LOVE Sci Fi!! Raised on Star Trek (original series) and was a huge TNG fan. Love all of the movies, too. I am also a Star Wars geek. Others: Blade Runner (original), Logan's Run, Planet of the Apes (original), Sleeper etc... and the series Space 1999.
I think Star Trek is responsible for the Humanist way I would like the world to be.
It definitely influenced my humanist ways. (:
I am a Star Trek fan and I now enjoy The Orville. Also, I pretty much like time travel movies, shows; and some fantasy like Lord of the Rings. I hate to admit that I like the show Lucifer. But, it may have something to do with the fact that Lucifer is super HOT!
DB Woodside is the only reason I watch that show.... He's not on nearly enough.
The great dichotomy of the modern mediums and cannon (movies, shows, video games). Represented by two of my favorite franchises: The Elder Scrolls and Fallout.
I’ve been a nerd all my life. I watched Star Trek reruns on TV as a small child and 1977 when Star Wars came out, my life was changed forever. In high school I was required to read both of Orwell’s major novels and again my life was changed forever. I grew up in the 70’s/early 80’s in rural West Virginia so my access to pop culture was very limited. I was thrilled to learn there were books out there for nerds like me. I’m glad it’s now sort of cool to be a nerd.
I've been an SF fan since reading Verne, Wells, Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke when I was a kid. I grew up with the Apollo programme, and never got over my disappointment when everything stopped after Apollo 17.
I've written some poor stuff myself. One odd byblow of that was getting seriously interested in both astronomy and evolution twenty odd years ago with the intention of "writing more believable Aliens"...
...and coming to the unexpected but very solid conclusion that, er, there are no aliens. Or at any rate, that other machine-building civilisations in the Milky Way Galaxy are wildly unlikely.
I used to read a lot of sci-fi. Dune (all) was always a favorite, and I re-read them last year. Also love both the Dune movies.
I can't read the stuff that's not "literature" quality, and I find that I don't care for excessive amounts of machinery and war.
Fantasy -- I tried like three times to read Lord of the Rings, and just threw it down as soon as it came to the stupid Magic kind of stuff. Until my son was getting to that age, and I saw the last of one of the movies... Now I am able to suspend disbelief for the sake of a good story!
Now Robin Hobb's stories with Fitz in them are my favorite.
And Outlander (oooooh yes, the TV show!)
Babylon 5 is the best TV sci-fi ever!
You needed another category for voting, being, "used to be a Sci-Fi fan". I really enjoyed most sci-fi when I was in my teens and early 20's but as I grew older my tastes in reading tended towards history and biographies. I must concede that I now read virtually no fiction of any kind.
I read a lot of PKD on scifi side - so I guess questioning reality is underlying thread. I can't say I like generic fantasy (e.g. I can't stomach Game of Thrones - the book - the prose is so badly written it hurts my ears). But I read a lot of Ursula LeGuin - mostly because her societies are always constructed in interesting and believable ways - possibly because of her anthropology background.
I started out as a heavy-duty Fantasy fan, though perhaps not coincidentally, I started drifting more towards Sci-Fi shortly before realizing I was an atheist. I have always loved both, though if I'm going to be reading about dragons and unicorns, I have a strong preference for High Fantasy. I don't have a lot of patience for Harry Potter and whatnot. It helps me to suspend my disbelief if it's literally set on a different world or if it's set long before or after the present day, like in the case of Tolkien's work. As for Sci-Fi, I love deeply speculative work (Bradbury, Crichton, et cetera) but also have a fondness for space opera.
Nowadays, I'm more of a Sci-Fi fan than a Fantasy fan, though someone finally convinced me to watch Game of Thrones about three years ago. This ended an ~5-year period during which I watched or read very little Fantasy. So,I'm reading and watching the GoT/ASoIaF stuff, as well as having recently re-read and watched American Gods. If you held a gun to my head and made me choose, though, it'd be Sci-Fi over Fantasy.
I am not a fanatic fan, but I enjoy it. Fantasy and Science fiction can be thought provoking.
Most people who like science fiction don't realize that a great deal of it would more properly be categorized as fantasy.
Am I about to have to once again defend the position that Star Wars is not a straight-out Fantasy series? Geez, I just had this argument a couple of weeks ago. If a work of fiction has more elements of one genre than another, then you classify it as the one with which it has most in common, then add a sub-genre if necessary.
I’m a huge fan of both, favoring fantasy. I grew up on RA Salvatore’s Legend of Drizzt series that’s still going on today. I credit his work, and many other heroic fantasies, as the foundation of my morality. I learned the value of love, friendship, heroism and sacrifice through modern fairytales, and I learned better lessons from these than you could ever hope to find in any holy text.