sci-fi

More Life, Royal Court review - posthuman tragedy fails to come alive

Saturday, 15 February 2025

I always advocate in favour of more sci-fi plays, and over the past decade there have been a gratifying number of them. But one essential element of any futuristic fantasy must be its power to convince. And it is precisely this that is missing from...

Albums of the Year 2024: Meemo Comma - Decimation of I

Saturday, 14 December 2024

I don’t really want to talk about this year. Genuinely.It’s been so horrific on the macro scale with deranged Fascism and the effects of rampant and undeniable climate change looming everywhere you look – and on the personal level I’ve been been...

Things Will Be Different review - lost in the past

Sunday, 06 October 2024

Time-travel is a trap in debutante Michael Felker’s tender sf two-hander, whose title’s grim irony becomes gradually apparent.There’s golden American promise in the sun and shadow of the diner where Joseph (Adam David Thompson) meets sister Sidney (...

Alien: Romulus review - game over for the adults

Friday, 16 August 2024

In space no one can hear you scream, but they usually can in a cinema. Wednesday night’s gala launch of Alien: Romulus was awash with the gussied-up cast and writer-director Fede Álvarez, alongside assorted Olympians and influencers walking the red...

Borderlands review - the end of a universe?

Saturday, 10 August 2024

So, it falls to me to review perhaps the least-anticipated film of the year. Borderlands is based on an admired video game, and there may be nothing more hostile than pissed-off video-gamers.The tsunami of online negativity aimed for weeks at merely...

Sky Peals review - a parable of alienation in a motorway service station

Thursday, 08 August 2024

“I think my dad might have been an alien,” Adam (Faraz Ayub; Line of Duty; Screw) tells a self-help group he wanders into. What does that make him? He doesn’t feel at home anywhere – not with his family or, perhaps not surprisingly, at his job in a...

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes review - a post-human paradise

Saturday, 11 May 2024

Planet of the Apes is the most artfully replenished franchise, from the original series’ elegant time-travel loop to the reboot’s rich, deepening milieu. Director Wes Ball again offers serious sf, just as much as Dune, considering the consequences...

Minority Report, Lyric Hammersmith Theatre review - ill-judged sci-fi

Wednesday, 01 May 2024

Towards the end of David Haig’s new adaptation of Philip K Dick’s 1956 science fiction short story, someone asks if three humans who have been symbiotically connected to a massive AI computer for a decade can survive the experience.Yes, she’s told...

I.S.S. review - sci-fi with a sting in the tail

Friday, 26 April 2024

Earthrise, the 1968 Apollo 8 photograph of our small island of a planet, taken from the Moon’s surface, transformed our vision of our fragile home world. “To see the Earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it...

3 Body Problem, Netflix review - life, the universe and everything (and a bit more)

Tuesday, 26 March 2024

From Game of Thrones producers David Benioff and DB Weiss, in cahoots with Alexander Woo, 3 Body Problem is Netflix’s daring attempt to dramatise Liu Cixin’s novel The Three-Body Problem. A mind-bending sci-fi epic spanning multiple decades, while...

Album: Bolis Pupul - Letter to Yu

Thursday, 07 March 2024

This album starts on an extremely literal note. The whole record is themed around Belgian born-and-raised Bolis Pupul’s explorations of the Chinese side of his heritage after his mother’s death in 2008, and his regrets at not having done so when she...

Dune: Part 2 review - sombre space opera

Sunday, 03 March 2024

Dennis Villeneuve’s Dune sequel is a sombre science-fiction spectacle that insists on the scale of cinema: erupting sandworms are Cecil B. DeMille colossal, the sound design centred on Hans Zimmer’s score thunderously enveloping. In a genre once...

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