Awesome Science Fiction

A Thousand Suns is a series of science fiction short films created by BlackMilk Studio and Macgregor, sci-fi fanatics tired of the remake and sequel cycle in mainstream media. Each short is under 5 minutes long, but they all have that imaginative spark and are wonderfully shot. The first six episodes are available at the bottom of this post or on YouTube.

Joel Edgerton stars in this series about a physicist and professor who finds himself out of place in his own life. He soon discovers that he has been abducted by a variant of himself, living a different version of his life. And his quest to return to his real family won’t be easy. Based on the best-selling novel by Blake Crouch. Premieres 5.8.2024 on Apple TV+.

Movies and TV shows about space travel usually have a big budget for visual effects. Not so with this short film by Caroline Klidonas, who shot an entire short film about a doomed space mission without leaving her apartment. It’s the low-budget, low-gravity effects and Caroline’s commitment to the performance that really sell it. (Thanks, Rob!)

Honest Ads offers a darkly humorous take on what could happen if our worst fears about artificial intelligence come true. Along the way, fake CEO Roger Horton exposes the kind of machine-generated garbage that passes for “content” these days and how large language models are just really good at guessing what the next word might be in a sentence.

NECA’s 10″ tall version of OmniCorp’s ED-209 crimefighting robot perfectly matches the one on-screen. It’s fully poseable with a moving head, legs, arm wing panels, and cannon arms. It’s the perfect match for NECA’s 7″ RoboCop figures, and it makes mechanical sounds and speaks, “Warning: throw down your weapon. You have 15 seconds to comply.”

Celebrate your love for Star Trek with these official playing cards, artfully designed by Theory11. The cards come packed in a dark or light silver-foiled tuck box, with illustrations of Starfleet officers from The Original Series and the latest Trek movies on each face card. The backs have a symmetrical pattern inspired by the original Enterprise NCC-1701.

This prequel to John Krazinski’s outstanding horror flick A Quiet Place rewinds time about a year and a half before the original, giving us our first look at how things went down when the aliens invaded Earth and survivors discovered that silence was golden. It stars Lupita Nyong’o, Djimon Hounsou, and Joseph Quinn and arrives in theaters 6.28.2024.

With shows like For All Mankind and Silo, Apple TV+ has proven it can produce great science fiction. Their upcoming series Constellation stars Noomi Rapace as an astronaut who finds her life on Earth has changed in unexpected ways after returning from a disaster in space. Co-star Jonathan Banks helps to piece together the mystery. Premieres 2.21.24.

Science fiction has always promised us robots to do our bidding around the house. And we want more than just robot vacuum cleaners. In the 1980s, toymaker Tomy tried making a home robot with the Omnibot 2000. LGR looks at this retro automaton, which can speak, play music, and serve drinks.

Having proven his dramatic chops in Punch-Drunk Love and Uncut Gems, Adam Sandler flexes his acting muscles further with his first science fiction movie. In Spaceman, he plays a lone astronaut worried about his marriage when he encounters a strange creature (voiced by Paul Dano) who might just help him fix his life. Coming to Netflix 3.1.24.

Paul Chadeisson’s science fiction short film is set on a planet that’s been exploited for its natural resources by a fascist empire. As massive autonomous factories endlessly churn out war machines, the authoritarian leaders lose sight of their humanity. (Thanks, Rob!)

This science fiction short film tells an original story while demonstrating what’s possible with state-of-the-art computer graphics. Oscar-winning VFX artist Tim Webber of Framestore used Unreal Engine to create FLITE, which follows the story of a woman imprisoned in her hi-rise apartment building and the stranger who helps her make a daring escape from the tower.

This Amazon Prime series is based on the Fallout video games and promises action and drama on an epic scale. Set 200 years after a nuclear war, the wealthy inhabitants of fallout shelters are cast into the wasteland outside the safety of their vaults, where they encounter endless peril. From Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, creators of Westworld. Premieres 4.12.24.

This science fiction short film from Dan Ciraulo’s Dark Path VFX drops us into an encounter between a large spaceship and an unknown vessel. A group of fighter pilots is sent to confront the non-responsive craft and investigate its origin. But what they find when they get there is shocking. (Thanks, Rob!)

What happens when you ask an artificial intelligence to write a script for a short film about AI’s impact on society? You get this dystopian nightmare. Nobody & The Computer posted this AI-generated movie, which imagines what the future might look like once we all have AI-powered augmentations and robots have taken all of our jobs. (Thanks, Rob.)

Digital artist Erik Wernquist welcomes us to a planetary orbiter that rotates at 1 RPM to generate artificial gravity for its occupants. The luxurious environment inside looks like it could be a home away from home for über-rich visitors. However, devoid of people and bathed only in natural light, it takes on a haunting quality.

Not to be confused with the bonkers 1982 film of the same name, Zach Tolchinsky’s stop-motion animated short has a decidedly more coherent plot. It follows a man living in the ruins of civilization when a flash of light appears outside his bunker. He could stay safely inside, but instead, he risks everything and heads into the Forbidden Zone to investigate.

Based on their short film Scavengers, Joe Bennett and Charles Huettner’s animated science fiction series follows a spaceship’s crew who find themselves on a beautiful yet dangerous planet never visited by humans. After their ship is damaged and crashes on the surface, they must do what it takes to survive the hostile environment. Coming to MAX 10.19.2023.

Science fiction books, TV shows, and movies often set their stories in real locations in space. The Overview Effect put together a visualization that charts the relative locations of stories in fictional works like Star Trek and Alien, and Dune, using actual places in the universe to illustrate their distances and relationships.

(PG-13: Language) Adam Long and Adam Peterson’s warped short film drops us into a conversation between two buddies. But what starts out as an attempt to cheer up a depressed friend takes a wild turn that reveals a disturbing family secret and a critical mission to prevent the universe from ripping itself apart.

Zack Snyder pitched Lucasfilm on a Star Wars movie, but it never came to fruition. So, the filmmaker created a new science fiction universe on a similar scale. Rebel Moon kicks off with a two-part movie about a peaceful colony threatened by an oppressive empire and the young woman who could be the savior of the universe. Part one hits Netflix 12.22.23.

Illustrator Chet Phillips created this series of 11″x 14″ signed prints inspired by vintage Modern Mechanix magazine covers. Each of his imaginative Modern Machines and Inventions covers features a reimagined version of an iconic vehicle or spaceship from pop culture. We can’t decide if we like the Back to the Future or Firefly design the best.

Views of an AI imagines a film in the Blade Runner universe, but in the style of Fritz Lang, the man behind the 1927 cinematic masterpiece Metropolis. Like Ridley Scott’s original, it follows the story of a man who retires replicants and falls in love with one, then adds a new layer about a rebellion against the ruling class who created these androids.