Sci-fi
Netflix’s science fiction romance Our Times breaks the time travel movie rules
From The Flash to Avengers: Endgame to 2002’s The Time Machine, time travel movies often follow characters hoping to prevent a present personal tragedy or larger calamity by tweaking some event in the past. The sweetly funny Our Times, now streaming on Netflix, breaks that mold by sending its characters to the future and focusing…
This culty sci-fi book from 1992 actually got modern AI right
The current cultural fascination and frustration with artificial intelligence is nothing new. As far back as the 1921 Czech play R.U.R. — the workers-rights story that first coined the term “robot” — science fiction writers have channeled fears about artificial intelligence into stories where robots represent (or just bring out) the absolute best or worst…
The best Star Trek fan event of the year joyfully celebrates the franchise’s worst episode
Star Trek fans celebrate a lot of holidays. There’s Star Trek Day on Sept. 8, the anniversary of the premiere of Star Trek: The Original Series. There’s First Contact Day on April 5, the anniversary of the fictional date on which humanity made first contact with Vulcan visitors. One might even celebrate Captain Picard Day…
The wildly ambitious sci-fi romance Love Me lets WALL-E grow up — and obsess over influencers
A version of this Love Me review was initially posted after its premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. It has been updated for the movie’s theatrical release. Centuries after an extinction event wipes out humanity, two surviving AIs — an internet-enabled robotic buoy and an orbiting satellite (played by Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun,…
Citizen Sleeper 2 asks how we stay human in a hopeless future
Life for Sleepers is fraught. They gain consciousness in a state of indentured servitude, an emulated human mind inside an android body, forced to work until they’re discarded. Those who escape don’t last long due to trackers in their bodies, and their hardcoded dependence on a drug known as Stabilizer. Without it, a Sleeper’s body…
Star Trek as ‘going to a national park’: Lower Decks’ creator reflects on the end of the show
Years ago, comedy writer Mike McMahan got the opportunity of a lifetime — an interview to join the writing staff of a new Star Trek series, the first in over a decade. McMahan was a massive Trekkie and had recently made a splash with a parody Twitter account called “TNG Season 8,” in which he…