Most of my favourite books/movies/TV shows are Sci fi - I love Mary Shelley, slaughterhouse five, annihilation (both the book and the movie), The Thing, x files, the invasion, and the OA. This feels like a pretty wide variety of writing styles when I line them up but 90% of the sci fi I read/watch I just don’t enjoy at all. It’s a shame because when I love something sci fi I feel like it’s changed my whole life, but when it comes to finding new things I can just enjoy its easier to go through other genres. Is anyone else like this? Does anyone have reccomendations based on what I do like?
Looks to me like you’re in the sci fi/thriller genre. There’s a lot in that category. Seems you like the classics too. Have you tried Phillip K. Dick? Dracula might be your cup of tea also.
I didn’t personally enjoy Blade Runner or do androids dream of electric sheep, maybe I should give some of his other works a go though. I know he’s considered an OG. I subscribed to the Dracula mailing list thing so have been reading it for about half a year now haha
Look at Richard K. Morgan. He wrote the Altered Carbon books. The first season of the tv show is ok, the second not so much. The animated one is pretty good. However the books are outstanding. There’s two other books not in the Altered Carbon world that you might like better: Thin Air and 13teen.
Try Minority Report or other Dick adaptations like A Scanner Darkly, Total Recall (original), The Adjustment Bureau, etc.
If you want to give him another shot, I’d actually recommend his short story anthologies. I feel like Dick excels with bringing an interesting idea or twist to a story, but is weaker with character development. In a short story, his strengths are accentuated and his weaknesses are diluted or eliminated.
Two titles to look for are “The Father-thing” and “I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon”.
In fact, many of his stories that turned into feature films started as shorts. “Minority Report”, “Total Recall” (originally “We Can Remember it for You Wholesale”), and “Paycheck” were all short stories originally, and hit all the harder for being shorter and more focussed.