SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

I am talking about, books, movies, television series, theaters. Any media you can think off.

Something you came across that kept on amusing you long after you were done consuming it, because it lived on in later works.


I will go first:
H. P. Lovecraft
Twilight Zone

For me, The Dark Tower series by Stephen King. I really enjoy how so much of King's books tie in to that series. But it's also a series that I get to just live in for a while, and by virtue of how it's written, it sticks around. ;)

So basically the seminal SFF works. For me it's LOTR, Haldeman's Forever War, Hitchhiker's Guide, Neuromancer, 2001 Space Odyssey, Asimov's Robots, and Verne and Wells' works. For later gens, I'd put Harry Potter and Hunger Games in the list.

Time wrote: "No myths, no religions allowed.

...I will go first:
H. P. Lovecraft
Twilight Zone"

I'm confused. Those examples are especially reliant on myths as part of the settings & themes, and in many stories/ episodes, on the characters' religious assumptions affecting their presumptions and perceptions.

For example, if one doesn't believe in the myth of ghosts or a religion that has a devil, one isn't going to be frightened in a cemetery....

So what do you actually mean?

What are examples of media that you don't want included in this thread?

Definitely The Lord of the Rings. It wasn't the first fantasy book I read, but one of the first, and one of the most impactful. Apart from the influence it had on the fantasy genre as a whole, fantasy LARP and the group I play in are in part influenced by this work.

The works of H. P. Lovecraft, because so many authors took up the world he started to build and made it huge and scary and wonderful and I can explore this world on my own via LARPing.

Things that had a lasting, but very personal, effect on me: Star Wars & the Expanded Universe (now Legends), Momo, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, The Great Gatsby, 1984 and Pet Sematary.

Cheryl wrote: "Time wrote: "No myths, no religions allowed.

...I will go first:
H. P. Lovecraft
Twilight Zone"

I'm confused. Those examples are especially reliant on myths as part of the settings & themes, and ..."

I understand the confusion, I was sort of hoping to avoid the major pantheons and associated myths. I didn't think it though very carefully, I will edit the post.

Things do ofc borrow, steal or are inspired by and I am sure a few more adjectives aswell. One thing connects to another, a arbitrary rule doesn't make sense.

I was just thinking, lovecraft and twilight zone keeps showing up all over the place, those are just two of the things I keep seeing all over (usually in a good way), so I am basically just asking, what keeps recurring in popular culture to you guys?

Lord of the Rings
The Princess Bride (not a big fan)
anything by Shakespeare

Star Trek. And specifically Discovery. Often to a pestering level almost, if it wasn't also very welcome ¯\_(ツ)_/¯