Unearth these sci-fi and fantasy gems

It’s a great time to be a sci-fi and/or fantasy fan, with big-name series such as Game of Thrones, Altered Carbon and Outlander booming on TV, along with the social media dominance of Outlander’s time-traveling love story. Besides big-name series, there are plenty of superb under-the-radar shows available for every kind of fan. We rounded up 10 you might not have discovered that are definitely worth your time. (We’ve left out zombie and superhero shows, because they’re genres all their own.)

If you miss Lost Colony

Your (probably) favorite Lost star, Josh Holloway, and Walking Dead alum Sarah Wayne Callies star in this alieninvasion drama on USA that just started its third season. The series is set in a dystopian future where the aliens have already won and humans live under military rule by human collaborators who serve the alien “hosts.”

❚ Stream Seasons 1-2 on Netflix. Season 3 airs Wednesdays at 10 ET/PT on USA.

If you love J.K. Simmons Counterpart

This Starz drama never rushes or drags. It’s more of a spy thriller that is lightly sci-fi, in part because Simmons sells its parallel-universe storyline so well, doing double duty as men from two different worlds. He plays Howard Silk, a low-level spy at a U.N. agency in Berlin who discovers a doorway to another dimension where the only person he can trust is his lookalike counterpart. ❚ Stream it on Starz.

If you like something, well, dark Dark

Often compared to Stranger Things, this Netflix drama starts off as a straightforward mystery about two children who disappear from a small German town. As the 10-episode season unfolds, the mystery is tangled up with the supernatural and the personal secrets of four families involved. ❚ Stream it on Netflix.

If you love martial arts fight sequences Into the Badlands

A companion to AMC’s The Walking

Dead and Fear the Walking Dead, this mystic tale is an underrated, pulpy good time. Set in a U.S. ruled by warring barons, it’s just as violent as the Dead series, with more stunning action scenes and beautiful sets and costumes. ❚ Stream Seasons 1-2 on Netflix. Season 3 airs Sundays at 10 ET/PT on AMC.

If you miss Firefly Killjoys

Love an irreverent team of attractive space heroes thrown together on a ship, dealing with romantic drama, and gunfights? Then Killjoys might be for you. This series follows a trio of bounty hunters (known as “killjoys”) in a system of four planets called “The Quad.” It delivers on the drama, action and (eventually) magic space goo, it’s also a keen commentary on class, race and climate change.

❚ Stream it on Syfy.

If you want something genuinely wild The Magicians

This Syfy fantasy, based on the novels by Lev Grossman, probably is the weirdest show on TV. It follows a group of magical grad students who discover that the Narnia-like fairy land they read about in a children’s book is real, and it’s causing havoc on Earth. Things get even zanier from there.

❚ Stream Seasons 1-2 on Netflix,

Season 3 on Syfy. If you like Black Mirror and Blade Runner Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams This anthology series based on short stories by Blade Runner author Philip K.

Dick is Amazon’s answer to the Black Mirror craze. The fantastic cast includes Janelle Monáe, Terrence Howard and Steve Buscemi.

❚ Stream it on Amazon.

If you love mythology and big feelings Sense8

The Wachowski siblings (directors of the Matrix trilogy) have crafted something vast, complex and intimate with this twisty sci-fi series about a group of eight strangers across the globe who share a psychic connection. The result is diverse, heartbreaking and moving, in addition to having a mythology so complex it can leave your head spinning.

❚ Stream it on Netflix. A finale movie premieres June 8.

If you’re into the mermaid trend Siren

This isn’t your average mermaid tale. Yes, Siren has many of the hallmarks of a Freeform series — melodrama, attractive young stars, a trendy hook — but it’s darker, bloodier and altogether more surprising. The series trades typical teen romance for real horror as it follows a murderous, ravenous mermaid who makes it onto land, to the dismay of humans.

❚ Stream on Hulu. Season 1 airs Thursdays at 8 ET/PT on Freeform.

If you want a female hero Wynonna Earp

Syfy captures the DNA of another great Joss Whedon series with Wynonna, which has strong Buffy echoes in its focus on a chosen one destined to save the world who quips at her enemies. Wynonna, played with acidic verve by Melanie Scrofano, is more of an anti-hero than Buffy, balancing her calling with bad decision-making. The series also boasts a cheery cast of supernatural sidekicks, and the relationship between Waverly Earp (Dominique ProvostChalkley) and Nicole Haught (Katherine Barrell) has a boisterous fandom all its own. (Google “WayHaught” if you dare.)

❚ Stream Season 1 on Netflix; Stream Season 2 on Syfy.

NETFLIX Children in Jonas’ (Louis Hofmann) town, where a wormhole lurks in a cave system beneath the local nuclear power plant, begin to vanish in Netflix’s “Dark.”

DANIEL POWER/USA NETWORK Will (Josh Holloway) lives in a future where the aliens run the show in USA’s “Colony.”