 March 24, 2008 - 1:23pm | I just posted something that brought back some great memories of one of my favoritehard sci-fi movies of all time: Runaway, with Tom Selleck as a bomb squad cop and Gene Simmons (of KISS) as one of the best terrorist villains in cinema hisory. I must have watched that movie a few hundred times when I was a kid. I wish I owned it on DVD. We're just barely one step removed from that today. Other favorites of mine include the obvious: Blade Runner, Alien, Aliens, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Serenity, and I'm sure there's plenty others that aren't coming to mind at the moment. |
 March 24, 2008 - 2:28pm | I second those nominations. My all time favorites are Blade Runner and Aliens. I think my friends and I nerd out and quote Aliens a bit much. " I keep this around for close encounters." "...game over, it's just game over man..." etc. At least I got to scare an alien rabbit thingy...... |
 March 24, 2008 - 4:33pm | I would say my favorite sci-fi movie are either Fifth Element or Serenity (both are pretty chessy). Confucious Says: Man with one chopstick go hungry. Man who eat many prunes get good run for money. Man who live in glass house should change clothes in basement. |
March 24, 2008 - 5:10pm | The subject is HARD sci-fi, but Fifth Element is cool too. |
 March 24, 2008 - 5:47pm | Call me naive, but I'm not quite sure what you mean by hard sci-fi. None the less, here is my list: Aliens Serenity Return of the Jedi (still wish it was wookies instead of ewoks but oh well) Starship Troopers |
March 24, 2008 - 6:48pm | "Hard sci-fi" refers to science fiction without the bells and whistles. No specified FTL travel (as no current FTL theory stands up to opposition). No magic, sorcery, or spiritism of any kind. Just straight science-friendly fiction. Aliens almost steps on it, but it doesn't mention or address how they get to the planet in question in just a few weeks. It just takes it for granted that there is a possibility of FTL. Some elitists would require that hard sci-fi give an explanation for every scientific event or object in the story and end the story based on some scientific resolution. But I don't hold to that and don't expect anyone else to. I also love non-hard sci-fi, so am not an elitist myself. I just refer to "hard sci-fi" to mean a realistic story set in the future. |
 March 24, 2008 - 9:58pm | For me, hand's down, "Blade Runner" (with narration.) It's kind of difficult to peg movies as "hard sci-fi"... a couple others that come to mind: Gattaca Contact Not really "hard", but not exactly "soft": Alien/Aliens Carpenter's "The Thing" Pitch Black Sunshine |
March 24, 2008 - 10:12pm | All of those are truly great movies. Except, I never heard of Sunshine. |
March 25, 2008 - 8:08am | You should check out Sunshine. It was released on DVD recently. Definitely hard sci-fi. At least I got to scare an alien rabbit thingy...... |
 March 25, 2008 - 9:42am | Aliens Wrath of Khan BladeRunner Escape From New York |
March 25, 2008 - 7:17pm | Well, since we've left realistic sci-fi behind, I'll say Terminator. |
March 26, 2008 - 4:57am | Well, when we get into "soft" the field is exponential... I can probably come up with 50 "greats" pretty easily... and picking 100 wouldn't strain me too much. ;) Terminator would definitaly be one of them. Easily in the top 10. And you should definitely go rent Sunshine... it's much "harder" than the group I put it in with. It caught me by surprise. Directed by Danny "28 Days Later" Boyle. |
 March 26, 2008 - 4:23am | These two pre-Star Wars movies hold a special place in my top 10 SF movies. Logan's Run (1976) Planet of the Apes (1968) «Language is a virus from outer space» William S. Burroughs |
March 26, 2008 - 4:56am | No one's picked "Forbidden Planet"? For shame! Actually started watching "Metropolis" yesterday... for a movie made in 1927, it's pretty impressive. I'm guessing that back then, the concept of a "machine man" was pretty avant garde. |
 March 26, 2008 - 6:13am | Gattaca, hands down best Hard Sci-Fi. Blade Runner would be my second choice, and Alien would be third. Talen "The Buddy System is essential to your survival. It gives the enemy someone else to shoot at." |
 March 26, 2008 - 7:20am | Hard SciFi: some oldies come to mind, although I do not remember the names... Saturn something with Farrah Fosset Sean Connery as a Investigative 'cop' on some sort of mining facility a weird one where a house computer held a woman hostage and ultimately impregnated her. and then some that are not quite so obscure... Blade Runner Alien series Predator 12 Monkeys Body Snatchers (i like the newer re-dos better) then the semi hard science ones... Johnny Mnemonic Matrix Running Man and others in this kind of genre <insert witty comment here> |
March 26, 2008 - 9:50am | Sean Connery's is Outland. Absolutely top 5 in any category. Can't believe I didn't think of it. |
 March 26, 2008 - 2:43pm | A couple of films which i like, and suprisingly not been mentioned so far, are Dune (1984 version), Darkstar ( for just being out there), and Saturn 3 - Kirk Douglas fights a robot with a criminal brain - still really good, I watched it recently. |
March 26, 2008 - 2:59pm | Do you mean Darkstar from 2006 or Dark Star from 1974? I guess I should check out Saturn 3? |
March 26, 2008 - 3:02pm | Blackhole and Tron. Two of Disney's best.  |
March 26, 2008 - 3:46pm | Darkstar from 1974, that plastic ball "alien" - wow, the special effects! |
March 26, 2008 - 4:11pm | Just thought of «Capricorn One» (1978) Quote wiki : "Although thematically Capricorn One is a typical 1970s government-conspiracy thriller with similarities to Hyams's subsequent film Outland, the story was inspired by allegations that the Apollo Moon landings were a hoax.[1]" «Language is a virus from outer space» William S. Burroughs |
 March 26, 2008 - 6:01pm | I don't know if anyone would call them "hard" but my favorite sci fi movies are:
I also like the TV Shows Firefly and Battlestar Galactica (the new one), though I've only seen the first season of BSG. In general I can't stand television and haven't had more than a few channels in years. |
March 26, 2008 - 6:20pm | Welcome Thoth. Yes, The Last Starfighter is another good one. Flash Gordon, I wouldn't say it's among the best, but it is a classic. |
 March 26, 2008 - 10:38pm | For me, the classics are the original Battlestar Galactica series, Alien Nation (movie and series), The Last Starfighter, Alien and Aliens. Star Trek II, III, and IV, but not V+... And of course, 2001 and 2010. Babylon 5, Firefly and Serenty are among the New Classics. As for new BSG: I'm a firm believer it suffers for the Battlestar Name. Had it not claimed to be BSG, I might have watched it... but to me, it can not and never will come close to the original in both inspiration potential nor family friendliness; It looks and feels wrong. It's decent drama, and good sci-fi... Tron's fantasy. Good techno-fantasy, but fantasy none the less. Definitely a must see, if only to demonstrate the height of the era's tech. |
March 27, 2008 - 6:17am | I don't think Tron is actually fantasy. I think we will one day have that kind of immersion into virtual reality. However, I don't think we'll ever be transporting our whole bodies into the program. On that matter, while the tech that digitized him won't likely ever exist, it was faux science, not an attempt at magic. Tron was conceptualized by a man that had access to the greatest thinkers of our time, and he was very informed on what those people believed about what they would be seeing, and tron is an expression of their concepts. Not to mention he was an avid reader of Popular Science and Omni (a magazine that accurately predicted today's technological climate). Nothing like the lightcycles and the tanks vs. security drones games had ever been produced, but they created the games with special effects, and within a few years they produced games just like that based on the vision, not on reality. Tron forced game makers to step it up. Maybe even someday soon with the effects they have produced on X-box and Playstation 3 we will be able to produce full immersion programs even for operation on the internet. They have the tools, all they have to do is make them affordable and decked out with all the bells and whistles. Human thinking just needs to catch up with the technology. (There's also the problem with proprietary technologies, but that's another discussion.) |
March 27, 2008 - 6:47pm | Tron has many disconnects from reality. 1) that the digitized tansmission would run as a program inside the VR 2) That programs essentially have souls 3) that the same technique as disassembled would reassemble the individual 4) that the criminal Dillinger would keep the original records in the machine (if he was smart enough to pull that stunt off, he's smart enough to know better than to keep the unedited source. 5) that programs can act outside their parameters. Don't get me wrong; I love the film. But it is well into the fantasy realm. |
March 27, 2008 - 8:20pm | Tron has many disconnects from reality. "Program" in the future could easily attain to a broader sense of the word as happens with many words in the English language.1) that the digitized tansmission would run as a program inside the VR 2) That programs essentially have souls It was Asimov that first referred to "the ghost in the machine", and he was referring to artificial intelligence gaining self-awareness. Besides, nowhere in the movie do they refer to "scripts" or "programs" as "souls".3) that the same technique as disassembled would reassemble the individual That's referring to the same faux science that I already addressed. It couldn't happen to begin with, so picking at one aspect of it is moot.4) that the criminal Dillinger would keep the original records in the machine (if he was smart enough to pull that stunt off, he's smart enough to know better than to keep the unedited source. That's a problem with the plot, not the premise of the movie.5) that programs can act outside their parameters. The field of artificial intelligence is seeking constantly to develop programs that can act outside their parameters. It's the very nature of sentience and the golden grail of programming. Who is to say that once true AI is acheived that there won't be actuarial programs that can interact like you and me? That's not fantasy. That's theory.
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March 27, 2008 - 10:00pm | Tron is one of my faves of all time. I had an opportunity to introduce it to my nephew this year who, at 11, is the same age I was when I first saw it. The movie still holds up. There are a lot of plot holes in it though, the script just isn't that tight, nor was it made to stand up to critical scruitiny. The fact that is was produced by Disney should give that away. ;) "The Black Hole" is in the same boat. Great movie if you don't start deconstructing it. I will say this about BSG... the new BSG is what mature, modern Sci-Fi TV should be. I personally think it offers far more meaningful messages than the original series ever did... but that's probably because, in comparison, the original series was essentialy a live-action cartoon (both in the depth of its messages and the campiness of it all.) I didn't even watch the new BSG until after Season 3 because I thought it would be too heavily inspired by the campiness of the first series. I have been pleasantly surprised that it actually takes itself seriously and can compete against mainstream dramatic TV. And I must admit that I couldn't be more thrilled by the fact that it's a far more adult series than the first. |
March 27, 2008 - 11:42pm | BSG is, by my own humble opinion, one of the best television shows on the air. It is fiction that has a lot more depth and substance than any of the prime time 'drama' shows --- look to Gray's Anatomy, House, etc. It at least is targeted towards more intellectual folks that care about more than how somebody's hair looks. <insert witty comment here> |
 March 30, 2008 - 6:37pm | Star Frontiers is regarded as Hard Science Fiction by many, and it has FTL. If you go by Alpha Dawn explanations, it goes the Aliens route by not addressing it specifically... it's just travel time. So by that standard, I'd call Pitch Black (but not Chronicles of Riddick) and Aliens hard sci-fi, and certainly some of my favorites. Terminator deals with time travel and that sorta crosses the line for me, but still some of my favorite scifi movies. Johnny Mnemonic is another one I'd call "hard" - it even had a cool mono-filament whip/garrote that was nifty enough to consider adding it as equipment in Star Frontiersman :-P 3. We wear sungoggles during the day. Not because the sun affects our
vision, but when you're cool like us the sun shines all the time. |
