Okay, you need to go to long form for sci fi these days.
Foundation in particular is full of great visuals. The Expanse, while gritty, was claustrophobic in the way the Orc caves were in LotR. Hell, even Andor was great. Add a few more like For All Mankind, which is like if old popular mechanics magazines were real… There’s beautiful stuff out there.
have you read the Hitchhiker’s Guide and the series? because goddamn that shit is funny as fuck if you take the time to comprehend it. A perfect example: Ford Prefect is named after a shitty car because they assumed cars were the dominant form of life because of all the energy and infrastructure we lavished on them. AFAIK it never explains the name in the book lol. You’re just supposed to know UK motor trends from the mid 20th century.
another suggestion but a bit more cerebral than Douglas Adams - the Baroque Cycle trilogy has a character called Half Cock Jack Shaftoe, who genuinely has some of the funniest fucking adventures/escapades I’ve read in ages. Literal laugh out loud cackling madly shit. And his progeny in Cryptonomicon gets the same treatment, two of the funniest characters ever written.
another suggestion more recent: dungeon crawler carl is the purest popcorn mainline gamers/scifi/fantasy readers will encounter, it’s over the top and all the way around back to the start but it really works quite well. I was skeptical but enjoyed it thoroughly.
Okay, you need to go to long form for sci fi these days.
Foundation in particular is full of great visuals. The Expanse, while gritty, was claustrophobic in the way the Orc caves were in LotR. Hell, even Andor was great. Add a few more like For All Mankind, which is like if old popular mechanics magazines were real… There’s beautiful stuff out there.
But what if I want funny, but I’ve watched futurama a million times
have you read the Hitchhiker’s Guide and the series? because goddamn that shit is funny as fuck if you take the time to comprehend it. A perfect example: Ford Prefect is named after a shitty car because they assumed cars were the dominant form of life because of all the energy and infrastructure we lavished on them. AFAIK it never explains the name in the book lol. You’re just supposed to know UK motor trends from the mid 20th century.
another suggestion but a bit more cerebral than Douglas Adams - the Baroque Cycle trilogy has a character called Half Cock Jack Shaftoe, who genuinely has some of the funniest fucking adventures/escapades I’ve read in ages. Literal laugh out loud cackling madly shit. And his progeny in Cryptonomicon gets the same treatment, two of the funniest characters ever written.
another suggestion more recent: dungeon crawler carl is the purest popcorn mainline gamers/scifi/fantasy readers will encounter, it’s over the top and all the way around back to the start but it really works quite well. I was skeptical but enjoyed it thoroughly.