Scientists' SF picks

Scientists vote Blade Runner best sci-fi film of all time

Alok Jha, science correspondent Thursday August 26, 2004
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5001709-103690,00.html accessed 31 Aug 2004]

The Guardian

Ridley Scott's Blade Runner is the favourite science fiction film of scientists, according to a poll for the Guardian. Second and third places went to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and the first two films of the original Star Wars trilogy.

Scott's film, based loosely Philip K Dick's short story, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, presents a dystopian vision of a future Los Angeles in which a policeman is hunting four illegal androids.

"Blade Runner is the best movie ever made," said Dr Stephen Minger, stem cell biologist at King's College London. "It was so far ahead of its time and the whole premise of the story - what is it to be human and who are we, where we come from? It's the age-old questions."

Professor Chris Frith, of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College, London, was impressed by the way the film used science as an integral part of its narrative. The Voight-Kampff empathy test, for example, is used by the police in the film to differentiate androids - who have memories implanted and are programmed with artificial emotions - from humans. "The Voight-Kampff empathy test is not far away from the sort of thing that cognitive neuroscientists are actually doing today," said Prof Frith.

Kubrick's 2001 was praised by scientists for its bold vision on the evolution of humanity. Aubrey Manning, emeritus professor of natural history at Edinburgh, pointed to "the brilliance of the simulations - still never done better despite all the modern computer graphics. The brilliance of using Brazilian tapirs as 'prehistoric animals'. The brilliance of the cut from the stick as club, to the space shuttle. Kubrick declaring that once tool use begins - the rest is inevitable. Hal: the first of the super computers with its honeyed East Coast establishment voice."

The poll also established Isaac Asimov as the scientists' favourite science fiction author. He was praised for making the science in his books understandable. "Unlike a lot of sci-fi writers, Asimov knew how to explain the science, and was a great populariser of real science," said Professor Mark Brake, a science communication lecturer at Glamorgan University. "But what sets him aside is that he was also masterful at documenting human responses to scientific progress."

John Wyndham, author of The Day of The Triffids, and Fred Hoyle, author of The Black Cloud, were second and third favourite writers.

Top sci-fi authors

1 Isaac Asimov
2 John Wyndham
3 Fred Hoyle
4 Philip K Dick
5 HG Wells

Top five sci-fi films

1 Blade Runner (1982)
2 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
3 Star Wars (1977 ) / The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
4 Alien (1979)
5 Solaris (1972)