How do you like your Sci-Fi?

[Dusty]

Are you a hardcore sci-fi gamer? Or a deep thinker who prefers their Sci-Fi in the textual form? Maybe your the common man who prefers a TV with a remote! Go ahead and vote your favorite Sci-fi medium.

[Daryn]

I generally like scifi novels, though I'd have to say that I will get it wherever I can find it. I don't think the medium is too important provided that the stories are good.

[Wolfgang of Borg]

Hey um any chance of maybe adding an option for radio / audio fiction? I basically grew up on The Hitchhiker's Guide and Seymour the Fractal Cat...

[SliceOfDog]

Ooh, this was a difficult one, but I had to go TV, with games as a very close second. Movies are instantly out, because there are too many crap ones, it has perhaps the worst good;mind numbingly crap ratio of all those mediums. I do love sci-fi books, but generally not for the sci-fi elements in them; that is to say, I enjoy books that are quite low on the sci-fi scale, and generally not epic space battles.
So it has to be TV. Stargate, Babylon 5, just awesome awesome shows like that :p

[Dusty]

Um any chance of maybe adding an option for radio / audio fiction? I basically grew up on The Hitchhiker's Guide and Seymour the Fractal Cat...

I dunno that falls pretty well into the OTHER category and I don't want to extend this to 8 options My favorite is TV Series as well. While I do love some Sci-Fi games like Halo I just feel that series like Stargate, Firefly, and Star Trek have defined the modern Sci-Fi genre while most games haven't had a very lasting impact. Also sometimes TV is a great way to unfold a drama. Look at Lost and Flash Forward.

[Wolfgang of Borg]

...that falls pretty well into the OTHER category...

Aww dammit, i voted "Literature" without thinking first; didn't even consider what the category "Other" might cover >:[
Anyway um seriously tho u should totally check out radio scifi -- there is some amazing stuff there!

I don't much like TV 'cause the storytelling is always so slow and measured and repetitive, recapping itself over and over and over...

[Samantha Arrow]

Gaming was tempting:

"I'm commander Shepard and this is my favorite poll on the Citadel."

But had to go with television:

"Captain Jean Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise."

[Dusty]

I will admit Star Trek, especially Voyager can get very repetitive but TNG has some very very good episodes, Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner are very talented actors and there can be some profound moments along the way.

[Brome Teks]

I don't think medium matters so much as actual content. Games have great storytelling (Mass effect 2 Storyline: Ohgodwhat) Or completely mediocre storytelling (Halo 3 Storyline: Faceless soldier with no personality whatsoever kills many, many aliens). Same goes for books, Television shows, or movies.

So I picked all of the above.

[Nelle Kozera]

Books was my choice, mainly because 75% of scifi I have been exposed to has come from novels.

[Wolfgang of Borg]

I will admit Star Trek [...]

Nah man it's not just Trek, repetition is like THE characteristic feature of TV as a medium... Charles Stross nails it perfectly here

Consider a script. A script consists of pages each of which represents one minute of on-screen action. It typically runs to 250 words, most of which are dialog. A 42 minute TV show is 10,500 words (a novelette, in fiction-not-script terms), but breaks down into four scenes, each of which needs a near cliff-hanger ending (prior to the advertising break, to keep the viewers wanting to see more), and a restart at the beginning (to drag in new viewers who have channel-hopped over from a less compelling production). Of each roughly 2,500 word scene, then, about 250-500 words will be wasted (dramatically speaking) on reestablishing the action, and the last 500-1,000 words goes on setting up a mini-climax (except in the first and final scenes, where you need a setup and a climax for dramatic, not advertising, purposes). Thus, the 10,500 word script actually contains about 7,000-8,000 words of meat, or 28-32 minutes of non-repetitive on-screen action to propel the story forward. (As a reference point, a 8000 word short story, to an average reading speed of 350 words per minute, takes 22 minutes to plough through. I'm ignoring, of course, the need for additional background description in the short story — stuff that doesn't belong in a script.)

Here's the rub: the ideational density of a TV or film production, to a viewer experiencing it in real time, is lower than that of a work of written fiction is to a reader — an hour of TV with ads (and spurious scene-based setup/teardown) is equivalent to 20-25 minutes of written fiction.

For me radio / podcast / audiobook wins because

* it's more idea-dense than telly / films
* unlike books you can do other stuff at the same time

[Legacy350]

It's always about visual over facts for me.(I guess too much words aren't my type). So I pick "Other" since Arts was my true medium. lol

[Silver]

Is "All of the above" a valid option? Maybe? Sort of?

[Seismic]

I prefer gaming. PnP RPG's like Dark Heresy and Deathwatch are my fav's while console gaming I'd have to say the Metriod series, Mass Effect (1 and 2), and Borderlands.

[Dusty]

I'm surprised by the lack of support Movies are getting xD

[Seismic]

Other than Star Wars, Tron, and Star Trek what other decent Sci-Fi films are there? I don't like Aliens or Predator, haven't seen Blade Runner, and couldn't care less about Inception.

[Dusty]

Plenty. 2001: A Space Odyssey, Moon, Aliens, Predator, Serenity, Equilibrium. There are more then just the big names out there.

[Seismic]

Forgot about 2001 and 2010

[Wolfgang of Borg]

Like Slice said, the movie quality:crap ratio is just way too low; from my hello post:

Brazil, Existenz, Gattaca, Strange Days, The City of Lost Children and The Thing

these being the ones i've watched repeatedly. Oh and Dark City, but only 'cause it's so pretty.

(if stranded on a desert island tho i'd also want a copy of Primer, if only to while away the time trying to understand it.)

[Stargazer Bleu]

Not sure how hard core I would call my self.
I do like all of the above tho.
Books, TV series, some which even had movies made about.
Even some games. video game or table top kinds.

I have been to conventions before but not where sci-fi was the major/main theme.

[Golithka]

I chose movies because I have always been a great lover of cinema. There are so many films I loved.

[Samantha Arrow]

AHAHAAHAH typo!!!

What's literture? Never heard of it. Do you meant literature?

[Acton]

I am definably in the Literature camp I guess listening to Science Fiction podcast count. Least is TV because rarely I seen any good Science Fiction on TV.

[themnax]

there's no reason movies and tv couldn't be done as well as the short stories and novellas that get published in anthologies and analog-sf. movies come close occasionally. tv very rarely. mostly do to cost and the priorities of a profit driven corporate entertainment industry.

[Daryn]

While I agree that scifi movies and TV shows can be great if done right, I'm also in agreement that for the most part, they rarely are. This year I've watched episodes of Falling Skies, Terra Nova, and Game of Thrones. For some reason, only Game of Thrones was able to hold my interest. Maybe it's because of the care that went into making that series in comparison to the others. There is a distinct quality level to the wriring which neither of the two scifi shows seemed to have.

The good news for me is that these old movie producers are slowly dying off, to be replaced by people who value art again.

[macrorufus]

Deep fried.... with chicken.

[Rick Canaan]

Hehe, first off, I reopened the poll. It was set to auto close after 30 days. Don't know if that was accidental or not, but it struck me as a poll that people might enjoy voting in for a while yet.

Either way, I voted "Literature".

While I listen to all of my books, I still find science fiction presented in novels, to be my favorite.

Like a few others have mentioned in this thread, I am not a big fan of science fiction on TV. Even the supposedly really "good" ones, like Star Trek (and all of its various manifestations), just seem too underdone to me. It just isn't possible, for my tastes, to present a compelling story in an hour of commercial-interrupted viewing. Too many short cuts are often taken, too many things left unexplained, or just downright slight-of-handed, the producers hoping their audiences aren't watching too critically.

None for me, thanks.

I think, coming in as a close second to books, for me, is movies. I love a good science fiction flick. All of the genres too - from sci-fi horror, to the serious and compelling drama, to the funny and whimsical. If it is a good movie that was well and professionally done, then I am likely to enjoy it.

But most of all, with me, it is books. There is no other medium from which you can get such truly in-depth and character-driven stories. Books, yep - all the way for me.

[Daryn]

I don't think that we'll see anything more in depth than books and audiobooks until fully interactive fiction manage to come onto the market. It's one thing to read a book, but I think the next step is being part of the story. Not like playing a game, that's alright, you can be part of that narrative first hand. What I'm talking of is the ability to become a character, being able to adapt to situations and the narrative adapting to your adaptatations.

I don't know about you guys, but I'd be all for that.

[13Swords]

lit for me. The sci-fi in lit is limited to the author's imagination, whereas with games, movies, and other digital story media, you're limited by budget, skill of animators, etc.

[13Swords]

@Daryn: You mean, like an RP that gets recorded?