GOOD SCI FI
📚 2025 On Deck
📚 2024 Reading
My 2024 reading journey went deep into the proverbial rabbit hole, where layers of reality lie hidden beneath perception. The prior year, I explored subtle energy and meditation through CorePower yoga Teacher Training. Ideas about subtle energy and the realities that we perceive, led me to string theory. Early in 2024, I embraced its concepts, only to later encounter works challenging its relevance, reflecting an ongoing scientific crisis.
Sara Walker’s Life as No One Knows It (2024) served as a key proof point, exploring alternative frameworks for understanding life and its origins, further highlighting the paradigm shift underway in science.
The 2023 UAP hearings reignited my curiosity, leading me to books like UFO: The Inside Story by Garret Graff (2023), Imminent by Luis Elizondo, and American Cosmic by Diana Walsh Pasulka (2019). These explorations, paired with classic speculative fiction like The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Altered Carbon, paralleled my inquiry into reality’s nature. Carl Sagan’s Contact deepened this reflection, inspiring thoughts on humanity’s cosmic role.
I also ventured into classic and contemporary works, reading Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, Walter Isaacson’s biographies Einstein and Elon Musk, and Crucial Conversations. By year’s end, I saw reality as a grand automaton — a software-like system with gears turning in clockwork precision. This hybrid view, blending physics, cognitive science, and computational theory, propels me into 2025 with curiosity and optimism for what lies beyond the aperture of perception.
✅ Life as no one knows it—Sara Walker
✅ Imminent — Lue Elizondo
✅ Altered Carbon — Richard Mogan
✅ American Cosmic—Diana Pasulka
✅ UFO: the inside story…—Garrett Graf
✅ Cat’s Cradle — Kurt Vonnegut
❌ Gödel, Escher, Bach—Douglas Hofstadter
✅ The moon is a harsh mistress — Robert A. Heinlein
✅ I am a Strange Loop — Douglas Hofstadter
✅ Einstein — Walter Issacson
✅ Sense and Sensibility — Jane Austen
✅ Crucial Conversations — Multiple Authors
✅ Elon Musk bio — Walter Issacson
✅ Contact — Carl Sagan
✅ Parallel Worlds — Michio Kaku
📽️ GOOD SCI FI LIST 2024
These sci-fi classics explore the shifting boundaries of reality and how they ripple through our psychology. Each film serves as a milestone in storytelling, technology, and human reflection, offering glimpses into the frameworks we use to define our world — and ourselves.
“Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977) evokes awe and fear of the unknown, while “District 9” (2009) reimagines first contact as a metaphor for segregation and xenophobia, revealing how fears of “the other” mirror our inner biases. “The Matrix” (1999) questions the nature of reality itself, introducing the now-iconic “red pill” metaphor for awakening to hidden truths. “Planet of the Apes” (1968) delivers a legendary twist ending, forcing a radical recontextualization of what came before. Both films challenge us to confront the systems shaping our beliefs and reflect on unseen forces defining reality.
“Ghost in the Shell” (1995) and “Metropolis” (1927) blur the line between human and machine, challenging assumptions about consciousness and control. The neon-drenched world of “Ghost in the Shell” foreshadows modern fears of AI, surveillance, and identity fragmentation, while “Metropolis” warns of unchecked power divides in a society driven by industrialization. Both films ask profound questions about humanity in a world where technology can mimic, manipulate, and replace us. “Children of Men” (2006) portrays a world teetering on collapse, while “Akira” (1988) explores youth rebellion and the dangers of unchecked technological power. Their grim visions of the future remind us that reality is not a static truth but a construct shaped by human choices, fears, and ambitions.
“Alien” (1979) and “Inception” (2010) confront the psychological impact of isolation — one in the vast emptiness of space, the other in the corridors of the human mind. Both plunge us into worlds where reality is stripped to its primal elements: survival and self-awareness. These isolating settings force characters (and viewers) to confront the deepest layers of fear, desire, and identity. From the silent majesty of “Metropolis” to the explosive rebellion of “Akira,” these films offer a lens to view humanity’s struggle with reality’s shifting boundaries. Sci-fi isn’t just about imagining the future — it’s about examining the fragile, shifting nature of reality itself, inviting us to consider how much of our world is perception and how much is truth.
✅ Alien (1979)
✅ Akira (1988)
✅ Inception (2010)
✅ Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
✅ The Matrix (1999)
✅ Planet of the Apes (1968)
✅ Children of Men (2006)
✅ District 9 (2009)
✅ Metropolis (1927)
✅ Ghost In The Shell (1995)
