If recent Hollywood deals are any indication, science fiction on TV is about to get even more interesting and complex. The trend started with the surprising announcement in late 2016 that Lin Manuel-Miranda's next project—after completing his run on Hamilton and writing the music for Moana—would be to adapt Patrick Rothfuss' cult fantasy series The Kingkiller Chronicle for TV and film. Just in the past two months, three more gamechanging options were announced: HBO will adapt Nnedi Okorafor's Who Fears Death, award-winning filmmaker Ava DuVernay is working on a TV adaptation of Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy, and TNT has snapped up N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy. All of these books represented major shifts for the science fiction genre and, until recently, would probably have been considered unfilmable.

To understand the magnitude of this change, consider the Xenogenesis trilogy. Octavia Butler published these cerebral alien invasion novels in the 1980s, shortly before she became the first science fiction author ever to win a prestigious MacArthur "genius grant." The books follow three generations of people after an advanced alien civilization of three-gendered, tentacle-covered creatures has created hybrid children with the dying, post-nuclear remnants of humanity. It's a multi-layered story about colonialism and survival, and it includes surreal scenes in which we enter the minds of aliens to experience their unique sensorium. Though critically acclaimed and widely read, the novels never made it to the screen.

One issue was pragmatic. Imagining these novels coming to life without a James Cameron-level budget is hard. Today, however, special effects are cheaper than ever. A clever combination of practical effects and CGI could render Butler's aliens and their biotech spaceships.

The other issue, however, was thematic. There's plenty of action in Xenogenesis, but a lot of the story is character-driven and involves weighty questions about freedom and identity. Until the last decade, most audiences expected science fiction to feel like Independence Day or Minority Report. Sure, you could argue that the various Star Trek series often got pretty thinky. But Star Trek never leaves us adrift in ambiguity, unsure whether things are going to be alright. In the wake of series like Battlestar Galactica, Game of Thrones, and Westworld, however, audiences appear to be ready for weird moral murkiness alongside dragons and cyborgs.

That’s surely the appeal of Rothfuss’ Kingkiller Chronicle novels, which come on like epic fantasy but quickly become a character study. The novels focus on a fighter and magician named Kvothe, who is telling his life story to a chronicler. Kvothe’s family was killed by a supernatural, evil force when he was young, and he’s devoted his life to finding it. What’s interesting is that most people in his world doubt that this evil force exists and are dubious that magic is as powerful as Kvothe claims. Occasionally, we’re left wondering whether Kvothe is exaggerating his adventures for the storyteller or if everything he’s seen is all too real. With the Kingkiller Chronicle, we have a chance to see a fantasy story that’s also a psychological investigation.

Science fiction audiences are also ready for a change of scenery. We’ve seen enough of the pseudo-Asian Blade Runner future, and urban American dystopias are a dime-a-dozen. That’s why Nnedi Okorafor’s tale of a post-apocalyptic Sudan makes for such compelling reading in Who Fears Death. She focuses on a girl named Onyesonwu, whose mother was raped by enemy soldiers during an ongoing tribal war. As Onyesonwu gains experience practicing magic, she sets out to find her mother’s attacker—who also happens to be her father, another powerful sorcerer.

A luminous braid of magic and science, Who Fears Death offers us a look at a future world we almost never see in Euro-American science fiction. After soaking up the barren, gorgeous landscapes in Game of Thrones, it's not hard to believe that HBO could do justice to Okorafor’s future Sudan.

Another kind of world we never see in science fiction is featured in N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy. Though science fiction has brought us dozens of desert planets, tropical paradise moons, and city worlds, there are almost no examples of alien planets with a diversity of ecosystems and geological features like Earth. Jemisin uses her considerable knowledge of geology to build a world whose mega-continent is breaking apart, setting off volcanoes and wrecking its many environments. The planet’s only hope comes from an oppressed underclass of people known as orogenes, who can control geophysics with their minds—possibly because they’re connected to an ancient, forgotten technology from thousands of years ago.

Jemisin’s main character, Essun, is an orogene whose mind has been shattered by trauma and perhaps overwhelmed by her powerful connection to the planet’s inner workings. She’s also the only person who truly understands how to stop the planet’s dangerous "fifth season" of fire, ash, and starvation. Essun possesses a magic/technological power we’ve never seen in fiction before, and her globe-spanning adventures are ripe for serialized drama.

What these novels have in common is a shared interest in the psychology of their main characters. Though they are set in fantastical worlds, their protagonists’ struggles are recognizable. They may have access to incredible science and sorcery, but they suffer from the same mundane troubles as humans on Earth today. They’ve lost their families; they are troubled by difficult romantic relationships; they feel like outcasts in their communities. And they aren’t always the epic heroes of their own adventures. They might have grand destinies, or they might just be fighters on the line along with thousands of others.

Though these series transport us to other worlds, they aren’t escapist in the traditional sense. More often than not, these novels force us to think about unpleasant things and identify with morally gray characters. Put another way, these are stories that do the work that drama has always done.

If these book options make it all the way to TV series, you might say they represent the ongoing fusion of quality drama with science fiction in mainstream media. But, of course, it matters that they are speculative tales rather than realistic. There are stories we can tell in worlds of magic, futurism, and science fiction that we just can’t tell in a gritty realist series. Taking our worldly problems out of this world allows us to relax and entertain new ideas: after all, these are aliens and sorcerers, not actual human leaders and ethnic groups. We can sandbox our everyday beliefs and preconceptions, and ask the fundamental questions.

The future of TV isn’t just entertainment. It lies in stories that invite us to think about where we want to go as a species and what we are willing to sacrifice to get there.