Preferably books but anything will do.

  • Rhaedas@fedia.io
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    2 months ago

    I questioned the other suggests that it was retrofuturism, as I had a different picture of what that meant, but apparently that is a very broad category that it seems most futuristic fiction seems to fall in if it has anything we think of in the picture, like flying vehicles or modernistic buildings. Everything from cyberpunk (both positive and dystopian) to steampunk to dieselpunk fall under the name. So I would maybe further narrow this to cyberpunk, aka Bladerunner/The Expanse type? Hard to say the environmental/social feel from just this picture.

    • queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
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      2 months ago

      Yeah, the image doesn’t have a ton of genre references (at least not that I can identify) which I think is why responders defaulted to retrofuturism. Which is a really broad category: it’s basically “what people from the past thought the future would be like” so any sci-fi that stays in the public consciousness long enough becomes some flavor of “retrofuturistic” by default.

      I feel like cyberpunk, and all the *punk genres, tend to be darker and grimier than this picture though. This feels like someone fed a diffusion model “sci-fi landing pad” and it created this generic pastiche of scifi-ish buildings and aircraft, which is probably why it’s hard to pin down: it’s a synthetic average of a million stolen stories, sanded down to dust and reconstituted as a standard issue art wafer. Which is pretty cyberpunk dystopian, I think, so I guess I’ve come around to agreeing with you.

      • Rhaedas@fedia.io
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        2 months ago

        As presented it is the more cheery side of cyberpunk. The others tend to creep in older tech tells (steam or other), and the ship doesn’t look very shiny and new, so there’s a taste of used there, even if it’s not very old, like Star Wars tech always feels, even in the brighter parts (like on Coruscant). Definitely AI source, a human artist would have put details like wear marks, debris on the ground, little things to give an age feel.

        I’m actually working on figuring out my own scifi tech as background material for a novel, and AI is not create at coming up with things visually. I’ve hammered out the ideas in text, but now I’m trying to find ways like Blender to bring them to life to better see it.

  • pyr0ball@reddthat.com
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    2 months ago

    Stephen Baxter has a ton of hard sci fi books with a similar aesthetic, expensive stories, and interesting philosophy

  • janewaydidnothingwrong@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I would heavily recommend the Culture series books by Iain M. Banks. They have a lot of advanced technology. Their societies are largely ship and space station based rather than on-the-ground cities but there is a huge variance across the series.

    I would also recommend basically anything by Alistair Reynolds, but primarily the books in the Revelation Space series. Banks is probably a bit more accessible of an author but Reynolds is fantastic if you give him a chance. House of Suns is a good standalone novel outside the rev space series if you want a starting point.

    Edit: also basically anything by Peter F. Hamilton. Fairly similar to Reynolds in scope but with quite a bit of raunchy stuff, whether that’s a positive or a negative is your preference lol. Pandora’s Star is where I’d recommend starting for him.

    • Ixoid@aussie.zoneEnglish
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      2 months ago

      I love Peter F. Hamilton’s work, he’s my no. 1 author. Pandora’s Star is an excellent entry to his work, but it’s also the first of many (7?) books set in that universe (although the original story is concluded in the next novel). My recommendation for new readers is usually Fallen Dragon, as is a rare standalone novel, as well as a very entertaining read.

      • janewaydidnothingwrong@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Nice, I have done Pandora’s Star/Judas Unchained which I liked a lot, the Void trilogy which I liked but not a lot, and the Night’s Dawn trilogy which I strongly disliked overall. Most of the time I dont have that kind of mixed experience with an author but I dont think not liking a series detracts from him in any way, it just wasnt a good fit for me. I’ll have to check out Fallen Dragon when I’m done with Neal Asher’s Brass Man.

      • I_Fart_Glitter@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun and Robots of Dawn are a murder mystery/sci-fi trilogy by Asimov. They are linked to the foundation series/the rest of his interconnected novels and short stories, but they work fine as a stand alone series that isn’t a massive commitment.

  • jnarcahan@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    What about it do you like? It reminds me of a lot of books in the Scifi paperback section of my local library growing up. But those books could be really different.