If you need a break from the hustle and cheer of the holidays, there's nothing better than the ultimate escapist genre: sci-fi. This year has been a good one for those who like their entertainment off-planet or otherwise removed from our reality. We finally got a Predator sequel that isn't silly; the author of Station Eleven released her highly anticipated new book; Star Wars proved it's ready to grow up; and the production company A24 brought us one of the most exhilarating movies in years. There are even a number of sci-fi podcasts that can keep you company while you wrap presents or decorate your home with tinsel and lights. Here are some of the best sci-fi movies, books and shows as of late that you can binge over the holidays.

Science fiction is one of the most popular genres. It's ideal for people who like to dream about what could become real one day. However, not all technological advancements are portrayed as a good thing in sci-fi movies. In multiple cases, artificial intelligence is developed, or it builds malicious intentions over time, and it decides to take over the entire world or at least part of it. It often does this even if it means hurting those who built it in the first place -- the humans.

Prime Video is playing host to a vast range of sci-fi stories, from the absolute classics to the hidden gems more people need to watch. One of those is Coherence, widely regarded as the best hidden sci-fi gem out there. How cool and intriguing is that title? Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes is a low-budget time travel comedy from Japanese filmmaker Junta Yamaguchi. The wild premise: A café worker discovers his TV can show him what happens 2 minutes into the future.

Oscar Isaac gets quite naked, and then he gets quite dead. Timothée Chalamet, as Paul Atreides, falls in love with a girl, played by Zendaya, who's on screen for all of seven minutes. They barely speak; most of their courtship proceeds in visions and hazy dreams--the safest of social distances. Not that most real-world teens would even play Seven Minutes in Heaven these days. If they didn't already prefer to achieve sexual awakening as Paul does--remotely--then the past two years of Covid-19 protocols will have inculcated in their psyches the belief that a policy of No Touching is not only law-abiding but, for a lot of them, ideal.

Science fiction gets a bad rap in some circles for being a genre with nothing but a bunch of spaceships and robots. It's also got drama, action, and even some romance. It's also full of spaceships and robots and if you're not really into those things, well, the door is over there. If you do adore droids and contraptions that fly through the cosmos, though, we have something here that's just for you. Below is a selection of the best sci-fi movies you can currently stream on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon.

But at its heart, Back to the Future is a sci-fi movie--and one of the most perfect examples of the genre. Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) is your typical cool '80s teen who just so happens to pal around with a mad scientist, Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd), who invents a time machine. Through a series of unfortunate events, Marty ends up getting sent back to 1955, where he befriends the teenaged versions of his parents and does his best to dissuade his mom from having the hots for him. By messing with history, Marty's messing with his own future and slowly being erased. But he manages to right the past, find his way back to 1985, and give those fun-loving kids a taste of what rock'n' roll should sound like.