We took a trip through decades of the genre and came up with a list of the most important and best hard science fiction movies of all time. They are the essence and the foundations of the book of sci-fi rules that’s still being written as we, the audience, become much more self-aware of our relationship with technology, the future, and whatever those two will bring.
Their list:
15 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) 14 Interstellar (2014) 13 Gattaca (1997) 12 Solaris (1972) 11 Ex Machina (2015) 10 Coherence (2013) 9 Sunshine (2007) 8 Primer (2004) 7 Stalker (1979) 6 Gravity (2013) 5 THX 1138 (1971) 4 Ad Astra (2019) 3 Contact (1997) 2 The Martian (2015) 1 Blade Runner (1982)doesn’t contain Arrival (2016) wtf.
Doesn’t contain Moon, 12 Monkeys, The Arrival, Alien, District 9… there are quite a few movies I would out ahead of Ad Astra and Sunshine at the very least. And possibly Gravity and Solaris too. Also, listing 2001 in 15th place???
doesn’t contain Arrival (2016) wtf
I agree, that was one of the most thought provoking scifi films I’ve seen in a long time.
Or The Arrival (1996)
Lol I saw that movie this year and it was a valiant effort, but I thought it was ridiculous to see Charlie as a crazy astronomer.
I saw it as a kid and didn’t even realize it was Charlie Sheen until decades later. The glasses and facial hair really disguised him from me.
Saw it a few years ago and it gave me strong Hitchcock vibes. Agree that watching Sheen in a serious movie was a little weird, but the movie was decent
Doesn’t contain The Arrival either. Or Moon, or Alien or Twelve Monkeys… Basically there are a lot of more deserving candidates then Gravity, Ad Astra and Sunshine.
Great movie, but I’m not sure it’s considered “hard SF.” There’s no real basis to anchor much of the science in it.
I’d say the same thing about “Sunshine” and “Interstellar”.
Some movies I might consider including, in no particular order:
- Moon (2009)
- 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984)
- Silent Running (1972)
Agreed, and those are all good adds, especially Moon.
Silent Running… what a great, prophetic movie.
Both the book and the screenwriting required the invention of a form of alien linguistics which recurs in the plot. The film uses a script designed by the artist Martine Bertrand (wife of the production designer Patrice Vermette), based on scriptwriter Heisserer’s original concept. Computer scientists Stephen and Christopher Wolfram analyzed it to provide the basis for Banks’s work in the film.[32][33] Their works are summarized in a GitHub repository.[34] Three linguists from McGill University were consulted. The sound files for the alien language were created with consultation from Morgan Sonderegger, a phonetics expert. Lisa Travis was consulted for set design during the construction of the scientist’s workplaces. Jessica Coon, a Canada Research Chair in Syntax and Indigenous Languages, was consulted for her linguistics expertise during the review of the script.[35]
If you’re trying to say that the fact that they invented a realistic language for the film makes it hard SF, I think that’s quite a stretch. What’s the basis for
spoiler
a language changing a human’s concept of time and allowing them to remember the future
?
Sure, good point, I think of the movie Arrival as two parts:
For most of the movie, a scientist is struggling with a novel interesting scientific problem with guidance from subject matter experts who have established environmental knowledge but not theoretical insight, with a great deal of interference from funders, with inter-team rivalries and a collaborator / competitor tension with similar teams around the world. The problem in question is based on linguistics with the type of thoroughness that is never shown on screen and rarely in print SF. (Compare it to the “Shaka when the walls fell” episode of TNG. I like that episode! But it’s cartoony by comparison.) So both the practice and the principle of the research shown has a scientific basis, and if the movie had ended with the lead scientist solving the problem then I think we’d all agree it’s Hard SF. However, we also have the last part of the film.
You question the scientific plausibility of the last part of the film. Regarding the story the film is based on, apparently:
In the “Story Notes” section of Stories of Your Life and Others, Chiang writes that inspiration for “Story of Your Life” came from his fascination in the variational principle in physics. -source
but I don’t know enough to judge that and though it was kind of uplifting, the last part of the film was qualitatively different from the first, and I agree seems a lot less “Hard SF”.
To recap, I argue that at least the first part (a majority?) of the movie is Hard SF. Now the question is: does the last part disqualify it from a) being on this list and b) being Hard SF? Regarding a), the authors of the list say “Contact is hard sci-fi by association because it’s not a very realistic film” so they are taking a very forgiving definition of Hard SF. Therefore I stand by my assertion that Arrival is qualified to be on that list. By virtue of the quality with which the first part of the movie proceeds, I argue that it also deserves to be on that list. Regarding b) whether Arrival is Hard SF beyond the definition used by that list I am less certain.
I’m with you on the first part, but the fact that the whole conclusion to the story - the solution to the mystery - ends up being as close to fantasy as to SF to me makes it not a hard SF film. But we’re talking about terms for things that exist on a spectrum, not crisply defined black and white. I don’t begrudge your take on it, I just feel differently.
I think there is a large gap between Contact and Arrival. Contact involves creating a giant machine that allows ftl communication. Arrival involves the idea that we are born with our neurons already physically imprinted with every memory we will ever save. This is already known to be wrong because we have observed change in neurons.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, though decades old & sounding like it’s from Star Trek, is the basis, from actual linguists. Highly implausible for humans & long outdated, but as the film’s linguist consultant quips, “for aliens, all bets are off.”
what’s the basis for
fiction
I don’t think we’re connecting here. Hard science fiction is science fiction with an emphasis on scientific accuracy or plausibility. It’s sort of a subgenre, and this list is about movies in that subgenre. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t great SF movies outside of that subgenre, but this isn’t about those.
Although now I have to question the inclusion of Interstellar on this list, because it gets pretty far out there as well, especially at the end.
Yeah, valid point
Ah, gotcha, obviously I didn’t understand the proper connotations of “hard” here.
IRC when I watched it, it seemed to make references to the work of Niklas Luhmann, systems theory and of course Sapir–Whorf.
Sure, those aren’t hard sciences, but then again Asimov’s the Foundation is also about sociology.
Certainl y as deserving to be on the list as Solaris or Stalker. I absolutely love those movies, but they’re very religiously inspired rather than science based.
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Conspicuous in its absence: anything animated, like Ghost in the Shell (1995), which I’d argue is harder than quite a few things on this list.
Haven’t heard of half of them. And no Alien? What silliness.
Strongly agree! A sci fi movie list with no “Arrival” is … DOA.
I thought it was time 6 on the list.
Bah…. Never mind. That was another list loaded below that one.
thank you
I’ve seen… Primer and Gattaca.
I’m guessing you don’t know what hard sci-fi is.
Gravity is on this list? That movie had the most ridiculous physics.
And a ghost
That was the fictional part of the science fiction.
Allow me to introduce you to the term “hard science fiction”
There’s no science at all in Gravity, it’s just straight fiction.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it. I don’t remember loving the movie, but I thought it got kudos for getting the physics right. No?
They flew from the Hubble Space Telescope to the ISS using a Manned Maneuvering Unit, nothing about that is “getting the physics right”.
The part that had me screaming at the TV was where George clooney’s character and Sandra Bullock’s character were tethered together. There are attached to the space station via straps. George Clooney releases the clip and immediately goes flying off into space. There’s no spinning, nothing at all pulling him away. If he unclipped, he would just hang there.
I’m not trying to be a stickler here, but if you’re making a movie about space following the basic details of how things move around in space is kind of important.
The media got paid for writing positive stuff about it. It was a really shitty movie and I will never understand it’s high rating in my life…
George Clooney was actually super annoying in it too. It was like putting the Oceans 11 character in a space suit with no changes in personality.
Both of them had no real personality in the whole movie, it was carried by CGI all in all.
Maybe you’re thinking of interstellar. They got a lot of kudos for the work they did imagining what a black hole would actually look like.
I might be conflating them? I saw both for sure. The more I’m thinking about Gravity, the more I’m remembering stuff that pissed me off. I’m also remembering a book where a woman astronaut gets stuck out in space and has to throw something to move the other way - maybe it was in Sevenes? I don’t know, I read a lot of SF and sometimes it runs together.
Could the book have been Gravity? There was an unrelated book with that title about a woman in space
Hmmm, no, I don’t think so, but good guess
For me it was just the sheer improbability of getting out alive. Missions to space are about precision and there’s no room for error. I figure that anyone on the ISS will be on the escape module before such relatively large detectable debris even hits. The film was a bit of a dramatisation to say the least.
If your complaint is they didn’t realistically portray angular momentum and also she went crazy and imagined someone who wasn’t there, then the only hard scifi movie in the list is The Martian.
Not just angular momentum. She flew hundreds of miles and drastically changed orbit in an MMU. And when George Clooney died there was nothing pulling him away from the space station. The movie is called gravity, but they weren’t following the basic rules of how things work when there’s no gravity.
It would be like someone hopping on a child’s scooter and chasing down a bullet train three states away, or having a character randomly able to fly. If you’re going to break the basic rules of how the universe works, you have to provide an explanation. If the explanation is magic, you have to have things that are magic and non-magic, and a system of how magic works. This is as much hard science fiction as the Fast and Furious movies.
I don’t even care about the ghost, people hallucinate.
My only nit pick about the Martian is that there isn’t enough atmosphere on Mars to cause the kinds of winds they show. Still a solid movie though.
She flew hundreds of miles and drastically changed orbit in an MMU.
All of that including Clooney’s motion ( which I was specifically thinking of) falls under angular momentum. It was a subtle joke.
Is there any movie that would be hard scifi?
Moon maybe?
Silent Running shows Saturns Rings as dense micro asteroids when it’s sparse enough to fly though like Cassini did.
How does Clooney’s motion fall under angular momentum? The ISS wasn’t spinning. So everything is angular momentum if you include things that aren’t spinning relative to each other.
Orbital mechanics aside, following Newton’s laws of motion is kind of a basic requirement for any movie that’s not fantasy.
How does Clooney’s motion fall under angular momentum
He’s orbiting the earth
So everything is angular momentum
That’s the joke about anything in orbit.
following Newton’s laws of motion is kind of a basic requirement for any movie that’s not fantasy.
So what movie is hard scifi?
Primer, Robocop, Children of Men, Moon, District 9
Watching someone time travel by climbing inside a superconductor ring is hard scifi (Cern is giant superconductor rings and no time travel) but watching an object in space move in a way that it shouldn’t isn’t hard scifi?
Magical anti gravity in District 9 is hard scifi? But an alternative earth future (There is/was no Space Shuttle Endeavor. The Shuttle and ISS never coexisted. The MMU was retired in the 1980’s.) with a long range MMU and Hubble in a different orbit isn’t?
Edit:
Just looked at Robocop. It is filled with Hollywood physics. Man gets shot and gets thrown backwards 5 feet.
Oh and everything inside the base in Moon is Earth gravity.
Gravity and Ad Astra don’t belong on this list. Also they suck.
I hate Ad Astra so much. I was so hyped for it and then almost left the theater when we were watching it.
Gravity is not too terrible. Rewatched it recently. It’s a fun watch the first time but it’s too shallow for subsequent views.
Gravity is not bad IMHO, but it lost its hard sci fi cred
::: spoiler with the Sixth Sense shenanigans::: .That’s very subjective. I hate Interstellar because I think it’s laughably dumb but many other people have a raging hard-on for that shitty movie. Ad Astra was very weird and very boring, but I liked the interesting visuals.
That site is awful. Has a nice little “Accept all” button for its popup, but you gotta go through thousand partners it sells your data to in order to even try to reject.
This is some serious malicious intent shit.1506 partners. Insane.
Hmmm, strange, I just got the pop-up saying I was running an ad blocker, but there was an option to continue without disabling and nothing further came up.
Ublock origin
Hard to define ‘hard’, a few more I liked: (no ranking)
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The Time Machine (both the Pal and the Wells films; quite different)
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Dark City (1998, Pryas)
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Forbidden Planet (1956, Wilcox)
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The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951, Wise)
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Fifth Element (hilarious, Besson, 1997)
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Alien (Scott, 1979)
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13th Floor (Rusnak, 1999)
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Stargate (1994, Emerich)
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Steamboy (2004, Otomo)
Movies made from famed series I’d REALLY LIKE to see:
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Ringworld (Niven, a crime noone’s DARED to try).
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Some setting of Riverworld. (Farmer)
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ANY of Neal Stephenson’s SF books, esp. Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, Diamond Age, Anathem.
(Not even the BBC? I mean, who expected Doctor Who to get THIS far?!)
Dark City is an amazing movie!
One of the rare examples of sci-fi mixed with a skillfully unfolded mystery. Even when you know ‘the answer’, there are plenty of ‘how did they do that’ film-making mysteries.
I forgot to mention his entirely ‘I, Robot’, VG 2004 film … maybe because robots don’t don’t seem so science-fictionish these days…
They sold parts of the filming set to the first matrix movie by the way!
Ringworld has an adaptation! It’s one of the most popular video games.
What? Where? What’s it called?
I have no idea what they’re talking about. The only Niven “Known Space” Ringworld games are all DOS based from decades ago.
However, Halo and Outer Wilds have both taken shots at ringworlds, but they are not Known Space universe.
Yeah I was talking about Halo.
I read Ringworld after playing Halo, thinking “haha I’ll check out this thing that looks like it influenced this game that I enjoyed” but then it turns out Bungie just lifted a bunch of stuff wholesale.
There’s too much kinky sex in Ringworld to be accepted by puritanical audiences.
They did Johnny Mnemonic from Stephenson, low budget I guess. Imagine Cryptonomicon 💖.
Jonathan Stross Laundry files could be so good too (and so botched I guess).
I would love a lush tv series version of diamond age that really lingers on the setting.
Your list is far better.
I loved Niven’s books, one of my favorite sci-fi authors. However, he might be a hot potato for studios, he is an outspoken libertarian and may not be the best to put in front of a camera with many studios keeping a close eye on stars’ public persona and statements.
Plus, I don’t know how you’re gonna make films about Luis Wu fucking his way around the Ringworld with various aliens. Really gonna have to sanitize the story a bit, or all of Niven’s aliens are going to have to be transformed to Star Trek aliens, basically humans with some weird shit on their nose and forehead.
All of the aliens that Wu is fucking on the Ringworld essentially are Star Trek style aliens.
Spoilers for decades old scifi: >!Star Trek aliens are almost all humanoid because a humanoid progenitor species seeded the galaxy with DNA that would eventually give rise to humanoid life. Ringworld is even more direct than that: it was originally peopled by the humanoid Pak, but they left a bunch of gaps in the ecology and stopped maintaining the ecosystem, so humanoids evolved to fill the empty ecological niches. Hence, humanoid otter-people, bison-people, and jackal-people, all of whom can fuck each other.!<
So…a film furries might like.
Don’t forget all the aliens in Ringworld, besides Nessus and Chmee, are basically humans with weird changes.
he had some proclivities that are indefensible.
Could you elaborate?
I got him mixed up with a different pedo sci-fi author. Disregard.
Who? William Barr’s dad?
Allegedly Arthur C. Clarke.
Dude, no, don’t spread rumors like that.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-03-24/arthur-c-clarke-not-a-paedophile-sri-lanka/1081914
Which is why I said allegedly.
However, this is also allegedly a quote from Clarke:
There are at least a couple of Riverworld attempts. Haven’t seen either
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverworld_(2003_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverworld_(2010_miniseries)
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I enjoyed Big Hero 6 but one of the top defining “hard” sci fi movies of all time, in the same list as Metropolis?? All because of its supposed sophistication in portraying AI? “AI is good for once!” Uhhh it’s totally a case of green light means good robot and red light means evil robot. Cute movie but this list is hot garbage.
I know Internet lists and opinions and all that, but I’m sorry but any list that puts 2001 behind Interstellar is one to ignore, at least the rankings.
All good movies on the list, though.
2001 is so hard to watch. I’ve started so many times but keep getting distracted. Interstellar, while not perfect, kept my interest better.
The long, slow scenes in 2001 are fairly unique. Unlike long scenes filled with action like you get in, say, Children of Men, the long slow scenes in 2001 - the space shuttle dockong, the moon landing, the scene at TMA-1 excavation sites, not much is happening, or if it is, you understand whats happening fairly quickly. I like them personally, and I compare them to being on an airplane waiting to taxi - inherently boring with nothing to do, but unique and exciting for some and being exposed to all sorts of interesting things out the window like luggage carts, pushback tractors, other jets milling around. Boring, but fascinating. Its a very different style from modern fast-paced films though.
I agree. At this point I get excited when I think a list has mostly the right things on it (this one is hot and cold there) - getting the order right, or even close, seems like too much to ask.
This is just a SciFi Movie list rather than a hard SciFi one.
I agree that The Martian is hard SciFi tho.
Solid first few, then it went to kid’s films? Really not impressed by the list at all, like the furthest they reached back was Blade Runner and only mentioned it because it’s popular, not because it was a genre defining film.
Blade Runner absolutely brought cyberpunk to the big screen, it was absolutely genre defining for a lot of people. Prior it was just Neuromancer that imagined it.
Plus they had “Metropolis” from 1927, did you read the whole list? Lol
To clarify: Yes, you’re absolutely correct that Blade Runner was genre defining. However, my reference was regarding the list itself…referencing the other films it’s like it was chosen because “of course” it has to be chosen, not because the list creator actually tried to define the quality of the rest of the list to match the impact had on filmmaking or the genre like Blade Runner did.
You’re not wrong there, plenty of the choices seem like what a casual person who doesn’t even really seek out Sci Fi would think of as “genre defining.”
I mean really, arrival? It’s basically just Slaughterhouse 5’s Tralfamadorians but without the existential non-meaning attached. It wasn’t a bad movie, but it’s just another good enough film from the last decade.
Yeah, very disappointing, was looking for more hard sci-fi stuff.
Edit: Because nobody listed it, Stowaway was good and reasonably hard sci-fi.
Hard to find a general public that’ll justify the expenditure. Books on the other hand…
I don’t think the author of this article or 99% of the people in this thread understand what hard sci Fi is.
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Okay, your comment is at the top, so here is my take on the list:
There is a lot of overlap on this list and other “best (whatever) scifi” that pop up every so often. Yes Blade Runner was iconic and influential, but I already knew that.
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) | Good start. great visuals. lacks some context in the ending that are half explained in interviews and such. Personally, I like the book’s take on it more.
- Interstellar (2014) | A Nolan film. Also great visuals. This is one of the first movies I saw that somewhat accurately portrays what black holes are supposed to look like. It has a bunch of scenes where space or relativity or physics, etc, things are explained to experts that should already know what is being said. It works to get that info the viewer, but I found it a bit jarring
- Gattaca (1997) | Anything produced by Danny DeVito (yes that one) gets my money. This is a big “What If” movie where the question is “In a world where most everyone can select the genetic makeup for their children, how does someone born naturally fit in and live?”.
- Solaris (1972) | Never seen it, but I’ve heard good things. I tried to watch the remake with George Clooney, but I couldnt get in to it.
- Ex Machina (2015) | Great movie on the idea of an actual concept call the “Turing test”. I will point out there are some trigger warnings
- Coherence (2013) | never seen it. I added it to my list
- Sunshine (2007) | I couldnt get in to this one. It may be because I just wasnt in the mood for some hard space scifi (They are trying to re-start the sun, how cool does that sounds?), or it could be because of the content. I’ve heard of a lot of people liking it, so check it out if it sounds interesting to you.
- Primer (2004) | This is a great take on how suddenly having the ability to time travel might affect someone. There are some nested time line stuff that could be hard to follow, but overall great
- Stalker (1979) | Haven’t seen. it sounds intriguing though
- Gravity (2013) | This is science fiction in the sense that this story is fictional and takes place in space. Without being a nasa expert, everything seems to be within today’s level of technology. You could think of it as a disaster movie, but set in space. Overall fun, but in a different way than some of the other movies on this list
- THX 1138 (1971) | I hated this movie. I find it derivative of Ayn Rand’s Anthem, or Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451. Those books, plus THX 1138 feature a protagonist who is a cog in their own dystopia who breaks free and goes on a massive escape, eventually finding that the world is not as destroyed as they were told to believe. I felt like it suffered from all the same criticisms that George Lucas was given during the original star wars trilogy, but without anyone to refine his idea into something more unique or appealing.
- Ad Astra (2019) | Great visuals, boring story about a man who cant move on from his deadbeat dad
- Contact (1997) | Carl Sagan’s story about humanity being contacted by an alien race and given further instructions. It does an interesting exploration of science vs faith when confronted by aliens
- The Martian (2015) | Silly space action where a botanist figures out how survive on Mars and contact Nasa who have no idea that he is alive
- Blade Runner (1982) | Humans have created manufactured clone robot people. they dont like being slaves by default and revolt. Now they are hunted to extinction. Harrison Ford is the type of officer assigned with tracking down some on Earth. Amazing visuals, weird narrative. There are like, 5 different cuts of this movie and I dont find any of them particularly good. I like the sequel more.
Sounds like you’re interested in sci-fi movies with a deeper philosophical story to tell. For that reason, definitely watch Tarkovsky’s Solaris. From what I understand, it bears literally no resemblance to the ‘remake’.
I know Stalker often gets put in the sci-fi category, but I’m not sure it will satisfy someone setting out with typical expectations of the genre. It’s a great film though, and the dream sequences are peerless in film history.
Tarkovsky’s films very much run against the grain of Western cinema - they are often experimentally slow, to offer an extended exploration of a philosophical or aesthetic idea. They’re extremely strange and unique movies. I would say, essential viewing, when you have the time and mindset to be taken on a journey that at times will feel painful. Though, I think that’s Tarkovsky’s intent to some degree.
I do! In fact, I personally try to watch as many sci-fi movies in January as I can. I try not to discriminate, and give everything a chance that’s vaguely sci-fi. I’ll add Solaris to my list for sure
Rock on. Would be curious to know your thoughts!
You are the hero we deserve. Take my upvote! Gattaca was pretty cool, and Solaris is now indeed on my list.
District 9? Thoughts welcome
Yeah that’s a good add
Really excited to see Coherence on a list with so many other greats. It’s a great thriller movie and one of my favorites to watch with others. Provokes fun conversation about “what would you do in that situation?”
I liked its portrayal of “how would I outsmart myself, an identical me that’s also trying to outsmart me back?”
Watching 7 people all try to do that together makes for a lot of interesting drama, and shakes out much that they’d hoped to hide about themselves. In fact that’s exactly how some of the characters try to outsmart themselves: by going for that jugular vein of deep dark secrets no one knows. Fucking brutal.
And all that would be impossible to portray without sci-fi. This movie’s vehicle for the sci-fi elements is dumb as rocks: a comet passes overhead and fractures quantum spacetime. Wut? It’s not an important point but damn, at least make it sound like you tried.
Finding this on the list was nice because I’d watched Coherence on some pirate streaming site and then forgot the name of the movie. Such a great movie.
Great movie but REALLY not hard scifi.
No Europa Report, probably the hardest of sci-fi movies ever (~9.5 on Mohs scale)? Most movies on that list are somewhere around 5…6 on the Mohs scale, with some (GATTACA, 2001, Ex Machina) around 7…8 and only Martian at 9. Sunshine, Stalker and Coherence are not hard scifi at all, ~2…3.
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Lol the Mohs scale is a hardness scale for gemstones/minerals sorry to disappoint. Goes from 1 to 10, 10 being diamond 1 being talc.
I honestly feel bad taking it away, I want an awesome scientific scale rating how hard scifi is.
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Sweet, I added Solaris and Stalker to my list of movies to watch. Still need to see Primer at some point too.
Thanks for sharing this.
What an interesting list. I am very surprised at how many of these I’ve never heard of and how good those look.
I own some of these but I think I’ll try to buy the rest.
I had the same reaction: the ones I’ve seen are excellent, but some I’ve never heard of, so I’ve got some things to watch!
Website: asks me to disable adblocker.
Me: guess I won’t be seeing that list then.
There’s a “continue without disabling” link.
