Happy National Science Fiction Day! Hope you can spend your last day of holiday break binging some of 2021’s best sci-fi before embracing that tomorrow is indeed Monday in the year of 2022 (yikes!).

We were blessed with some pretty great sci-fi over the last year, much of which I still need to catch up on.

Of course there was Dune, which if you haven’t seen yet, you should (even though I’m still partial to Lynch’s version but thoroughly enjoyed this newer version as well). The New Yorker published an insightful piece by Ed Park back in October that highlight’s the main strength of Villeneuve’s film — being that it harnesses one of the book’s most gripping hallmarks, which is that it makes teenagers feel powerful and necessary, when they spend so much of their time feeling the exact opposite.

Beyond Dune, WandaVision was a 2021 standout as well. Stream it on Disney+ and make sure to check out the excellent recapping the A.V. Club put out earlier this year.

Late out of the gate but definitely still enticing was Amazon’s new adaptation of Wheel of Time. While I’m not totally gripped every episode, I still have hopes for the second season, and am very much interested in seeing the world mythology more well established. Tor.com did some excellent write-ups on the first season, check em out here.

As for books, I very much enjoyed Ishiguro’s latest Klara and the Sun but there is still so much I have yet to read! I’ve bookmarked these best-of lists from Polygon and Business Insider and am resolved to dive in ASAP.

I also had the pleasure of watching Godard’s off-beat part sci-fi/part pulp classic Alphaville and absolutely loved it. Highly recommend if you like that sort of thing.

What was your best sci-fi experience from the last year?