This is not a list of io9's "favorites," or a compendium of people we think should have power. With this list, we've tried to reflect as accurately as possible who the movers and shakers are in the worlds of science fiction - the people who can command a big budget, or get a creative project produced just by signing their name to it. These are people whose tastes are setting pop culture fashion, and inspiring imitators across the globe. They're wheeling and dealing, controlling the kinds of stories you'll be reading, watching, and playing for years to come.

In addition, the list is not in order of power. All of these people are powerful in different ways, often in different industries.

JJ Abrams
Lost. Star Trek. Fringe. At this point, media polymath JJ Abrams can do no wrong on television or at the movies. He's rebooted Star Trek with a flourish, and even though FOX show Fringe may be flagging in the ratings this year, it's still garnering critical praise. Next up for Abrams: Two linked sequels to Star Trek and an untitled scifi/spy comedy series.

James Cameron
Whether you love or hate Avatar, there's no denying Cameron knows how to make science fiction into a rich, technically sophisticated storytelling genre. And he can command a budget of nearly $400 million, which is what many estimate Avatar cost. Next up for Cameron: More Avatar, and more technical innovations.

Lady Gaga
Like Cameron, Lady Gaga is another polarizer: You hate her or you love her, but either way she's unavoidable. With videos supporting her two latest releases, The Fame and The Fame Monster, she crafted an image of herself as a pop creation whose alienness rivals that of 1970s-era David Bowie. Dressed in outfits that belong on another planet, playing piano from inside whirling silver rings, Lady Gaga made sci fashion into just plain fashion. Next up for Gaga: Touring, mostly without pants on.

David Howe
Though he got a lot of razzing for the Syfy rebranding campaign, Howe has brought the once-marginal SciFi Channel into the mainstream with Syfy's blend of paranormal reality shows like Ghost Hunters, top-rated miniseries (Tin Man), and attention-grabbing series like Stargate Universe and Warehouse 13. Under Howe's watch, Syfy's ratings have gone through the roof, and the channel is now among the top ten most-watched channels among men ages 18–54, and women ages 25–54. Next for Howe: Several new series, including the much-anticipated Battlestar Galactica prequel Caprica in spring.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Senior Editor and the Manager of Science Fiction at Tor Books, Nielsen Hayden is a kingmaker among American science fiction novelists. Under his watch, Tor has helped turn writers like Cory Doctorow, John Scalzi, and Jo Walton into award-winning superstars of the genre world. Plus it doesn't hurt that Tor is re-releasing the mega-selling Wheel Of Time series. Next for Nielsen Hayden: More award-winning books.

Diane Nelson
A longtime executive at Warner Bros, Nelson was recently named DC Entertainment President, where she's going to take on the task of shuttling promising comic book properties into Time Warner's other media divisions - mostly movies. With properties like Batman, Justice League, and Wonder Woman under her watchful eye, Nelson is poised to set the tone for next decade's most anticipated (and, for some, dreaded) comic book movies. Our favorite Nelson quote: "I prefer to be known as an executive rather than a girl." Next for Nelson: Superman and Wonder Woman movies.

Warren Ellis
Ellis has long been a favorite among discerning comic book fans who have made his books Transmetropolitan and Planetary into cult hits. And his work on countless Marvel titles, as well as his novel Crooked Little Vein, have made him a critical darling as well. But Ellis' power extends far beyond the comic book world, and into the realms of subterranean fashion, philosophy, and trendsetting. He runs a very popular blog that routinely breaks news on the pop trends and weird news that feed the creative imaginations of writers, artists, filmmakers and fans. Ellis is one of the science fiction world's most influential tastemakers and opinion shapers. Next for Ellis: The movie version of his comic book Red starts filming in January, starring Bruce Willis and Morgan Freeman.

Charlaine Harris
With her Sookie Stackhouse novels constantly on bestseller lists, and HBO's Sookie series True Blood a critical and audience hit, Harris is the queen of vampire fiction for adults. She's also a pioneer of the supernatural romance genre, which has propelled science fiction and urban fantasy stories into the hands of women - and helped turn fantastical genre fiction into a mainstream obsession. Next for Harris: Dead in the Family, a new Sookie Stackhouse novel, in May 2010.


Felicia Day
Day, creator of the cult hit web show The Guild, was the star of scifi's biggest web sensation to date: Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog. Now she's crossing over into the mainstream, with roles on House, Dollhouse, and Lie To Me. Day proves that web celebrities can be just as powerful as TV celebrities. Next for Day: Appearing in some of the final episodes of Dollhouse next year; The Guild season 4.

Audrey Niffenegger
With her mega-selling novel The Time Traveler's Wife now a Hollywood movie, it's no wonder that Audrey Niffenegger got almost $5 million for her latest novel, Her Fearful Symmetry, which came out earlier this year. Next for Niffenegger: An art exhibit at Printworks Gallery in September, 2010, and a third novel, The Chinchilla Girl in Exile.

Alastair Reynolds
Joining the millionaire science fiction author club along with Niffenegger is Reynolds, a British author whose space operas have netted him prestigious awards and fans the world over. Last year, he signed an unprecedented 10-book deal with leading UK SF publisher Gollancz, for £1 million. Next for Reynolds: A three-book cycle that the UK Guardian described as "an African-inflected trilogy charting how humanity might go on to conquer the solar system and the galaxy."


Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh
Jackson and Walsh have been writing and production partners on some of the biggest science fiction and fantasy epics of the last decade, including the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Now Jackson is putting some of his muscle behind young directors like District 9's Niell Blomkamp, and it's paying off nicely; Jackson and Walsh have also been working with Guillermo Del Toro on developing two forthcoming movies based on The Hobbit. Next for Jackson and Walsh: Producing The Hobbit movies; a possible miniseries based on Naomi Novik's dragon warfare series called Temeraire.

Michael Bay
Bay exploded his way into some of the biggest box office cash in history with the incomprehensible yet lucrative Transformers 2. Call him a mindless detonation-whore if you want, but Bay's a money-making golden boy in Hollywood right now. Next for Bay: Transformers 3, set for 2011 release.

Ridley Scott
After blowing everybody's minds with his original visions in 1970s and 80s science fiction classics Alien and Bladerunner, Scott turned his attention to other genres, making incredible flicks like Thelma and Louise and American Gangster. But last year, to our delight, he set his sights on science fiction again. Next for Scott: He's got a prequel to Alien in the works, as well as plans to adapt Joe Haldeman's The Forever War and early SF classic Brave New World to the big screen.

Kevin Feige
As President of Production at Marvel Studios, Feige will control the vertical, horizontal, and asskickital on your movie screens for quite some time. Having worked as a producer on hits like Iron Man and Fantastic Four, Feige will continue his reign at Marvel with more films based on Marvel's characters. Now that Disney is putting its considerable weight behind Marvel Studios, we can only hope that the asskicking will get awesomer, not cutesier. Next for Feige: Producing movie versions of Thor, The Avengers, Captain America, Ant-Man, Deathlok, and more.

Image Metrics
When it comes to making science fiction look awesome, it's important to credit the power of a great tool and the people who make it. Image Metrics is an FX software package used for creating facial animation (often with motion-capture technology) and effects mavens love it. It was used to create effects for Benjamin Button last year, and this year was used for Avatar and the videogame Assassin's Creed II. Next for Image Metrix: You'll be seeing effects created with the software in the film Splice.

Neville Page
The creature designer whose monsters are sometimes more memorable than the actors who fight them, Page created the Cloverfield creature, as well as working on character and creature design in Star Trek (yes, that was his weird red monster on the ice planet), Watchmen and Avatar. Not only are his monsters cool; they actually help advance the stories we see them in. Next for Page: He designed the suits in the forthcoming sequel to Tron.

Patrice Desilets and Jade Raymond
As Ubisoft videogame Assassin's Creed veers into science fictional territory, game designer Desilets finds himself heading up the creative team behind one of the most interesting, complex, and fun SF/F games of the past few years. As producer on Assassin's Creed and Assassin's Creed 2, Raymond helped popularize the games and made them accessible to a broader audience. Next for Desilets and Raymond: Desilets is at work on the next installment of Assassin's Creed; Raymond is heading up a brand-new Toronto Ubisoft office, where she says she'll work on AAA games.

Sam Worthington
Aussie actor Worthington came out of nowhere to helm two of the year's most anticipated science fiction epics: Terminator 4 (where many argued he was the only interesting character), and Avatar (where he proved he can act even when he's turned into a motion-captured animation). He's poised to be Hollywood's next big SF action star. Next for Worthington: Clash of the Titans; producing and starring in comic book flick Last Days of American Crime; possible Avatar sequel.

Zoe Saldana
After stealing the show in JJ Abrams' Star Trek and kicking major ass in Avatar, Saldana is on track to be the next Sigorney Weaver: Able to play smart believably, and able to throw down in highly physical, action-adventure roles. She leaves everyone wanting to see more of her brains and brawn. Next for Saldana: comic book flick The Losers; Star Trek sequels.

Thanks to: Michael Goldfarb, Stephen Totilo, Charlie Jane Anders, Meredith Woerner, Graeme McMillan, and Lauren Davis, who all helped compile this list.

We caught up with Snyder, the director of the new Watchmen movie, and Gibbons, the artist of the original graphic novel, at Wondercon, where they were promoting the film alongside the cast. They showed about 15 minutes of footage from the film, including a big chunk of the film's beginning, with its hilarious McLaughlin Group sequence (sexy Eleanor Clift!) followed by the Comedian's murder and the credits over the montage of Watchmen's alternate history. And then Rorschach's investigation, and the two Nite Owls meeting up, followed by Rorschach's visit to Nite Owl and then jumping forward to Rorschach in prison.

So when I was sitting next to Dave Gibbons and Zack Snyder, at the press roundtable, I was struggling to come up with a question they hadn't already answered a million times. So I decided to ask them about the relationship between worldbuilding and superhero origins. The superhero origin is the often formulaic story of someone who either discovers superpowers or decides to become a superhero, and then confronts his/her heroic destiny while confronting some greater threat. And watching the first 10 minutes of Watchmen, I was really struck by how much it used the conventions of superhero origin stories to fill in the details of this alternate world - both because the superheroes are instrumental in spawning a different timeline, but also because we see the superheroes coming into themselves as the history unfolds.

Luckily, Gibbons and Snyder understood my somewhat wonky question, and their answers were revealing and interesting. Gibbons said he'd almost forgotten that originally Moore had only had plotted six issues for Watchmen, and then he found out he actually had 12 issues. So he decided, "We have time to do a bit more with the characters." The finished product spends a lot of time focusing on the characters' origins, says Gibbons, and "it's about why would you wear a costume, why would you fight crime." As much as it's about history and politics and society, it's also about where these particular characters come from.

Snyder added that coming to this story afterwards and recreating it for film, you get a "more pure experience" than starting out with a story and then doubling the length by examining more of the backstory.

In the traditional superhero comic, you get the first issue where you meet the superhero and discover how he/she became super, says Gibbons. And then in the second issue, you see the superhero fighting more villains and discover more of why he/she wants to fight evil. Watchmen mixes up both those stories into one seamless whole.

Another difference between Watchmen and the traditional superhero movie, according to Snyder: it's not the typical three-act structure, it's actually more like a four-act structure. Instead of a beginning, middle and end, it has a beginning, a middle, a second beginning, and then the end. In fact, at one point, he and the other creators were briefly talking about splitting it into two movies, and the natural break-points would be either Rorschach getting arrested, or Rorschach getting set free. Or you could break the story when Dr. Manhattan is on Mars, but that's a scary and bewildering place to leave the audience, said Snyder.

Other revelations from the Wondercon Watchmen panel and roundtables:

Ocean's Eleven The studio originally had an idea of doing an Ocean's Eleven type cast, comprised of huge movie stars, but that ended up not happening. Snyder talked to Tom Cruise for a while, but he was busy with Valkyrie, and Snyder was never sure what role Cruise would play.

Rorschach's Audition Tape Jackie Earle Haley was so eager to do the role of Rorschach, he filmed an audition tape in his living room, with a "slightly dodgy Rorschach mask." He did the scene where Rorschach is talking to a psychiatrist and screams, "Give me back my face!" Snyder was blown away and couldn't imagine giving the role to anyone else after that. He showed that tape to a bunch of people, until an embarrassed Haley asked him not to. (And the tape won't be a DVD extra, also because Haley didn't want to include it.) Haley told us in the roundtable that the tape was "cheesy" and that Snyder said he liked it for "the passion," which is a nice way of saying, "Dude, it sucked, but I loved the passion."

The Director's Cut The movie's "director's cut" is three hours and ten minutes, and will hopefully have a theatrically run in July. Stuff that didn't make the cut includes extra violence, more blue nudity, Hollis Mason's death, and some other "bits and bobs." Snyder actually included some extra "blue nudity" in his movie, to give Warners something to trim out of the movie. He had a whole "blue penis" meeting with Warner Bros. where they asked him to include a bit less of Dr. Manhattan's wang. "I don't think anybody's going to feel they were cheated, either of violence or of blue nudity," Snyder said of the theatrical version.

The Original Script The script that the studio gave Snyder, when he first agreed to do the movie, ended with Nite Owl killing Ozymandias by crashing the Owl-ship into him via remote control. Nite Owl even says a cool catch phrase immediately afterwards.

Nite Owl's Formula. To play Nite Owl II, Patrick Wilson gained 20 pounds, and then struggled to keep them on during all the fight training he had to do. He ate tubs of GNC formula that's pure calories, and also tons of ice cream.

What you're seeing here is the launch on December 20 of the Ariane rocket from Kourou space center in French Guiana. Its payload was two Eutelsat communications satellites, Hot Bird 9 and W2M. Hot Bird 9 will beam television signals to Europe, the Middle East and North Africa while W2M will service central and eastern Europe as well as Indian Ocean islands.

We're sleeping today. But we'll be back tomorrow!

If you need a little reading material, check out the io9 2008 year in review!

Photo via MARTIN/AFP/Getty Images.

A Giant Monster Will Destroy New York (Cloverfield (2008)): On Saturday, May 23, a giant monster, probably of extraterrestrial origin, will tear through New York. It will also carry with it a set of killer parasites. At the time of the initial attack, the monster will be a mere newborn, suggesting that this first round of destruction is just the beginning.

We Will Perfect Time Travel and Upload Our Consciousness to Computers (Freejack (1992)): In 2009, we will use time travel to steal bodies from the past moments before death. The still-living bodies will then be sold to the highest bidder, who may have already uploaded their consciousness to a machine. The lucky buyer will then take over the stolen body and start life anew.

Artificial Intelligence Will Run Our Lives (Silver Hawk (2004)): In 2009, Professor Ho Chung will develop a wearable AI that will improve our very existence. The device will detect our every vital sign, every whim, and every need, and a robot attendant will provide us with food and drink, instruct us to exercise, or whatever else we require. And, of course, an evil fellow with a British accent will try to use it to take over the world.

President Cheney Will Pass the Patriot Act III (Death of a President (2006)): After the assassination of President Bush in 2006, blame for his death was erroneously laid upon a Syrian-born man. President Cheney authorized attacks against Syria and Iran and was reelected, Tony Blair stepped down to join Cheney’s Anti-Assassination Commission, and misery climbed along with gas prices. (You don't remember any of this?) Next year, Cheney will go to war with Cuba over the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, extend surveillance over Iranian and Arab Americans, and convince Congress to pass a new version of the Patriot Act.

Americans Will Struggle Through a Post-Apocalyptic Existence (The Postman by David Brin (1985)): Seventeen years after an apocalyptic event, Americans will continue to live without a postal service, radio system, or central government. Instead, they will live in isolated communities, waiting for signs of civilization's return. And, in 2009, a man in a postal uniform will start visiting these communities, carrying with him what appears to be a letter from the provisional government with promises for a better future.

The World Will Face Life Without Oil (We Were Warned: Tomorrow’s Oil Crisis (2008)): In September 2009, a Category 5 hurricane will demolish the oil drilling an delivery systems in Texas. Three days later, a terrorist group will attack Saudi Arabia’s largest oil refineries, choking off much of the world’s supply of oil. Faced with a global energy crisis, the world’s governments will race to find new sources of oil and explore alternative forms of energy.

America’s Computer Systems Will Be Destroyed (Dark Angel (2000)): On June 1, 2009, a terrorist group will detonate an electromagnetic pulse over the United States, disabling most of the country’s computer and communications systems. The result will be devastating, and even a decade later the country will continue to struggle. Earlier in the year, a group of genetically engineered children will escape from a government lab.

Humanity Will Go to War with an Alien Race (The Super Dimension Fortress Macross (1982)): In 2009, the Zentradi fleet will arrive, looking for an enemy spacecraft that crash landed on Earth ten years ago. A panglobal space agency will have successfully reverse engineered and rebuilt the ship, and will defend the Earth in Space War I.

A New Conservative Party Will Displace the Democrats and Republicans (“From Our Point of View We Had Moved to the Left” by William Shunn (1993)): January 2009 will see the inauguration of a president from the New Right Party, a neoconservative party. But something will go awry during the inauguration ceremony.

Disaster Will Strike on a Commercial Spaceflight (Orbit by John J. Nance (2006)): American Space Adventure will launch the Intrepid on an orbital flight. But a meteorite will strike the ship, killing the pilot and damaging the communications system. Kip Dawson, who won a trip on the ship in a sweepstakes, will be left to steer the ship back to Earth, and the world will be gripped by his unwitting transmissions home.

A Virus Will Kill 90% of Humanity (I Am Legend (2007)): A virus genetically engineered to cure cancer will mutant into a lethal airborne strain. The virus will kill 90% of humans, mutate the majority of survivors into fearsome, vampiric monsters, and leave a small minority unaffected. Following the outbreak, most uninfected humans will be killed or commit suicide.

The British Government Will Begin Dismantling Public Freedom (Last Rights (2005)): After a record low voter turnout of 30%, members of the Democratic Consensus Party will take office. The new government will institute youth curfews, restrict the Internet, and manipulate the media to drum up support for their policies. But their real plan involves the Enabling Act, which will suspend normal parliamentary procedure and allow them to pass even more radical policies.

The Large Hadron Collider Will Cause All of Humanity to Experience a Flashforward (Flash Forward by Robert J. Sawyer (1999)): The LHC doesn’t destroy the universe, but during the search for the Higgs boson, all of humanity suddenly loses consciousness. During that loss of consciousness, each person experiences what their life will be like 21 years in the future for two minutes. Car accidents, plane crashes, and other disasters will also occur as a result of the simultaneous blackout.

Korea Nationalists Will Try to Change the Timeline (2009 – Lost Memories (2002)): In an alternate timeline, Japanese Prime Minister Ito Hirobumi was not assassinated in 1909, which leads to a chain of events in which Japan allies with the US in World War II and Korea remains part of Japan. In 2009, a group of pro-Korean nationalists will attempt to find an artifact that will let them travel back in time and alter the timeline to allow for the creation of an independent Korean state.

Earth Will Encounter Numerous Alien Threats (The Whoniverse (2007-2008)): The Doctor and his companions, the team at Torchwood, and Sarah Jane Smith will all deal with various and sundry alien threats to Earth. Among other events, Earth will be stolen from its orbit, the Master will conquer the entire planet, and the Sontarans will try to destroy humanity. But many of these events will be retroactively averted or hidden from the general populace.