Never heard the term “cozy scifi” before, but there’s certainly a lot more non-dystopian scifi than you would think, especially if you go back a few years before “dark” became the major profit farm.
D’you have some names?
I guess I’m saying the term “cozy sci fi” seems to encompass most of the history of sci fi. My favorite authors are all old - from HG Wells and Jules Verne through the “golden age” generation - Asimov, Clark, Heinlein, Doc Smith and that crowd, whose stories mostly involved technology or aliens. Murray Leinster is one of my all-time favorites. For space opera Poul Anderson is great. For creative explorations of cultures and societies try Ursula LeGuin and CJ Cherryh. Googling cozy scifi brings up a list that includes Becky Chambers - interestingly it’s almost entirely women.
I prefer sci fi as an escape from reality, not as a confirmation that it sucks.
TY!
I prefer sci fi as an escape from reality, not as a confirmation that it sucks.
I wouldnt think of Chambers’ books as only escapism litterature, even though there’s nothing wrong in my book w/ escapism.
It is escapism yes, im in a tough spot now but at night i dive into her books and forget for a moment about troubles. But it also suggests that reality doesn’t necessarily sucks & won’t necessarily sucks.Many years ago during high anxiety I got into reading lightweight non-scifi for a while. As an American fan of British humor and vintage stuff, I love PG Wodehouse’s Bertie and Jeeves stories. Looking through thriftshops turned up the Mrs. Feeley books - a series by Mary Lasswell about the adventures of three old ladies who live in a San Diego junkyard during WWII. Also an odd one called The Wise Bamboo by J. Malcolm Morris, a nonfiction account by an army officer who managed a Tokyo hotel during the postwar occupation. That book is extra cool to me, because it’s stamped as coming from that actual hotel’s gift shop.
Up til then my literary interests had been almost entirely science fiction, but I found all kinds of diversion from reality in these completely different genres.
This sentence strikes me as so simple, yet so true. Life’s simple when u don’t complicate it.
That’s great, but it’s also sad it seems to end up being mostly fiction.
Maybe we need to work on a whole bunch of cozy sci-reality so the future can actually be good.
Tech bros seem to get all their ideas from scifi books so yeah, that does sound good.
Im not American, but I remember the title of a book that is considered a classic in the USA: Ideas Have Consequences. Haven’t read it, but i def agree w/ the main idea & w/ ur comment.
Very true, my comment was just frustration venting, not criticism, so I hope you didn’t take it that way. There is absolutely value in just telling people the future can be good. Star Trek also does this, and either predicted or is in some cases arguably responsible for a wide variety of things that either genuinely do or can make the world a better place already, but this video makes the case that simply showing a hopeful vision of future might be the most important thing it actually does.
Yeah agreed, although i deeply believe that there will be human conflicts as long as there will be human beings. Watching the vid’ now.
Her books are great!
