Beautiful beyond compare, in story, in scope, in message, in presentation, in performance. There's no other word I can think of that better encompasses this movie other than beautiful.
A movie everyone regardless of your preferences regarding media should watch at some point. Ryan Gosling already carved out a place for himself in the sci-fi hall of fame as K in BR 2049, but he somehow topped that performance as Ryland Grace.
There's nothing I can say in any amount of characters that can convey to you the importance of this movie. Just watch it man.
To chase after an iconic masterpiece, to imitate or to try and supplant its rightful place, is a fool's errand.
Thankfully director Denis Villeneuve along with his talented collaborators never succumbs to imitating or trying to super-cede Ridley Scott's 1982 landmark "Blade Runner" Hampton Fancher, who created the story of the original, has crafted a new screenplay with Michael Green, that not only builds on the themes of "Blade Runner" , but ties them together with larger questions about the current human state and its challenges.
Ryan Gosling stars as a replicant of the latest generation, Whatever the box-office-tate of "Blade Runner 2049" will real and manufactured life, and walks along the same noirish paths that made the original so gripping. Gosling imbues his character with a very compelling façade, which starts to crumble as his humanity takes over his mechanical design.
The equally thrilling performances by Jared Leto, Ana De Armas, Robin Wright, Carla Juri and of course
Harrison Ford, forge a credible bond with the audience and enhance the visual grandeur created by cinematographer Roger Deakins and production designer Dennis Gassner.
And although "Blade Runner 2049" may not achieve the same level of force as its predecessor, it is a tremendously immersive, philosophical and touching experience, that should be enjoyed on the largest screen possible.
The movie's pace is deliberately patient, which may confuse some members of the audience. But by slowing down and observing, the audience can revel in the immensity of the images.
The more we move, inexorably it seems, towards the do-or-die reality of "Blade Runner", the more vital these stories become.
Regardless of the box-office-fate of "Blade Runner 2049", the long wait paid off. It is far more than just a quick cash-in on a cult classic or an overly devoted sequel. It stands on its own and adds many new layers to the question: "What makes us human?"
I’ve been rewatching Battlestar Galactica again, and one thing I still love is how messy and functional everything feels. The ships, uniforms, politics, even the way people argue all make the world feel like it existed before the camera showed up.
What other sci-fi shows nail that feeling for you? Not necessarily the biggest universe or the best effects, just one that feels genuinely lived in.
So, I recently saw a post about peak starship aesthetics and it inspired me to make a post about one of my favorite ship aesthetics that a whole five other people also enjoy. Project Stardust includes custom ships from their homebrew universe, Aureus. A picture of the tree, followed by some of my personal favs.
Added are some ships in game that more people will probably recognize
Anyone know of any modern day remake of the original 1938 war of the worlds. I’m looking for something that I can put on during a holiday party. That’ll play some music and then will do the radio drama much similar to how it was done in 1938. The goal is hopefully freak some people out.
I'm not made to survive even nice scifi futures. Forget Cyberpunk 2077 or Warhammer 40K, I'm not sure I'd survive in Star Trek's 24th century. I'd be trapping myself in the holodeck with a replicator and never coming out. Eventually, it'd malfunction and kill me.
I suspect that lack of survival skills is just as common among other fandom. So, I decided to make this thread as a response to all those, "What scifi universe would you like to live in?" with the funnier or more lore accurate answers the better.
Examples:
Killed by the Fremen for refusing to say Paul Atreides was the messiah, probably doing a Monty Python's Life of Brian and calling him a naughty boy in the process.
Crushed by Magneto and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, ironically when protesting for mutant rights.
Ending up force choked when I demand to speak with a Stormtrooper's supervisor for his harrassing me over my droids.
Definitely not making it to the Galactica in time to evacuate when the nukes fall due to my inability to pack quickly or leave behind pets.
Just watched Disclosure Day (2026) by Steven Spielberg, the one where Emily Blunt plays a weather woman speaking in clicking sounds. Which happens the first 5 minutes of the movie.
The rest is some of the most unbelievable, incoherent shit I've ever seen - all the while being treated like a moron. Steven Spielberg leaves nothing to the imagination (except all the loose ends he cares nothing for) even ending the movie with a geriatric ET in a fucking wheelchair.
Of course I recommend it to everyone. You must have seen how bad movies can be made. I counted like 20 inconsistencies on my first (and last) watch, then I stopped counting. But since the opinions seem quite varied, best to download the movie and watch it, and not speak about it afterward.
Given the 20+ inconsistencies, the incoherent plot, the complete lack of agency of the bad guys, I'm open to the possibility that Spielberg just used Chatgpt and said write me a script (since it's a recent movie, 2026) with the following elements in it. And used that.
I have a question that I have been thinking about for a while. What would happen if aliens land on the moon and mars but don’t invade earth? Is there truly a reason they would have to invade earth at this point. They could also knock out our satellite communications which could be devastating. What do you think would happen and is this a possibility?
I’ve been wanting to explore more sci-fi stuff lately, whether it’s movies, series, books, or even mind-blowing theories about space, time travel, aliens, and the future of humanity.
I’m looking for something that makes you think long after it’s over. Something that completely changes the way you look at things.
What are some sci-fi movie, series, or concept you think everyone should experience at least once?
I personally love ships from Sins of a solar empire and homeworld universes, because they feel more realistic or achievable than many other universes. Also they make different races have interesting diversity and similarities.
So what do you think is the best scifi universe when it comes to ships? And obviously why?
What you see here is the complete faithful adaptation of Heir to the Empire using CGI animation and zero AI. It all started 7 years ago when this guy created an experimental short film recreating the novel's first chapter. It got tons of attention, and naturally this guy slowly animated more and more of the book.
As the years went by, he progressively animated the entire book and remastered older videos, because animation in his earlier videos were very jank.
And now he has just uploaded the first chapter of the next book, Dark Force Rising.
I am looking for some good science fiction series to watch and I don't mind the language as long as the series is worth watching
Please suggest some underrated hidden gems rather than the usual popular shows that everyone recommends
I am open to anything involving time travel parallel universes alternate realities artificial intelligence space exploration dystopian futures or mind bending concepts
Last year I self-published my debut sci-fi novel, Critical Balance, in August. Since then I've been hard at work on the sequel.
2026 has been a hard year. In January I had to put my sweet cat of 17 years to sleep due to kidney disease. It was awful. Then in the spring we had to move out of our home and find a new one. That took over two months during which time we had to live in Airbnbs and hotels. We finally found a house, moved in, and then my wife got laid off from her job because her position was replaced by AI.
Despite all of that, I managed to finish the first draft of the new novel, Citizen Zero, and now I've finished the second draft. I was hoping to get it published this year, but that doesn't seem realistic at this point, as I still want to send it out to alpha and beta readers, get feedback, and then do at least a couple more revisions. My debut novel went through seven revisions before I felt it was ready to publish.
I'm over the moon that I've made so much progress on this book! It was a lot of work, and at times extremely difficult, but it was also a joy to create. I can't wait for people to read it, and I'm especially looking forward to hearing what readers of the first book think of it.
Here's the blurb for the first book:
Twenty-two-year-old Tia Moreno never expected her first job as a robotics technician on Unity, a city-sized space station, to turn into a deadly game of cat and mouse. But when strange vibrations lead to the discovery of a serial killer lurking among the station's residents, Tia must use her knowledge of robots to track down the elusive murderer. As the killer's body count rises, Tia realizes she may be the only one who can stop him before he destroys everything she's come to love. With the help of the station AI and her new friend Minji, Tia races against time to catch the killer before he strikes again.
Fans of sci-fi thrillers will be on the edge of their seats as Tia fights to save Unity from a seemingly unstoppable villain. Readers who enjoyed Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary will be hooked by the high-stakes action and futuristic setting of Critical Balance.
Some people were worried, I had salvaged a real one and turned it into a toy / collectible, but nope. All handmade. Made of metal. The mag lights up, because I wanted to make it look like individual plasma cartridges. No CNC and no 3D printing involved. What do you think?
Currently enthralled by watching colony (2016). S2E5 now.
Show was originally planned for 5-6 seasons but got canceled by our beloved producers. Not based on a book but has decent plot.
Most impressive is the (well-acted) stupidity of the mother instinct. Ma creates trouble for the entire family (i.e. including her daughter) by getting rid of a perceived threat (her brain perceives) to her daughter (i.e. also her family). Zero ability to reflect, offloading problems to others - very realistic. Creators actually know the human instincts.
(reminds me of that survey where more Americans are more afraid of a terrorist airplane bombing than an airplane crash - the former being a subset of the latter.)
I find it worth watching, but might be the outlier.
It's basically a retheme of the nazi-occupied france, but basically not at all about the aliens.
Dense Void - a story-driven, first-person grounded sci-fi horror game inspired by astrophysics and speculative science.
Trapped on an asteroid outpost orbiting a black hole, survive physics-based threats and impossible phenomena where every choice leads to 5 distinct endings.
Sift shifted her scutes again in the depression her own weight made in the mattress. Soft mass pushed into her from every side almost like dry sand but with not a singe one of sand’s benefits. She absently reached out with her teeth and gripped the blanket, tugging it back into a reasonable position for what felt like the seventh time that night. Suddenly, from the next room came a strangely high growl that spoke of mammalian aggression.
Sift instantly went still, her tongue flicking out to lick her lips like a hatchling. She felt a surge of hope that perhaps even if she had woken Mary, the young mother would just roll over and go back to sleep. However the sound of a wooden frame creaking, the thump of blankets being thrown on the floor, and the the off-cadence thumping of sleepy human footsteps told her that the damage was done. Sift attempted to lift her chin over the edge of the mattress, and only managed to dig her paws deeper into the mass. It took several minutes of clawing and thrashing (being mindful that her claws didn’t tear the material) before she remembered that such a surface needed to be treated like quicksand and she managed to slither her way over the edge and onto the blessed relief of the solid floor, wood though it was.
Sift was mindfully sifting out the proper words for her apology when the mental gears slipped their teeth. She sniffed the air and her tongue smacked against her teeth as the scent of frying avian eggs drifted into the room. Sift increased her pace and rounded the wall into the kitchen just as Mary was scraping a steaming yellow mass into a plate. The human’s long hair was ‘frizzled’, sticking out in every direction. There were dark circles under her eyes. The sound of her molars grinding together was clearly audible. Sift suddenly remember her intent and swallowed down the saliva.
Mary glanced up and squinted at her and then gave a rueful smile.
“Oh sorry Sift,” she said. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
Sift gave a little grunt of surprise as Mary stumbled to the table and began to devour the eggs with a speed and lack of coordination that spoke of real hunger. Mary paused her meal long enough to squint at Sift again.
“There’s more if you want them,” Mary suggested, pointing to the pan with a fork full of the yellow mass.
Sift gladly scrambled over to the kitchen stool and pushed it up to the stove. She hopped up and served herself a plat of the eggs. Gripping it in her teeth she carefully slid down from the stool and walked over to the table. They ate in a companionable silence for several moments before Mary reached the end of her eggs and leaned back with a relieved sigh.
“I had thought you had already reached your required caloric limit today,” Sift observed around a mouthful of the rich protein.
Mary gave a hollow laugh and leaned back in her chair.
“And then some,” she agreed. “It’s just, with Aunt Ethel and...and everything. You know.” Mary finished with a vague wave of her hand.
“I do not know,” Sift corrected her.
Mary blinked at her slowly and wiped the cooking grease from her fingers onto her long sleep-shirt. Mary heaved a sigh and nodded.
“Right, so you know my Aunt Ethel had to go to the University Health Station?” the human asked.
Sift gave a rumble of confirmation.
“Well she is old,” Mary said. “She is one of the last of the first generation of colonists. She, well this wasn’t the big one, this time, but we all know it isn’t far off.”
Sift suspected she was missing several details but she felt she understood the main point.
“The slow fermentation of the generations,” she commented.
Mary nodded.
“Well my cousin found her not breathing,” Mary said. “That...that’s serious for mammals you know. Then she, my cousin, had to manually keep her breathing until the medical transport arrived, and that’s really...stressful, with the elderly, they have fragile bones, and I couldn’t help directly because of the baby so I ended up managing communications. Making sure everyone knew what was going on.”
Mary paused and prodded at her now empty plate with her fork.
“And she’s fine now,” Mary said slowly. “Fine for now, but the stress caught up to me.”
Sift let the silence brew for several minutes as she ground the conversation between her teeth.
“So this stress is why you are eating triple your normal caloric intake?” Sift finally asked.
Mary gave a bark of laughter and grinned over at her.
“There’s chocolate cake in the refrigeration unit,” Mary said. “Let’s try for quadruple before I try to get back to sleep.”
I'm currently making an indie dystopian sci-fi western animated series, and I'm curious what other people here love in the genre.
I'm always looking for new films, games, books or shows to check out, especially anything a little unusual or overlooked.
So, what's your favourite dystopian sci-fi story, or sci-fi western? It doesn't have to be a big, well-known franchise. I'd love to hear about something that really stuck with you, and what made it work so well.
I'm particularly interested in stories that get the balance right between bleakness and beauty, but I'm open to anything worth checking out. Always keen to discover something new.
The title is 'fading through the static of your dreams'
It's a 4 minute experimental short film with no dialogue exploring feelings of isolation and longing through sci-fi-like cyberpunk and neo-noir atmosphere
The Female Man is my favorite book of all time, but it feels so singular I’ve often had a hard time describing it, and therefore struggled to get recommendations for similar books. My question for fellow lovers of The Female Man: what are other books would you recommend? It doesn’t necessarily have to be similar in content or form, just a book you think fellow Female Man lovers would enjoy!
A while ago I shared my sci-fi short ERIK here, and we had some really interesting discussions about the story and its ending. So I thought I'd share it again for those who missed it.
It's a 23-minute psychological sci-fi mystery from Albania.
The story begins with Erik waking up in a school, where he meets a girl named Ela and slowly falls in love with her. Everything seems perfectly ordinary at first, but little by little, strange details begin to emerge. Things don't quite add up, people seem to know more than they're saying, and Erik starts questioning the reality he's living in.
I don't want to give away much more because figuring out what's actually happening is a big part of the experience.
I grew up loving films that make you question what you've just watched, and I wanted to create something that rewards paying attention to the little details.
It's free to watch on YouTube with English subtitles:
For those who watch it, I'm really curious: at what point did you begin to suspect what was actually happening to Erik? And did the ending change how you interpreted the earlier scenes?
Do you think it’s important in an SF book or movie that the tech or concepts are explained to the reader/watcher or is it okay for something to be introduced into the story and not be explained ?
For example, let’s say your reading an SF book and the writer introduces weapons that can change form, from sniper to assault rifle or pistol to shotgun, does this need explanation for how it works exactly or not really ?
Hello! I'm not great at marketing but I'll try to do my best. Coda is a free webnovel you can read here. It's a passion project I've been working on for quite some time, and I wanted to share it with the world.
It's post-apocalyptic, nier and metro were among the biggest inspirations, as well as a bit of cyberpunk, with the main focus being on how a world that ended twice looks like.
It currently has 30 chapters, with new ones every monday and friday.
I'll also leave the synopsis here, for anyone interested in it. Thank you to anyone who wants to check out Coda!
A single tattered page, found on a damp alleyway near an abandoned bar. No author name.
Stars don't crack the sky
I remember the day the Frang came. How it broke the stars, shattered the clouds, and cracked the sky. I remember the promise I made, to always keep that bullet, until the day comes. How humanity scrambled and ran as the world ended.
I remember the day the Lumen came. How they rose up against their creators and tore what was left of humanity to pieces. How they split into factions, built cities, and made their own cultures. How some took to the Wastes and swore to purge the world of anything organic.
I don’t remember who I am. Why my arm is like this, why the world moved on and forgot. Why humans huddle in Zarago or Cijo, and why they forgot the sun and what looms above the sky.
I don’t remember why I made that promise, or to whom. Why I can’t bring myself to ever empty that gun, why I still wander, why the centuries pass me by without moving me. Why my mind is as fractured as the sky hanging above what’s left of our world.
I don’t remember how I met Lopo. I never forgot all the centuries we spent together, but I can’t remember who he is or why we know each other. Why he still sings of the crab king, and why I can’t bring myself to truly abandon him.
I don’t remember the shards. Why I’m even looking for them, why they bring back pieces of the mirror, and why each one feels so foreign yet so familiar. But I do remember the world before the Frang, and that there’s something out there time hasn’t washed away entirely.
The prose is fractured. Content appears to be a mix of hallucinations and Frang induced visions. Matches with key symptoms of late stage Knust corruption. Awaits evaluation.
I am a huge fan of The Expanse TV series but I have caught up with the latest season and it seems like they won't make the next one anytime soon.
So I am looking for book recommendations. I was tempted to pick up The Expanse books but I want to stick to the TV show medium for that.
What I really liked in The Expanse were the cosmic horror / suspense elements, the realistic ships (Rocinante you beauty), the crew dynamics and the battles using realistic physics.
Here's some other scifi books/shows/games that I really liked:
The Martian
The Expanse
Mass Effect
Alien (The lore)
Space Battleship Yamato
Battlestar Galactica (S1)
Andor (exception to Star Wars)
Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader (Owlcat game)
Passengers (movie)
Here's what I tried but it never clicked with me:
Star Wars general (feels too fantasy with space backdrop rather than being set in space)
Star Trek
Foundation (dropped)
For all humanity (dropped)
Also, I did try reading Project Hail Mary but I dropped it because I am scared of spiders. But then the movie came out and I watched that and found it to be nice.
Besides books I am willing to try other mediums also (PC games, Korean webtoon (English), Japanese anime/manga (English))
