Why I Love Dune - and My Favourite Sci-Fi Settings
[5 min read]
Science fiction is often about imagination—faster-than-light travel, distant worlds, technologies that reshape what it means to be human.
And there’s no shortage of incredible settings across books, films, and games that explore those ideas. Worlds like Star Wars capture that sense of adventure—heroic, hopeful, and just a little bit larger than life.
But the ones that stay with me aren’t the brightest or the most optimistic.
They’re the darker ones.
The harsh deserts of Dune, where power, belief, and ecology are tightly intertwined. The cold corridors of Alien, where survival is never guaranteed. The neon-lit sprawl of Cyberpunk, where technology advances—but society doesn’t keep up.
Worlds where the future doesn’t feel distant—but uncomfortably plausible.
Dune
I borrowed Dune from my dad.
I remember struggling with it at first—names, factions, politics—but reading again as an adult made me truly appreciate it.
Not the spectacle—the weight.
Everything in Dune feels consequential. Power isn’t clean. Religion isn’t background. Ecology isn’t flavour text. It’s all intertwined, and it all matters.
And at the centre of it: spice.
One resource. One planet. Everyone depends on it.
Reading it again now as the movies came out, the ecological thread feels sharper—extraction, control, long-term consequences ignored until they can’t be.
What I’ve come to appreciate most is how human it all feels. No AI solving problems. Just people—trained, manipulated, believing their own stories—trying to stay in control.
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| Image by Modiphius |
How to jump in
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| Image by Legendary Pictures |
Want to go deeper?
There are a lot more Dune books—some beloved, some… less so. I’ve mostly stayed with the core, but if you want to disappear down a rabbit hole, it’s there.
There’s also the Dune: Prophecy TV series, which explores the origins of the Bene Gesserit. I enjoyed it, as a prequel to the main stories.
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| Image courtesy of Ebay |
Alien
I watched Alien in High School.
I don’t remember the first viewing clearly—but I remember the feeling it left behind.
Not just fear. Unease.
Everything in Alien feels slightly off. The ship. The pacing. The decisions. And by the time it becomes obvious something is wrong, it’s already too late.
What I love about this setting is how un-glamorous it is.
Space isn’t heroic. It’s industrial. Functional. Tired.
And then something enters that system that you fundamentally can’t deal with.
The real horror isn’t just the creature—it’s the sense that the people involved were always expendable.
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| Image by Free League |
How to jump in
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| Images by 20th Century Studios |
Want to go deeper?
There’s more film content—prequels like Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, and newer entries like Alien: Romulus.
If you want something adjacent, Dead Space leans hard into similar territory. I was involved in getting the original remade, which probably explains why it still sticks with me.
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| Image by Electronic Arts |
Cyberpunk
Cyberpunk came to me in the form of the 1990 tabletop roleplaying game, Cyberpunk 2020. I played as a Rockerboy and a Corporate. The latter being closer to how my life panned out.
What makes it resonate is the feeling that this isn’t some distant future.
It’s a direction.
Technology pushing forward faster than society can absorb it. Power concentrating. People adapting just to keep up.
It feels plausible in a way that makes it harder to treat as escapism.
And it’s energetic—fast, loud, messy.
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| Image by CD Projekt Red |
How to jump in
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| Image by R Talsorian Games |
Want to go deeper?
And if you want a different dystopian angle, The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day are still hard to beat. Something a little closer to home? Try the Black Mirror series, eerily imminent.
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| Image by Warner Bros |
What's Next?
If this article leans into the darker edges of sci-fi, then there’s one setting that takes that idea and pushes it to its extreme.
I’ve only scratched the surface—enough games to get a feel for it, enough reading to realise how vast it is. But the lore has a grip on me. A galaxy locked in endless war, where hope is rare, survival is temporary, and everything feels dialled up to eleven.
I wrote about my early experience with 40K recently—but the more I look at it, the more I realise I’m not done.
Next up in this series: post-apocalyptic worlds—where the systems have already collapsed, and survival is all that’s left.
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| Image by Bethesda |
This blog is written by me, with a little help from AI editing for clarity and tone. All ideas, feelings, and memories are mine.
