Most of my favourite books/movies/TV shows are Sci fi - I love Mary Shelley, slaughterhouse five, annihilation (both the book and the movie), The Thing, x files, the invasion, and the OA. This feels like a pretty wide variety of writing styles when I line them up but 90% of the sci fi I read/watch I just don’t enjoy at all. It’s a shame because when I love something sci fi I feel like it’s changed my whole life, but when it comes to finding new things I can just enjoy its easier to go through other genres. Is anyone else like this? Does anyone have reccomendations based on what I do like?
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The common factor seems to be more grounded Earth-based sci-fi with a smidge of horror and perhaps some mystery, rather than space battles.
In that case, films and TV:
- Early Cronenberg up to eXistenZ (perhaps Crimes of the Future, if you really like that)
- Society
- The Faculty
- Save the Green Planet
- Under the Skin
- They Live
- The Mist
- A Quiet Place
- Cube series
- Slither
- Splice
- Splinter
- The Reanimator series
- From Beyond
- Phantasm series
- Tetsuo
- Cloverfield (and 10 Cloverfield Lane)
- The Host
- Predator series
- The Void
- Fringe TV series, as you liked The X-Files. I presume you have watched Millennium?
- BrainDead (2016 TV series)
- The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker TV series
- Truthseekers (2020 TV series)
- Lovecraft Country - book and series
- Eerie Indiana
- Ultraviolet (1998 UK TV series)
- Tokyo Gore Police and others by the same team, like Meatball Machine and Machine Girl
- Gantz
- The Girl With All the Gifts - book and series
- Timecrimes
- Pi
- Bad Taste
- Grabbers
- Body Melt
- Wild Zero
- Pontypool
- The Objective
- District 9
- Firebase and have a look at the others they have done, especially Zygote
- Love, Death and Robots
- Matango
- Xtro
- John Dies at the End - read the books first
- Frankenstein’s Army
- Overlord
- Quatermass and the Pit, as well as other Quatermass films and series
- The Deadly Spawn
- The Man With X-ray Eyes
- Village of the Damned (1960)
- The Illustrated Man (1969)
- Take Shelter
And one with spaceships in it: Starship Troopers
That goes a little too hard into horror, so also try:
- The Truman Show
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
- Looper
- Source Code
- Minority Report
- 12 Monkeys
- Donnie Darko
- Vanilla Sky
- Dark City
- Being John Malkovich
Although they are all pretty obvious. Might have to ponder this more.
edit: also:
- The Arrival (1996) - instead of Arrival that I’ll assume you’ve seen
- Resident Alien - TV series and comics
- How to Talk to Girls at Parties
- Rupture (2016)
- The Watch (2012)
- Alien Raiders (2008)
- Threshold (2005 TV series)
- Invasion (2005 TV series)
- The Forgotten (2004)
This is a great list!
12 monkeys is also a series. It’s not as good as the movie, but still amazing.
Edit: more into the light scifi genre, Jennifer Government
Read the expanse series if you haven’t. It’s good. Bio of a space tyrant is pretty good too, but definitely less hard sci-fi.
If you want something very different, try Malazan Book of the Fallen. It’s fantasty, but the world building is outstanding.
Malazan Book of the Fallen is one of the best brick walls I’ve ever put my head through.
Lmao.
It’s a lot, that’s for sure. I’m on my first time through, and on book 5.
My friend got me hooked on them after my 3rd read of the Wheel of Time (speaking of brick walls)
Book 5 is my fave Malazan book! Once you have some time off after finishing the series, a re-read is so satisfying picking up all the clues you missed the first time around. Enjoy!
