What is your split between reading and watching science fiction and fantasy?

asp3

asp3

Silly con valley guy
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How much of your science fiction and fantasy intake is reading versus watching. If you wish you can split out listening as a separate input or include it as reading for books on tape.

I'd say I'm reading 95% and watching about 5%. Most movies and TV in the science fiction and fantasy categories don't really interest me.
 
I find I watch more Science Fiction and read more Fantasy. It used to be 90% reading and 10% watching, now its the other way around. I need to get back into reading more again.
 
If you are talking time involved, then it could be as high as 90% Watching [almost all sci-fi] and 10% Reading.
But if you are talking engagement, then its more like 90% Reading [equally split between Crime and Fantasy] and 10% Watching.
I tend to have the TV on while doing other things and so I use my TiVo to hoover up all the old Star Trek, Stargate, B5 and like shows it can find so there is always something to glance at.
 
The numbers are biased towards reading. A 13 episode season of 1/2 hour shows would be 6 1/2 hours. An hour program would be 13 hours. I don't think I could finish a typical 80K novel in 6 1/2 hours, and certainly could not finish an epic fantasy in 13 hours. So, one novel would trump one TV season. Looking at availability, there are probably two orders of magnitude more SF/F books available than TV shows or movies.
 
I only really get to read for a couple of hours each day when i'm on the train.

I've tried to cut out TV when I get in from work and have started listening to Audiobooks. My sleep quality has improved considerably.

I'll binge watch TV over the weekend, or days off though.

Probably 50%TV, 25% games, 20% reading and 5% on audio books.
 
asp3 said:
I'd call it watching as one is getting a lot from the visuals in addition to any dialogue and/or narration.
Click to expand...

You could say the same about comics.

EDIT: Chris Marker's La Jetée, a film made almost entirely from stills with subtitles, must sit right on the borderline between a 'read' and a 'watch'.
 
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JunkMonkey said:
You could say the same about comics.

EDIT: Chris Marker's La Jetée, a film made almost entirely from stills with subtitles, must sit right on the borderline between a 'read' and a 'watch'.
Click to expand...

In most cases one still needs to take an active role in progressing to the next portion of the story with a book or a comic. In most cases one just needs to sit back and watch a movie even if it has subtitles. Sometimes on stops a movie with subtitles if they're going by too quickly, but one doesn't need to do that for the story to progress.

La Jetee does have one section of motion which is very important to the story. The pacing and duration of the images and text in La Jetee is very important to the story itself. You would not get the same feeling for the movie if you just read the text.
 
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There aren't all that many SFF TV-series or movies going around. And compared with the huge number of books that see the light every year the material to watch actually shrinks to a dismissively small percentage. If you furthermore skip all the repetitious, monotonous material the TV and Movie world produces these days, or simply because vampires, undead, zombies and superhero's are not your thing, it's even shrinking down to something nameless on a quantum level.
Just look around on this forum and observe how often and how many people are doing re-watches, which wouldn't happen so often if there was an abundance of fresh and high-quality material to watch.
My TBR is about 50 at the moment (though, admittedly, I don't read much these days), but my TBW is 1. There is little new material to watch (though, admittedly, I am very picky :D) while I excitedly wait for series like Foundation (which I probably can't watch until it gets released on DVD), Middle Earth (once on DVD) and Wheel of Time (once on DVD) or the releases of new seasons, which seem to take ages these days.
But curiously I do watch more than read Fantasy.
 
asp3 said:
In most cases one still needs to take an active role in progressing to the next portion of the story with a book or a comic. In most cases one just needs to sit back and watch a movie even if it has subtitles. Sometimes on stops a movie with subtitles if they're going by too quickly, but one doesn't need to do that for the story to progress.

La Jetee does have one section of motion which is very important to the story. The pacing and duration of the images and text in La Jetee is very important to the story itself. You would not get the same feeling for the movie if you just read the text.
Click to expand...

So listening to an audiobook is more akin to watching a film in that you are not in control of the speed at which the text is read (one of the reasons I don't like the things.)

Elckerlyc said:
but my TBW is 1.
Click to expand...
!!!!!

You lucky bugger! I have about 300+ DVDs and BluRays backed up in my TBW pile.
 
JunkMonkey said:
So listening to an audiobook is more akin to watching a film in that you are not in control of the speed at which the text is read (one of the reasons I don't like the things.)
Click to expand...

Which I why I suggested listing listening as a separate portion. However I find it more akin to reading than watching.

Graphic novels and comics are also an interesting media where one has to move through them like one reads a book, but they provide the images related to the story rather than having them created in one's mind's eye. I do consider them reading more than watching though.

So in the end maybe my proposed separation of activities is a false dichotomy and should be reframed.
 
JunkMonkey said:
So listening to an audiobook is more akin to watching a film in that you are not in control of the speed at which the text is read (one of the reasons I don't like the things.)


!!!!!

You lucky bugger! I have about 300+ DVDs and BluRays backed up in my TBW pile.
Click to expand...
I use Smart Audiobook and almost always speed up the playback.

Smart AudioBook Player (Android)
 
Probably 80/20 in fantasy's favour for reading, and it was higher before discovering Avatar: The Last Airbender.
 
Definitely leaning more towards reading than watching. However, I’m really beginning to struggle with the smaller print in older paperbacks so I think my eyes would probably prefer it to be the other way around.
 
psikeyhackr said:
I use Smart Audiobook and almost always speed up the playback.

Smart AudioBook Player (Android)
Click to expand...

Now I use AIReader that does text to speech more than Smart Audiobook Player

I didn't answer the original question. Alzheimer's again.

I would say 10 to 1 in favor of science fiction though it is probably more than that but I am too lazy to try to be more accurate. Count books and try to remember which ones I never finished.
No way!
 
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