What are you looking at?

Welcome back to another blog hop, with #OpenBook. Here’s this week’s prompt.

Don’t forget to click the purple button to see what everyone else has to say on this week’s subject. It’s at the end of my post.

What is your favorite genre to read/watch (movies/tv)? Any book recommendations?

My favourite genre to watch and read will be no surprise. Since I can remember, I’ve been a huge fan of Sci-fi. I started reading and watching it a long time ago. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of Sci-fi on mainstream T.V. these days. Maybe it’s because there’s not an audience for it, perhaps the budget doesn’t stretch so far after all the restrictions of the past couple of years.  It’s always possible that I’ve just grown more picky as I’ve got older.

I still have my favourites on DVD, series that I watch over and over, the ones that influenced me, like Firefly, Battlestar Galactica (both versions) and Quantum Leap.

Of course, there is the odd exception, like the recent adaptation of Asimov’s Foundation. It wasn’t too hot on keeping close to the original books but, discounting that, I thought it was a pretty good attempt at getting the spirit of the books.

Fortunately, I have another passion, I’ve become partial to psychological thrillers, the twistier the better. These are better served by television and there have been some crackers recently, both book adaptations and exclusively written.

The thing is, all of them, although set on Earth, could quite easily have taken place in space, or on a random planet halfway across the galaxy. I’ve said it before, when we move out and colonise the galaxy, we will take all our vices with us. It’s inevitable that human nature in all its forms will be found wherever we end up.  

The scope for inventing ways for humans to do good and bad to each other is never-ending. Watching and reading these stories always gets my mind working, exploring ideas for tales of my own, in one of my own worlds.

As for books, I have a huge pile of them to read, as well as a bulging kindle app on my phone. I’m still finding exciting Sci-fi, and the thrillers that I’ve been reading have some pretty incredible plot ideas.

I’m not going to name titles but the last two books I read were by Andy Weir and J.P. Delaney. While they might be mainstream authors, to be honest, most of what I read these days is from the incredible variety of indie writers. They are the ones breaking the mould, with ideas that divert from the trends and mainstream of fiction, with genre-blending and radical new concepts. They have produced enough to keep me enthralled. It would be unfair to namecheck anyone in particular. Plus you have to read everyone else’s posts.

You can check out reviews of some of my favourite reads by clicking HERE.

Until next time.

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