So I'm back. Huge long absence due to a new job, classes, and the resulting near breakdown, etc. But I've returned and my bosses now allow us to use headphones, so I've been grabbing audiobooks left and right.
This, sadly, has lead to a biiit of a problem. Scifi is my 'pet' genre. I'm a nerd, raised on star trek, star wars, Heinlein, Crichton, Clarke and Bradbury.
But when I look around at scifi lately, I can't really see much that I -want- to read. I know I'm probably missing the good ones- it's, I admit, easy for me to overlook them as the majority of my 'research' is 'brows amazon's list' or 'dip into the shady little used book store down the street and browse tattered covers.'
I'm -tired- of distopias in all their varying flavors. I'm tired of post apocalyptic stuff that vaguely brands itself 'sci fi' as, technically, there is a little science and it is indeed fiction. I'm tired of books based on shows based on movies that I've already read -anyway.- (I'm looking at you, Star Trek, Star Wars and Babylon 5.) Or games. (Mass effect, you really tried. You really did, but you just couldn't cut it.)
Is there just -nothing- new out there in the space-opera genre? Where are the huge, clashing fleets that I used to dream about as a kid? The adventurers, braving the unknown? Where are the grand heroes, rising above everyone else and trying to make a difference- be it win a war, or stop a war, or stop a disaster, or fight against an invasion, or such? Where's the romance that comes with all this, naturally? I can't -find- any of it.
I realize this is going to sound very 'juvenile' but that's the sort of thing I crave- not the depressing navel-gazing that so much of what I've found lately IS. I don't care about the human psyche, or for an allegory about man's inability to communicate or whatever academic meaning an author is trying to cram down my throat. I want a good story, a fun read. The 'Saturday night movie' version of sci fi.
So, yeah.
I'm stuck. xD