I think this might be a truly unpopular opinion, but I could not get into the expanse at all. Just never got invested in the characters enough to stick with it. I've retried watching it 4 times due to everyone recommending it, kind of given up now!

Also the latest star wars films killed any interest I had in star wars.

My sci-fi unpopular opinion is probably that I don't consider Star Wars to be sci-fi. It shares more with fantasy in that it's more character and story driven and less about philosophy and the way technology changes the human experience which imo is what defines sci-fi.

My unpopular opinion is that I don't like space operas. I'd rather read pages of explanation of technology and world building. I don't care that the star princess in exile has to assemble a rag tag bunch of fringe worlders to take back the throne from the cruel council of the galactic core. How dat engine work tho?

I think sci-fi writers constantly make their stakes far too high, stack the odds far to heavily against the protagonists, and go for a scope far to broad. I don't need 3 people to save the entire intergalactic population from a super mega back hole bomb with .002 seconds to spare. I've seen it and read it a thousand times.

Give me the guy who thinks maybe his spaceship could take on exploring one planet, tell me what he finds and why it was wise for him to run home and call for extra resources to be redirected to that planet. Tell me how the technology of your imaginary world brought 2 characters together and allowed them to build a beautiful life together.

That's why I adore The Martian and can't get excited about Star Wars.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is highly overrated!

The main characters were obnoxious, I didn't end up caring about any of them, and quite frankly, I wished the towel guy had died at the beginning along with everyone else on Earth (except the dolphins). I wasted hours of my life over those 3 books!

2001 book was great. Arthur C Clarke has always been my favorite author. I think Rendevous with Rama would’ve been a more approachable story to adapt into a movie. Full of mystery and curiosity. Creative direction could go wild on art without changing bay of the books story. Starts with a mystery, reveals bits and bobs in the middle, ends with mystery. Leaves you questioning. Chefs kiss.

Haven’t really kept up with modern sci-fi opinion. So maybe my opinions are popular maybe not.

I believe Ilium and Olympos are part of the greatest sci-fi story ever written. Far better than Dan Simmons Hyperion Cantos. It presents wild and imaginative futuristic ideas with insane scientific basis for them.

Enterprise was an absolute solid series. Not perfect, but I wished it would have had more fans when it was on TV

I've got one. I thought John Carter was a fun movie and I have no idea why everyone was so pissed off about it.

Star Gate is just as good if not better at time then Star Trek and Star Wars.

I don't care for Deep Space 9.

Characters were mostly bad and uninteresting - they had to bring back worf. Limited plots stuck on a station - they had to add a ship. Then start a war just to have something to do.

A lot of sci-fi (at least where TV/Films are concerned) keeps getting too bogged down in what it thinks that it should be, and doesn't actually try to explore new possibilities or expand much, which generally means that the quality of sequels progressively gets worse, and the show ends up being a sort of even mush vaguely resembling the original.

The main example I could think of is probably Star Trek. It's too fixated on everything as it is, so even things that are supposed to be radical changes just re-establish the status quo with a new coat of paint. A radical show with radical viewpoints would never take off, as newer iterations would try to emulate the success of the show, and keep to the old.

It's part of why later Star Trek shows seem to be a bit more conservative, by comparison. Sure, values have changed since the original show, but the level of radical progressiveness has also gradually wound down too. Compared to the original show, which tried to push things from all angles, something like Star Trek: Discovery would seem almost conservative. Most of its more progressive elements are fairly standard for the time period it is set in, rather than pushing the envelope like the original did.

Similarly, all the shows end up trying to emulate the same formula, and even the same rough starship design. The Enterprise was originally specially designed and built to seem future-y, but many other of their starships since them seem to just be iterative designs on the original. Even one of them set 900 in the years in the future seems to have almost identical technologies, polities, and culture as one set in the 24th century. The visuals are different, but everything seems to be effectively the same under the coat of paint.

Not having that baggage is probably why up-and-coming shows, like The Orville, tend to be able to get away with more, since there isn't a previous Orville that it keeps trying to recapture, just yet, which should mean that it gets more leeway.

From a non Star Trek standpoint, it's also rather happened to Star Wars. The newer films are just trying to recapture the older films, rather than expand into their own thing, to the detriment of the films as a whole. The latest trilogy seems like a rehash of the old ones, down to having what is basically another death star, Rebellions, Vader-ish Masked Sith Lord, and Friendpatines.

I don't really have much of a solution, besides wanting the shows to just branch out more. I think Star Trek in the 32nd century should have gone with a brand new slate, where everything was different (from both an ideological, political, and technological standpoint), and the 23rd century ship that ended up there would be woefully outdated, not just on paper, but with the technology it was fitted with.

Star Wars has a bunch of interesting things that it could run with, such as the aftermath of the major wars, where the Rebellion is now having to deal with multiple smaller wars from various factions under the splintering empire, or have to secure its place in the resulting power vacuum.

One show that hasn't succumbed to this as much is Doctor Who, but that had a major revamp in its 2005 revival which drastically changed the nature of the show itself. Still, it doesn't seem to be particularly immune to it either. Behind-the-scenes, they're suddenly going back to the old composer and old showrunners, and the main character doesn't seem to evolve too much beyond "conflicted, but brilliant and eccentric hero". It also seems to be slowly settling into its own ruts, as well, with the most recent run rather resetting a redeemed villain's character development suddenly.

As a slight tangent, I also feel like that considering the messaging of the show itself, there could be quite a bit of interesting mileage that could be achieved by having a companion who is a species that is normally an enemy. Maybe something like a Dalek.

The writing in The Three-Body Problem is so dry that I could barely keep up with the plot due to being deceased from boredom.

Totally a me problem but it just did not vibe with me. I could never bring myself to read the second book. Tho to be fair to Ken Liu I have trouble with translations in general and I've never read a translation of Chinese-language literature I did vibe with.

Not sure if this is a hot take or not, but modern Star Trek sucks arse. The magic died with voyager, everything after that has been trite and forgettable. And I’m not even talking about those god awful movies.

Deep Space 9 is and always was the greatest Star Trek series. Also I'll go one more and say that I would take Sisko over Picard or Kirk any day of the week.

In The Pale Moonlight (s6e19) sealed these opinions for me.

I'm a great admirer of Isaac Asimov, but Foundation - the book - hasn't aged well at all.

I don’t think the original Star Wars trilogy holds up well. It takes too long for the scenes to unfold and feels more monotonous than I remember it feeling when I watched it in my youth.

Foundation sucks ass.

The premise was great: restart the human race after a predictable collapse by writing an encyclopedia galactica based on our collective knowledge that would help the survivors to rebuild a civilization. I was all for it and I was thinking about my own encyclopedia.....and boom the story was a boring political struggle. What a letdown.

Not sure how unpopular this is, but I think Interstellar was fantastic and loved everything including the climax (which everyone seems to hate).

@Anomandaris

I went to film school, and had to watch 2001 like five times in classes, breaking down every little element of it. And you know what? I also think it's boring and pretentious AF. The fx and production design are incredible, and parts of it are good enough, but other than that it's just Kubrick demonstrating how much smarter he thought he was than everyone else (I am not a fan of his films, if that wasn't clear enough).

I did enjoy the book a lot, though! If you haven't read it I think you'll be surprised how it tells the same story, just better.