Science Fiction

13617 readers

1 users here now

Welcome to /c/ScienceFiction

December book club canceled. Short stories instead!

We are a community for discussing all things Science Fiction. We want this to be a place for members to discuss and share everything they love about Science Fiction, whether that be books, movies, TV shows and more. Please feel free to take part and help our community grow.

Be civil: disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally insult others.
Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, ableist, or advocating violence will be removed.
Spam, self promotion, trolling, and bots are not allowed
Put (Spoilers) in the title of your post if you anticipate spoilers.
Please use spoiler tags whenever commenting a spoiler in a non-spoiler thread.

Lemmy World Rules

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

Tenthrow@lemmy.world

What criteria do you use to determine whether a book is worth your time? (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by nkiruanaya@lemm.ee to c/sciencefiction@lemmy.world

45 comments fedilink hide all child comments

It is not possible to read all the Sci-Fi books out there. So you must have a process for selecting what you do read. Reading a book is an investment in your time. Your time is valuable. No one wants to waste that time reading unworthy books.

I have never codified my criteria. And it has changed and evolved over time. I suspect it will continue to change moving forward, as who I am tomorrow is not who I was yesterday.

What is your criteria to date?

Mine is that it must meet ALL the following criteria, some objective and some subjective.

it must have at least 1,000 reviews
it must have at least 70% 5-star reviews
if after reading about it I get the suspicion that it's a romance disguised as Sci-Fi, I automatically reject it no matter what
if it's YA, it really needs to be exceedingly compelling to choose it
Space Opera also needs to be exceedingly compelling
if I get the feeling it's trying to preach I'll reject it
if i get the feeling it has (messaging, strong opinions, or political overtones) about today's societal issues, I probably won't choose it. Not judging; I primarily read for escapism.

I guess that's about it. There's probably more but I just haven't put that much thought into it yet.

I'm very interested in how y'all decide to choose a book to spend your valuable time reading.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Veraticus@lib.lgbt 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I agree it’s not possible to read everything, but I promise that if you are a habitual reader, you will run out of truly excellent books to read really rapidly. Both because there just aren’t that many and because everyone’s tastes are different.

These days my criteria is: if I heard of the book and it sounds interesting to me I’ll try it. If it fails to capture me within a chapter or two I’m putting it down.

I have a strong preference for queer books (especially queer scifi) and will totally overlook even dramatically negative reviews to read those. But that’s the only bias I have in my selection.

[–] Borkingheck@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What does queer Sci entail that's different from inguess hetero Sci fi?

[–] Veraticus@lib.lgbt 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Queer authors and/or characters and themes. There’s a fair amount of scifi like this as people have used the genre to explore gender and sexuality basically from the start. Historically, think Ursula Le Guin in Left Hand of Darkness. For more recent examples, consider A Memory Called Empire by Arcady Martine or Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir.

[–] lvl13charlatan@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I recently bought the audiobook for Gideon the Ninth. Glad to see another recommendation.