What do you look for/enjoy seeing in a Sci-fi story

[joannekwan]

I like sci-fis that have a hopeful note about people working together, advancing science, surviving in times of transition. Like my favorite is Lost in Space (the netflix series), and I really liked Arrival.

If there's a high concept behind the aliens/other-worldy, I'll dig it too, like Annihilation.

You can also win me over with some good characters and kickass alien designs like in Lost in Space and Alien.

[Azifri]

One aspect that I particularly enjoy in Sci-Fi is when the author takes a real (or somewhat feasible) technology, tweaks it a bit, and explores the possibilities that may arise from there. I also like to see cool places, megastructures, and giant robots
Other than that, I like the story to be character-driven, have interesting scenarios, and some plot twists.

[J.Lovelace]

I LOVE sci-fi involving scientists, AI, androids and robots in general. Anything cyberpunk or steampunk or dieselpunk.
Time travel or timeline switch is cool too, like in Steins;Gate.

[Darth_Biomech]

I personally enjoy seeing it as not being just a backdrop dressing. (Like for example the only difference with typical romance is them characters riding space!cars instead of cars)

[writercynknapp]

I like hard science fiction in application. Like in "Ring World", where a spaceship shears a connecting nano-filiment and later the invisible thread is used by other in an attack. Like in many Heinlien books.

I like fun science fiction. "Hitchhicker's Guide", Phil Foglio, Robert Asprin,

I dislike sad dystopia science fiction.

I like science fiction that is well designed. Designed to make sense across book series, when the effects can appear magical. "Dune" and "Chronicles of Amber".

The best science fiction enables the protagonist to be active, not swept away. Using something they learn to be used in innovation to save the day.

[Dogss]

I love fantasy and scifi, but not so much for the genres themselves, but rather they are good "backdrops." For me, really great characterization is king. I don't care about the settings at all until I start caring about characters.

[pilot-obvious]

Thanks for sharing my webcomic! I'm glad it's one of your favorites!

I second the slow world-building! It's hard for me to process a huge dump in sci-fi information that teaches me how the world works. I definitely forget information when that happens.

[HGohwell]

My own scifi tends to fall right on the soft science end, when it's not straight up science fantasy. I mean, I love hard science. I have lectures on hard science and futurism playing while I work on my comic a lot. But I am a sucker for a giant robot. My comic is a giant robot series dealing with just how sentient do AIs have to be before they're alive. I like to say on the more grounded side of giant robots and magic, but I don't want that to get in the way.

And that's my thing with scifi. I love lots of different type of scifi, I love the cyberpunk aesthetic. I love to go back and do clockpunk. And just your usual space scifi. One of my favoute series is Muv Luv, a really hard science take on the real robots. But the thing is, the same as with fantasy, is sometimes people get too caught up in the scifi of it rather than the story or plot. I don't want pages and pages explaining why the engine works, I want a brief explanation at best and I want things to be integrated and natural rather than world building and science shoved in my face like a collection of essay on tech with a few characters thrown in to get you from essay to essay.

[apexdraws]

I love stories with alien (or otherwise nonhuman) characters, which is one of the main draws of sci-fi for me :x

[ivanskilling]

No problem, I'm really enjoying it!

Yes definitely, and the weird name drops just make it more difficult to remember.

[CarltonIsaac]

The best science fiction enables the protagonist to be active, not swept away. Using something they learn to be used in innovation to save the day.

Then you'd love Asimov's "The Gods Themselves" if you don't already

[domisotto]

I love Space Opera genre with light humor, fast space ships and aliens. Actually, that's my preferred genre to write in, because you don't have to deal with old boys who hate warrior-women in fantasy, but I don't, because it is an extremely hard sell.

There are studies that indicate that the reader engagement is significantly lower with a work of sci-fi, because of all the unfamiliar words and images. It is probably a bit easier for the artists because you can conceptualize the looks of new creatures and landscapes, but when writing, it is far harder to lead the reader through visualization so that it is not boring to read.

Unsurprisingly, the two subgenres that lead the way in sci-fi are the android romances and dystopian sagas, since they don't have to plow the unfamiliar so much.

Sometimes I do really want to write a sequel to my space opera, but the thought of nobody reading it... meh.

[impossiblesoul]

Sci-fi has great potential for mind-bending games - time travel, memory / brain modification, and the possibility that other life out there is biologically built with different mental faculties than ours. Space politics are also something fun to experiment with (I particularly love the question of autonomy versus intervention). All of these tie into powerful moral dilemmas. Star Trek was something I grew up on, and they knew how to push that difficult atmosphere at times.

Sci-fi to me feels like fantasy in terms of adaptability - except built on the foundation of technology. I also like that the causality of sci-fi feels more concrete when world-building boils down to physics rather than the sometimes rootless whims of magic.

[MeltingCORE]

I love world-building. If you can create an inhuman world for aliens to live on that functionally makes sense and isn't just Earth with sparkles - you've got my attention! I also love cyberpunk themes (megacorps ruling the world, etc) and dystopian themes. And I like when characters are built up, if you're writing a dark story and everyone is soulless, I'm not interested. I think it's more interesting to see characters react and have emotions, even if their world is dark. Sociopolitics and multiple universes are also fun lol.

[ISNEKO]

I really enjoy a sci-fi setting, but if the author suddenly tries way to hard to deep dive into how something from their universe works like, for multiple paragraphs, as if I'm in a fucking school lesson, then I stop reading.

Just give me a fun world of technological marvels and conveniences and we're cool. The sci-fi isn't the main draw for me. It's an enjoyable setting.

[Darth_Biomech]

My comic has that!

Leaving The Cradle Webcomic

[ratscout]

I really love it when a sci-fi story does what it's supposed to do and explores the future of mankind under a variety of different circumstances and explores what those circumstances do to the human soul. The first Bladerunner is fantastic (although I liked the sequel, too), and I really 2001 as well. Only just started reading Dune recently, but it seems pretty dang great. I love that Frank Herbert kinda just throws the reader right into the story with this weird concept of the gom jabbar and testing whether Paul is human or not. XD Great stuff.

And Star Trek and (if you want to count Star Wars, although it's more science fantasy) are wonderful stories, too.

[Mallory]

For me what defines science fiction is whether there are questions being asked - questions about the world in which the story takes place, and also questions about our world. Sci-fi to me is SCIENCE fiction, which means it adheres to the tenets of all science - namely, searching for answers; coming up with solutions to problems and seeing if they work. They can be huge problems or little problems of just one person, it doesn't matter. Hard, soft, flavoured with romance or noir, I honestly don't care. Asking questions about physics, biology, linguistics or politics, or even how one small change would affect humanity's existence - again, I don't care. It's just gotta be asking something, because if it ain't asking questions, it ain't SCI-fi.

That being said, the primary driver of those questions is the characters, so they characters HAVE to be well-written, or you're missing your "FIction" part of sci-fi. So often you see people lauding some work of science fiction for the science bit, but the characters are as engaging as the dummies they use to test pedestrian detection systems in cars - vaguely resembling a human shape. Yeah, no thanks.

I read a pretty wide variety of stuff - Asimov's Nemesis is an old favourite (couldn't get into Clarke). I also really like Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers, Phoresis by Greg Egan, The Dispossessed by Ursula K Le Guin, Downbelow Station by Cherryh, and Snow Queen by Joan Vinge. I think the only sci-fi stuff I don't enjoy is the mindless action stuff - it doesn't do well in books since the action is so abstract. Just not really fun to read.

My own comic is about a young girl who flies off to space in search of answers about an old spacer myth - the Fable of the Wandering Planet. She believes that this planet will give her answers about why her mother - and a famous deep space captain - had disappeared. Am I gonna nail all of my own expectations? Errrr... doubtful. But I'm gonna try anyways.

[spadesart]

I really like when there's something in the plot that I can theorize about, be it lore or plot related. Not necessarily a heavy or complex story, just something that gets me hungry to know more about the world and characters.

I also really like deviations from the gritty and depressing/the slick black and white chrome aesthetics when it comes to visual design. Wander over yonder had fantastic art direction when it came to the background design and each environment had so much personality and pop to it. Hoping with the 80s and 90s aesthetic revival going on that we'll get some more bright and colorful sci fi stories.

Something I don't see enough and would like to see more of is comedy within the genre. I feel like sci-fi has this reputation of being super bleak and strict and that can turn people away from the genre.

[nonnicat]

I like sci-fi that deals with individuals having extraordinary abilities/powers (X-Men, Dirk Gently, Stranger Things, I Am Not Okay With This, to name a few). I also really like it when a big part of the story is the discovery of the more sci-fi aspects (like when the character is in a contemporary setting with more mysterious aspects occurring around them). I like fantasy/sci-fi stories that have clear rules, even if the reader/audience is not immediately made aware of them. I also love stories in general that are character-driven, hence probably why I like "super-powers" so much, and how it affects the dynamics of the characters' relationships.