influencing the psyches of the ship's crew. Writing and scientific inaccuracy Screenwriter Alex Garland was inspired to write Sunshine based on scientific ideas about the heat death of the universe. Garland had wondered about what would result from the Sun's death after reading in an American scientific periodical "an article projecting the future of mankind from a physics-based, atheist perspective". Garland said of the project: "What interested me was the idea that it could get to a point when the entire planet's survival rests on the shoulders of one man, and what that would do to his head." Garland brought the script to director Danny Boyle, who enthusiastically took up the project due to his long-time desire to direct a science fiction film set in space. Boyle and Garland worked on the script for a year, creating 35 drafts in their experimenting. Boyle also considered the story of Sunshine as a counterintuitive approach for the contemporary issue of global warming, with the death of the Sun being a threat. Originally, Sunshine was scripted to begin with a voiceover talking about how parents tell their children not to look into the Sun, but once told, the children would be compelled to look. Boyle described the Sun as a godlike personality in the film, creating a psychological dimension for the astronauts due to its scale and power. The director also described the film's villain as based on light, explaining: "That's quite a challenge because the way you generate fear in cinema is darkness." The director also sought to have the characters experience a psychological journey in which each person is worn mentally, physically, and existentially and is experiencing doubt in their faiths. To capture the dangers of the voyage that the crew members went through, the director cited Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything as influential in "articulating the universe's power". The story was also written in part to reflect the brilliance and "necessary arrogance" of real life science when the world's scientists are presented with the crisis that threatens Earth. The time period of the story, 50 years in the future, was chosen to enable the level of technology to advance to the ability to travel to the Sun, but to simultaneously keep a feel of familiarity for the audience. Scientific advisers, futurists, and people who developed products for the future were consulted to shape an idea of the