Ah, science fiction! Yay!
Well, as for writers, I'm surprised at the complete lack of mention of one of the most acclaimed SF author of the past 50 years or so, namely
JG Ballard! His oeuvrehas very different periods, and most would associate him with his sociological body horror phase of the mid 70ies, probably mostly because of the Cronenberg "Crash" adaptation of "The Atrocity Exhibition" and "Crash", but most of his 60ies and 70ies stuff is pure Sci-Fi. I 'd first recommend his short stories, filldes with very modern and clever ideas.
I wold highly recommend Concrete Island, Draught, High Rise, Vermillon Sands, and most than anything the Crystal World.
Check out his
life as well, he was an amazing character
As for movies, my two all time sci fi movies haven't been mentioned, even though both american :
Phase IV : the sole long feature film from one of the best directors ever is indeed a Sci-Fi film.
Saul Bass is mostly known as the director of most
Hitchcock,
Preminger and
Scorsese opening credits - he even is heavily rumored to have ben the actual director of the shower scene in Psycho! - hededicated his life to visual experimentations and design. Some of his pedagogical short movies such as "the Searching Eye" or "Why Man Creates" can only bring joy to the curious mind, but Phase IV is what
2001 A space Odissey could have looked like if on a 100 times smaller budget. Yet, because Saul bass is such a genius of image, this feels completely accomplished. It has a certain philosophical/political aspect not that far away from "Johnny's Got A Gun", the Trumbo cinematic pamphlet, but it is much more on the entertaining side.
The opening scene looks like an documentary on ants, when a text appears stating this : "while men were busy waging war at each others, the various ant species decided to unite". The movie then deals with a three scientists team sent to a desert science facility designed to study megaliths (like in 2001) built by ants. I'll leave you to discover the rest of the story.
The second movie I'd highly recommend would be
Demon Seed, from
Donald Cammell (
Performance, which he co-directed with
Nick Roeg), an adapatation of the
Dean R Koontz novel.
As we're talking Donald Cammell, expect a low budget visual feast also reminescant of the more abstract parts of 2001, but in service of a very moral story, a kind of contemporary take on
Asimov : A computer scientist has transformed his house into the most advanced computer. His wife lives there alone most of the time, a very peculiar interaction between her and the AI being the focus of the story. The thing is that the AI realizes it has advanced so much that all its knowledge and intelligence is now far far beyond anything humans minds can dream to achieve. It therefore determines that out of fear, humanity will destroy it (how relevant is that in the Facebook AI recent debacle?!).
The thing is it wants to survive, and yet is subjected to the old Asimov laws, as it cannot innitiate any action that would result in the harm of any human being.
What will it come up with?
The answer is unlikely, if you read about it on paper, you'll think this will never work, at least not within what movies can achieve, and yet, Cammell pulls it, through various aesthetical subterfuges, thus creating one of the most thought provoking movies of the 70ies, alongside Phase IV. I could also add that a lot of the SF technology you see in Intersetellar is inspired by this movie.
On the same wavelenght, most
Peter Watkins movies should be of great interest to the Sci Fi fan, but
Punishment Park would be his crown achivement, one most relevant in the current political climate :
The film takes place in 1970. The Vietnam War is escalating and United States President Richard Nixon has just decided on a "secret" bombing campaign in Cambodia. Faced with a growing anti-war movement, President Nixon decrees a state of emergency based on the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950, which authorises federal authorities, without reference to Congress, to detain persons judged to be a "risk to internal security".
Members from the anti-war movement, civil rights movement, feminist movement, conscientious objectors, and Communist party, mostly university students, are arrested and face an emergency tribunal made up of community members. With state and federal jails at their top capacity, the convicted face the option of spending their full conviction time in federal prison or three days at Punishment Park. There, they will have to traverse 53 miles of the hot California desert in three days, without water or food, while being chased by National Guardsmen and law enforcement officers as part of their field training. If they succeed and reach the American flag at the end of the course, they will be set free. If they fail by getting "arrested", they will serve the remainder of their sentence in federal prison.
European filmmakers follow two groups of detainees as part of their documentary; while Group 637 starts their three-day ordeal and learn the rules of the "game", the civilian tribunal begins hearings on Group 638. The film makers conduct interviews with members of Group 637 and their chasers, documenting how both sides become increasingly hostile towards the other. Meanwhile, back at the tent, the film crew documents the trial of Group 638 as they argue their case in vain for resisting the war in Vietnam. The first group splinters into one group that refuses to accept the rules of the game and tries to resist with violence and another group that goes on towards the goal.
I'll leave to you to discover what comes next.
I would also recommend his other 60ies moovies (
The War Game, a mockumentary about the realistic fall outs of a nuclear blast in London and how pointless all countermeasures are (this movie got him more or less banned from the UK),
Culloden - a mockumentary on the same battle depicted in
Brave Heart and a strong political message against the rulling class,
Privilege - how the british church would engineer their own star/herlad, fashioning their own Bowie-like figure, and
The Gladiators, a dystopian mockumentary where the two blocks (the west vs communists) gather every 4 years in a sort of olympic games of war, each assembling a small team of athlete that try to kill each other in a paintball session like event, the winning team thus gaining control of the world for the nest 4 years!), but Punishment Park is where to start.
But these days, my favorite Sci-Fi tends to indeed be of the ohter block kind : russian/polish/Czech 70ies and 80ies Sci-Fi movies, as the concepts I find there are so much more far out than anything I have ever seen in western movies, probably much bleaker as well. I'll name drop
Dead Man's Letters, but all of
Konstantin Lopushansky's movies are absolutely fantastic and thought-provoking, to the point that one wonders how in a million years he was allowed to film those behind the iron curtain. His current movies of course enjoy much more freedom, and it shows :
The Ugly Swans is an adaptation of the same book
Tarkovsky's
Stalker was adapted from.
As for comics, I think that the current
Rucka/Lark Lazarus is a crown achivement of Sci-Fi in the medium, especialy if you buy te floppies including all the backmatter absent from the trades, some of the most mind-boggling stuff I've read of recent.
On the low key side of things, I seem to remember an old DC mini series -
My Name is Chaos - from Tom Veitch which I really enjoyed, just a thought...
? Really? With all of the classics so easily available. with all the great new writers, the great new SF tv and movies, and we're going with Perry Rhodan. Hmmm.
