What is the most prescient science fiction film?

The best science fiction doesn’t just imagine the next great leap, be that the rise of artificial intelligence (2001: A Space Odyssey), genetic engineering (Gattaca) or driverless cars (Total Recall).

 It also extrapolates how these paradigm shifts might affect us dumb meatbags.

 But could anyone have predicted how the internet would rewire our minds? The 1990s felt packed with cyber-thrillers clearly jazzed by this new era of interconnectivity. But most were hung up on visualising it via fancy goggles, such as Keanu Reeves in 1995’s Johnny Mnemonic, stumbling through the mean streets of 2021 New Jersey with 320 gigabytes of hot data sloshing round his head. Some sci-fi films are fortuitously prophetic – Akira predicted that the Tokyo 2020 Olympics would be cancelled back in 1988 – but others really work at it. In 1999, Steven Spielberg assembled a nerd herd of futurists and asked them to imagine what Washington DC would be like 50 years hence. The results were pumped into 2002’s Minority Report, which went big on yet more driverless cars, invasive advertising and gesture-controlled tech. Even if the precognitive crime prevention stuff was a bit woolly, Minority Report’s vision of 2054 still feels textured and lived-in.

 But is there an even more prescient sci-fi film?

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