Science Fiction

From the detection of gravitational waves generated in space over a billion years ago, to discoveries in genetics here on Earth, we've collected the most compelling science breakthroughs and advances of 2016.

In 2017, two solar eclipses crossed the planet. Millions were awestruck as the earth, moon, and sun aligned, casting watchers into total darkness. America experienced the most extensive total eclipse, lasting ninety straight minutes, visible along a path pinpointed by NASA scientists.

Two unpopular teenagers, Gary Wallace and Wyatt Donnelly, fail at all attempts to be accepted by their peers. Their desperation to be liked leads them to "create" a woman via their computer.

What once was just imagination is now real; what was once the distant future is now around the corner. The "Science Fiction" of the past has now simply become "Science". And the science of the future was strangely prophesied by a group of visionaries whose dreams once may have deemed them renegades and "mad scientists," have become reality! In 1950, the term "Robotics" was coined by author Isaac Asimov in his book I.ROBOT — and our collective imagination reeled.

Mark Kermode continues his fresh and very personal look at the art of cinema by examining the techniques and conventions behind classic film genres, uncovering the ingredients that keep audiences coming back for more. This time Mark explores the most visionary of all genres - science fiction, and shows how film-makers have risen to the challenge of making the unbelievable believable. Always at the forefront of cinema technology, science fiction films have used cutting-edge visual effects to transport us to other worlds or into the far future. But as Mark shows, it's not just about the effects. Films as diverse as 2001, the Back to the Future trilogy and Blade Runner have used product placement and commercial brand references to make their future worlds seem more credible. The recent hit Arrival proved that the art of film editing can play with our sense of past and future as well as any time machine. Meanwhile, films such as Silent Running and WALL-E have drawn on silent era acting techniques to help robot characters convey emotion. And District 9 reached back to Orson Welles by using news reporting techniques to render an alien visitation credible. Mark argues that for all their spectacle, science fiction films ultimately derive their power from being about us. They take us to other worlds and eras, and introduce us to alien and artificial beings, in order to help us better understand our own humanity.

Set in the future in a time of interplanetary colonization, an unlikely pair race against an impending global crisis and are confronted by the monsters that live inside us all.

Explore the world of the seemingly impossible with the all-new series SCI FI SCIENCE. Hosted by internationally-renowned physicist and co-founder of string field theory, Dr. Michio Kaku, this series poses the idea that science fiction may not be so far from science fact. Examine topics that currently seem so far outďż˝ of the realm of possibility, such as invisibility cloaks, teleportation, time travel and more.