I have to admit I'm a fan of psionics in SF, what makes me want to roleplay sf is Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover series and Catherine Asaro's Skolian Empire stuff.
Fully fleshed-out characters, with ambiguities and consciences and inner worlds that have been plausibly shaped by their environments.
Background details about a world being encoded in the language rather than spelt out (like, oh, I don't know, a passing reference to "first sunset" and "second sunset" in a double star system). Such details, where different from Earth, having implications for the mythologies of the world and for people's assumptions about an intellectually satisfying range of things (like, maybe, with the double star, an unexamined belief that everything has a dual nature). My pet example of this is in The Left Hand of Darkness, where Gethen just doesn't appear to do fast transport: I think Le Guin is nodding to the supposed connection between fast vehicles and male hormones. A simplistic observation, perhaps, but nonetheless pleasing.
Planets with HUNDREDS of cultures and languages and perspectives, as opposed to the manageable few that seems to be standard in most of what I've encountered.
I want to see gender- and form-bending. Men who are sometimes women, swarms of bees who are sometimes people, buildings who are sometimes ships. The nature of the sometimesness varying from species to species and culture to culture. Multiple consciousnesses in one body, multiple bodies in one consciousness, in parallel and in serial. Shifting alliances and symbioses.
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Background details about a world being encoded in the language rather than spelt out (like, oh, I don't know, a passing reference to "first sunset" and "second sunset" in a double star system). Such details, where different from Earth, having implications for the mythologies of the world and for people's assumptions about an intellectually satisfying range of things (like, maybe, with the double star, an unexamined belief that everything has a dual nature). My pet example of this is in The Left Hand of Darkness, where Gethen just doesn't appear to do fast transport: I think Le Guin is nodding to the supposed connection between fast vehicles and male hormones. A simplistic observation, perhaps, but nonetheless pleasing.
Planets with HUNDREDS of cultures and languages and perspectives, as opposed to the manageable few that seems to be standard in most of what I've encountered.
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