74 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
Arthur C. Clarke's 1968 science fiction novel — written simultaneously with Stanley Kubrick's film — about humanity's evolutionary encounter with alien intelligence through the monolith — the most philosophically ambitious science fiction novel.
Vernor Vinge's 1992 space opera — set in a universe where intelligence capability varies by galactic zone (the Zones of Thought) — one of the most imaginative world-building achievements in science fiction.
Charles Stross's 2005 singularity novel following three generations of the Macx family through exponential technological acceleration — from near-future internet startup culture through post-singularity posthumanism — considered the most serious fictional treatment of the technological singularity.
American historian and science fiction author — University of Chicago professor of Renaissance history — author of the Terra Ignota series (SF starting with Too Like the Lightning) — expert on the history of censorship, heresy, and early modern thought.
Katsuhiro Otomo's 1988 animated film — set in a cyberpunk Tokyo after a nuclear explosion — about motorcycle gangs, psychic powers, and government conspiracy — the film that introduced anime to Western audiences and defined the cyberpunk aesthetic.
Hulu's 2025 Alien franchise TV series set on Earth — the first Alien entry set on the home planet — expanding the franchise beyond confined spacecraft settings.
Disney+ Star Wars prequel series created by Tony Gilroy, following Cassian Andor's radicalization into the Rebel Alliance against an oppressive empire, distinguished by its political realism and adult tone.
Denis Villeneuve's 2016 film adaptation of Ted Chiang's Story of Your Life — about a linguist who learns an alien language that gives her non-linear time perception — widely praised as the most intellectually serious mainstream science fiction film of the decade.
British science fiction author — author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Childhood's End, and Rendezvous with Rama — who proposed the geostationary satellite concept — one of the Big Three of science fiction (with Asimov and Heinlein).
Kim Stanley Robinson's 2015 generation ship novel — following a multigenerational voyage to Tau Ceti, ultimately arguing that Earth is the only planet humans can truly inhabit — a critique of the colonization-of-space narrative.
Robert Zemeckis's 1985 comedy science fiction film about a teenager accidentally sent back to 1955 — one of the highest-grossing films of its decade, notable for its tight screenplay, perfect casting, and inventive time travel logic.
Charlie Brooker's British (later Netflix) anthology series — each episode an independent near-future technology satire — exploring how technology amplifies human weakness, cruelty, and self-deception.
A 1982 science fiction film by Ridley Scott set in a retrofitted 2019 Los Angeles where a detective hunts rogue synthetic humans, based on Philip K. Dick's novel.
British-American film director — Memento (2000), The Dark Knight (2008), Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014), Dunkirk (2017), Oppenheimer (2023) — one of the few directors who simultaneously achieves artistic ambition and consistent commercial dominance.
Steven Spielberg's 1977 science fiction film about a man drawn by mysterious visions toward a first contact event.
Fictional character from George Lucas's Star Wars — the former Jedi hero Anakin Skywalker who was seduced to the dark side and became the Galactic Empire's enforcer — functioning in MW discourse as the archetypal fallen hero whose redemption through love is the mythological core of the saga.
French-Canadian film director — Arrival (2016), Blade Runner 2049 (2017), Dune Part One (2021), Dune Part Two (2024) — widely considered the greatest living science fiction filmmaker.
British author — creator of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy — who died at 49 of a heart attack — whose combination of philosophical wit, genuine scientific curiosity, and comic timing made him the most beloved British comic writer of his generation.
Frank Herbert's 1965 science fiction epic — set on the desert planet Arrakis — following Paul Atreides through a story of ecology, religion, politics, and the dangers of the messiah — the best-selling science fiction novel and the foundational ecological SF text.
Denis Villeneuve's 2024 second installment of his Dune adaptation — covering Paul Atreides's rise among the Fremen and assumption of the messianic role — widely praised as one of the best science fiction films in recent decades. (See also Lenny: Dune Part Two, ID 322.)
Denis Villeneuve's 2024 second installment of his Dune adaptation — covering Paul Atreides's rise among the Fremen and his assumption of the messianic role — widely praised as one of the best science fiction films in decades.
A 1982 film by Steven Spielberg about a lonely suburban boy who befriends a stranded alien and must help him return home.
Orson Scott Card's 1985 novel about a child military genius trained to defeat an alien invasion — notable for exploring strategy, manipulation, empathy, and the ethics of war through a child's perspective — one of the most widely read science fiction novels ever written.
Hideaki Anno's 1995–96 mecha anime series — superficially about teenagers piloting giant robots against alien enemies but actually a psychological deconstruction of the mecha genre and an exploration of depression, identity, and interpersonal fear.
Amazon Prime Video's 2024 TV adaptation of the Fallout video game franchise — set in a post-nuclear apocalypse America governed by vault-dwelling survivors and mutant-populated wastelands — praised for its dark comedy, world-building fidelity, and production design.
Theodore Judson's 2004 alternate history science fiction novel — a pseudo-historical account of a future world in which a civilization (the Fitzpatrick civilization) rises and falls, narrated from within as if by a court historian — exploring themes of empire, charisma, and the reliability of historical narrative.
American science fiction author — author of the Dune series — who created the most complex SF world and the most sophisticated SF treatment of ecology, religion, and messianic leadership.
Mary Shelley's 1818 novel — about scientist Victor Frankenstein who creates a creature from body parts and abandons him — the founding text of science fiction and the first novel to explore the ethics of scientific creation.
American novelist whose A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series (adapted as Game of Thrones) brought literary complexity, moral ambiguity, and genuine unpredictability to epic fantasy — and whose slow writing pace has become a cultural phenomenon.
H. G. Wells was an English writer who invented scientific romance — 'The Time Machine', 'The War of the Worlds', 'The Invisible Man' — and became the founding figure of modern science fiction.
British writer who invented modern science fiction — The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, The Island of Doctor Moreau — and wrote realistic social novels and political prophecy, making him the dominant English-language popular intellectual of the early 20th century.
American historian and prolific alternate history novelist who has a PhD in Byzantine history from UCLA — writing Guns of the South (what if the Confederacy received AK-47s), In the Balance (alien invasion during WWII), and Household Gods — the most prolific American alternate history author.
Spike Jonze's 2013 film about a lonely writer who falls in love with an AI operating system — the most prescient mainstream film about artificial general intelligence, human-AI relationships, and the nature of consciousness.
Scottish author — wrote literary fiction as Iain Banks and science fiction as Iain M. Banks — creator of the Culture series — who died of cancer at 59 — considered the most important British science fiction author of his generation.
A 2010 film by Christopher Nolan about a thief who enters people's dreams to steal or plant ideas, culminating in a four-level nested dream heist.
Christopher Nolan's 2014 science fiction epic about a team of astronauts traveling through a wormhole to find habitable planets for humanity — notable for its collaboration with physicist Kip Thane and its visually accurate depiction of black holes and time dilation.
American author and biochemistry professor who wrote more than 500 books — including the Foundation series, the Robot series, and the Three Laws of Robotics — and who is considered one of the Big Three of science fiction alongside Clarke and Heinlein.
Chinese-American science fiction writer who wrote The Grace of Kings and The Wall of Storms (Dandelion Dynasty), translated Liu Cixin's Three-Body Problem into English, and whose short fiction The Paper Menagerie won the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards.
American novelist and humanist whose Slaughterhouse-Five — based on his experience surviving the Dresden firebombing as a POW — combined science fiction with anti-war satire and an unflinching examination of time, free will, and mass death.
American author and founder of Scientology — who created Dianetics as a self-help system (1950), then transformed it into the Church of Scientology — one of the most controversial religious movements in American history.
Marshall Brain's 2003 science fiction novel presenting two possible AI automation futures: the first half shows a dystopia where a simple AI management system gradually takes all jobs, leaving most humans in managed poverty; the second half imagines an abundance utopia where AI creates enough for everyone through an 'Australia Project.'
British novelist — author of Frankenstein — daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft — wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley — who wrote the founding text of science fiction at age 18 during a ghost story contest.
Steven Spielberg's 2002 adaptation of Philip K. Dick's story — about a pre-crime police force that arrests people before they commit crimes — notable for its UX design (gesture interface) and its exploration of free will vs. determinism.
American science fiction author known for long, densely researched novels about technology, cryptography, and civilization — whose Snow Crash coined the term 'metaverse' and whose work influences Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.
American science fiction and fantasy novelist whose Red Rising series — set in a caste-divided solar system — became one of the most praised science fiction sagas of the 2010s, combining Roman mythology, political fiction, and epic adventure.
Iain M. Banks's 1988 Culture novel — about Jernau Gurgeh, the Culture's greatest game player, who is sent to play the Empire of Azad's defining game — considered the best entry point to the Culture series and the most intellectually satisfying Banks novel.
Andy Weir's 2021 science fiction novel about a lone astronaut who wakes up with amnesia on a solo mission to save Earth from an alien microorganism — notable for scientifically rigorous problem-solving and an alien first-contact subplot.
American author who wrote Fahrenheit 451 (the dystopia of book burning and television), The Martian Chronicles, and Something Wicked This Way Comes — known for poetic, lyrical science fiction that prioritized human emotion over technical detail.
Pierce Brown's 2014 science fiction novel set in a caste-divided society on colonized Mars — following Darrow, a lowborn Gold miner who infiltrates the ruling class to destroy the system from within.
British film director — Alien (1979), Blade Runner (1982), Thelma & Louise (1991), Gladiator (2000), Black Hawk Down (2001), The Martian (2015), Dune (abandoned), Napoleon (2023) — one of the most visually ambitious directors in Hollywood history.
American author who won six Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards — known for The Chronicles of Amber (a 10-volume epic fantasy), Lord of Light, and This Immortal — blending mythology, philosophy, and science fiction into a distinctive lyrical style.
Apple TV+ science fiction thriller created by Dan Erickson, in which employees of a biotech company have their work and personal memories surgically separated, exploring corporate control, identity, and consciousness.
Apple TV+ dystopian drama adapting Hugh Howey's Wool novel series, set inside an underground silo where the last remnants of humanity live under strict information control.
Ted Chiang's 1998 novella about a linguist who learns an alien language whose structure gives her the ability to perceive time non-linearly — the basis for the film Arrival — exploring how language shapes cognition and the nature of free will when the future is known.
American science fiction writer who has published only a handful of short stories and novellas — yet has won four Hugo Awards, four Nebula Awards, and four Locus Awards — known for philosophically rigorous explorations of language, consciousness, free will, and technology; his story Story of Your Life was adapted as Arrival (2016).
A 2020 film by Christopher Nolan in which a secret agent navigates a world of time-inverted objects and people to prevent a future war against the past.
Douglas Adams's 1979 comic science fiction novel — following Arthur Dent's adventures after Earth is demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass — the most beloved comic science fiction novel and the source of '42' as the answer to life.
A 1976 science fiction film directed by Nicolas Roeg and starring David Bowie as an alien who comes to Earth to save his dying planet and is destroyed by human corruption.
Disney+ Star Wars live-action series starring Pedro Pascal as a lone bounty hunter, produced using the revolutionary LED Volume virtual production system powered by Epic's Unreal Engine.
The Wachowski sisters' 1999 science fiction film — a hacker discovers reality is a computer simulation enslaving humanity — combining bullet-time action choreography with philosophy (Descartes, Baudrillard, Plato's cave) in a mainstream blockbuster.
A 2006 film by Christopher Nolan about two rival Victorian magicians whose obsessive competition leads to sacrifice, deception, and a Faustian technological bargain.
Liu Cixin's 2008 Chinese science fiction novel (2014 English translation by Ken Liu) — the first in the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy — beginning during the Cultural Revolution and expanding to first contact with an alien civilization on an unstable three-sun system.
H.G. Wells's 1895 novella in which a Victorian inventor travels to the year 802,701 to find humanity has diverged into two species — the effete surface-dwelling Eloi and the subterranean predatory Morlocks — as the consequence of 19th-century class stratification.
Rod Serling's 1959–64 American television anthology series presenting science fiction, fantasy, and supernatural stories with twist endings and moral commentary — one of the most influential American television series — addressing race, conformity, war, McCarthyism, and nuclear anxiety through allegory.
Liu Cixin's 2000 novella about humanity building engines to move Earth itself out of the solar system to escape an expanding sun — the basis for the hugely successful Chinese film — notable for its collectivist approach to human survival.
qntm's 2021 novel based on SCP Foundation fiction — about a secret organization that combats 'antimemes': ideas that actively resist being remembered or perceived, effectively becoming invisible threats.
American author who revolutionized science fiction and fantasy by centering anthropological imagination, gender theory, and anarchist political philosophy in genre fiction — producing works of lasting literary and cultural significance.
John Badham's 1983 film about a teenager who hacks into a government computer and nearly triggers nuclear war — notable for its early depiction of computer hacking and its famous AI conclusion ('The only winning move is not to play').
Damon Lindelof's 2019 HBO limited series expanding the Watchmen universe, set in an alternate present-day Tulsa and centering the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre as a foundational historical trauma.
A 1967 James Bond film starring Sean Connery, in which Bond infiltrates a hollowed-out volcano serving as a secret SPECTRE rocket base in Japan.
2009 science fiction film written and directed by James Cameron — set on the moon Pandora — depicting a conflict between an indigenous alien species (the Na'vi) and a human mining corporation — the highest-grossing film in history — a landmark in motion-capture and 3D filmmaking technology.
American mathematician and science fiction author who coined the term 'technological singularity' and wrote foundational hard SF novels — including A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky.
American science fiction author and futurist — co-founder of the cyberpunk movement, editor of the Mirrorshades anthology, and one of the most influential technology commentators of the last 40 years.
Vernor Vinge's Hugo Award-winning novel — depicting two human factions competing to exploit a pre-industrial alien civilization, with a clandestine slave system maintained by 'focus' (a neurotechnology that maximizes specialists' productivity at the cost of their humanity).