I'm... split...

[Attila the Hutt he/him]

I've always been a sci-fi guy. From Card's Enderverse to King's Dark Tower series. And then like Alice taking a leap of faith down a rabbit hole I picked up "The Final Empire" on the suggestion of my brother. Now, I have been swept away by the sheer magnitude of the Cosmere.

[Argent he/him]

I've found it comforting to avoid thinking about books in terms of their genres and think about them as stories instead. If the book is a portrait, then the genre is the background - useful for providing context, but not the focus of the piece. 

[Complexityspren]

Hello and welcome.

I never got through The Dark Tower... I should try it again.

[CaptainRyan he/him]

@Attila the Hutt Welcome to the 17th Shard and to the Cosmere! I, too, am a big sci-fi reader (check out "the Three-Body Problem" by Cixin Liu if you have not read it) but I think Brandon Sanderson has officially taken over as the most ambitious author I will ever read. 40+ books spanning thousands of years all with some sort of over-arching theme but yet each one unique and incredible in its own right. Just. Wow.

Also, just a warning, there are a TON of spoilers for the different series/books in the forums so tread carefully.  

[Modal Seoul he/him]

Welcome. Have a cookie.

(Also, watch out for buggers. They're really annoying.)

[Attila the Hutt he/him]

@Complexityspren The Dark Tower is one of my favorite reads! Once you get to Roland's backstory in the Wizard and the Glass you will be hooked!

[king of nowhere]

hard fantasy and sci-fi are actually rather similar, with magic taking place of technology. of the two, i tend to prefer fantasy because (when well-written) it makes more sense. I mean, I know a lot about science, and I like to overanalyze things, and any sci-fi book will have some inconsistencies in the way it describes science. also, science carries several implication about the overall tech level. one thing that I never could really digest about star wars is that for all their technology, they had actual people aiming turrets. even in our time we have radar-aimed machine guns that can destroy a missle mid-flight; certainly a computer is cheaper and more accurate than a human operator for that task. I see luke and ian going to the turrets to repel the enemy fighters, and I can't avoid thinking "with the tech level they have, there's no plausible justification for them not having auto-aimed automated turrets. it's like an itching in a place i cannot scratch.

with magic instead the rules are completely arbitrary. you can have a magic that lets you teleport without letting you fly, and it has no consistency problem. try writing a sci-fi with a civilization that can make teleports but not airplanes.

[Aaronator17]

Personally, I like to think that almost every Cosmere book so far straddles the line of sci-fi and fantasy so well that they could very well be considered 'Science-fantasy'

[TheCremling]

DONT EAT THE COOKIE!!!!

IT WILL LEAD TO YOUR DOWNFALL!!!!!!!

Edited April 28, 2017 by TheCremling
spelling error