1 Thanks for not mentioning Planetes, the junk anime everyone brings up whenever sci-fi and anime are mentioned in the same sentence.

2 I was wondering why it was such a lousy list, then I realised that it's all DVDs released in 2009.  So some of the shows & movies are older, but they've had new releases this year.

3

Pete, you won't find me advocating Planetes; I didn't like it.

Pixy: Yeah, I kind of wondered why 2001 wasn't in there. If that's all recent releases, then it explains why there's so much crap in that list.

4 I am kinda out of touch with the world. Has anybody seen them and are they worth a hoot? I have seen the Star Trek movie and I thought it was pretty good (hey it is science fiction).

5

Banner of the Stars is excellent. Some people swear by Planetes, but I thought it was dull and uninspired.

Oh, you meant those live-action movies? We don't do that kind of thing around here; this is an anime blog.

6 I'm one of those that liked Planetes, but only on the second try. The first half-dozen episodes are hard to take because it doesn't seem to be going anywhere, and Hachi-maki is deep in his "my dreams are dead" phase.  Eventually some seemingly unrelated sub-plots start coming together, though never tightly, and it gets better.  Not really good, but better.

And its more horror than science fiction, but I can't let this discussion go by without bringing up Divergence Eve.   Other good series that are technically SF (some more than others) would be Cowboy Bebop, Shingu, and Nadesico, with Ghost in the Shell and Outlaw Star, as 2nd tier efforts.  Dennou Coil was intriguing but couldn't keep my attention. There's others, but I'm working off what I've seen.

I'd say this would be a great topic for a lengthy discussion thread but I'm sure someone's done it already.