THE VIDEO SHELF · science fiction short film
They're Made Out Of Meat
A 2004 short film adaptation of Terry Bisson's story "They're Made Out of Meat", in which aliens discuss the astonishing discovery of meat-based intelligent life. It stars Tom Noonan and Ben Bailey.
Why HN readers recommended it
HN points to it as the best filmed version of the story whenever aliens or the nature of intelligence come up.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- Stephen O'Regan
- Topic
- science fiction short film
- Format
- other
- Level
- general
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 2
- HN mentions in dataset
- 4
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2023–2026
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
I always liked the idea and think O'Reagan's short is the best take on it. A black and white version set in Les Deux Magots, Sartre and Beauvoir at a table in the background, would be nice. [LINK] [VIDEO]
Borrible on Hacker News · 2023-05
In Alien Supercivilizations Absent from 100k Nearby Galaxies (2015)Great short film version: [VIDEO] I do wonder sometimes if someone out there is waiting for something actually intelligent to emerge down here.
api on Hacker News · 2026-04
In They're Made Out of Meat (1991)
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.