Badly cropped?
There is letterboxing then there is OPs image.
“We now return to Lawrence of Arabia presented in its original Ultra Cinemascope letterbox format.”
Need to get that 100:9 screen to see what is going on.
Finally a use for this:
That's wiiiiiide
You don't already have one? Pleeb
Na. I'm not compensating for anything.
I laughed a good bit at this one! Lol!!
Who gives a shit lol
Well done at showing everyone what a shit you are!
Well done at showing everyone what a shit you are!
The conversation is about an uncropped picture btw 😂😭
Just say you don't know how.
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.
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.
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've had revelation space sitting on my pile for a little bit now, just have to finish a billion stormlight books first
A worthy pursuit, it's the journey that matters after all
Dalinar Kholin wants to know your location.
Tell him i'm on the way, he'll like that
“Retro futurism” is the vibe you’re looking for. Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut is a good one.
If you haven't read any Asimov books you should give them a shot (:
:D Reminded me that there's a huge collection of them st my local library, i might go and get some
If you're in the US they have some of the audiobooks too! Libby is amazing
I read I, robot. But I'm yet to try anything else.
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.
Check out the legendary artist Syd Mead who pioneered this style: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syd_Mead
I wouldn't really call it "Retro", more "Industrial".
Stewart Cowley did an art book of stuff like this back in the day... let's see here...
"Spacecraft 2000 to 2100 AD" published in 1978.
https://archive.org/details/spacecraft2000to0000cowl/mode/1up
Stephen Baxter has a ton of hard sci fi books with a similar aesthetic, expansive stories, and interesting philosophy
Second this!
IDK, what was included in the prompt that generated it?
If I had to hazard a guess, a futuristic city based on cover art for '70s science fiction novels, several of which are on my shelf.
That's AI?
Idk, It's not mine. It was a yt video.
It's very obviously AI... you're doing really good at showing your idiocy with yoir replies here.
Blushes cutely
Nothing galvanizes someone's opposition than calling them an idiot.
Lol he's REALLY mad about smth.
Retrofuturism as others have said, but probably more specifically cassette-futurism
Do you read French? If so, the comic book artist Moebius is all over this.
I don't. But I'll check it out
He's all over the Hoopla service if your library offers it.
"The Rolling Stones" by Robert A. Heinlein. Lead by Grandmother Hazel Stone, a Lunar family buy and refit an old spaceship, and head out to the Saturn colonies. Written as a YA book in the 1950s.
"Rendezvous With Rama" by Arthur C. Clarke. A spaceship is diverted from routine patrol when scientists discover that an alien spaceship is heading towards the Sun.
"Lancelot Biggs, Spaceman" by Nelson Bond. Comedic SF stories of a tramp spaceship plying the Mars/Earth run. The narrator is a radioman and the hero is a goofy genius who manages to get himself into, and out of, all kinds of scrapes.
Star Wars
I call it "slop"
Sorry for the AI jumpscare, I just thought it was really cool.
I don't know if it has a name but my association is semi pulpy sci-fi books from the seventies and eighties.
Star Wars / Trek
Stargate Atlantis / SG-1 later seasons (04+)
Tomorrowland (2015)
Blade Runner
Demolition Man (1993)
Judge Dredd
The fifth element
And probably many more underrated. As for books, I don't read any :-)
As for games, the closest right now is probably Star Citizen. Wouldn't invest in that though.
Elite Dangerous if you like space futurism. Has some planets with this vibe too, I think.
Planetary ports in Elite are just ~1km wide circles with some similar buildings, unfortunately. No sprawling metropolis settings. I love the game, but it's still markedly empty. Planets with billions of humans are atmospheric earth-likes, which you can't land on. Can't approach any closer than high orbit
But the audio design is excellent
Homewold
Thanks for the recommendations
I'm about halfway through We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. It was originally published in the 1920s, and has a lot of the hallmarks of sci-fi of the era: everything's made of glass, everyone has access to personal helicopters, Government scientists can do imagination-ectomy procedures on subjects to keep them in line, everyone has a number instead of a name. It's very "in the year 1999" kinda vibe. I like it. Also a pretty snappy read, I'm not struggling to get through it like some other so-called masterpieces (one day I'll make it through Gravity's Rainbow... maybe)
I've read this one. It's very good.
I mean, it depends if you want it to be positive, read Issac Asmov's Robert Vision and if you think it's too pessimistic, move to Arthur C. Clarke (Rondevouz with Rama is always a good pick me up, although the "Space Boobies" passage is a bit of struggle.), if you want more pessimism, go for Iain M. Banks (Consider Phlebas is the first in The Culture series.)
How you managed to spell Phlebus correctly but fucked up Robot, I'll never know.
how is culture series pessimistic? from what i have read culture the most utopian thing ever
Not pessimistic but some characters have tragic endings. Sometimes it's the "main" character due to special circumstances. Really good reading though.
"special circumstances" I see what you did there....
I don't remember space boobies. I'm scared to go look now.
Also I wouldn't recommend Consider Phlebas. I like some of his other work but that was just a terrible book for the first two thirds at least.
Tap for spoiler
Yeah consider phlebas is good with context but it isn't really a "culture" novel in the way that the others are. I think my favourites are excession and matter but the others are good too.
Player of Games is interesting - the main character, a gamer, goes to a non-idyllic civilisation because he's fucked up his idyllic Culture life.
Almost space-faring atom-punk, but designs and art look a bit too modern.
I always think of this sort of setting as "Amazon takes over the earth and starts an interplanetary trading empire," do we have a term for that? Corpo anti-punk?
Reminds me of:
- The Expanse (Novels + TV show)
- Anno 2205 (Video Game)
- Star Wars, specifically Andor (Series) and legends materials (e.g novels) exploring corporate entities and the Ecumenopolis planet Coruscant.
Amazon takes over the earth and starts an interplanetary trading empire
DITTO!
Apollo Punk.
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.
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.
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.
The expanse is great.
Slop
Can you give more examples of what you think fits or defines that more?
I think other people have already covered the bases of what I'd suggest, but just for curiosity's sake, to further clarify this style you're looking for.
Tbh, I'm really not sure.
But i'll try. Let's say cities full of irregular buildings like spires and structures with incredible architecture. Lots of technology everywhere. Everything is seemingly made of metal painted white (?) Spacious, grand, odd shaped vehicles etc.
That's not a good description. That could be anything. But that's the best I could do.
Foundation series. Your picture is exactly how I envisage Trantor.
a chiniese artist called RuiHuang_art also have this vibe of scifi
I checked it out. GOD DAMN! THANK YOU SO MUCH!
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.
The art in Simon Stalenhag's books has a similar vibe. The art is also freely available to view on his website: https://www.simonstalenhag.se/
I haven't actually read any of the books yet - still waiting for a delivery
Thanks
I've read them all, they are phenomenal.
I'd add the Electric State adaptation on Netflix and "Tales From the Loop" adaptation on Amazon.
Retrofuturism?
Judge Dredd graphic novels.
Similar cities and tech. Tongue-in-cheek for a lot of the older stories.
Mega-cities, block-war, sky surfers, Hover Wagons, robots, and knee pads.
Wow, thanks
Dystopian?