5 Underrated Sci-fi Movies

5. Sunshine

I watched this expecting another space horror movie, and while it is scary in places there is more to it than that. It is easy to forget on earth just how big and powerful the sun really is. Nothing in our experience prepares us for the power or immensity of the sun.

That is what this movie is about. Dealing with something so much larger than yourself and having no choice but to face it. The science isn’t great, I’m pretty sure that we can’t reignite the sun and the technology isn’t forthcoming, but who knows what might happen in the future.

4. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

I am only judging from my friends, most of which haven’t seen this but it seems underrated. Part of the problem I have is that people want to discount that this is science fiction because it is mostly about characters, but as you’ll see from my next two choices many of the best science fiction movies are about interesting characters.

As for the science, it might not be as extreme as it seems. We are getting better all the time at telling what people are thinking, and we have at least a passing idea of how memories are created. The idea of destroying specific memories may or may not ever be really possible, but if it is it might not be all that far off.

For scarier ideas of what would happen if people could mess with the memories of people read Phillip K. Dicks books, he has a number of stories about this, but none of them have Jim Carrey.

3. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Based on my favorite book I was excited when this movie came out. This book is one of the most cinematic stories I have ever read, in part because it was based on a radio play, and they got a great deal of it right in the movie. The book certainly has far more than the movie, but I love the additions in the movie, as well as the subtle tips of the head towards the books.

If you’ve already seen the movie, watch it again, but this time watch Mos Def and the towel. Mos Def is certainly one hoopy frood.

2. Gattaca

For some time this was my favorite science fiction movie. This is what I love about science fiction without any of the traditional tropes that people think it needs. There is very little action in this movie, it’s all about ideas and the ideas are becoming more important all the time.

The question this movie asks is how much of what we are can be defined by our genetics. As any good movie it never completely answers the question, but it examines it completely. In the world of Gattaca genetic screening has become so easy that those who aren’t perfect have become second class citizens, and having children without it is considered unnatural.

The hero of Gattaca was born naturally and has a potential heart defect but he wants to be in the space program. He has fought his entire life against this idea, but the only way to get into the space program is to fake who he is. He becomes a “Stolen Ladder” by assuming the genetic identity of a man who was genetically almost perfect.

I would not ruin any of the surprises in this movie, I would just say that it deserves far more attention than it got.

1. Serenity

There are a great many people who consider this a great movie, but it is still called a cult film in many places and it doesn’t deserve that. This movie is as good as any number of far better known movies. I saw this in the theater with a friend who said it was the best science fiction movie since The Matrix and I have to agree. The effects were great, the characters are fun, the plat was exciting and it deserves attention not just from a small army of devoted fans, but from the general populous.

Top 10 Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels

10. Q Squared by Peter David

I read Star Trek and Star Wars books because I need something relaxing and not challenging. They are like eating popcorn; it gives you something to do but not much else. Peter David’s books are the best of that. It is clear he knows the Star Trek series well and Q squared brings in one of my favorite characters without the constraints of a TV budget.

Throughout this movie you get to see the connection Q has to many of the other godlike beings we have seen in the Star Trek series, including the god being from Star Trek 5, the wormhole aliens and O a Q like alien from another reality.

If you like Q and Star Trek you can’t really miss with Q squared.

9. The Belgariad (series) – David Eddings

This would likely be higher on my list if I hadn’t read it so recently. I only finished the last of the second group of five books a couple weeks ago. Still the characters in these books are great and in many ways, the world makes more sense than in a great many other fantasy novels.

The politics, the gods, even the orb all really affect the world and though I figured out some of the secrets before they were revealed there were plenty of others things that I didn’t recognize were going to happen until they did.

8. The Sword of Shannara (series) by Terry Brooks

One of the first major fantasy series I took on after reading Lord of the Rings, these books are high on the list in part because of the great memories I have of reading them in school. I used to sit inside during lunch hour reading them. I even mis

sed school because I stayed up all night reading.

I know there are flaws in the writing and the truth is that I haven’t continued to read the series, but the first three books are responsible for keeping me reading after Lord of the Rings and for that, they have to be on my list.

7. A Spell for Chameleon by Piers Anthony

The Xanth books started declining quickly after the first couple, but I love this book. The series itself is known for pun and while there are a few in this books this was before he started to see how many he could fit in each book and so "A Spell for Chameleon" is a really fun book with good ideas, good characters.

Because of this book I have read a dozen other Piers Anthony novels some of which are good and some which are bad, but I wouldn't have read any of them if it hadn't been for "A Spell for Chameleon"

6. The Misenchanted Sword -- Lawrence Watt Evans

Probably the most obscure book on my list. Most of the other books I found because people suggested them to me. Part of the appeal of Lawrence Evans Watt’s stuff is that I found it myself.

The misenchanted sword is the first in a sort of series, though each book focuses on a new story with a new main character. The story in this book is a bit more serious than in other books in the series but it is still fun with a great and complicated magic and world.

5. A Fire upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge

Another book I read recently. I had read other of Vernor Vinge’s work and enjoyed it but it wasn’t great, then I read “A Fire Upon the Deep” and it was fantastic. The aliens in it are well done, and quite alien, and the two separate stories weave together perfectly.

The way that he gets around faster than light travel

and other extreme technologies is brilliant as is how he finally defeats the main enemy in the book.

A thanks to the Kickass Mystic Ninjas for recomending this.

4. Wizard’s First Rule : Terry Goodkind

I’m trying to watch “Legend of the Seeker” but every time

I do, all I can think is how much it isn’t Wizard’s First Rule. As the series went on it was a bit more hit or miss to me, but Wizard’s First Rule was great. It is rare to have true romance in a fantasy novel, though it is getting more common.

Now I’m not a huge romance fan, but in this book it is great, mostly because it can’t happen, but there is still far more to this book than that. This book explores how people think, or don’t while being able to retain the fun of a fantasy novel.

3. Foundation Trilogy :Isaac Asimov

This is a big idea series and I love big ideas. Asimov is one of my favorite authors and has certainly written more of my favorite short stories and novels than anyone else has. From Nightfall to I, Robot, he has a library of things that I love, and the Foundation Trilogy is at the top of that pile.

Compared to modern doorstops these are small novels but they get through the ideas they want to and I suspect many modern novels could be vastly improved by being far shorter.

This novel is a massive space empire story with the first foundation, which has been created by Harry Sheldon to cut the chaos caused by the collapse of the galactic empire from ten thousand years to a thousand. Harry Sheldon is able to do this by predicting the way large group of people will react a science fiction idea that doesn't need spaceships or robots.

2. Ender’s Game Orson Scott Card

Ender’s game feels like fantasy in a world like ours if a hundred year or so. The technology is advanced but not overly so, and the countries and religions still exist. The story follows Ender Wiggens the smartest of the students in the Battleschool, a school devoted to training general to fight the Buggers who work as one thanks to their Queen and will defeat the human fleet if they can’t work together as well.

The training takes place through games, but it is the way he writes children that is so great. From the beginning, the children feel like people not just children and though much of the story is in games he brings in a feeling of rushing forward as they push Ender.

There is far more in this book than can be explained in a few words and I love every word of it.

1 The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglass Adams

Picking the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy as my favorite book is difficult. The science fiction in it isn’t as good as in other books on this list. It’s the book I have reread the most and will continue to reread. From the destruction of earth to the restaurant at the end of the universe, there are great tangents, great characters and tons of humor.

The movie was good, but it covers only the first book and even then there is a lot left out.