Elite Dangerous gives you an entire galaxy to explore. Star Citizen gives you a smaller universe built around physical detail and immersion. After years playing both, neither completely delivers my perfect space game, but each gets surprisingly close in very different ways.

Science fiction usually asks us to suspend our disbelief. The Expanse asks surprisingly little.

Aside from one major speculative element, everything about its vision of the future feels plausible—from the ships and technology to the politics, economics, and cultures that emerge when humanity spreads across the Solar System. It's thoughtful, grounded, and one of the few series that's made other sci-fi feel a little less believable ever since I finished it.

I didn't expect to love Dungeon Crawler Carl as much as I do.

On the surface, it's a wildly absurd premise: Earth is gone, survivors are forced into a televised alien dungeon crawl, and a guy in boxer shorts teams up with a talking show cat to stay alive. It sounds ridiculous. Somehow, it becomes one of the funniest, smartest, and most emotionally satisfying science fiction series I've read in years.