Hiatus is probably, unfortunately, the wrong word. Unless you mean like Firefly Season 2 hiatus, in which case it would be perfect.
How about Ratchet and Clank, that’s pretty ‘shiny’ sci-fi. It’s got robots, cool guns, humanoid aliens, variety of planets ,etc.
Haven’t seen it, I’ve heard the game was better though
I love the Brumpo Tungus saga of Swan Song. I like the idea of a space NASCAR.
The anime movie Redline is like a version of a space NASCAR with cool looking aliens. The story of Redline is okay but the animation by MADHOUSE Inc. is top notch probably because it was in production for 7 years. Here is a clip.
I think Space Dandy anime also has really cool and wacky aliens which might fit in with the light hearted nature of a show.
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I feel like there should be a fanart somewhere of the Tungus, with a Knight of Hell alternate skin, looking at Kia and saying “You’re already in Hell!”. But he has to have the obvious fake nose and mustache glasses.
Red Rising trilogy is pretty awesome, although it might not have the kind of tone this project is going for. But it does manage to blend in some fantasy concepts while having amazingly outrageous action sequences.
Tank Girl, the Dan Dare comics from Eagle magazine and, of course, Ice Pirates.
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Not to mention Babylon 5 had some awesome speeches in it!
Really depends on the vibe and the themes you want.
The Culture Series is my fav touchstone for sci-fi now, but Adam is the one who introduced me to it. I’d love to see something post-capitalism. Something that deals with existential issues like The Culture. What do you do when you are safe and you have what you need? That sort of question/theme.
Some kind of dual-world element could be real neat, something like Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, which has pretty neat sci-fi (or cyberpunk?) in one of the worlds. Dreamfall: The Longest Journey has some dual-world sci-fi. Maybe a touch of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland if drugs could be a way to pass between worlds, or if there is a dream-like quality to reality. If you could pull in some Terence McKenna weirdness I would lose my shit.
Plus Richard Feynman somehow. I dunno, he was awesome.
If magic is a thing, something like Visionaries, Knights of the Magical Light could be a media object of fun interest. It is a goal of mine to build the Visionaries RPG if none exists by the time I have time.
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Well, I’m very torn about what I like most, SciFi wise. For example, I’m fond of really hard SciFi, where we’re contained to the solar system for communication and distance reasons. Where spaceships moving at single digit percentage of light speed is about the greatest achievement that can be reasonably reached. Where a ship needs a burn as long retarding as accelerating. Where distances are huge and anything human made is tiny. Where a single interplanetary ship is a huge expense and less than ten organisations or governments of any kind have that type of resources. Where it takes months or years of travel between planets and where weather may delay a launch weeks or months. Problem is, nearly everything in this genre that I have read are short stories in collections of SciFi, and I don’t have names to give for most of it.
On the other hand, I have read and seen far more soft SciFi. Babylon 5 is my overall favourite SciFi TV series, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is a good second. Both are characterised by being mainly personality driven. The problem being both shows needing trouble to come to the station instead of them going out looking for it is mitigated by them having interesting and multifaceted characters and a cast that have opportunity to grow and evolve in their roles. And Babylon 5 is eminently quotable, it has so many good ones!
There’s of course the soft space SciFi favourites of HHGTTG, Red Dwarf and the like that are more comedy, or the more serious spacefaring kind, like most of Star Trek, but those I find aren’t as fun in movies, TV shows or games and if I find myself liking it, it’s probably a book or short story. Game wise, a game here that I have several hundreds of hours in would be FTL (though there’s not really a coherent story to that one), another would be the single player side of the StarCraft series.
Then we have another branch of SciFi - that which is not at all or just very peripherally in or about space. Total Recall, Tron, Alphaville, 1984, Blade Runner, Predestination (in book form All you zombies), Snowpiercer, Lockout being among those I like to mention. Lots of alien invasion and old (or new) B-films here. Lots of in the computer/network/matrix/aether, near future, alternate history-future, dystopian, cloning, AI, robot, mechs, time travel, mutation, cyberpunk, post-apocalyptic, kaiju/monster attack. Game wise I like to mention Beneath a Steel Sky, Deus Ex, UFO/X-COM/XCOM.
Does an entirely in-the-computer series count as SciFi? ReBoot was a computer animated series that took place in a computer, and not in the Tron way, or even The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest way. It might count. I liked it, but then I was young teenager back then.
And finally, not really SciFi, but Science Fantasy, the soft SciFi that brings the mystical or magical to the table. Here we have Star Wars, Shadowrun, anime and cyberpunk aplenty.
We’ve seen Star Wars, Shadowrun, Warhammer 40k campaigns, and we also have Numenera as post-apocalyptic post-tech. Swan Song was kind of it’s own spacefaring adventure, in the soft SciFi way. We already know something about the characters and setting - this is not going to be a hard SciFi nor set on Earth. I’d like to see it take more of a HHGTTG or Red Dwarf spin.
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One of my favourite Sci-Fi books has to be Blue Remembered Earth by Alistair Reynolds.
“Blue Remembered Earth takes place in the 2160s, at a time when humanity has repaired Earth’s climate and extensively colonised the inner solar system. An omnipresent surveillance system (known as the “Mechanism”) ensures that violent crime is almost unheard-of, and genetic engineering has vastly extended human lifespans. China, India and the nations of Africa are now the world’s leading technological powers, although they face competition from the United Aquatic Nations, a new underwater civilisation populated by water-breathing transhumans. Almost all humans possess neural computer interfaces known as “augs”, which allow them to access online information, view augmented reality displays, translate speech in real-time and operate telepresence robots. Some individuals, wishing to escape the constant surveillance of Earth’s Mechanism, live in a bohemian, ungoverned “Descrutinized Zone” on the far side of the Moon.”
Worth a read if you haven’t. The story and characters are pretty awesome, plus there is some wicked places visited in the books. The themes and such are pretty great too.
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A thousand great suggestions above.
One semi-less serious one. This seems to me like the guardians of the galaxy type adventures in cartoon form from when I was a kid. Captain simian and the space monkeys. Watch it 
I cannot agree more with you @Darkvlagor I love the atmosphere in Bilal’s work. I don’t know if it will fit @AdamKoebel universe but he should definitely check it (if he doesn’t know it a already 
) !
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Immortel made a lot of noise back in 2004, if he mentioned Moebius in the audio conv I’m pretty sure he heard of it 
Yeah, Andromeda Invictis. Kevin Sorbo sporting that captain role pretty well, nice mix of alien races that are not so alien. It was pretty nice, if a little under budget, until Roddenberry did it himself. when his wife took over it became somewhat ridiculous, but still action packed and fun to watch. It’s exactly the size of problems and heroes you need to make a Guardian of Galaxy’ish story. A big YES.
Well, I know that you will be using FATE to play this, but since I found out about Masks Next Gen I kinda loved the idea of runnign them in a space opera’ish setting. So this may not be a story inspiration as such, but the type of intercharacter relationships and plot twists is what I would love to see in this new show. It’s exactly what was going on in guardians despite the fact they were not teenagers (but weren’t they, really?). I’ve been watching you long enough to know, that I can expect this type of chemistry between PCs from games you’re in and not be dissapointed.
As for real recommendations: Anachronox - the game by ION STORM. It’s a bit buggy, but I would love to see you play it on stream and this is EXACTLY the type of sci-fi world-saving adventure with rich intercharacter relationships that you need. It’s just the exact thing you will try to create with the cast on the show, so if you have’t played, please do. There’s an Anachronox the movie youtube video with all the cutscenes to give you the idea (and spoilers) if you don’t feel like playing. But if you play (or played) I’d like to hear your thought on it, because, despite being a John Romero’s PR disaster (a followup to Daikatana2), this was a pretty awesome game.
Hey there, don’t know if anybody has already recommended it but RIck and Morty surprisingly seems to fit the mold of “humans are just another race”, sure it centers around two humans, but the universe is so much bigger and humans are seen by the rest of the galaxy as primitives, earth is just another planet and our nukes suck versus any kind of alien.
It’s also a great show. In my opinion that is.
I know this thread is super old by now, but I wanted to chime in again and recommend Descender. It’s another Image comic with a lot of heart and beautiful art!
I watched a very old film called 2001 about two humans who are very cruel to a machine trying to do its job. I was very inspired to better pay attention to the humans around me.
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