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.
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:
Agreed, and those are all good adds, especially Moon.
Silent Running… what a great, prophetic movie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrival_(film)
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:
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.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
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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What basis do you anchor manufactured animals and people on? Blade Runner is number 1. Replicants aren’t clones, or robots. They’re something else entirely.
Really there are several movies on this list I wouldn’t call hard SciFi.