> love how socially relevant discourse in these shows is manifactured by creating an absolutely idiotic sci fi premise that will never happen, kinda killing the believability of the discourse altogether

Welcome to scifi. That’s the entire purpose of the genre: to re-contextualize social issues into fantastical and far flung societies. It, like the parent genre of speculative fiction, is a giant “what if?” testing chamber.

Come join us in r/PrintSF if you’d like to join the conversation on speculative fiction.

> I swear Reddit thinks everyone other than King and Rowling is unknown.

While Guin is one of the great scifi authors, scifi is often considered a niche genre and she is an older author. Finding Guin in a modern bookstore can be a challenge.

Even finding the scifi section of any big box bookstore can be a challenge. It’s certainly the smallest section in Barnes and Noble, and has to share with high fantasy….which in turn is being overtaken by D&D and other table top gaming supplies.

I pretty much exclusively read spec fiction and nonfiction. Regular fiction and mysteries bore me to tears. There’s nothing there to titillate the mind and make me think and re-think new concepts.

I cut my teeth on Dune and Ceasar’s Column. As I matured, my tastes transitioned to The Sheep Look Up and The Culture series. In my teens, I had an entire 2 year stint where I exclusively read nuclear apocalypse fiction (Level 7 is by far my favorite in that category full of standouts). Right now, I’m taking a palate cleaner by reading Mark Kurlansky. I just finished Salt; A World History and will be moving onto The Last Fish Tale.

After that, it’s back into Scifi with Beacon 23 by Hugh Howey. I read the Ancillary series and An Empire Called Memory duology not too long ago. Based on them, I’m thinking about digging into language-oriented scifi, if that’s even a sub genre.

I’m 30f and my wife is the polar opposite. She is exclusively chick lit and Christmas lit. She loves having the post-read discussions, though, as I talk through whatever new and interesting concept from my latest read. We had a great talk about languages without gendered pronouns not too long ago.

I’ll gladly send some recommendations your way.

I wouldn’t say the early seasons glorified anyone, least of all Elizabeth. She’s routinely shown to get almost nothing she actually wants done; she’s paralyzed by her office and borderline incompetent as a result.

I don’t know how you can look at seasons 1 and 2 and call it royal propaganda.