Science Fiction: 248

Evelyn Wang is a Chinese-American woman who runs a struggling laundromat with her husband, Waymond. Tensions in the household are high due to the laundromat being audited by the IRS after Evelyn incorrectly filed her taxes. Additionally, Waymond is trying to give divorce papers to Evelyn; Evelyn’s father, Gong Gong (Cantonese: “grandfather”), has just arrived from China; and Evelyn’s daughter, Joy, has been trying to get her mother to accept her girlfriend, Becky. While at the IRS building, Waymond’s personality changes when his body is briefly taken over by Alpha Waymond. Alpha Waymond explains to Evelyn that many parallel universes exist, since every ...

In a dystopian 2050, fighter pilot Adam Reed steals his time jet and escapes through time on a rescue mission to 2018. However, he accidentally crash-lands in 2022 instead where Adam meets his 12-year-old self who is struggling with the recent death of their father Louis in a car accident. Adam reluctantly enlists his younger self’s help to repair his jet and reveals that he is looking for his wife, Laura, who was supposedly killed in a crash while on a mission to 2018. Adam is being chased by Maya Sorian, the leader of the dystopian world and her lieutenant Christos who attempt to apprehend Adam and take him back to 2050. The Adams are ...

Tech giant Bubble unveils their latest creation: the B-bot, created by Bubble’s CEO Marc Wydell with the intent to make a robot buddy that is designed to help make friends, via algorithm. In the city of Nonsuch, California, middle-schooler Barney Pudowski is the only kid in his class who doesn’t have a B-bot. His former childhood friends, Savannah Meades, Rich Belcher, Noah and Ava have all become absorbed by their individual B-bots. On Barney’s 12th birthday, his father, Graham, and his grandmother, Donka, come to realize that he doesn’t have any friends. They hastily go to a Bubble store, but closes for the day, leading them to buy a slightly-damaged one from ...

Thomas Anderson is a successful video game developer, creator of The Matrix video game series based on his faint memories as Neo. At a local coffee shop, Anderson keeps crossing paths with Tiffany, a married mother with no recollection of her past, on which Anderson based Trinity, a character in his game. Anderson struggles at times to separate perceived reality from dreams. His therapist prescribes him blue pills to suppress the occurrences, which he stops taking. Anderson operates a simulation called a modal, a programming sandbox created to develop game characters. A young woman named Bugs learns that the modal is running old code in a loop, enacting the moment when ...

Star Wars: The Bad Batch is an American animated series created by Dave Filoni for the streaming service Disney+. It is part of the Star Wars franchise, acting as both a sequel to, and spin-off from, the series Star Wars: The Clone Wars. The Bad Batch is produced by Lucasfilm Animation, with Jennifer Corbett as head writer and Brad Rau as supervising director. Dee Bradley Baker stars as the Bad Batch, a squad of elite clone troopers with genetic mutations. ...

Guy is a non-player character (NPC) in Free City, a massively multiplayer online (MMO) video game developed by Soonami Games. Unaware that the world he lives in is a video game, he works as a bank teller alongside his best friend and the bank’s security guard Buddy. In the real world, Millie Rusk, who plays as Molotov Girl, tries to find evidence of being the rightful owner of the source code stolen by head developer Antwan Hovachelik, while co-developer Walter “Keys” McKey works at Soonami. In the game, Molotov Girl catches Guy’s attention by singing his favorite song, “Fantasy” by Mariah Carey, and he begins to deviate from his programming. Taking ...

In 10191, Duke Leto of House Atreides, ruler of the ocean planet Caladan, is assigned by the Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV to replace House Harkonnen as fief rulers of Arrakis. Arrakis is a harsh desert planet and the only source of “spice”, a valuable substance that extends human vitality and is critical for interstellar travel. In reality, Shaddam intends to have House Harkonnen stage a coup to retake the planet with aid of the Emperor’s Sardaukar troops, eradicating House Atreides, whose influence threatens Shaddam’s control. Leto is apprehensive but sees the political advantages of controlling the spice planet and forming an alliance with its native ...

Married couple Guy and Prisca travel to a tropical resort with their young children Trent and Maddox as a final family vacation before they divorce. On the advice of the resort’s manager, the family visits a secluded beach also occupied by three additional vacationing parties: rapper Mid-Size Sedan and a female companion; surgeon Charles, his trophy wife Chrystal, their young daughter Kara, and Charles’ mother Agnes; and nurse Jarin and his epileptic psychologist wife Patricia. Tragedy strikes the group’s vacation when the body of Mid-Size Sedan’s companion is discovered, which is followed by Agnes suddenly dying. Strange events soon occur, including the three ...

Five years after Godzilla defeated King Ghidorah, Kong is monitored by Monarch within a giant dome on Skull Island. Kong is visited by Jia, the last Iwi native and adopted daughter of Kong expert Ilene Andrews, who is deaf and communicates with Kong via sign language. Bernie Hayes, an employee of Apex Cybernetics and host of a Titan conspiracy theory podcast, extracts data suggesting sinister activities at a Pensacola facility. However, Godzilla suddenly attacks the facility; during the rampage, Bernie stumbles on a massive device. Madison Russell, a fan of Bernie’s podcast, enlists her friend Josh to investigate Godzilla’s attacks. Apex ...

In 2258 AD, the colonists of the planet New World, all men, have been afflicted with a condition called the Noise, which causes everyone to see and hear each other’s thoughts. The colonists were involved in a bitter war with the native humanoid species referred to as The Spackle, a war that ostensibly killed all the female colonists while half the men survived. Todd Hewitt lives in Prentisstown with his adoptive fathers, Ben Moore and Cillian Boyd. Other residents include the preacher Aaron, the town’s mayor David Prentiss, and his son Davy. Prentiss has learned to control his Noise, making his thoughts difficult to see and hear. A spaceship that lost contact with the ...

Tales from the Loop is an American science fiction drama television series developed and written by Nathaniel Halpern based on the art book of the same name by Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag. The eight-episode first season was released in its entirety on Amazon Prime Video on April 3, 2020. Tales from the Loop follows the interconnected lives of the residents in the fictional town of Mercer, Ohio. Mercer is home to the Mercer Center for Experimental Physics, an underground facility known as the Loop. It is here that researchers attempt to “make the impossible ...

Roy Pulver, a retired Delta Force soldier in Atlanta, has been stuck in a time loop, and has learned the day’s patterns through many previous loops. He wakes at 07:00 AM each day, avoids an assassin in his apartment and an attack by a gunman in a helicopter outside his window, then escapes his apartment before it explodes. He has been able to elude more assassins throughout the morning, but finds himself unable to figure out how to survive a final attack at 12:47 PM, waking up back in his apartment on the next loop. On the day before Roy entered the loop, his estranged wife Jemma had asked Roy to visit her at defense contractor Dynow Labs ...

Augustine Lofthouse, a reclusive academic, has devoted his life to finding habitable planets where humanity can expand. In the present day, he meets Jean Sullivan after giving a presentation at a gala and the two form a romantic relationship. After a pregnancy scare, Sullivan leaves him because of his obsession with work and his inability to bond with other human beings. Several years later, when Lofthouse encounters her again, she tells him they have a daughter, whom he chooses not to meet. Thirty years later, in 2049, an unspecified disaster has wiped out most of the Earth’s population and left the surface contaminated with ionizing ...

A US weapons manufacturer tests its 4 killer robots on heroin producers in the Golden Triangle in SEAsia. It goes haywire. Six American doctors must fight for their lives after four weaponized robots wipe out a village in Southeast Asia. Parents need to know that Monsters of Man is a graphically violent movie about killer robots set loose in the jungle as a trial run for a potential military contract. It’s long, violent, and not particularly kind to non-White-male characters, but the robots are cool, and it has interesting themes about accountability and life. Many characters are killed, some in shocking, gruesome ways. Expect heavy ...

On a distant planet, Sonic, an anthropomorphic blue hedgehog who can run at supersonic speed, is chased by a tribe of echidnas for his power. His guardian, Longclaw the Owl, gives him a bag of rings that open portals to other planets. She uses one to send him to Earth while she stays behind to hold off the echidnas. Ten years later, Sonic enjoys a secret life near the town of Green Hills, Montana, but longs to make friends. He idolizes the local sheriff, Tom Wachowski, calling him “Donut Lord”, and his veterinarian wife, Maddie, calling her “Pretzel Lady”, unaware the pair are planning to relocate to San Francisco, as Tom, bored with the lack of action in Green ...

Cecilia Kass is trapped in a violent and controlling relationship with wealthy optics engineer and businessman Adrian Griffin. One night, Cecilia drugs Adrian with diazepam and escapes his highly secured house with the assistance of her younger sister, Emily. Cecilia hides out in the home of her friend Detective James Lanier and his teenage daughter, Sydney. Two weeks after Cecilia’s escape, Adrian seemingly commits suicide and leaves her $5 million. His lawyer brother, Tom, handles the arrangements. Cecilia suspects another presence in the house after several strange events, but James assures her she is just traumatized and paranoid. During a ...

A CIA agent, the “Protagonist”, participates in an extraction operation at the Kyiv opera house. After seizing an artifact, the Protagonist is captured by mercenaries. He is tortured before consuming a suicide pill. He awakens to learn the suicide pill was a test of loyalty and that the artifact was lost. The Protagonist is recruited by an organization called Tenet. A scientist briefs him on bullets with “inverted” entropy, meaning they move backward through time. The Protagonist meets his handler, Neil, through a CIA contact, and they trace the inverted bullets to arms dealer Priya Singh in Mumbai, India. They learn that Priya is a member of Tenet, and her ...

Devs is an American science fiction thriller television miniseries created, written, and directed by Alex Garland that premiered on March 5, 2020, on FX on Hulu. Lily Chan is a software engineer for Amaya, a quantum computing company run by Forest. Lily soon becomes embroiled in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, who died on the first day of his new job at Devs. The series explores themes related to free will and determinism, as well as Silicon Valley. It received generally positive reviews, with critics praising its imagination, cinematography, acting, and soundtrack. Lily, who works in ...

Star Trek: Picard is an American television series created by Akiva Goldsman, Michael Chabon, and Alex Kurtzman for the streaming service CBS All Access (later rebranded as Paramount+). It is the eighth Star Trek series and was launched in 2020 as part of Kurtzman’s expanded Star Trek Universe. The series features a retired Jean-Luc Picard who has been deeply affected by the death of Data in the film Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) and the destruction of the planet Romulus in the film Star Trek ...

For All Mankind is an American science fiction drama streaming television series created and written by Ronald D. Moore, Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi and produced for Apple TV+. The series dramatizes an alternate history depicting “what would have happened if the global space race had never ended” after the Soviet Union succeeds in the first crewed Moon landing ahead of the United States. The series features historical figures including Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, ...