Which sci-fi titles (movies, books) do you consider comforting, cozy, something you come back to from time to time? For me, I guess it is The Matrix. Still holds up to this day, gets better with every re-watch, and gives me a sense of peace when I need it.
For me it’s definitely a book that often doesn’t get much love: Spin by Robert Charles Wilson. I read that book like ten times by now in both English and my mother tongue. Such a defining book for me since I first read it in my youth and it gave me a lot of food for thought regarding what it means to live a meaningful life. It is not really hardcore sci-fi after all but more a kind of coming-of-age novel that happens to take place in a sci-fi setting.
The books Walkaway (Cory Doctorow) and Accelerando (Charles Stross) both give me nostalgia for a time when the future seemed like an exciting challenge instead of an unbearable one.
Anything written by Becky Chambers is like a comfy blanket for your soul. She puts so much humanity and empathy in stories about aliens.
I get that OP is almost more thinking of people’s “comfort food” works that serve that need for them personally, but Becky Chambers is very specifically writing to inspire that kind of feeling from the get-go. Life can get hard, bad things can happen, but good things too, and people (including pan-sexual bird aliens) are just living in the future the same way they do now and most of them are trying to be decent.
I adore the book The 5th Gender but it’s worth knowing in advance its also gay smut 😅
It’s really sweet and romantic gay smut though 🥺 and to be fair the sci-fi and mystery elements are genuinely fantastic. At the beginning I was worried it was gonna be overly quirky, just ignore that part. Its endearing quirky, I swear.