Science Fiction

I'm at home in the chaotic universe of Douglas Adams.

Firefly is maximum comfy.

The Martian. Both the book and the movie

For me it's The Expanse.

And also pretty much anything by Philip K Dick.

Murderbot of course (Martha Wells), also The Wayfarers series by Becky Chambers. Also her novella To Be Taught, If Fortunate

On the topic of The Matrix, I'm surprised by the number of people who think that Matrix 1 2 & 3 are the only Matrices. In my opinion, The Animatrix is better than both sequels combined, by a lot, and most people seem to have never heard of it. If you're a fan of The Matrix, watch The Animatrix!

Just finished Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. It's a fun and wholesome scifi story.

Pretty much any of the Wayfarers books by Becky Chambers, not so much for familiarity or nostalgia but because that’s intentionally part of their vibe

The 1973 BBC Radio Dramatization of Asimov's Foundation. It's about eight hours long and the voice work is quite good. It's comfortable for me to listen to and come back to, very digestible. One complaint: I've yet to find a version that had properly equalized sound levels, so the comfortable listing volume for their speech throughout the work is suddenly jarringly loud when they switch to the machine-clacking "encyclopedia" segments that serve as segues between parts of the story. Other than that, I have no complaints: It's a fairly faithful adaptation of the original work, and does not suffer from the fatigue and dating many other works do (in my opinion, audio balancing notwithstanding).

I've found myself rereading Old Man's War multiple times.

Anything written by Becky Chambers is like a comfy blanket for your soul. She puts so much humanity and empathy in stories about aliens.

My favorite all time movie is Interstellar but I wouldn’t call it comforting or cozy

I loved Orson Scott Card’s Ender and Alvin cycle

YSK Card had some problematic words regarding LGBT community at some point but made amend since. I read the books before hearing about that, and that’s something I wish I had known of. You might want to check his words before giving him your money.

I guess one cozy and comforting show would be some old stuff from my youth like Stargate SG1, X-Files or Sliders maybe? Something that I would put on a screen like an old friend and doing something else in the meantime.

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.

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.

Here's some I consider cozy:

• Asimov's R. Daniel Olivaw Trilogy starting with "The Caves of Steel" is downright cozy.
• Nathan Lowell's "Quarter Share" and the other "Tales from the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper".

And if you like to listen to books, "Quarter Share" is available as a podcast: https://chartable.com/podcasts/quarter-share/episodes

Edit: It varies by book, but many chapters of "The Vorkosigan Saga" are downright cozy.

Inception (2010)

Do comics count? If so, Freefall. Philosophy, ethics, science, questioning what it truly means to be human, and all while never losing its sense of humor.

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.

Arthur C. Clarke's stuff is like that... So are a lot of the old anthologies from 50s-60s (e.g. the Groff Conklin ones ... Omnibus for one - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groff_Conklin).

The 'Riverworld' series by Farmer and 'Ring' series by Niven are also.

Extremely soft sci-fi, but I just finished Starter Villain by John Scalzi and it was a great time. Nothing life changing, but it made me smile a lot. I liked his style so I read The Kaiju Preservation Society next, also a cozy adventure. I moved on to his Locked In series, which is police procedural mystery sci-fi that deals with the aftermath of a pandemic that leaves 1% of the world with locked-in syndrome. It's not as feel-good, but I've burned through the first two pretty quickly.

Anime series called Aria, it’s peak slice of life, very light in the sci fi but it’s there. My ultimate comfort watch