The 10 Most Prophetic Sci-Fi Movies Ever
When Arthur C. Clarke died last week at the age of 90, science
buff analyzes the most eerily predictive, prescient films of the
the science right, or will sometime soon.
10. 2001: A Space Odyssey
Released: 1968 | Set in the year: 2001
2001. Despite its place in cinematic history, this movie is a
particularly easy target. Once our own timeline slipped past the year
2001, it became obvious that, as measured and bleak as the film's
technology seemed at the time, it was a work of strange optimism.
Artificial intelligence is still far too dumb to achieve psychosis and
challenge now as it was when Apollo 11 landed there, a year after the
movie was released. Still, Clarke and Stanley Kubrick nailed the feel
of space travel, and its eventual commercialization, in a way that
still resonates today. And HAL 9000's calculated mutiny is plausible
enough to ring in any NASA administrator's head, when the time
manned missions.
Hits
Space tourism: The image is as indelible as those cavemen worshipping
at the foot of the monolith: an elegant but strangely familiar-looking
craft gliding through space. This was not a muscular rocket ship, but
a space plane bearing Pan American's logo, like a jetliner that simply
flew higher than the rest. (Clarke and Kubrick's business acumen was
Richard Branson's brain in 1969). The inside of the craft, from the
rows of empty seats to the weightless flight attendants, reinforced
the feeling of uneventful, commercial air travel. In the year 2008,
space tourism is far from casual, but 2001's prediction that one day
flying to an orbital space station would require zero training or
Misses
Artificial intelligence: HAL 9000 may be too smart for his own good.
He's also too smart, period. In the 60's many AI researchers were
extremely optimistic, predicting full machine sentience by the end of
Discovery One is in cryogenic sleep during the long trip to Jupiter,
an AI could be instrumental to keeping the ship in working order. But
in the 40 years since the movie's release, artificial intelligence has
been a major disappointment. And any time an autonomous system has the
power to kill, such as an armed unmanned vehicle, roboticists are
careful to require an authorized human operator to actually pull the
trigger, or, in HAL's case, turn off the crew's life support.
Manned space exploration: The workings of the various spacecraft in
2001 are ambiguous, but until more efficient propulsion systems can be
developed, none of the spaceward jaunts in the film are possible. And
if getting to Mars seems like the biggest challenge of the century,
imagine planning a trip to Jupiter.
Undecided
Videophones: We have the technology to turn almost every phone on the
planet into a full-fledged videophone. But, as it turns out, most
people don't want to put on pants to answer the phone. A two-way video
feed means devoting your full attention to the conversation, and
sacrificing nearly any kind of multitasking, including simply walking
down the street. It's possible, though, that video will become a
standard option for existing phones, allowing for occasional, but
highly optional face-to-face conversations. In other words, users
might agree to opt into video, as opposed to constantly opting out.
Speculation aside, videophones aren't in high demand now, and probably
never will be.
9. Short Circuit
Released: 1986 | Set in the year: Unspecified (but probably 1986)
Of all the robot movies in the history of science fiction, from
classics like Metropolis and The Terminator to more recent,
questionable attempts, like Artificial Intelligence: AI, why pick this
one? Short Circuit is, by no stretch of the imagination, a fine film.
And its protagonist, Johnny Five, isn't helping the case of self-aware
extroverted thing to pieces than to kill an entire platoon of stoic
Terminators. But Short Circuit got one thing right, which was the
burgeoning field of armed ground robot development. And while Steve
Guttenberg's lovable roboticist would prefer his creations engage in
peaceful cohabitation with their human masters, his employer, the Nova
Corporation, is pushing the machines on the United States military.
The plot is too idiotic to recap, and the notion that the robots'
primary purpose is to carry nukes behind enemy lines is deliriously
weird, but the role of the defense industry in pushing the limits of
ground robots is clear. DARPA's Grand and Urban Challenges might seem
like the first steps toward robot cars, but it's the Department of
Defense that's throwing the competition, and collecting all of the
data from the various teams. Even iRobot, makers of the Roomba, relies
on military contracts to stay profitable.
Hits
Autonomous military ground robots: Unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) are
nowhere near as advanced as the five SAINT (Strategic Artificially
Intelligent Nuclear Transport) robots in Short Circuit, but their
basic construction holds up surprisingly well. They move around on
tracked wheels, like the majority of current UGVs, and have
sensor-packed heads that look a lot like the autonomous navigation
systems planned for the Army's MULE robot. It's unclear why they have
arms, much less the incredibly dextrous hands that Johnny Five uses to
read books, dance with ladies, etc. Presumably they need some way to
carry and detonate nuclear weapons, but it's best not to stare too
long into the abyss that is Short Circuit's internal logic, such as it
is. It's also unclear just how autonomous the SAINTs are, since Five's
sentience is awakened by a lightning bolt. But if the premise is that
the military will develop a ground robot that can move autonomously
throughout the battlefield and fire at targets with integrated
weaponry, then Short Circuit is the unlikely harbinger of the
robot-dependent wars to come.
Misses
Lasers: Why do the SAINTs have lasers, instead of perfectly lethal
rockets or machine guns? This is a common problem when Hollywood
fumbles with sci-fi. Instead of running with one or two high-tech
concepts, everything becomes fair game. So Blade Runner gets flying
cars, the Terminator movies get beam weapons, and Johnny Five is
packing a scientific breakthrough that's much more impressive than he
is.
Artificial Intelligence: Is it worth getting into how simplistic
Five's artificial intelligence is? If nothing else, I'd like to know
what sort of hard drive he comes with. Those books he reads at
breakneck speed have to go through instantaneous optical character
recognition and get stored somewhere. Or am I being petty?
8. Soylent Green
Released: 1973 | Set in the year: 2022
That most blameless of apocalyptic menaces, overpopulation, has been
with us for centuries. It compelled Jonathan Swift to write his
satirical call for institutionalized cannibalism in the 18th century.
And in 1973, Hollywood produced a no-less-sensational (but
considerably less satirical) movie about a vastly overpopulated
future, where sinister corporate types have resorted to secret,
institutionalized cannibalism. Every day is a potential food riot in
New York City, but every Tuesday is Soylent Green day, when the
rations is distributed. Despite that infamous (and unintentionally
funny) final line, and despite Charlton Heston, this movie is a
surprisingly bleak and unflinching vision of the future. And sure, I
get it, the stuff is made out of people. But that revelation won't fix
the desiccated environment or shrink the population to manageable
levels. The world of Soylent Green is as doomed as its inhabitants are
delicious.
Hits
Climate change: Although the potential impact of greenhouse gases on
the environment was only beginning to be debated in the early 70s,
Soylent Green cut to the chase. More people means more pollution,
which means a future that's significantly hotter than the present.
It's unlikely that, by 2022, New York City will be mired in year-round
summer, but there's no longer any doubt that the climate is changing.
And as oil prices continue to climb, the notion that only the rich
will have air conditioning, while the middle-class Charlton Hestons of
the world literally sweat it out, seems more likely by the day.
Misses
Overpopulation: It's true, the world as a whole is getting more
populated. But 40 million New Yorkers by the year 2022? That math has
never added up. According to census estimates, the population of New
York City was close to 7.9 million in 1970. By 2000, it had climbed to
just past 8 million. By 2025, some experts believe it will reach 9
million. In the real world, a million more people can make impossible
situations even worse. Subways get more packed, traffic grinds to an
absolute halt, and the electrical grid faces unprecedented peak loads.
And 40 million could destroy a city like New York. But getting to 40
million in the next 100 years, much less the next 10 or 20, is a
stretch even for science fiction.
Industrial cannibalism: Corporations can sometimes be vile. And human
beings, on rare occasion, eat other human beings. But the urge to dine
on the so-called "long pig" is a private matter, reserved for plane
crash survivors and the criminally insane. To think that any
corporation is capable of planning, orchestrating and keeping a lid on
an operation as massive as Soylent Green is to have a conspiracy
theorist's view of human competence. Then there's the government's
complicity, since at least some portion of the bodies are provided by
the euthanasia clinics. I'm not saying that corporations and public
anyone would do faced with this sort of apocalypse? But they would
never expect to get away with it.
Undecided
Government-sanctioned suicide: If the world were, in fact, pushed to
the brink of destruction by rampant overpopulation, would public
opinion toward suicide change? Hard to say, but the idea that the
snacks. In Soylent Green, the suicidal are provided with a clean,
comfortable room. As the poison kicks in, a montage of nature footage
plays, accompanied by your choice of music. Never mind the fact that
your body is then unceremoniously dumped into a garbage truck and
carted off to a heavily-guarded person-milling factory. Considering
that the alternative is a world increasingly packed with sweaty
to go.
7. Blade Runner
Released: 1982 | Set in the year: 2019
It's not that Blade Runner actually predicted much of anything. But it
has the flavor of effortless, worldly prescience. This is a future
that's both ravaged and fully functional. And in 10 years, the skies
over Los Angeles might be worse, and climate change could mean weather
systems that are heavier than we ever expected, even in sunny Southern
California. But things probably won't be quite so apocalyptic, and
there certainly won't be replicants with implanted memories. However,
on a rainy day in any of the world's biggest cities, life has looked a
lot like Blade Runner for years. From the blinding video billboards in
Manhattan's Times Square and Tokyo's Shinjuku district to the sheer
crush of human beings and crawling traffic, all we're missing are
those neon-handled umbrellas.
Hits
Urban development: Everything feels old in Blade Runner. No one is
marveling at the building-size projection of a geisha, because the
damn thing has probably been there for years. The traffic clogging the
streets is a gridlock like any other, only now there are even more
cars cramming into the same insufficient roadways. And despite the
packed-in, overcrowded streets, the movie's climax takes place in the
city's crumbling, abandoned places, in hallways and on rooftops rotted
through with water. The world isn't about to end in Blade Runner, but
it's not getting any cleaner, or more efficient. It's just getting
older.
Misses
Replicants: There's no delicate way of putting this: We can barely
clone a sheep without killing it, much less grow a human outside of
the womb. Clones tend to be frail things with persistent health
problems. The only thing they have in common with the biological
androids in Blade Runner is a shortened life span. To achieve a fully
manufactured humanoid creature that's injected with memories and
force-grown in order to reach physical and emotional adulthood in a
more manageable time frame is as feasible as breaking the speed of
light.
No details are provided, but they wouldn't help. The only
extraterrestrial mining colony in our future is on the moon, and
whether we'll even get there by 2019 is still up for debate.
Undecided
Flying cars: It's to the movie's credit that the flying cars in Blade
Runner seem so commonplace. The drivers wear headsets, and check with
air traffic control, and seem to avoid unnecessary shenanigans. This
is how flying cars should work, if they were at all plausible.
Unfortunately (or, depending on how much you trust your fellow
drivers, very fortunately) flying cars that operate as regular cars as
well as aircraft, with full vertical-takeoff-and-landing (VTOL)
capabilities, have yet to reach first-generation status, much less the
kind of mature product that police officers would be able to use in
densely populated areas. But if a company called Urban Aeronautics can
get its act together, and deliver its VTOL-capable, $3 million X-Hawk
by 2010, flying squad cars might become a little less ridiculous. What
Blade Runner gets right is the potential customers. Price and security
restrictions are likely to keep the first flying cars out of reach for
private pilots. Initial customers could include emergency responders,
the military and law enforcement. If everything falls into place,
including massive demand and an even more massive boost to police
budgets, VTOL patrol vehicles could happen. Not by 2019, but possibly
not long after.
6. The Running Man
Released: 1987 | Set in the year: 2019
The movies that have the biggest cultural impact aren't necessarily
the best ones. In fact, sometimes they're among the most embarrassing.
The Running Man envisions a decaying 21st-century America, where
Arnold Schwarzenegger's police chopper pilot is falsely accused of
opening fire on a crowd of hungry rioters. He had actually refused to
pull the trigger, but with a sprinkling of computer wizardry,
re-edited footage of the incident shows him maniacally gunning down
unarmed civilians. He's then put on the highest-ranked TV show in the
country, where convicts try to outrun a team of hulking
book names like Buzzsaw (who uses a chainsaw) and Sub-zero (a
razor-sharp hockey stick).
Hits
Reality game shows: American Gladiators debuted in 1989, two years
after Running Man was released (and it has recently returned on NBC).
Although it was presumably a competition between paired-off
contestants, the syndicated show featured a cast of hulking
"Gladiators" with names like Nitro, Ice and Laser. They alternately
tackled contestants, bashed them with giant Q-tip-like sticks, and
fired at their heads with tennis-ball launchers. And while no one was
vicious and borderline exploitative reality-game shows was born.
Hopefully TV will never get as gruesome as this movie predicts, but as
the number of television channels spirals toward the infinite, the
lowest common denominator channel may one day be only a click away.
Misses
Video editing: Special effects, and computer-generated imagery in
particular, have become extremely sophisticated. The most deceptive
effects involve addition and reduction, as panoramic landscapes are
digitally chroma-keyed behind actors filmed on green screen, and
people and cars are stripped out of a bustling cityscape. But
manipulating living beings with CGI requires software and CPUs from
atrocity were simply a matter of creative editing, the premise of this
movie might work. Pasting his bug-eyed laughter from, say, the Police
Athletic League's annual volleyball tournament is almost feasible. But
assuming that we'll reach this level of digital fabrication in the
next ten years is silly, even by this movie's standards.
5. Destination Moon
Released: 1950 | Set in the year: Unspecified
Perhaps the most boring movie ever made about space travel,
Destination Moon is remarkable because of what it wasn't. In one of
those inexplicable Hollywood horse races, this was one of two movies
released in 1950 about man's first trip to the moon. First came
Rocketship X-M, in which, when the eponymous rocket runs out of fuel
halfway to the moon, it somehow grinds to a halt in the vacuum of
space. The craft ultimately lands on Mars (don't ask why), where the
crew discovers a bustling civilization, yada yada yada. Destination
Moon, on the other hand, is a tale of astronauts obeying Newtonian
physics. The dramatic climax comes when the crew realizes they don't
have enough fuel to make it back to Earth, and even after dumping all
of their unessential gear, one of them will have to stay behind. Trust
me when I say you won't care who dies, and that fighting some moon men
with deadly moon spears would have been a far better finale.
Hits
Realistic spaceflight: At its best, Destination Moon is an
astonishingly sober primer on the physics, and potential
complications, of space travel. When the crew takes off, an extended
sequence (they're all extended, really) shows the effects of
acceleration on their grimacing faces. When its time for a spacewalk,
the astronauts put on their suits and wait, and wait, as the air
cycles out of the crew compartment. It's all very scientific and
responsible-the educational equivalent of spinach slathered with milk
of magnesia. For what it's worth, the moon also looks remarkably like
it should. And when the rocket first leaves Earth, the crew counts
down from 30. There is such a thing as too much realism.
Commercial interest in space: The premise of the movie-private
investors banding together to build the first manned moon rocket-is
obviously dopey. But envisioning any level of commercial interest in
space was revolutionary in 1950, particularly when the pulp legacy of
serials like Flash Gordon was still so prominent.
Undecided
Nuke-powered rockets: Tempting as it is to criticize Destination Moon
for its nuclear-powered rocket, the potential for nukes to provide
both thrust and onboard power has been actively pursued for years. In
fact, a nuke-powered manned vehicle has been proposed for the mission
to Mars.
4. The Truman Show
Released: 1998 | Set in the year: Unspecified (probably an alternate
timeline)
The Truman Show is a kind of cinematic chimera. It's part comedy, part
drama, straddling the line between science fiction and modern-day
fairy tale. Set in a fictional world where the most popular show is a
24-hour-feed of a single, painfully average guy, there's nothing
blatantly predictive about the movie. But like The Running Man before
it, it's hard to deny the impact The Truman Show has had on pop
culture, and especially on TV producers. Arriving just before the
explosion of reality television, the intentionally over-the-top story
still echoes today. Purchased by a corporation as an infant, Truman's
entire life has been a televised lie, with millions watching every one
of his manufactured tragedies and triumphs. Mostly, though, Truman
simply lives, and the show's popularity is its straightforward
voyeurism. And, like Big Brother, Survivor, and every other reality
show on the air, none of his environment is actually real.
Hits
Reality TV: It's easy to chalk up the debut of Big Brother a year
after Truman's cinematic release to coincidence. And MTV's The Real
World debuted long before The Truman Show, in 1992. But whether it
actually predicted the sudden (and lasting) popularity of orchestrated
realism, or simply capitalized on it, consider this: in 2003, Spike
aired The Joe Schmo Show, which featured a regular guy tricked into
competing on a completely fake reality show. Unlike Truman, Matt Gould
could see the cameras, but all of the other contestants were paid
actors, playing the part of various reality-show stereotypes. While
Matt eventually got all of the prizes in the rigged contest, the
show's central running joke was in the same existential ballpark as
The Truman Show.
Misses
Weather machine: Dissecting the plausibility of an extended parable is
an exercise in missing the point, but producing a hurricane on demand
to keep Truman from leaving his fictional town is still pretty hard to
swallow.
3. The Road Warrior (Mad Max 2)
Released: 1981 | Set in the year: Unspecified
seemed to be crumbling, and marauding gangs were winning the war
against law enforcement. In the opening montage in The Road Warrior
(Mad Max 2), we find out why. Oil shortages had led to global war, and
the vaguely dystopic setting in the first movie was a paradise
compared to the dusty post-apocalypse of the sequel. Mel Gibson's
lonesome drifter helps a compound of survivors under siege from a
small army of bandits sporting leather jockstraps for masks and lots
reserves. The end of the world, it seems, is a sprint to decide who
can consume the very last drop of oil. Which is why, despite the
bizarre cast of characters and outlandish setting, it's hard to shake
the feeling that The Road Warrior could happen, or at least start to
happen, any day now.
Hits
Resource wars: Not everyone agrees that oil is running out. But it's
hard to dispute the skyrocketing price of crude. The extent of the
current crisis has yet to be defined, but nations are scrambling to
find new sources of oil, and to develop alternative power generation.
A report commissioned by the Department of Defense in 2003 warned of
the potential for military conflict over dwindling resources, and
British Defense Secretary John Reid made a similar prediction in a
2006 speech. Some experts claim that resource wars are already here,
pointing to the potential impact of water shortages on the conflict in
Darfur. And all political hand-wringing aside, if you live in Somalia,
or Darfur, The Road Warrior seems a lot like everyday life. With
roving warlords, the constant threat of violence, and a society in
tatters, the only thing that's missing is a hero. Because in the real
world, no one's really coming to the rescue.
Misses
Flamethrowers: This is a minor gripe, but if all fuel production has
ground to a halt, would anyone, even the fuel-rich compounders, bother
to use flamethrowers? Or are flamethrowers the flamboyant,
post-apocalyptic equivalent of driving a stretch Hummer?
2. Minority Report
Released: 2002 | Set in the year: 2054
Back in the hoary old days of Tom Cruise's superstardom, Minority
Report was just another box office home run. The story was neo-noir,
with a detective on the run for a murder he hasn't yet committed. But
the convoluted plot line, full of psychic visions and nonpsychic
betrayals, isn't what most people remember about this movie. They
remember that scene where Cruise whips through images and data with
his hands, and the creepy holographic ads that yelp from cereal boxes
and greet you by name at the Gap. Minority Report is a vision of a
sleek future that feels plausible, full of believable-looking gadgets
and essentially free of all violent crime. The pushy ads and unnerving
psychics are just part of the package.
Hits
Display technology: When we first saw Microsoft's innovative
multitouch interface, Surface, I said what everyone says. "It's just
like Minority Report." And it's what people say about Jeff Han's
larger, wall-mounted touchscreens, watching him deftly shuffle through
windows with his fingers. Microsoft is fine with the association-Han
is not. He points out that, since Cruise's character is dealing with
holographic images floating around himself, the interface lacks the
tactile feedback of tapping and sliding your hands across a screen.
That might be the case, but between Han, Microsoft and the iPhone,
touch-based computing is here to stay. And 3D displays, which were a
key trend at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, are also on the
verge of commercial viability. I'm not predicting a holographic,
gesture-controlled computer in the near future, or even the less
sophisticated holographic ads and camcorder footage that shows up in
the movie. But if Surface is already available in 2008, it's hard to
imagine that we'll be using mice and 2D monitors in 2054.
Self-driving cars: Adaptive braking and autonomous cruise control are
already a reality for luxury cars. So in nearly 50 years, will cars
reach full autonomy? Scientists and automakers would argue that a
driverless world is a significantly safer and less congested one, and
that incremental improvements will eventually add up to robotic
chauffeurs. The head of Stanford's DARPA Urban Challenge team, which
placed second in the driverless race, predicts self-driven cars by
2030. That deadline might feel a little tight, but 2054 is much more
forgiving.
Misses
Precognition: Without getting into a debate about whether psychic
powers exist, here are some facts. Parapsychology has all but
disappeared from academia in the United States, and is on a downward
slide overseas. There is no significant government funding for any
experiments related to psychic phenomenon. In other words, whatever
you may or may not believe, state-sponsored precognition doesn't
exist. To assume that the next two decades will see a sudden
breakthrough in observable psychic ability, as well as the
bureaucratic and budgetary momentum to install those psychics as part
of a crime-prevention initiative, is about as far-fetched as believing
that future presidential administrations will start relying on Ouija
boards.
Maglev cars: Self-driving cars make sense. But magnetically levitating
cars that climb buildings? It makes for a swell video-game-ish action
scene, but has little to do with actual maglev technology, which is
progressing at a glacial pace.
Undecided
Jet packs: It's a sad fact of life, but the jet-pack industry is a
phantom market. That could change, however, if enough people risk
their incredibly rich and/or stupid lives in the coming years to allow
jet-pack makers to improve on the basic design. So if jet packs were
to, pun intended, take off right this minute, or within the next
couple of years, it's possible that by 2054 they would be
fuel-efficient enough to stay airborne as long as the ones in this
movie, and light enough to not blow your ACL every time you land. It
probably won't happen, but it could. And we all want it to, so it
should.
Iris scans: The mandatory, frequent iris scans, which serve as a
security tool as well as a marketing one (the Gap holo-greeter has
specific suggestions for Cruise's characters, based on the shopping
history associated with his eyeballs) are completely feasible, given
the increasing high-tech scrutiny of Americans. However, its more
likely that the technology will have at least some failure rate,
similar to tag-detection systems at retail stores, acting more as an
aid to security personnel than a self-contained security measure.
E-paper: The wirelessly updated e-paper newspapers are considerably
prettier and more flexible than the Kindle, but that technology could
easily become commonplace within the movie's timeline. But if
holographic technology is as advanced as it appears to be, why bother
with any tangible display surface?
1. Gattaca
Released: 1997 | Set in the year: Unspecified
The mark of a truly prescient sci-fi film is when, after stumbling
over a lengthy description of the complex moral dimensions surrounding
a given topic, you realize you've been wasting your time. "Oh, right.
It's like Gattaca." Since this slow-burn cult classic was released,
the murky bioethics of genetic profiling have snapped into focus.
Relegated to the status of "in-valid" due to a subpar DNA profile,
Ethan Hawke's protagonist sets up a complicated identity-swapping
scheme to secure a spot as an astronaut. The technology on display in
increasingly relevant. I should also point out that the writer and
director of Gattaca, Andrew Niccol, wrote the screenplay for one of my
other picks, The Truman Show. It's not that I'm a Niccol groupie, but
he seems to have a knack for getting to some of the biggest issues of
our time, just barely ahead of schedule.
Hits
Genetic profiling: The fear factor has been working the edges for
years: Will the babies of tomorrow be selectively bred for certain
traits? Is eliminating Down syndrome worth the ethical dilemma of
allowing parents to choose their child's gender? Still, what Gattaca
poses is an even more plausible crisis: If we can use genes to find
out who's biologically suited to specific tasks, and to calculate
estimated life spans for every newborn, how would that reorganize our
society? If, for example, we knew that the odds were against a given
presidential candidate to survive a single term in office, would
anyone vote for him or her? And, as British authorities have recently
proposed, if we can identify the genes associated with criminal
behavior, why not test every single child, and create a pre-emptive
database of would-be offenders? Genetic profiling can clearly be
abused, but it could also save lives. Scientists are currently working
to identify which genes indicate an increased chance of weight gain,
which could help fend off obesity for future generations. But is it
worth the risk of saddling whole segments of the population with the
stigma of the dreaded "fat" gene? Genetic engineering is still
centuries away, but the opportunity to decimate free will, by way of
well-intentioned genetic early warnings, has already arrived.
Undecided
Manned exploration: Since Gattaca isn't set in a particular time,
there's no way to gauge the plausibility of the protagonist's dream,
which is to get his genetically inferior, possibly short-lived self
into space. His first assignment is to reach Titan, one of Saturn's
moons, which would set this movie way into the future. But since there
are no pop-culture references, and everything is so perfectly fascist
and minimal, Gattaca is adrift in its own timeline. It's wherever you
want it to be, which is one of the reasons it's so successful in its
sci-fi ambitions.
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