With a wasteland as their canvas, a Master and his Apprentice set about turning rubble into planets and moons, asteroids and comets, spinning them in orbit around a symbolic Sun. So begins Ambition, a short film made by Academy Award-nominated director Tomek Baginksi in collaboration with the European Space Agency.
Produced in Poland and shot on location in Iceland, the film was just screened during the British Film Institute's celebration of "Sci-Fi: Days of Fear and Wonder" in London.
At the heart of the film is the Rosetta comet mission, but the ESA says it's a larger tribute to how contemporary space exploration is crucial to searching for clues to our own origins.
Commenting on Ambition, Alastair Reynolds said, "As a science fiction writer, it's hard to think of a more stirring theme than the origin and ultimate destiny of life in the universe."