I love hard science fiction. Actually all science fiction–Grace and I bonded over our love of the ridiculously cheesy Sarah Connor Chronicles this past year–but I remain fascinated by the darkened, measured futurism of Clarke and Asimov. I remember spending hours pouring over my dad’s copies of 2001, Rendezvous with Rama, The Caves of Steel and Ringworld. Phrases from these books formed the literary substructure for my whole life–and there’s something about the phrasing of those books, and the science fiction movies from the late seventies to early eighties, which remains poignant. The last survivor of a far-orbit spacecraft punctured by micrometeoroids, in the long months until rescue, turning as all listeners do, to Bach.

That’s why I enjoyed Moon so much. One man, serving out a three-year contract on a lunar mining facility, alone. No one to talk with save recorded messages from his wife and newly born daughter, and the company of a vapid, invariably rational finite-state automaton. If you haven’t seen the film, I strongly recommend it. It is best, however, to go in as blind as possible.