What’s something you couldn’t get into, but feel like you should?
What’s something that you feel like you should like,, but for some reason can’t get into, no matter how many chances you give it?
For me, it’s The Three Body Problem. It should be right up my alley from everything I’ve heard about it (especially the second book, which looks at the Fermi Paradox and the Great Filter!), but for the life of me, I can’t get past the first chapter at all. I even tried reading it in another language to see if it was the translation that kept me from getting into it, and nope.
It’s got everything I enjoy: big ass spaceships brawling it out and a long history of lore. But for some reason, I’ve never been able get into it. I should be a huge fan, but I’m just not, I cannot bring myself to care less about it.
Watched the first season but I just can't get past how awful Rick is. All the constant burping and how much of an asshole he his really puts me off the whole thing.
Foundation stopped me from finishing for 20 years until I could get it on audiobook, and even then it was a slog. All the politics in that book are simply not what I'm after when it comes to sci-fi, even if I can acknowledge that it's a fantastic piece of work.
I read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson earlier this year. It took me around 5 months because I was determined to finish it but HATED reading it. There's some good world building and ideas going on, but it was just a slog. I'm normally a kind of slow reader, but it doesn't take me half a year to finish a book.
And so the direct answer to the question would be: Neal Stephenson. Just doesn't seem to be for me.
Im sorry but Star Wars. Some stuff is freaking cool, like the whole smuggler side, but it's something about mixing magic and scifi that rubs me the wrong way. Also, lightsabers are so.. toylike.
The beginning of 3BP is very, very dry and slow. There's a lot of exposition, and a massive amount of footnotes (which I personally found very helpful as like many westerners, I have extremely limited knowledge of Chinese history).
I highly recommend persevering and soldiering on, there's a reason why it's very highly rated. One of my favourite series and totally made me do a 180 on my opinion of SETI.
I know this thread is about science fiction, but dark fantasy is kinda like sci-fi if you squint really hard. And close your eyes.
Anyway, I really wanna be into the Soulsborne game franchise (Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Elden Ring, etc.) but every time I try playing one, it simply doesn't spark my interest like I feel like it should, as I love fantasy and darkly themed stories.
So now I wanna read the Berserk series, which is widely regarded as the greatest manga of all time. But then I hear the Soulsborne franchise is directly inspired by Berserk, so now I'm worried that it won't spark my interest once I start reading it. I really wanna like these franchises, both are regarded as some of the greatest of their medium and I'd love to enjoy them as much as other people do.
I never got into Battlestar Galactica when it was airing, I don't remember why. Perhaps young me thought it was a Star Wars knock-off or something?
Anyway, after reading some discussions on Lemmy, I started watching it yesterday (began with the miniseries) and it's very promising!
I never got into StarGate either. I liked the movie, but was annoyed that in the show Kurt Russel was recast by MacGyver. StarGate is now the next on my watchlist.
The Expanse did it for me. I couldn't read the books. I couldn't watch the show past two episodes.
The oft-praised Honor Harrington books also fall into this camp. It seems I'm completely allergic to David Weber's writing, because I can't read any of his other series either.
Anything billed as "Young Adult". I just find them off-putting in their formulaic structures and find the way they talk down to their readers a bit insulting. I read a lot of adult books as a child (pre-teen, not even "young adult"), though, so perhaps I'm not the target market.
edited to add
Neal Stephenson. I hatehatehate his writing. I think if he wrote essays I might find them readable, but his fiction is atrociously bad. (It doesn't help that he spouts gibberish on topics he knows little to nothing about—e.g. Chinese culture—with dogmatic authority.)
P.S. I can understand completely why you didn't like The Three Body Problem. It is, especially at the beginning, very Chinese and incorporates outlooks and ideas that are utterly alien to the western mindset.
I've read a few different people sound off on Neal Stephenson in this thread, complaining specifically about how he goes on and on. I friggin LOVE reading him, and it's because of how he plays with language. His sentences are so wild, and so fun for me to read. They're not driving the plot--they're just cool thoughts written in interesting ways that reliably catch me off guard. Maybe it's because English isn't my first language, but for whatever reason I just love reading the ridiculous ways he has of saying sometimes very mundane things.
Hopefully I won't get crucified for this take, but Dune. I love the Barsoom series, I love Tremors, but Dune did nothing for me. I tried reading it near the end of spring semester in high school, which is arguably a bad time as I was dealing with track semi-final/finals as well as school finals, and after a month of reading less than a page a day, I gave it back to the friend who loaned it to me. That was 12 years ago, though so maybe I should give it another shot.
Not sure what it was. Maybe expectations were too high. Tried the first two books and they were fine, just didn't really trigger anything in me that made me want to keep going.
As far as TV shows: The Expanse and Foundation. I really want to like them but the first 3-4 episodes left me quite meh. Someone tell me it’s a slow start and gets better?
I tend to put more priority to story line vs special effects or action scenes.
I actually got stuck on the second book in the Three Body series. I found the first a page turner. Though it is an unconventional book and I can easily see why some would not be into it.