The last time I took a survey, I got screwed over.
A few years back I participated in a survey for my cable company and it asked what specialty channels I liked. IE: Being a fervent NASCAR fan, I admitted to The Speed Channel and a few others. A year later my favorite channels were on their own special programming tier that I had to pay extra for.
After talking to a lot of people back then about that survey and what they told me, it seems all the survey did was tell the cable company what channels to charge extra for. Thanks Mr. Cable company. I’ll remember that one.
With that said: What do Blade Runner, Firefly and 1984 all have in common?
They topped their respective categories in a survey titled “Visions for Tomorrow” that The Sci-Fi Channel conducted asking site visitors to report in on their favorite movies, sci-fi shows and books.
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The survey tabulated approximately 20,000 votes and the top notches for film went to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, the top TV spot went to Joss Whedon’s Firefly and the book with the top honors was George Orwell’s 1984.
My faith in the fandom of sci-fi has been renewed and as you are about to see, it was a healthy looking set of top 10’s that came across the results:
An interesting observation is that only one film jumped across categories, and that was 2001: A Space Odyssey, which ranked 4th in films and 8th in books. (Shouldn’t that be some bonus ranking?)
The complete list of the results are:
Top 10 Films to Watch
- Blade Runner
- The Matrix
- The Terminator
- 2001: A Space Odyssey
- Jurassic Park
- Close Encounters of the Third Kind
- The Day After Tomorrow
- The Day the Earth Stood Still
- Children of Men
- Armageddon
Top 10 Television Series to Watch
- Firefly
- Battlestar Galactica (2004)
- The X-Files
- Heroes
- Stargate: SG-1
- Doctor Who
- Star Trek: The Next Generation
- Babylon 5
- Star Trek
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Top 10 Books to Read
- 1984 by George Orwell
- The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
- Dune by Frank Herbert
- The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
- I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
- The Stand by Stephen King
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
- 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
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34 Comments
Firefly at #1…nice. Surprised at The Matrix taking #2.
I’m guessing “Star Wars” wasn’t an option?
Also I love Firefly (massive fan) but there is no way its better than B5, Buffy, The X-Files, or BSG. Heroes also shouldn’t be on the list after one breakout season followed by a lackluster one. And hey… what about “Lost?”
I had a slight oversight on my part. When The Sci-Fi Channel did supplement the top 10 with their own choices, they did add Lost to their list of top 10 TV shows. I missed that because somewhere in the back of my mind, I made some internal assumption it would not, not be on the top 10 list. Does that make sense?
Of course, after a quick review, it seems they jettisoned Firefly from their list to put Lost in there. Again, I let my presumption guide what I saw… I feel bad. Sorry gang.
Again, I suggest their programming department take note from this survey and get the ball rolling in the right direction.
This survey gives them everything they need to structure programming the way their viewers want.
Anyone holding their breath on that one?
Couple tv shows that I would have put up there LEXX and Red Dwarf..
“Fire Fly” ? Please….”Buffy” ? Get out !
“Children of Men”,? Was it that good?
And what is “The Day After Tomarrow” , and “Armageddon” doing up there? That’s BS.
Anyone think that Iron Man (for example) sucked compared to the totally believable story in the Day after Tomarrow? Or the white knuckle (yawn) ride of Armageddon?
All I’m saying, retarded and biased voter base. Yep!
Where’s Forbiddon Planet, Planet of the Apes, the Original Time Machine I could go on and one with better films than those and no Star Wars. Come on that’s bs to the max.
I’ve yet to see a poll that completly matches what I like so go figure.
You make great points 790. Ah, nice addition, Forbidden Planet!
The survey was biased towards this odd goal they’ve created with this website, “online poll to determine the top 10 things to read, watch and do to save the world.”, so that focused the readers minds in what they thought would be in that category.
To that regard, where’s Jericho? I’m always suspicious of self serving surveys.
I’ve always had the same problem with polls and my own opinions 790.
Thank you, 790. I instantly spotted Forbidden Planet missing, which is a truly great scifi movie.
Also the Thing, and even Predator should be up there.
You already know what I think about Red Dwarf and Lexx.
As for Buffy, while I was a big fan, never saw it as scifi.
What about the Invaders, with David Vincent travelling around, trying to find people to believe him about an insidious alien invasion. Loved watching that every Sunday, along with Land of the Giants and other scifi shows from back then. May not have looked great, but they caught the imagination.
well Firefly ruled imho, good ensemble, good writing and the science/future was simply part of the story as opposed to being a vehicle for a special effects shop. Other quibbles would be how does the SciFi network continue to label “occult” shows as SF. While I too cut my teeth on Land of the Giants, The Invaders and Time Tunnel… The Outer Limits and Twilight Zone had a much more lasting impression on me, but your milage may vary.
For the Movies, it’s funny that nary a soul even mentioned Alien (or it’s spinoffs), Dark Star, or even Heavy Metal. Not saying that the latter two should be on that list, but Alien should be.
As for the books…..it’s as if these guys stopped reading in 1958. No Zelazny, no LeGuin, No Heinlein. Off comes the Steven King (it’s Horror not SF), see ya Aldous and lose Wells’ Time Machine and add Niven’s Ringworld, Zelazny’s Nine Princes in Amber, Weber’s On Basilisk Station or Heinlein’s Time for the Stars.
oh crap, forgot to mention farscape in the TV shows…..
tbh I hate the SF channel, for every right thing that they do (Eureka, BSG), they do two wrong ones (cancelling Farscape, all this “ghost” programming)…. it’s supposed to be a refuge for folks who watch and enjoy science fiction, not the monster of the week movie dreck that they are so fond of rolling out.
790 – you named the two movies on that list that left me thanking “???”. Might as well put Ice Pirates and Starship Troopers on the list.
replacements? Enemy Mine and Contact
Where are they? C’MON!
oh… and ALIENS (or Alien). Where the heck is ALIEN(S)!?
ALIENS, yes, where is that movie! And 790, stop reading my mind!
Kahless, what’s all this Klingon stuff doing in here? I can’t believe you learned how to speak Klingon? A klingon audio-book I had no idea……
Good pics Piratedan, Dark Star, Heavy Metal and Farscape for sure top notch.
On the Novel side, I would say The Stand qualifies for sci-fi. it was a bio-weapon outbreak story that had a spiritual twist.
Some other good books I’d reccomend.
Swan song, Lucifers Hammer, War Day and the Collosus series.
Event Horizon anybody…..I thought it was a great piece of Sci-Fi…
The problems with these surveys is that they are more in tune to what is pop culture than having anything to do with what actually represents the best of the Sci-Fi genre…I think THe Stand was one of the best books I have read from Stephen King but does that mean it’s one of the best works in Sci-Fi literature..absolutely not!! I thought the book I AM Legend by Richard Matheson was deserving to be on the list…Not the Movie…I thought that was too slow and poorly executed. Surveys are opinions and enough fanboys can significantly cloud any surveys final outcomes…Buffy…huh? The Stargate movie was certainly worthy to be there…Anyway the debate about personal choices could go on forever…lots of great choices were not included…How much of this will end up on the Sci-Fi channel now that they know what people care about in the genre?
Event Horizon is a very good scifi/horror, which pains me to say due to the director.
Also, if I was going to pick a Spielberg movie to go into that top ten (apart from Close Encounters) it would be ET, not Jurassic Park.
Alien would probably get in my top 5, let alone a top 10.
“Aliens” is my all-time favorite film. “Event Horizon,” on the other hand… are you guys nuts? I thought that was incredible piece o’ crap, guys.
Vic
Greenknight did you read the unabridged version of the Stand? It was like 800 pages. And if you liked Stand , you’ll love Swan Song.
And yeah I agree this poll is really just PR for sci-fi channel, a fun post however.
Also Event Horizon was really good. I found it very disturbing. The cast was great and it had a freaky twisyt “kaotic space” is no place I wanna go. I sure felt bad for Fishburne’s character at the end.
Aliens, goes without saying as one of the best sci-fi films. Vic have you see the Special Edition? They added about 30min to the cut and made it better.
There’s also a special edition of Event Horizon new on dvd. I believe it has about 10min of new footage. It came out about a year ago.
I might have to get that….?
Event Horizon trivia:
If you pay attention when they fist board the EH, look up to the top of the floating debris (in the hallway) and you will ether see a VHS tape or a DVD depending on what format your using.
Yeah I really liked Event Horizon. Got it on dvd a while back and still enjoyed it.
I think the cast is what carries it for me. Fishburne, Neal, Isaacs, Pertwee – some really good actors in there.
Metropolis should definitely be on the list. It’s the grand-daddy of films such as Blade Runner, Star Wars, etc.
The special edition is what I have. Just checked.Got it cheap too, £4.99 I think.
Good call on Metropolis. They did an anime version of that which was really good.
Speaking of which Akira and Ghost in the Shell would be up there too for me, but depends on whether you like anime or not.
790, of course… I own the “Alien Quadrilogy” DVD set.
Vic
(This took me 6 min to think up Hollywood dorks).
^
Escape from the United States….
Kurt Russell is back as Snake Plisken….!
Blamed for the breakdown of the world-wide power grid, Snake must escape from the US Forces that pursue him all the way down to Mexico.
Once Snake makes his way into Mexico he meets up with “past” associates, only this time they have insidious plans to invade the crippled US and destroy San Diego’s navel bases.
Snake was helped by some “friends” in San Diego escape…
Who’s side will Snake choose?
Directed by the master John Carpenter.
Rated R!
I would rather see that idea than a remake of a masterpiece.
Brolin, take off, you Hoser!
Oh sorry about that I meant to type that Escape from the US idea on the “Screen Rant Weekend News wrap up”
Wow that was stupid of me. ;-(
Vic,
In regards to Event Horizon, I never got the movie until I did a little background reading on what it actually is because in the movie you get the dumbed-down Hollywood version, some experts beleive that th energy field at an Event Horizon is so great that your thoughts can become reality…SO I guess the movie is really about how our thoughts control us and why that is a bad thing…A lot of the crew in the movie have bad experiences on that ship because a lot of them have latent guilt over what happened to the first crew and it manifests itself in the form of evil incarnations of their thoughts. I think it was brilliantly done but I would love to see a version with Homer Simpson letting his thoughts control the universe…Instead of worm hole we would get a…donut hole of course….
Cheers
790
I have read all of King’s books at least twice and some I read every other year like the Stand and IT( One exception noted below)..I really like the Dark Tower Series up to and including Wizards and Glass…Just after that book King had that horrible accident where he was nearly killed by the minivan(I think)..after that I got a lot of bitter from his writing and things just weren’t the same .. His writing style really changed and that nostalgia from books like Stand and It was lost to me..I was really disappointed by the last three books in the Dark Tower series and in fact to modify what I said above I still haven’t read the DARK TOWER(book 7) because of my utter and complete disappoinment with books 5 & 6. I have read the expanded version of the Stand and actually found it an improvement over the original 1970’s release.
Cheers
Stand, the classic tale of good vs evil. So Greenknight where do you think Capp Tripps ended up at the end ?
Have you read Swan Song, by Robert R. McCammon? Sheesh that’s just as good some people think its better than the Stand. Instead of a pandemic its a nuclear war aftermath story that will blow your mind.
That’s too bad about King, I did hear about him but I havnt read much lately. The last book I read was The Taking, by Koontz.
I wonder what King went thru, did he see a light or something change him in the hospital ?
Event Horizon, had one of the most chilling scenes I’ve seen in a long time. The scene where they playback the ships logs. Man that was some intense stuff. So intense that I don’t need to see that again. =-O
Books are really hard for me because their is so many. I think if I would have
chosen one it wouldn’t have been a novel but rather an analysis of the genre and that would be “Microworlds” by Stanislaw Lem. Probably would throw in “Movie Megacheese” by Mike Nelson to boot. Megacheese has a review of “Event Horizon” by the way. I would apologize on Mikes behalf, For the fans, but it wouldn’t change anything. If indeed SciFi intends to use the compilation for retread forget any of your favs that were expensive. Star Wars, block buster category. SciFi would spring for something in the “12 Monkeys”,
“Paycheck” category with smaller stars.
I guess I would have dropped “Brazil” in the bottom of my 10 movies. Gilliam had me rolling in the aisle with that one, and who says SciFi and Fantasy can’t be smart, married, and fun? LEXX anyone, 790 can be forgiven almost any sin for putting that series on the roster. Watched a couple of Episodes yesterday in fact; “Norb”+”791″. Sadly the Science Fiction series I like most today isn’t live but anime “Planetes” and “Ghost In The Shell SAC.” Both have a harder Science feel to them and have layers of complexity.
Thanks alot “The Old Man” I really appreciate the kind words !!!!
LEXX is my favorite tv show of all time!
I hope more people check it out.
If you have any questions ???? Please ask away.
790
When I first started reading King’s the Dark Tower series I was very excited at the prospects of what the future books were going to bring to the King universe. I read; before the Internet became the medium for discussions like we have here at Screen Rant; that King himslef had stated that he was going to tie together a lot of loose ends from his books and we would see the reappearence of a lot of his characters in the Dark Tower series..CHaracters that had been killed or sacrificed themselves or had played a huge role in his books…A few of the characters he mentioned were NIck from the Stand, the Priest from Salem’s Lot, Ralph from Insomnia, Stan from IT and countless others who fans of his universe would recognize immediately…There was going to be the ultimate showdown of good vs evil and the Dark Tower Book 7 was going to be were it all culminated…Now after King has his accident I wasn’t getting the picture that this was all going where he had initially said it would so like I said before I stopped reading the books and have never read THe Dark Tower…I thought that Captain Tripps would have made an appearance in the Dark Tower somehwere to play a pivotal role but like I said I never finished. Randal Flagg is there as he was in the STand so maybe if I ever finish it I will find out. Have you read it? If so how did you think it ended without spoilers please…
Sorry Greenknight333 but I didn’t read any of the Dark Tower series. In fact back in the day before all these distractions I read more Dean Koontz than King. Sorry I can’t help ya on
that.
On Tripps I meant where did you think landed at the end of The Stand.
Since he’s a fallen Angel he knows no afterlife so he was just dumped on that beach at the end.
I remember when I was younger I thought that was a lame ending for his charcter.
I didn’t realise King had his own version of the Avengers going….
(Extra stuff).
I did hear that the guy that hit King died about 2 years after the accident and I think King even went to his funeral.
The guy was very depressed that he hit Stephen King and they said that he slid into a depression and died of a disease.
King meanwhile, seems like he’s lost the spark?
if I had his ear I would tell him to write some sci-fi stories.
790
I think he hit one of the alternate reality threads that King said all emanated from the Dark Tower..Kind of like the DC Crisis on Infinite Earths..I Thought for sure he was going to turn up in the Dark Tower Series as a helper to Flagg but like I said I haven’t read the final book…
Of course !!!
Gheesh I should have figured that out myself from your last thread. (Idiot 790 !!!!).
Yeah your totally right on Greenknight333. Thanks for that info.
Closure….ahhh.
My god, how can that be an accurate list without
Farscape?!
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