Sci-Fi Worlds with Christopher Paolini and Brandon Sanderson | Five Favorites
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- čas přidán 4. 01. 2024
- Christopher Paolini and Brandon Sanderson sit down at Dragonsteel 2023 to discuss their five favorite sci-fi worlds across TV shows and video games.
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My childhood favourite author and my current favourite author. Heaven
Wow you guys look you could actually be brothers! I can't believe I never noticed this.
If only Brandon had borrowed Dan's hat 🤠
Haha true, they always remind me of each other visually and also as bubbly funny personalities, so cool that they share mutual support, game recognizes game!
@cregkly5444 ohhh that would have been perfect!!
My first thought was “why is Brandon wearing that hat…oh, wait!” I haven’t seen Christopher since he was writing his first three books.
4:05 - The Expanse
5:45 - Mass Effect Video games
9:48 - Why Paolini decided to write Sci-Fi
11:45 - Star Wars (and Star Wars vs Star Trek worldbuilding)
13:47 - Babylon 5
15:19 - Star Trek Deep Space 9
16:21 - Horizon Zero Dawn
17:28 - Battlestar Galactica (reboot)
18:52 - Lost
20:03 - Dune
22:12 - the Prisoner (original TV show)
Thank you. 👍
So basically all my faves.
Brandon has finally exposed himself and how he writes so fast. Behold: The Brandon Clone!
Mass Effect is so great. Love seeing such great authors paying homage to one of my favorite video game series.
I would love a 5 favorites of dystopian stories
Would love to see where they'd go with it... on the focus of world-building, I'm going with #1 Fallout (too easy, I mean just look at my biopic), Blade Runner (there was a video game, so I'm cheating like Brandon), The Handmaid's Tale, Bioshock, 12 Monkeys. Just some of many Honorables: Half-Life, Last Among Us, Mad Max, The 100, Metro 2033, Deus Ex, various Black Mirror episodes, Silo, Walking Dead, and I'm probably forgetting dozens I'd argue with myself about ranking, and that's ignoring all the games or shows I haven't experienced.
There are so many, I'm beginning to think we humans might like dystopian themes too much...
@@SoyElDiabloRojo The Fallout series is my all-time favorite. 😁
My favourite authors talking about my favourite games and TV shows. 2024 is off to a very good start! Hope these two do a full podcast talking about this sometime!
It is always entertaining when Brando Sando bounces ideas back and forth with other authors and people. Love it !😁
B5 is great. Gotta pill as many people on that show as possible.
Love Atomic Rockets. Love Isaac Arthur. Love Babylon 5. Love Deep Space 9. Love BSG, except the ending.
I think I'll have to read your books.
I LOVE both of the authors, I missed Chris Paolini book signing where I love and I'm still crying over it
Altered Carbon TV show/books have some of the best world building in the sci-fi genre
Christopher seemed like a really cool guy. I'll have to check out his works
Now this is a five favourites I'm especially excited to watch 👀
The Prisoner is an amazing show and one of my favorites too. So happy to see it mentioned. Paolini is correct. The ending is brilliant.
The Red Rising series by Pierce Brown is one of the coolest sci-fi works i've ever experienced, that mix of hunger games+space opera+revolution+roman(ish) culture... just so cool.
For me is up there with Star Wars and Mass effect, haven't read the Expanse series for now, oh and forgot to mention another Sci-Fantasy that has HUGE world-building and lore Warhammer 40k.
Seeing this video in my subscription feed made my day
Horizon Zero Dawn being mentioned makes me so happy. Such a great game!
the writer who got me into fantasy and my favourite fantasy writer in one video, awesome.
This! I am absolutely shocked seeing these 2 having a conversation like that. I spent 15+ years telling people Eragon was my favorite book series until I first read Mistborn and then Way of Kings. To see them sitting there, side by side, going back and forth talking about their favorite shows, games, movies and books...all of which I also grew up loving...is simply unreal. 🤯
I loved this! Big fan of both of those authors!!!
Love the Isaac Arthur shoutout!
Two of my favoret outhors❤❤
Nice video, they look like they could be family
Dune, Rain World (love the ecology and biology of the setting), Area X (genuinely eldritch without falling back on too many cosmic horror cliches), The Expanse, and Death Stranding (Death Stranding is a bit hard to catorgize, but i love how insane the whole thing is.)
Those are really great choices! You sort of have a type with a truly alien environment with warping flora and fauna. I would predict that you would like the show "Scavengers Reign" as it deals with some similar themes as a bunch of your settings.
I'm searching up Christopher's number one pick now. That sounds super interesting and I've not heard of it before.
Also that hat is amazing
I love the Warhammer 40k universe, how it incoporates fantasy and gothic elements, its massive scale and feel and the dystopian nature of it all.
Long live the Emperor!
I love how it starts from the idea that everyone is the bad guy, and just goes from there.
Also between the 3 settings (AOS, Old World, 40K) it really does have something for everyone.
This is awesome!
my favorite sci-fi worldbuilding is Xenoblade Chronicles X. The premise of the game is that the earth has been destroyed and some of the last remaining humans have crash-landed on another planet. It's an interesting kind of post-apocalypse story where humanity has to rebuild on an alien planet. Over the course of the game you'll meet various alien races and the environment is beautiful.
YES! I am almost done with the game (want to reach level 50 before I take on the final story chapter). The world building is amazing and the open world was so ahead of its time. It’s a shame it was released on such an unpopular console. If they made a remake for the switch I would be so happy!
I've been waiting for the Mary Robinette one since being there at Dragonsteel. I wrote a list of the short stories BUT i lost most of them... :-( The ones I read were great!
Love Citizen Sleeper's sci-fi microcosm. Such a fun, flavorful blend of different sci-fi sub-genres: hard sci-fi, cyberpunk, solarpunk, etc.
The Dune miniseries is GREAT AND I AM WILLING TO DIE ON THIS HILL
Mass Effect, The Expanse, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Bioshock
I see Paolini I jump in 🎉
Like I needed another reason to LOVE Brando Sando. Horizon Zero Dawn is so underrated I wish so bad it could have a tv adaptation
Same I was so hyped when he said it
Wasn’t it supposed to get a tv adaptation?
@@grayhackinson9722 I never even heard that. It would be so good 😩
@@grayhackinson9722 One is "in development" but the budget needed would be pretty absurd so that's probably a holdup.
I could hear the sound of my heart breaking when I found out Brando hasn't seen the greatest science fiction television that humans have produced, Battlestar Galactica.
How dare they not have Stargate SG-1 in their list :(
Thank you. Was about to comment this myself
Stargate SG1 and SG Atlantis, Farscape is on the crazier side.
On the subject of Lost, Season 4 was actually the first one they shortened, to 'just' 16 episodes, and the same for seasons 5 and 6, and quality of storytelling was much improved (imho) This was more or less unprecendedted (sorry, spelling) at the time with network television, where seasons were always 22-24 episodes each. So they really broke new ground with season 4 and onwards!
DS9 is also my favorite of the Trek shows. These guys have some good taste
I'm in the "Star Wars is fantasy" camp. Definitely not as hard sci-fi as most things they mentioned.
My underrated scifi world building pick: Andromeda
The Nietzscheans are genuinely the most interesting "warrior race" in scifi television.
I recommend the first 2 seasons to everyone because they're legitimately great (and the 3rd season has some highlight episodes too, but don't watch beyond that). Particularly if you're like me and none of the modern Star Trek shows get anywhere close to scratching the itch. Andromeda scratches the itch.
Yeah, it turns out that when you fire the lead creative from your show for telling too interesting a story, the quality of the story goes downhill. Seasons 3 and 4 struggled to remember whether they had other people aboard the ship now or not, never mind more nuanced details like character arcs...
Season 5 does get points for almost managing to pull a solid ending out of nowhere, though it's a shame about the first fifteen to twenty episodes of the season...
Not too shabby. I'd have Weber's Honorverse on my list at 5; only one not mentioned.
Brandon you MUST watch Battlestar Galactica!
Adoooonalsium
Yo! I know it's probably poor etiquette to try and make a Q&A out of your comment section, but I was wondering, any chance that Shallan's perfect visual recall is caused by Scadrian(Terris) blood, or perhaps she's using a hemallurgic spike for copper, perhaps without realizing it, or is her visual memory capturing more of a savantism-type
So glad Horizon Zero Dawn made it here. One of the best new worlds and lore in generations.
Mass Effect also seems to have taken inspiration from an old game called Star Control 2. The mako in the first game acts like the resource gathering from it. I've seen some people compare the Syreen, a female dominated psychic race, to the Asari.
You can get Star Control 2 for free. Do it! It's great!
They look like twins
I'm going to go with the future game...Exodus, which is being done by several former bioware people.
I wonder if Brandon has actually played ME 2 and 3 yet. Last time when he and Dan discussed this same subject and he brought it up, he said he'd bounced off the second one because there was a gap between him playing the two, and the shift in party and stuff.
beard brothers
Certainly
Mass Effect gang rise up ⬆️
It's funny that you say you feel like you need a PHD to really understand Red Mars; I feel the same way when trying to follow your elaborate magic systems. lol
Please make custom book marks for your books I want them
11:01 Brandon can get on the next spaceship after he finishes his cosmere novels or the 17th shard will chase him down 😂
I can name like 4 books that just have their own version of the Fremen. Dune is absolutely incredible and seeing its influence on other writers is awesome
Name them! I'm curious.
Fictional groups like the fremen:
Dothraki
Sand people
Klingons?
That's all I've got.
Dune really is to Sci Fi, what Tolkien is to Fantasy.
@@TheLordofMetroids 👏 👏
Brandon please watch Battlestar Galactica Reboot. PLEASE!
Whoa, I didn't think anyone else cared about the original Prisoner!
I started The Expanse, but couldn't get past the first few chapters of the first book.
Why not?
@@ackyfacky4332 Too violent, sexual content, etc. Not my thing.
So I've had Leviathan Wakes, Red Rising and Three Body Problem sitting on my shelf for years. Never felt thr drsire to open them because I suck at reading Sci-fi. I've learned over the years, I kinda hate hard sci fi. If it didn't invent some weird magic bs things I don't like it.
So to that end, my favorite Sci-fi are all movies and games ect.
5. Halo. As a 90's kid I am required to say this.
4. Mass Effect. This trilogy may just be the best game series I've ever played, even with the glaring faults in the story of 3.
3. Star Wars. While there are stories in star wars i love more than anything else, there are things that I hate more than anything else here. (If you think the sequels are bad, ask me to tell you about Callista)
2. Star Trek, the most beautiful vision of the Future. I love it and I hope we will be able to build something like this.
1 Warhammer 40K. The most horrifying view of the future. I love it... From a distance. (If you don't know much about 40K, it basically asks the question "what if there were like a million Darth Vader's? And it just goes from there..."
Babylon 5 and the Battlestar Galactica reboot are kinda opposite extremes when it comes to world-building.
Babylon 5 went in with a 5 year plan and, with the advantage of knowing exactly what was planned to be coming (and what the plan Bs and trapdoors were for when real life meant a character had to disappear or be recast), there's a lot of foreshadowing and setup right from the start, and there's a fun intellectual exercise you can do of trying to reconstruct the original plans from the setups that ended up not paying off, because most of them did, and even with the rewriting to accommodate actors coming and going, and the entire fifth season going missing for most of the production window for the fourth season because the entire network failed, the show stuck pretty close to the original outline (as far as I can tell form the outside).
Meanwhile, with Battlestar Galactica, it became increasingly obvious that the opening titles were lying when they claimed there was a plan - to be fair, the Cylons did have a plan - to infiltrate and nuke the Twelve Colonies - they pulled it off successfully in the miniseries/extended pilot, and were then making it up as they went for the four (or three and two half) seasons that followed, just like the writers. That's not to say that the writers did a bad job of it - on the contrary, they did a fantastic job, almost, but not quite, avoiding writing themselves into any awkward corners that let attentive viewers catch them slapping a quick patch over a bit of story that didn't quite work out.
For example, in the miniseries they establish that there are twelve humanoid Cylon models, which is fine for the first couple of seasons - they have four established models from the miniseries and they can toss in new models from time to time without worrying too much about running out so long as they use them sparingly, so by the end of the second season they are up to seven known models. But then in early season 3, you have a situation where humans and Cylons are living together openly, but only the seven known models of Cylon. So, rather than revealing the remaining five models (and removing the underlying tension about who might secretly be a Cylon), they turned a problem into an opportunity, and came up with the idea of a secret Final Five - five special models that were hidden from the regular Cylons for reasons to be revealed later (once they've had time to figure out what they are) and didn't even have numbers, so the numbered Cylon models were the ones we'd already met, numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 8 (six was the first to be numbered, and eight's number was revealed relatively early). So they eventually retcon in a number 7 that ceased to exist before the miniseries started.
It's all good improv, and they do a good job of making everything fit, but it is visibly a question of world-building by papering over the cracks faster than they appear rather than having all the answers in advance.
Both versions work (neither show is perfect - Babylon 5 has a tendency toward oratory, and BSG could use a bit more levity - but they're both very good) and each avoids the flaws of the other, but, like I said, they are pretty much opposite each other in their approach.
On a completely unrelated note, one of my major peeves when watching Smallville (particularly in the early seasons) was the Clark and Lex relationship and characters getting reset a few times a season - the writers wanted to focus on the interesting aspects of Clark not being Superman yet - which is fine - but they ended up showing Clark doing lots of things that classic Supes would never do, while everyone went around telling each other how nice a guy Clark Kent was, and at the same time, Lex was going around saving people's jobs, stepping in as an agel investor so a teenage orphan could own and manage a small business in between attending High School, and generally being a genuinely considerate and generous friend, while everyone told each other how evil Lex Luthor was. But, despite setting up for an interesting story where Clark was selfish and kind of a jerk, while Lex was his friend until someday Lex realises that Clark needs a nemesis to react against if he's ever going to fulfil his destiny and become the inspiration hero he could be and reinvents himself as that nemesis - despite setting themselves up for that story more than once, they always jumped back to the conventional (DC approved) big blue boy scout and good mind tragically warped to evil...
Well said!
If there was one big crack in Battlestar, I think its the fact that of the secret final five cyclons, they ALL happened to be lead characters that ALL happened to end up on the flagship, and even had secret aging protocols to cover the fact that some of them had known other characters for decades and that was a step too far for me. Its fine that X or Y turned out to be one and they didn't even know it, because that was interesting... but at least two or three of them should have been random new characters we'd never seen before. (I know, tv shows, economy of cast, its why Star Trek sends the command crew on all the missions) You can say something for subliminal programming but the fact that none of them got wrecked when Earth was destroyed or any of the other ships got messed up or...
@@robbybevard8034 I'm prepared to cut some slack for the Final Five all having ended up in and around fleet leadership - we know that there was some subtle intervention by a higher power going on.
Besides, if they had planned the Final Five from the beginning, then they'd have made sure to include those characters in the story, however minor their roles. It's not exactly surprising that they'd end up in the Fleet somewhere - by the time they're revealed, every known surviving human is in the Fleet - and given that the Five can also resurrect, they'd be surviving "humans" so long as they could turn up with some sort of excuse for not being dead after all. Of course, one of the Five did turn up out of nowhere with an unverified explanation for not having surfaced previously (another example of not having planned in advance), so might not have survived the attack on the Colonies.
There would have been several problems with making some of the Final Five entirely new characters:
- they would have had to establish the new character's backstory during the period covered by the show, consuming chunks of valuable screentime
- any significant recurring character introduced during S3 would have immediately been assumed to be one of the Five
- the story of the Five's reveal is seeing how they react and change as a result of their self-discovery, and a new character wouldn't have the "before" to compare with, so wouldn't have the same dramatic potential
- to the extent that "guess the Final Five" was a game being played between viewers and creators, revealing that one of the Five was Poochie, who had been around all along, but just off-screen, would have been "cheating". It's more satisfying to have the Five have at least the appearance of being guessable
Of course, that last point is undermined at least a little by the reality that the Five weren't planned that much in advance, so the clues just weren't there for people to be able to guess - which was a recurring problem with the "anyone could be a Cylon" aspect of the show, particularly in the first season, where the reality was "we could decide retroactively that anyone has been a Cylon all along, honest" - with the Cylons unknown even to the writers, what people were actually guessing wouldn't have been "who is a Cylon?", but "who will the writers retcon into having been a Cylon?"
Which circles back to my original point - that having Babylon 5 style advance planning has the advantage of letting you establish mysteries in a way that feels fair to the viewer rather than it being either the major guest star or decided by drawing straws on the day, while Battlestar Galactica style invention as you go has the advantage of being more responsive to audience reaction, real life events, and writer inspiration.
Paolini sniffing too much ink wearing a hat like that,lol
He's killing it!
I'm sad not to see Brandon mention StarGate. I would classify SG-1 as relatively hard science fiction, and it's one of my favorite shows ever
The exspance follow hard scifi rules then makes aliens with magical powers
OG Battlestar Galactica had plenty of humor & likeable characters; it was hampered by a sudden shift from "4 telemovies" to "do weekly episodes", though the back-half of its first and only season was pretty solid. It was just too expensive for its time. While I'll admit from a raw writing/world-building perspective, neo-BSG may have been technically better, by about halfway through I was rooting for the Cylons to win because all the human characters were kinda horrible. And I didn't love the "some of us people are Cylons" plot line -- preferred the Cylons being homicidal space robots that destroyed their original creators (which is an idea that The Orville picked up on).
Not a big video game player, so for TV Science Fiction I want to give a shout out for world-building to Farscape (aliens that actually looked alien because puppets!) and Firefly, which they mentioned in passing but was cut short before it could really expand upon some of the ideas they introduced.
Looking like twins 🤔
Looks like Paolini has taken up Wonkamaxxing.
This site was mainly intended for science fiction authors who wanted a little scientific accuracy so they can write SF "the way God and Heinlein intended" (Arlan Andrews's Law)
love it!
My top 5 from top best to fifth best are:
Doctor Who
Warhammer 40k
Mass Effect
Star Trek
Bioshock
"No movies, no books"
"The expanse, star wars"
20:09
Any list that involves Sci Fi and doesn't include Alastair Renyolds is wrong.
wtf 2 brando
No WH40k? Absolute casuals
Brandon, this type of content is cool. However, please...the next time you do a live stream, don't sign papers during the whole thing. Please engage some with chat, that's why it's live. No one wants to watch you sign documents and try to act like you can give us your full attention. Please and thank you. Satire!
The streams and podcast only fit into his schedule BECAUSE he does signings during them. Its why they started the podcast in the first place. Take that aspect out and they start scheduling his time for other things instead.
Besides, it's a podcast, you're meant to listen to it while doing other things yourself. That they have video at all is just a bonus, no one is watching these, they're listening to them.
@@robbybevard8034 I don't think that is an acceptable excuse. If Brandon is so busy to not give his fans his undivided attention and perhaps engage with them a bit, maybe he should consider not having them at all.
@@momo_genX He's now given us literally hundreds of videos hanging out with him and Dan and answering questions during livestreams.
It does not take much attention or thought to sign your name repeatedly, it's pretty easy to pay attention to other things at the same time. It's not like he's watching tv or reading or driving or something. (And most people can drive and have a conversation at the same time.)
@@robbybevard8034 I have only caught two live streams,.and he signed the whole time. I am telling you my opinion. Brandon is successful enough to do what he wants. My opinion is that it looks bad. I might not know much about CZcams content, but I know what makes a successful live stream, for I have witnessed a creator that did things right, the Why Files are an example, and go from a couple of thousand viewers to being one of the most popular and viewed live streams on the platform during that time frame. Engagement with chat and showing your interest is important. I can walk and chew gum at the same time, but if I am public speaking I am going to spit the gum out.
Yes, he doesn't need live stream success, nor any super.chats. it looks tacky.
@@momo_genX I didn't even know what the Why FIles is, so I looked it up. Their first video is "CIA Psychics Find Alien Bases Underground".
If that's your go-to example of good content, I really don't care about your opinion.
Have a good day.