Jolt Country

Ben mentioned that there is a lot of space for someone to do the "people on a spaceship encounter strangeness in outer space" thing right. OK, there is space to do it right after Alien did it about 30 years ago.

Here's what I know of in the vein:

MOVIES
Event Horizon

Alien

Sunshine (haven't seen it)

Jason X (I think that is the Friday the 13th in Space movie. It was horrible, of course.)

2001 (haven't seen it all the way through)

Solaris by the Russian guy (haven't seen it)

Solaris by Soderbergh

Dark Star

BOOKS
Solaris (haven't read it)
The first two Red Dwarf books



... Am I missing some that are so good I should see them or so bad I should learn from them?

My ultimate goal is to make a game which reimagines Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now set in space.

To this end, Apocalypse Now is a spaceship strangeness movie worth studying, except the spaceship is a boat.

Also:

Forbidden Planet

Mission to Mars (didn't see)

Hellraiser IV

Serenity?

Mission to Mars was pretty horrible.

Yeah, speaking of Serenity, the episode of Firefly where they get stranded counts.

Ben, if this is your ultimate goal I shall not leapfrog you. I shall conclude my research.

This has been...

Exploratory Thread!!!

Dude, the world can stand TWO games about spaceships encountering strangeness. Personally, I would be fine if every game (and movie and book) created from here until the end of time was about spaceships encountering strangeness.

Please, let Exploratory Thread CONTINUE!

EDIT: And really, what are the chances I'll complete a game, much less a game with a scope that grand?

Movies:

Supernova (bad, I liked it okay)
Pitch Black (although mostly on-planet)
Saturn Three (but an outpost, maybe)
The Black Hole (a Disney classic)
2010 (And you said 2001 already)
The Last Starfighter (liked it as a kid)
Hellraiser: Bloodline (or one of them, anyway)
Space Truckers (campy Dennis Hopper flick)

TV:

Most Star Trek and ST:TNG Episodes
Tripping the Rift (computer-animated)
Lost in Space (and the movie, too)

Books:

Deep, Very Deep Space (young-adult)
Orphans of the Sky (Heinlen, if I recall)
A Deepness in the Sky (awesome, Vernor Vinge)
A Fire Upon the Deep (even more awesome)
Hitchhiker's Guide (how could you forget???)
Rendezvous with Rama (sort of)

pinbacker wrote:My ultimate goal is to make a game which reimagines Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now set in space.

That might be the film version of Cordwainer Smith's "A Planet Called Sheol". Screenplay by Harlan Ellison writing as Cordwainer Bird, directed by Ridley Scott.

No, it doesn't exist. But it fuckin' should.

Bruce

I thought Event Horizon looked really interesting, so I put it on my Netflix queue. Are there any other good movies like it that are sort of a marriage of sci-fi and horror?

Alien, Aliens, Alien3, Alien Resurrection.

John Carpenter's The Thing.

GAMES:
All the Star Trek licensed games.

pinbacker wrote:Alien, Aliens, Alien3, Alien Resurrection.

John Carpenter's The Thing.

Yeah but those are just space monster movies. What I'm looking for is serious supernatural stuff. Like in Event Horizon, the ship goes to hell. Is EH pretty much one of a kind, or is there anything similar?