David Cronenberg has directed more than 20 feature films in a wide variety of genres, but he remains best known for provocative '80s sci-fi films like The Fly and Videodrome. Humor writer Tom Gerencer is a lifelong fan of Cronenberg's artistic vision. "He is an absolute genius, and he has merged that with an absolute mastery of craft," Gerencer says in Episode 533 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "Often you see one or the other. You see someone who's very workmanlike and can produce a good movie, or you see someone who is a genius and is just all over the place, and there are good ones and bad ones. But he is both, and that's rare."

The 1970s were one of the most overtly political decades for science fiction filmmaking. Humor writer Tom Gerencer grew up watching movies such as Logan's Run, Silent Running, and Beneath the Planet of the Apes, all of which contain clear political messages. "We were watching industrialization do what it's continued to do now, getting worse and worse and worse, and we had a lot of voices back then saying, 'No, we have to stop this,' and rightly so," Gerencer says in Episode 543 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Geek's Guide to the Galaxy host David Barr Kirtley was impressed by the continued relevance of many '70s science fiction movies, whether it's the idea of a deadly new virus in The Andromeda Strain or the threat of artificial intelligence in Colossus: The Forbin Project. "If you look at some of the issues they're dealing with--pandemics, AI, ecological collapse, youth culture, nuclear war--you would have to say that they did a pretty good job of honing in on some of the issues that were going to be important over the coming decades," he says.

The 1969 novel Dune Messiah is a sequel to Frank Herbert's sci-fi classic Dune. TV writer Andrea Kail is a diehard fan of the original Dune, but has always found the sequel disappointing. "Overall, as a book, it just feels like it's very unformed," Kail says in Episode 537 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "It just felt like, 'These are the ideas, and I put these ideas down, and here's a first draft. Now let's go back and fix it.' And then, no, never went back to fix it."

There's a big protest going on at Artstation against AI generated images. Personally, I think we, as a society, aren't ready for what AI-generated media will bring. As a writer, I'm terrified that someone soon will be able to say "write me a sci-fi novel about black holes" and the AI will spit out a 120,000-word book that some publisher might actually print and the average reader might consider "good." I labor over each word, sentence, chapter, and overarching story, and most novels take me over a year to write. And now someone will soon recreate this with a few mouse clicks.

In Steven Spielberg's classic 1977 movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, an ordinary man gets caught up in momentous events involving alien visitors. TV writer Andrea Kail says the film continues to fill her with awe. "It stands up better than most movies I've ever seen, including the special effects," Kail says in Episode 498 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "It's shocking how well it's done. It doesn't look dated in any way. I think it's a stunning movie."

In the 1980s the fantasy genre achieved unprecedented popularity with the release of films such as Labyrinth, The NeverEnding Story, Ladyhawke, and Time Bandits. Science fiction author Matthew Kressel says he loves watching classic fantasy movies like Krull, in spite of the slow pacing and dated special effects. "I know it's really cheesy, and corny at parts, but there's something about the world of that film that draws me in every time," Kressel says in Episode 486 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "I watched that movie with my cousin, who's no longer alive, and I have an emotional attachment to it. Every time I watch it, I'm back as a kid in that theater watching it." Humor writer Tom Gerencer says that for adults who grew up in the '80s, nothing can compare to the magic of watching Heavy Metal or Highlander.

William Gibson published his classic novel Neuromancer almost 40 years ago, but it still feels fresh today. Science fiction author Matthew Kressel has been a fan of the book ever since reading it back in 1987. "When I first read Neuromancer, everything I had read before that was golden and silver age [sci-fi]--Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven, Asimov, all that stuff," Kressel says in Episode 477 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "So when I encountered Neuromancer, I was like, 'What is this? Science fiction of the '40s and '50s tended to evoke a consensus future of jetpacks, flying cars, and domestic robots. Neuromancer helped crystallize an alternative view of the future, one dominated by hackers, drugs, and mega-corporations. This darker view, which came to be called cyberpunk, proved far more prophetic. "More than any other science fiction book that I can think of, Neuromancer conveys what the future is going to feel like," says Geek's Guide to the Galaxy host David Barr Kirtley. Science fiction author Sam J. Miller constantly finds himself discarding story ideas because he realizes that Neuromancer beat him to the punch. "The ideas are so dense and exciting," he says. "If you were to rip off half the things in this book and use them in a book now, it would be amazing.

Ursula K. Le Guin's 1974 novel The Dispossessed depicts a society with no laws or government, an experiment in "nonviolent anarchism." Science fiction author Matthew Kressel was impressed by the book's thoughtful exploration of politics and economics. "After reading The Dispossessed, I was just blown away," Kressel says in Episode 460 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "It was just such an intellectual book. It's so philosophical, and it was so different from a lot of the science fiction I had read before that. It made me want to read more of Le Guin's work."

Frank Herbert's classic science fiction novel Dune, first published in 1965, is still extremely influential. "I was worried," Kressel says in Episode 417 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "I was like, 'Am I going to read this and not like it now? Have I outgrown this book?' It was the exact opposite. I love it even more."

The long-running BBC series Doctor Who recently completed its first season with Jodie Whittaker as the titular Doctor. Writer Sara Lynn Michener says that having a female Doctor came as a welcome change of pace. "This formula of always having female companions, and always having male Doctors, it just made me think of Doctor Who in a certain way that wasn't very flattering," Michener says in Episode 343 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "It felt less real, because if this alien does in fact have the ability to regenerate in all of these bodies, why are we still seeing this very standard, very heteronormative pairing constantly?" Science fiction author Rajan Khanna also enjoyed Whittaker's performance, and found that this season of Doctor Who was the first one he was able to watch with his girlfriend. "She's tried to get into it previously, and just bounced off of it," he says. "And this season I was like, 'I'm going to watch Doctor Who.