disturbing watch. It was mostly filmed locally and each episode was named after a song and featured a local band. It was also a fundraiser.
https://youtu.be/XQB4LW67SdY
And here’s the Firefly theme. The only song I think I’ve air-violined to. So much nostalgia…
https://youtu.be/o-sp68GjYL0
The Martian. Both the book and the movie
Same author (Andy Weir), different book: "Project Hail Mary". Almost a spiritual successor to "The Martian" and gives you cozy feels AF.
Loved it it's much more "fantastic", ie mind inspiring. Also there's gonna be a movie!
I loved the book. Tried enjoying the movie three times, I think, then finally realized that the book is way better.
Murderbot of course (Martha Wells), also The Wayfarers series by Becky Chambers. Also her novella To Be Taught, If Fortunate
okay. So. Murderbot hit a space for me. I read it in the middle of the pandemic. the wry, humor of it was just beautiful. the plot and story was engaging. The whole thing was beautiful.
incidentally, the librarian that turned me onto it (a very reliable source,) was kind of acting like how I imagine Gordon Ramsey might act when suggesting going out to KFC. Kind of discretely. kind of like maybe they were dealing weed. And maybe also, kinda like they felt guilty about that.
For me it's The Expanse.
And also pretty much anything by Philip K Dick.
Huh, surprised you mention Philip K. Dick. I read a lot of his short stories and found them anything but comfy. Rather, depressing and gloomy.
As for the Expanse, I just read the Leviathan Wakes, and yeah, I really enjoyed the vibe
He can be pretty funny. "Beyond Lies The Wub" for example.
But it's the novels that I find comforting. He was an ideas guy not a craftsman, but the characters' inevitable descent into confusion, paranoia, and relationship angst, as he more or less tells the stories despite them, gives it all a certain consistency that I enjoy for its familiarity.
Galactic Pot Healer still warms my heart
Just finished Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. It's a fun and wholesome scifi story.
Great pick. I read that over the summer and found it both excellent and uplifting! It really showcases a shining example of humanity we should strive for
The audiobook is fantastic if you're into that sort of thing, too.
Yeah. I did actually listen rather than read. It was amazing. Rocky's tunes made him come to life. "Why are you stupid. Question?"
Indeed! I would say "The Martian" also fits.
On the topic of The Matrix, I'm surprised by the number of people who think that Matrix 1 2 & 3 are the only Matrices. In my opinion, The Animatrix is better than both sequels combined, by a lot, and most people seem to have never heard of it. If you're a fan of The Matrix, watch The Animatrix!
I remember watching it back in the days. Some of the "parts" were a bit too weird (especially the animation) for my taste, but yeah, I enjoyed it overall.
No love for 4?
Does it deserve it? I haven't watched it and tbh kind of afraid to touch
I'm aware of being the exception, but I liked it and view it as the real sequel to the first movie. It's an appropriately tongue in cheek satire. The director knew what she was doing
4?
Pretty much any of the Wayfarers books by Becky Chambers, not so much for familiarity or nostalgia but because that’s intentionally part of their vibe
Thanks for the recommendation, haven't read it!
Anything written by Becky Chambers is like a comfy blanket for your soul. She puts so much humanity and empathy in stories about aliens.
I get that OP is almost more thinking of people's "comfort food" works that serve that need for them personally, but Becky Chambers is very specifically writing to inspire that kind of feeling from the get-go. Life can get hard, bad things can happen, but good things too, and people (including pan-sexual bird aliens) are just living in the future the same way they do now and most of them are trying to be decent.
Read a bit of both, but I found their hard sci-fi writing a little "cold"
Ok, I see what you mean. Indeed, there is optimism in their ideas.
The 1973 BBC Radio Dramatization of Asimov's Foundation. It's about eight hours long and the voice work is quite good. It's comfortable for me to listen to and come back to, very digestible. One complaint: I've yet to find a version that had properly equalized sound levels, so the comfortable listing volume for their speech throughout the work is suddenly jarringly loud when they switch to the machine-clacking "encyclopedia" segments that serve as segues between parts of the story. Other than that, I have no complaints: It's a fairly faithful adaptation of the original work, and does not suffer from the fatigue and dating many other works do (in my opinion, audio balancing notwithstanding).
Had no idea this existed, thank you
I've found myself rereading Old Man's War multiple times.
I have the audiobook of that one. For me it's Project Hail Mary.
Project Hail Mary definitely has a comfortably buddy feel to it
My favorite all time movie is Interstellar but I wouldn’t call it comforting or cozy
I loved Orson Scott Card’s Ender and Alvin cycle
YSK Card had some problematic words regarding LGBT community at some point but made amend since. I read the books before hearing about that, and that’s something I wish I had known of. You might want to check his words before giving him your money.
I guess one cozy and comforting show would be some old stuff from my youth like Stargate SG1, X-Files or Sliders maybe? Something that I would put on a screen like an old friend and doing something else in the meantime.
I read the Ender's Game (and watched the movie after that) recently. It was pretty brutal at times, but I liked it.
The first couple seasons of Sliders are really comfy. It starts fast, episodes are self contained, and the world is usually in a slightly better state at the end of each episode. Often it's thought provoking too, but not in a Black Mirror doom and gloom way.
SG1 is great and can have the same feeling, but it takes a couple seasons to get there. Definitely worth watching in my opinion, but if you want an immediate hit of comfort it may not work unless it's a rewatch.
For me it's definitely a book that often doesn't get much love: Spin by Robert Charles Wilson. I read that book like ten times by now in both English and my mother tongue. Such a defining book for me since I first read it in my youth and it gave me a lot of food for thought regarding what it means to live a meaningful life. It is not really hardcore sci-fi after all but more a kind of coming-of-age novel that happens to take place in a sci-fi setting.
Treasure Planet came out in 2002. You could be in your early 30's and have been in the target demographic for the film at the time.
Haven't watched it, will check out
Do comics count? If so, Freefall. Philosophy, ethics, science, questioning what it truly means to be human, and all while never losing its sense of humor.
sounds fun. where might I find this?
http://freefall.purrsia.com/
It’s been going since 1998 so there’s a lot of material.
Here's some I consider cozy:
And if you like to listen to books, "Quarter Share" is available as a podcast: https://chartable.com/podcasts/quarter-share/episodes
Edit: It varies by book, but many chapters of "The Vorkosigan Saga" are downright cozy.
Certain episodes of Star Trek TNG are that way for me.
A lot of Futurama is this way as well.
I don't know how many times I've listened through the audiobook of Andy Weir's The Martian.
Yeah, Futurama is awesome, although feels a bit overwhelming sometimes
I adore the book The 5th Gender but it's worth knowing in advance its also gay smut 😅
It's really sweet and romantic gay smut though 🥺 and to be fair the sci-fi and mystery elements are genuinely fantastic. At the beginning I was worried it was gonna be overly quirky, just ignore that part. Its endearing quirky, I swear.
Inception (2010)
The books Walkaway (Cory Doctorow) and Accelerando (Charles Stross) both give me nostalgia for a time when the future seemed like an exciting challenge instead of an unbearable one.
Arthur C. Clarke's stuff is like that... So are a lot of the old anthologies from 50s-60s (e.g. the Groff Conklin ones ... Omnibus for one - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groff_Conklin).
The 'Riverworld' series by Farmer and 'Ring' series by Niven are also.
Extremely soft sci-fi, but I just finished Starter Villain by John Scalzi and it was a great time. Nothing life changing, but it made me smile a lot. I liked his style so I read The Kaiju Preservation Society next, also a cozy adventure. I moved on to his Locked In series, which is police procedural mystery sci-fi that deals with the aftermath of a pandemic that leaves 1% of the world with locked-in syndrome. It's not as feel-good, but I've burned through the first two pretty quickly.
Annihilation is my go to comfort movie. I've probably seen it thirty times.
Not the one I just read. It was excellent but quite apocalyptic. Even worse, there was all this buildup about whether humanity would learn anything and not so much
Another one... Ell Donsaii series. It's light but nice to read and quite interesting in a science fiction kinda way
Anime series called Aria, it’s peak slice of life, very light in the sci fi but it’s there. My ultimate comfort watch
Octavia E. Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy (also known as Lilith's Brood Trilogy). I've listened to the audiobook narrated by Barrett Aldrich four times now, and I always discover some new angle to the story.