President Barack Obama shared his essential list of science-fiction movies and TV shows that will “expand your mind to new horizons” in the November issue of Wired magazine. It’s a list of titles that I think any lover of movies, especially science-fiction, would be intimately familiar with, comprised of classics like “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Blade Runner,” as well as more recent movies like “The Martian” which was maybe the most surprising on the list for me. I don’t know if it’s a film that really struck a chord and will be remembered as a classic in, let’s say, 30 – 40 years from now, the way most of the other films and TV series on the list are. It seems outclassed here, when compared to seminal work like the late Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” TV series which enchanted and enlightened me as a kid growing up in the 1980s; a watershed moment for science programming on TV. Or a universally-agreed upon pioneering classic like Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.”




But director Ridley Scott can claim 2 films on this list (the other being “Blade Runner,” which is now being remade/rebooted/sequelized/prequelized/whatever).

Obama told the publication that he picked Stanley Kubrick’s “2001” because it “captures the grandeur and scale of the unknown,” while he selected Scott’s “Blade Runner” because it “asks what it means to be human.”

Every title listed below is available on various home video formats. Have you seen them all? If not, you should!

1. “2001: A Space Odyssey” 1968

2. “Blade Runner” 1982

3. “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” 1977

4. “Star Wars” 1977

5. “Star Trek” 1966-69

6. “The Martian” 2015

7. “The Matrix” 1999

8. “Cosmos” 1980