10 Best Sci-Fi Movies Based on Short Stories

Summary

• Short sci-fi stories perfectly suit adaptations, providing filmmakers a foundation to build upon while injecting their own ideas.
• Influential writers like Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, and Ted Chiang can communicate fascinating concepts in a few pages, inspiring unique sci-fi movies.
• The best sci-fi movies based on short stories combine bold, original premises with relatable human emotions, building on the written word.

There have been plenty of sci-fi movies based on short stories, including some of the genre’s most influential classics. For whatever reason, science-fiction seems particularly suited to short story adaptations. This could be because short-form stories have always been essential to sci-fi literature, with plenty of important magazines showcasing the best work from sci-fi writers.

Filmmakers often take inspiration from sci-fi short stories. The best writers, such as Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick and Ted Chiang, can communicate fascinating original concepts in just a few pages. This gives filmmakers a basis to work from, but it also allows them enough freedom to inject their own ideas into the story. The best sci-fi movies based on short stories tend to combine a bold, unique premise with a lot of relatable human emotion.

10 The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953)

“The Fog Horn” by Ray Bradbury

After an atomic bomb test disturbs an enormous reptilian beast from a bygone era, it rises from the ocean to wreak havoc on modern society, laying waste to a densely populated city. If that plot summary sounds like Godzilla, it’s because the Japanese creature feature owes a huge debt to The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, an American movie released just one year earlier.

The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms
didn’t just influence
Godzilla,
it’s also partly responsible for the abundance of kaiju movies in the 1950s.

The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms didn’t just influence Godzilla, it’s also partly responsible for the abundance of kaiju movies in the 1950s. New techniques and technologies soon made The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms look quaint and outdated. It no longer has the same fear factor, but it’s remarkable how much of it has informed subsequent creature features, and the story of man’s hubris is timeless.

9 A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)

“Supertoys Last All Summer Long” by Brian Aldiss

Stanley Kubrick first bought the rights to “Supertoys Last All Summer,” and he collaborated with several different writers to try and produce a workable script, including the original author, Brian Aldiss. Eventually, Kubrick abandoned the project, and he allowed Steven Spielberg to take over. A.I. Artificial Intelligence is a strange mixture of Kubrick and Spielberg’s competing visions.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence
is a strange mixture of Kubrick and Spielberg’s competing visions.

The story of an android programmed to feel human emotions is a sort of modern-day Pinocchio tale. Many of Spielberg’s best movies are sprinkled with his trademark fairy tale magic, and A.I. Artificial Intelligence is no exception, even though darkness does eventually take over. Perhaps this is the influence of Kubrick, who never got a chance to see the finished movie after years of his own work.

8 The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)

“Farewell to the Master” by Harry Bates

The Day the Earth Stood Still has done more than almost any other movie in defining the visual language of the sci-fi genre, especially the design of robots and alien spacecraft. The silver-suited visitors from another planet belong to the movie, but the story originated from Harry Bates’ “Farewell to the Master”. The story reflects the Cold War anxieties of the era, with Americans unsure how to respond to their guests.

The Day the Earth Stood Still
has done more than almost any other movie in defining the visual language of the sci-fi genre.

It has become a cliché now, but the idea of aliens visiting Earth to warn them about the dangers of their division was propagated by The Day the Earth Stood Still, and Harry Bates’ story. Over 70 years later, The Day the Earth Stood Still rightly holds its place in the history of science-fiction, but it has held up surprisingly well. The ambiguous character of Klaatu and his unmoving companion Gort are just as chilling as ever.

7 They Live (1988)

“Eight O’Clock in the Morning” by Ray Nelson

Although it was met with confusion when it was first released, They Live has since been recognized as a razor-sharp social satire, which now seems shockingly prescient. They Live follows a man who discovers a pair of special sunglasses which allow him to see through the thin veneer of civilized society to discover the real world being run by aliens who force humanity to consume and keep quiet.

Ray Nelson wasn’t widely known at the time he published “Eight O’Clock In the Morning,” and it’s still his most famous story, largely due to the film adaptation.

They Live observes the grotesque intersection of consumer culture, politics and popular media, and the results are not pretty. The movie’s radical political message is accompanied by some brisk action scenes and a sense of increasing urgency. Ray Nelson wasn’t widely known at the time he published “Eight O’Clock In the Morning,” and it’s still his most famous story, largely due to the film adaptation.

6 The Fly (1986)

“The Fly” by George Langelaan

There will probably always be a debate over the relative merits of David Cronenberg’s The Fly and the 1958 version. The first movie adaptation was released just a year after George Langelaan’s story was published, and it sticks closer to the framework it lays out, not just in the basic structure of the plot, but also in the style of horror. Cronenberg’s adaptation is a much more viscerally disturbing tale of body horror, complete with some shocking practical effects.

The Fly
still manages to stick to the core ideas of Langelaan’s story, even though Cronenberg’s fingerprints are all over it.

The Fly still manages to stick to the core ideas of Langelaan’s story, even though Cronenberg’s fingerprints are all over it. The gore and disturbing effects are all designed to tell the story of a man who pushes away his loved ones as he succumbs to a horrifying disease. In this way, The Fly is far more universal and relatable than it first appears to be. The fact that Jeff Goldblum delivers one of his best performances is a bonus.

5 Total Recall (1990)

“We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” by Philip K. Dick

Philip K. Dick’s “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” is just 20 pages long, so it had to undergo a lot of development before Carolco Pictures finally had a script that was possible of being made into a movie. Total Recall was stuck in development hell for years, and it was eventually one of the most expensive movies ever made at the time. The combination of RoboCop director Paul Verhoeven and Arnold Schwarzenegger made it a success nonetheless.

Naturally,
Total Recall
dialed up the action as soon as Arnold Schwarzenegger became attached. His character is barely recognizable from Dick’s short story.

Naturally, Total Recall dialed up the action as soon as Arnold Schwarzenegger became attached. His character is barely recognizable from Dick’s short story, as he’s a much more hands-on type of secret agent than a low-profile schemer. Totall Recall exhausts the material of Dick’s story fairly quickly, and the violence spills over into a completely original third act, but the movie never loses sight of Dick’s message.

4 The Thing (1982)

“Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell Jr.

John Carpenter’s The Thing is not the only film adaptation of “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell, but it has had a much bigger impact than 1951’s The Thing From Another World. The Thing sticks to Campbell’s story much closer than The Thing From Another World Does. It was initially met with mixed reviews, but The Thing amassed a cult following, and it has since been reappraised as an important entry into the sci-fi genre.

John Carpenter’s
The Thing
is not the only film adaptation of “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell, but it has had a much bigger impact than 1951’s
The Thing From Another World.

The big difference between the movie and the story is The Thing‘s ambiguous ending. In Campbell’s novella, the survivors band together to destroy the creature, shortly before discovering that it was close to constructing a machine that would allow it to escape for good. The movie is much more pessimistic, as MacReady and Childs eye each other suspiciously in the snow, waiting for death to come.

3 Minority Report (2002)

“The Minority Report” by Philip K. Dick

Philip K. Dick wrote “The Minority Report” as an examination of Cold War-era paranoia and the rise of authoritarian crime fighting measures. Almost 50 years later, Steven Spielberg found it to be the perfect fit for 21st century issues in policing and mass surveillance. The grim future that Dick predicted seemed to be drawing ever closer with the development of new technologies.

As well as being a thoughtful exploration of the limits on individual autonomy within oppressive authoritarian systems,
Minority Report
is a white-knuckle thrill ride that still delivers the goods two decades later.

As well as being a thoughtful exploration of the limits on individual autonomy within oppressive authoritarian systems, Minority Report is a white-knuckle thrill ride that still delivers the goods two decades later. The movie’s use of wearable tech and insectoid machinery may seem a little outdated by modern sci-fi standards, but the story and its ideas have both held up extremely well.

2 Arrival (2016)

“Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang

Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival tells an unusual story of first contact. Rather than having the aliens obliterate the White House or abduct humans for nefarious experiments, they simply hover above the Earth and wait for humans to come to them. Arrival is about working laboriously through the language barrier between humans and aliens, but it’s just as captivating as a war between worlds.

Arrival
is based on a short story by Ted Chiang, who spent five years studying linguistics before he felt ready to tackle the story’s themes.

Arrival is based on a short story by Ted Chiang, who spent five years studying linguistics before he felt ready to tackle the story’s themes. Arrival‘s non-linear timeline ties into the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which states that language can affect the way that one thinks and perceives the world around them. In Chiang’s “Story of Your Life,” the heptapods impart their gift to Louise and leave before she can fully grasp why they came in the first place. In Arrival, their motivations reinforce the film’s theme of determinism and free will.

1 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

“The Sentinel” by Arthur C. Clarke

Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey remains one of the most influential sci-fi movies of all time. Like many of Kubrick’s movies, it was based on a pre-existing work of fiction. The key difference is that Arthur C. Clarke worked on the script with Kubrick, so he was allowed to shape his ideas from “The Sentinel” and a few of his other short stories into a movie that reflected his vision.

The story and the movie start off similarly, but Kubrick’s peculiar vision is more obscure than Clarke’s prose.

The story and the movie start off similarly, but Kubrick’s peculiar vision is more obscure than Clarke’s prose. By the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the plot has diverged from Clarke’s original story entirely. “The Sentinel” never reached the same level of critical acclaim that 2001: A Space Odyssey did. Kubrick is at his most inventive and visually ostentatious when dealing with sci-fi, making 2001: A Space Odyssey required viewing for any fan of the genre.