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Your Nerd-in-Chief Barack Obama Made a List of the Best Sci-Fi Entities Available for Your Viewing Pleasure

President Obama Campaigns For Hillary Clinton In North Carolina
Photo: Sara D. Davis/Getty Images

Of Barack Obama’s many lasting legacies, one will undoubtedly be his place in history as our coolest president … who’s also a total Poindexter. For the last leg of his senior year, the president is nerding out with the folks over at Wired, guest-editing their November issue and penning a list of must-see sci-fi movies and television. The list, titled “TOMORROWLANDS, A Sci-Fi Viewing List to Expand Your Mind to New Horizons,†has eight picks, with Obama’s explanations for each. His selections include 2001: A Space Odyssey (“it captures the grandeur and scale of the unknownâ€), Blade Runner (“it asks what it means to be humanâ€), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (“it is fundamentally optimisticâ€), The Martian (“it shows humans as problem solversâ€), and Cosmos (“it fed my lifelong fascination with spaceâ€). Of course, not all of the commander-in-chief’s reasoning is so weighty; he also picked The Matrix because “it asks basic questions about our reality — and looks cool.†And as for one of the great questions of the fandom age, both Star Trek (original series only) and Star Wars make the grade — so much for that alleged Vulcan bias.

Obama Reveals His Favorite Sci-Fi Entities