All posts tagged: Science fiction

The 4 best science-fiction shows of 2026 so far

The 4 best science-fiction shows of 2026 so far

Published by Miika Tikkanen

What does the state of sci-fi TV in the first half of 2026 tell us? To be honest, things could be better. Only one series has been an unalloyed pleasure. This may seem an odd way to describe Star City, a grim alternate-history thriller about the Soviet space programme, in which its characters duck KGB interrogators and endure near-fatal space accidents. More anon. There were brilliant moments in other series, too – they just came with a little more baggage. Typifying this was Fallout, which, as the New Year rolled around, was already three episodes into its uneven second outing. Here, a nuclear catastrophe sees a privileged few take refuge in underground “vaults” while everyone else dukes it out for survival on the surface. The heroes of Fallout season one are back: Pollyannaish vault-dweller Lucy, mech-powered super-soldier Max and the irradiated gunslinger known as the Ghoul. But for Lucy and Max, it’s more of the same. Max continues to bounce between embracing and rejecting the paramilitary Brotherhood of Steel, and all that Lucy learned from …

The one film to watch before seeing Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day

The one film to watch before seeing Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day

Published by Miika Tikkanen

“IF YOU believe, it’s science fact; if you don’t believe, it’s science fiction. I’m an agnostic between the two beliefs, so for me it’s science speculation.” These were Steven Spielberg’s words in 1977, regarding one of his greatest cinematic achievements: Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In its “science speculation”, it is perhaps the perfect UFO film – brimming with wonder and spirituality, but with one foot firmly on the ground. There’s never a bad time to watch it, but with the release of Spielberg’s new film Disclosure Day this month – a conspiracy thriller about a whistleblower who is trying to share proof of alien life with all of humanity – it is now essential companion viewing. Close Encounters follows another dogged everyman in pursuit of the truth, but under very different circumstances. Electrical lineworker Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) leads an unsatisfying life in Muncie, Indiana, with his wife Ronnie (Teri Garr) and their two sons. Though their home isn’t without love and affection, it is also full of the noise and resentments that …

Constellations

Constellations

Published by Miika Tikkanen

I. We had crash-landed on the planet. We were far from home. The spaceship could not be repaired, and the rescue beacon had failed. Besides me, only the astrogator, part of the captain, and the ship’s AI mind were left.  Outside, the atmosphere registered as hostile to most organisms. We huddled in the lifeboat, which was inoperable but still held air. Vast storms buffeted our cockleshell shelter, although we knew from prior readings that other areas remained calm. All that remained to us was to explore, if we wanted to live. The captain gave me the sole weapon. She tasked the astrogator with carrying some tools that would not unduly weigh him down. Little existed on the planet except deserts of snow. But alien artifacts lay in an area near us. We were an exploration team, so this discovery had oddly comforted us, even though we had been on our way elsewhere. The massive systems failure had no discernible source, and the planet had been our only choice for landfall. The artifacts took the form …

The science-fiction films to look forward to in 2026

The science-fiction films to look forward to in 2026

Published by Miika Tikkanen

Well, those little green shoots of recovery I forecast last year have flowered. This year is set to bring tighter scripts, cheaper projects (which is good, because studios can take more chances) and a more enjoyable cinema-going experience all round. On 16 January, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple will deliver (honest) on all those promises exasperatingly kept back in 2025’s 28 Years Later. There will be Cillian Murphy reprising his role from 2002’s 28 Days Later, plus more from actor Jack O’Connell’s “Jimmys”, an acrobatic killer cult. There will also be Nia DaCosta in the director’s chair – a young, much-lauded talent who not so long ago had the misfortune to helm The Marvels. A film written by Alex Garland is just what DaCosta needs for a proper career rebuild. The first truly science-fictional release to look out for is Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die (February), with Sam Rockwell as a man from the future, taking hostages at a Los Angeles diner in a wildly improbable attempt to save the world. Director Gore …

How not to misread science fiction

How not to misread science fiction

Published by Miika Tikkanen

We are approaching the Gregorian New Year, and it’s a great time to ponder what’s coming next. Are we about to use CRISPR to grow wings? Will we all be uploading our brains to the Amazon cloud? Should we wrap the sun in a Dyson sphere? If, like me, you are a nerd who loves science and engineering, sci-fi is the place you turn to imagine the answers. The problem is that most people are getting the wrong messages from these visions of tomorrow. As a science journalist who also writes science fiction, I am giving you an end-of-year present: a quick guide to not misreading sci-fi stories. Pay attention, because all our civilisations depend on it. There are two main ways that people misread sci-fi. Let’s start with the simpler one, known as the Torment Nexus Problem. It appears most often in tech conferences and business plans, and gets its name from an iconic social media post by the satirist Alex Blechman. In 2021, he wrote: “Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the …