Talk about Verses

Asimov's Foundation is really good stuff, I also second Niven.

More recently the Westworld stuff has me intrigued, not really for what we see but what the world outside the setting might be.


You mean a fantasy settings that is actually scifi because everything is made up and magic is just very advanced technology made to simulate magical stuff?

If so, I have some rough ideas written down (although in Italian, not in English).

I love Star Wars, and most of the universes in Brandon Sanderson novels because I think theyre great also Dragon Age and the DC tv show universe with The Flash and Arrow so uh... the Flarrowverse??? I like that
And the Marvel Cinematic Universe ofc, I love Marvel movies

But what really makes me happy are multiverses... I LOVE multiverses

Anne McCaffery's vision of PERN aka Rukbat 3, 3rd planet orbiting the star Rukbat aka Alpha Sagittarii, in the constellation of Saggittarius.

The name Pern came from an early report from earth explorers and stoo for Parallel Earth Resources Negligible.

In the first three books in the series you see a pre-indusrial, medieval-type society with the lands divided into holdings and the common folk who work the lands answer to a Lord Holder. The Lord Holder is the main leader in his/her own area and runs his area as he/she sees fit and is only takes instructions from his area's Weyr. A Weyr is a place with caves large enough to hold Pern's dragon's and their dragonriders, and each Weyr has it's own set of Weyrleaders. The Holds pay tithes to each Weyr and take orders from the Weyrleaders during a threadfall. Thread is a silvery, ribbony type organism that falls from the sky and devours all organic matter it comes into contact with, then it burrows into the ground. The dragonriders fight the thread by meeting it in battle in the sky and has their dragons 'flame' it it into cinders, any thread that makes it to the ground is then battled or detected by ground crews made up of the common folk.

In the first 3 books you get the impression that this is a fantasy story with dragons that have a telepathic bond with their riders, but at the end of the 3rd book, The White Dragon, you find out that Pern and it's people are actually decendants from space exploring earth settlers who, thousands of years ago bioengineered the dragons from dragonettes/firelizards, small creatures who were indiginous to the planet, battled and ate thread and resembled little dragons. They make this discovery by accidently uncovering an ancient man made pod that housed AIVAS, a solar powered voice activated computer.

It's basically the perfect blend of Fantasy and Sci-fi, because after the first 3 books, there are books written about how the humans first landed and also about different historical Pern 'heros', and also there's books that come in after, that tell the story of what happened after AIVAS was discovered.

But there is another 'verse.... the Underverse




Nah, but seriously, the Riddick franchises had some cool ideas but they need more explanation and not being shoved into one movie in lieu of plot. As to Star Wars, I felt the same way as you for a long time until I inched my way into it, and my advice is: if you're selective, it'll definitely pay off. First off if you like Star Wars and the EU, you owe it to yourself to try the Thrawn trilogy. Don't worry about the small inconsistencies before they got the timeline down; in fact, if you can, get teh 20th Anniversary Edition with annotations by Timothy Zahn that explains exactly what happened in each case. Helps a lot. I'm pretty confident Thrawn may change your mind. You can safely skip the Yuuzhan Vong stuff, especially the first book, it's atrocious. Basically steer clear of any non-Zahn stuff written prior to 2005 and you should be fine. But after the Vong it starts getting good again. Dark Nest trilogy, Legacy of the Force, Fate of the Jedi and whatever else may be in between. And thankfully the books recap enough so you never really feel like you're completely lost on what happened before. As for prequel stuff, I hope you've read the Darth Bane trilogy. I'll stop here with Star Wars, don't want to hijack the thread. If you want to discuss it more, head over to the SW thread.

Otherwise, I love the ME verse, B5 and TRON, obviously. Marvel as well. Not so much DC (I like Batman, Batman Beyond and some Green Lantern stuff). For third party comics it's funny, I love Spawn and The Darkness but more for their adaptations into HBO show and video game respectively than the original comics. Oh and Aliens/Predator- the second game was the bomb and the movies were decent (well the first one kinda sucked but Requiem was good).

I'd say I love the Elder Scrolls verse but the lore is treated the same as the gameplay for me- more of a sandbox to do my own thing. I have spent way more time reading up on it on the wiki though so there is that. Otherwise the Half-Life/Portal Universe is probably my top video game verse, followed by ME and Metal Gear. I used to love Starcraft but all the Kerrigan wanking in the second game (as well as the second game in general) kind of put me off. Protoss FTW though.

Book wise, I highly recommend checking out Fred Saberhagen's Books of the Gods, a strange, (possibly post-apocalyptic) retelling of Greek myths. I really like what they've done with the gods in that series. There's also his Dracula books which go back to Stoker's original, except Dracula is the protagonist, and he survives into the modern day and has various adventures (it's better than I make it sound). While we're on vampires I also used to be into Anita Blake but have kind of lost interest since she became a Mary Sue that just bangs a new monster to gain new powers every book (and despite that going on for over half the series, the parts that weren't that still kicked ass last I checked). And though it was a YA series back in the 90s, the Animorphs verse kicks ass, is not childish at all and could actually school most mainstream sci-fi in alien design (looking mostly at TV shows with rubber forehead aliens). And if we're getting nostalgic, ReBoot's up there too (where's that 90s thread?)

As for what I'd look for in a verse, for sci-fi it'd either be a strange blend of modern day but with some crazy tech/shenanigans or full on sci-fi but with transcendent beings we can't even fully grasp yet but maybe there's a way to get there ourselves. On the fantasy side, I really need more necromancers. There is an entirely unacceptable lack of necromancers in most things I've heard of (though admittedly I don't go out looking for new franchises much anymore). That or Death personified/avatars playing a major role. Physical gods work too.

I have some ideas of my own for creating verses but I'll keep them to myself for the time being.