If you can stomach the 139 minute run time (you may want to plan an intermission) with bouts of no dialogue, you'll find an extremely influential work that set the tone of the genre for decades to follow. Many modern titles still pull their inspiration from here, like Dead Space's black markers bearing resemblance to the monoliths, and a litany of rogue AIs mirroring HAL 9000's personality. The musical score is incredible and the visual effects have aged gracefully. I would recommend it to anyone interested in a thoughtful trip through the quiet emptiness of space.

"No one can imitate Dunsany, and probably everyone who's ever read him has tried." -- C. L. Moore, letter to H. P. Lovecraft, 1936 The chief of the gods has created the world and fallen asleep to the beat of his drummer, leaving the small gods to play games with the lives of mortals. Dunsany's earliest work comes in an easily digestible collection of short stories. You'll find the literary origin of many fantasy concepts that are commonplace today, which influenced writers like Lovecraft and Tolkien.