[xkcd]

[Wondermark]

We looked at over 300 science fiction and fantasy television shows from 1970, the year after the original Star Trek series ended, to the present. In this chart, we list a few of the most iconic shows, but those are just a sampling of the hundreds we surveyed.

Then we looked at which shows on the air in any given year featured any one of the most common science-fiction themes: aliens, space travel, robots, time travel, and magic.

(Shows that contain multiple themes were counted once in each category, so Star Trek: The Next Generation would add one point each to aliens, space travel, robots and time travel.)

One thing the graph tells us is that the popularity of the different themes are increasingly linked as time goes on. Space travel and aliens are closely linked throughout the graph, since shows about space travel almost always include aliens, but as the graph transitions from the 1970s into the 1980s, shows with robots are increasingly linked to shows with aliens. This is in part because the more recent shows featuring robots and more recent shows featuring aliens are more likely to be one and the same, whereas in the 1970s, shows like Batman and The Bionic Woman would feature artificial intelligence but not extraterrestrials.

But it's interesting to note the way magic trends as well. In 1970, the gap between shows featuring magic and shows featuring more science-based themes is fairly wide, which may be related to the relative cost of producing the different types of shows; Captain Kirk required pricey sets and a makeup crew while Samantha Stevens just needed a film editor and the ability to wiggle her nose. But as audience expectations for shows involving magic become analogous to their expectations for science fiction shows, magic's peaks and valleys start to correspond to those of other themes, though supernatural shows may be a bit more resilient to overall drops in television spending.

The time-travel line is especially interesting, less for what it indicates about the popularity of time travel than for what it says about the variety of stories being told. Although time travel is sometimes the focus of a show (as in Quantum Leap or Seven Days), it more frequently appears in a handful of episodes of a show that tells a diverse set of science fiction or fantasy stories. Shows like the various Star Trek series, Lois and Clark, and even Xena feature the occasional obligatory time travel episode.

But the graph's most striking feature is the boom all the themes apparently experienced in the 1990s, and which now seems to be on the decline. It seems to suggest a huge investment in genre television shows (and perhaps in television in general) that we simply aren't seeing any more.

Interestingly, space travel shows were the first to go as circumstances changed, and although shows about managed to hang on longer, they, too are on their way out. Does this indicate that science fiction and fantasy shows are on the decline? Or does it represent a shift to less expensive, near-future science fiction with different speculative priorities, shows like Dollhouse, Chuck, and Fringe?

Here is a full list of all the shows we surveyed to create this chart.

Graph by Steph Fox and additional reporting by Alexis Brown.

David McCandless created this visualization as part of his upcoming book of chart porn, The Visual Miscellaneum. Here, he charts the temporal paths of different TV and movie time travelers (Doctor Who was omitted for the sake of sanity, though he hasn't ruled out making a separate chart for the Time Lord), and, just for fun, imagines what might happen if time travelers who landed in the same year happened to meet up (I suspect that, despite his ingenuity, Marty McFly would not fare well against the Terminator). McCandless did feel that his research revealed one key deficiency in time travel stories: nearly all time travel journeys he mapped originate and land between the years 1900-2100.

[Information is Beautiful via Reddit]

Click to expand the image below.

Chart design by Stephanie Fox!

Design by the amazing Stephanie Fox.

Mostly we've focused on movies from the U.S. and Europe, and we've included the living dead among zombies — so mummies are included, but vampires and ghosts aren't. Obviously as you look at this chart, you have to correct somewhat for the fact that more movies are being made as we get closer to the present, and (more importantly) there are better records of those movies with better tagging. So it's easier to research movies with zombies in them if you're looking at productions from the 1980s onward. In addition, there's been a huge boom in indie and low-budget horror movies over the past ten years, and that undoubtedly accounts somewhat for the giant spike you see during the last 8 years or so.

Still, even correcting for the fact that there are more movies being made today, you can see that there are distinctive spikes in zombie popularity - and they always seem to fall slightly after a huge political or social event has caused mass fear, chaos, or suffering. That's why World War II, Vietnam, and the current Iraq War are all followed by a zombie rush at theaters. Obviously, if you're going to look at these historical correlations, you have to consider that movies inspired by a real-life event aren't going to show up in theaters for at least six months to a year, so we've accounted for that.

You can see that most of these spikes in zombie popularity do seem weirdly close to periods of historical trauma like wars or the AIDS epidemic. Is there a causal connection, or is it just coincidence? You be the judge.

Chart by Stephanie Fox. Additional reporting by Katharine Duckett.

Appendix: Zombie movies we included in this study.

1910: 1
Frankenstein

1911: 1
The Mummy

1919
J’accuse!

1931: 1
Frankenstein

1932: 1
White Zombie

1933: 1
The Ghoul

1935: 2
The Lost City
Bride of Frankenstein

1936: 4
Revolt of the Zombies
Ouanga
Midnight Blunders
The Walking Dead

1938: 1
J’accuse! (Remake)

1939: 1
Son of Frankenstein

1940: 1
The Ghost Breakers

1941: 1
King of the Zombies

1942: 1
Bowery at Midnight

1943: 4
Dead Men Walk
I Walked With a Zombie
Revenge of the Zombies
Frankenstein meets the Wolf Man
The Mad Ghoul

1944: 1
Voodoo Man

1945: 1
Zombies on Broadway

1946: 1
Valley of the Zombies

1952: 1
Zombies of the Stratosphere

1953: 1
Scared Stiff

1955: 1
Creature with the Atom Bain

1957: 3
The Zombies of Mora Tau
Voodoo Island
The Unearthly

1958: 4
Womaneater
The Revenge of Frankenstein
The Brain Eaters
Misterios de la magia negra (Mysteries of Black Magic)

1959: 6
Invisible Invaders
Teenage Zombies
The Mummy
Plan 9 From Outer Space
The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake
Night of the Ghouls

1960: 1
Creature of the Walking Dead

1961: 3
Muñecos infernales (The Curse of the Doll People)
The Dead One
Dr. Blood’s Coffin

1962: 2
Carnival of Souls
Santo contra los zombies (Invasion of the Zombies)

1963: 1
They Saved Hitler’s Brain

1964: 7
Roma contro Roma (War of the Zombies)
The Curse of the Living Corpse
El Secreto del Dr. Orloff (The Secret of Dr. Orloff)
The Last Man on Earth
Monstrosity
Zombies
The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-up Zombies
Der chef wünscht keine Zeugun (No Survivors, Please)

1965: 2
Earth Dies Screaming
Terrore nello spazio (Planet of the Vampires)
Cinque tombe per un medium (Terror Creatures from the Grave)

1966: 2
The Plague of the Zombies
The Death Curse of Tartu

1967: 2
They Came From Beyond Space
Dr. Terror’s Gallery of Horrors

1968: 6
Night of the Living Dead
Dr. Satán y la magia negra (Dr. Satan Versus Black Magic)
The Wild Wild West: Night of the Undead
Astro-Zombies
Blue Demon contra cerebros infernales (Blue Demon vs. El Crimen)
Autopsia de un fantasma (Autopsy of a Ghost)

1969: 2
Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed

1970: 4
Night Slaves
Dream No Evil
El mundo de los muertes (Land of the Dead)
Santo el enmascarado de plata y Blue Demon contra los monstrous (Santo and Blue Demon Against the Monsters)

1971: 4
La muerte viviente (Island of the Snake People)
La noche del terror ciego (Tombs of the Blind Dead)
Escape
The Resurrection of Zachary Wheeler

1972: 7
Gli orrori del castello di Norimberga (The Torture Chamber of Baron Blood)
L’Etrusco uccide ancora (The Dead Are Alive)
La Notte dei diavoli (Night of the Devils)
Blood of Ghastly Horror
Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things
Tales From the Crypt
(Las momias de Guanajuato) The Mummies of Guanajuato

1973: 15
El espanto surge de la tumba (Horror Rises From the Tomb)
La invasión de los muertos (Invasion of the Dead)
La orgía de los muertos (Beyond the Living Dead)
El ataque de los muertos sin ojos (Attack of the Blind Dead)
Christina, princesse de l'érotisme (A Virgin Among the Living Dead)
El castillo de las momias de Guanajuato (Castle of the Mummies of Guanajuato)
Horror Express
Dead People
La noche de los brujos (Night of the Sorcerors)
La rebelión de las muertas (Vengeance of the Zombies)
Psychomania
Flesh for Frankenstein
Santo contra la magia negra (Santo vs. Black Magic Woman)
House of the Living Dead
Vudú sangriento (Voodoo Black Exorcist)

1974: 13
Dead of Night (Deathdream)
Garden of the Dead
Corpse Eaters
House of Seven Corpses
House on Skull Mountain
Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires
Non si deve profanare il sonno dei morti (Let Sleeping Corpses Lie)
Shanks
Sugar Hill
El buque mandito (Horror of the Zombies)
El pantano de los cuervos (Swamp of the Ravens)
Young Frankenstein
Kung bakit dugo ang kulay ng gabi (Night of the Zombies)

1975: 7
Macchie Solari (Autopsy)
The Dead Don’t Die
Frozen Scream
La noche de las gaviotas (Night of the Death Cult)
Lord Shango
Shivers
La Perversa caricia de Sátan (The Wicked Caresses of Satan)

1976: 1
Gou hun jiang tou (Black Magic II)

1977: 3
The Child
Shock Waves
La fille á la fourrure (The Porno Zombies)

1978: 4
Dawn of the Dead
Les raisins de la mort (Grapes of Death)
Salinnabileul ggotneun yeoja (Living Dead Girl)
Within the Woods

1979: 4
Zombi 2
Io Zombo, Tu Zombi, Lei Zomba (I Am a Zombie, You Are A Zombie, She Is A Zombie)
Phantasm
The Day It Came to Earth

1980: 10
Zombi Holocaust
John Carpenter’s The Fog
Alien Dead
The Children
Bloodeaters
Paura nella città dei morti viventi (City of the Living Dead)
Fiend
Virus
Incubo sulla città contaminata (City of the Walking Dead)
Más allá del terror (Further Than Fear)

1981: 13
Night of the Zombies
L’aldilá e tu vivtai nel terrore (The Beyond)
Heavy Metal
Quella villa accanto al cimitero (The House Outside the Cemetery)
Le notti del terrore (Burial Ground)
Dawn of the Mummy
Dead & Buried
Le Lac des morts vivant (Zombie Lake)
Frankenstein Island
L’abîme des morts vivants (Bloodsucking Nazi Zombies)
Kiss Daddy Goodbye
Evil Dead
Rosso Sangue (Absurd)

1982: 9
Aftermath
Creepshow
Raw Force
I was a Zombie for the F.B.I.
Wu long tian shi zhao ji gui (Kung Fu Zombie)
O segredo da Múmia (The Secret of the Mummy)
Pengabdi setan (Satan’s Slave)
The Curse of the Screaming Dead
Revenge in the House of Usher

1983: 5
Frightmare
Natas: The Reflection
One Dark Night
Sole Survivor
Zeder

1984: 6
Surf II
Night Shadows
Night of the Comet
Zombie Island Massacre
Frankenstein 90
Rocktober Blood

1985: 12
Hard Rock Zombies
Return of the Living Dead
Re-Animator
The Midnight Hour
The Dark Power
Attack of the Beast Creatures
Dead End
La mansión de los muertos vivantes (Mansion of the Living Dead)
Day of the Dead
Lifeforce
Warning Sign
Cementerio del terror (Zombie Apocalypse)

1986: 12
Zombie Brigade
Zombiethon
The Supernaturals
Loves of the Living Dead
Diamond Ninja Force
Deadly Friend
Nightmare Weekend
Goremet: Zombie Chef From Hell
Night of the Creeps
Raiders of the Living Dead
Zombie Nightmare
Abracadabra

1987: 14
Bad Taste
Evil Dead 2
I Was a Teenage Zombie
Dak Bangla
The Gate
Zombie 5: Killing Birds
Redneck Zombies
Killing Spree
La revanche des mortes vivantes (Revenge of the Living Dead Girls)
Zombie High
Video Dead
Zombie Vs. Ninja
Night of the Living Babes
Una notte al cimitero (Graveyard Disturbance)

1988: 11
The Serpent and the Rainbow
Return of the Living Dead Part II
Dead Heat
Waxwork
Phantasm II
Zombi 3
FleshEater
Zombie 4
Pet Semetary
Meng gui xue tang (The Haunted Cop Shop II)
Curse of the Blue Lights

1989: 17
The Laughing Dead
The Dead Next Door
The Vineyard
Curse of the Zombie
Beverly Hills Bodysnatchers
The Chilling
The Dead Pit
Blood Nasty
Zombie Rampage
Hellgate
Zombie Party
Working Stiffs
The Nutzoids at Cannibal Cove
From the Dead of Night
Ginseng King
Monster High
Night Life

1990: 5
Bride of Re-Animator
Night of the Living Dead
Voodoo Dawn
Demon Wind
Linnea Quigley’s Horror Workout

1991: 9
Chopper Chicks in Zombietown
The Boneyard
Demoni 3
Nudist Colony of the Dead
Teenage Exorcist
Zombie ja Kummitusjuna (Zombie and the Ghost Train)
Zombie Army
Zombie Cop
Zombie ’90: Extreme Pestilence

1992: 11
Brain Dead
Batoru garu (Battle Girl)
Netherworld
Waxwork II
Zombie Rampage 3
Pet Semetary II
Death Becomes Her
Army of Darkness
Urban Scumbags vs. Countryside Zombies
Dead is Dead
Zombie Rampage 2

1993: 7
My Boyfriend’s Back
Return of the Living Dead 3
Zombie Bloodbath
Space Zombie Bingo!!!
The Killing Box
Zombie Genocide
Drag

1994: 7
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
Shatter Dead
Shrunken Heads
Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead
Twilight Zone: Rod Serling's Lost Classics
Dellamore Dellamore
Gore Whore

1995: 6
La Cage aux Zombies
Legion of the Night
Zombi I
Zombie Bloodbath 2: Rage of the Undead
Voodoo
Zombie Holocaust

1996: 4
Living a Zombie Dream
Zombi vs. Mardi Gras
Avaruuden teurastajat (Space Butchers)
Frankenstein and Me

1997: 10
Plaga Zombie
Premutos: Lord of the Living Dead
Uncle Sam
The Necro Files
Night of the Living
Le Zombi de Cap-Rouge
Zombie Ninja Gangbusters
Striker Bob
Bryllupsnatten (The Wedding Night)
The Viscious Sweet

1998: 9
Bio Zombie
I, Zombie: A Chronicle of Pain
Zombie Cult Massacre
Laughing Dead
Tale of the Mummy
Into the Woods…
The Cabin
Hollywood Mortuary
Zombie Toxin

1999: 5
Hot Wax Zombies On Wheels
The Mummy
VS3: Infantry of Doom
Mutation
The Collegians Are Go!!

2000: 12
The Dead Hate the Living!
Flesh Freaks
Junk: Shiryô-gari
Meat Market
Prison of the Dead
Versus
Wild Zero
Zombie Bloodbath 3: Zombie Armageddon
Teenage Zombie House Massacre
Reign of the Dead
Heavy Metal 2000
The Horrible Dr. Bones

2001: 15
Cremains
Mulva: Zombie Ass-Kicker!
Biohazardous
Dead in America
Stacy
Meat Market 2
Zombie (zero)
Biker Zombies
Children of the Living Dead
Plaga Zombie: Zona Mutants
The Mummy Returns
Zombie Chronicles
Night of a Thousand Screams
R.I.P.
The Resurrection Game

2002: 9
Bubba Ho-Tep
Deadline
Cremaster 3
Mark of the Astro-Zombies
Necropolis Awakened
Resident Evil
Zombie Campout
Roni vs. Lincoln
Evil Night
28 Days Later…

2003: 22
House of the Dead
Beyond Re-Animator
Cadaver Bay
Flesh For the Beast
Maplewoods
Mummy’s Kiss
Xombie: Dead on Arrival
Undead
Graveyard
Corpses Are Forever
Noctem
Zombie Beach Party
I’ll See You in My Dreams
Gory Gory Hallelujah
Zombiegeddon
Night of A Thousand Screams 2
Necro Files 2
Zombie Night
Exhumed
Wiseguys vs. Zombies
The Mental Dead

2004: 29
Jigoku kôshien (Battlefield Baseball)
Dawn of the Dead
Dead and Breakfast
Shaun of the Dead
Choking Hazard
Les Revenants
Resident Evil: Apocalypse
Vampires vs. Zombies
Beaster
Zombie Vegetarians
Dawn of the Friend
Corpses
Angry and Moist: An Undead Chronicle
Bad Friend
Bone Sickness
Curse of the Maya
Dead & Breakfast
Feeding the Masses
Ghost Lake
Hide and Creep
Hunting Creatures
Night of the Living Dorks
Rotten Shaolin Zombies
Khun krabii hiiroh (SARS Wars)
Shadows of the Dead
Shao Lin jiang shi (Shaolin Vs. Evil Dead)
Zombie Honeymoon
Zombie Nation
Zombie Planet

2005: 29
Day of the Dead 2: Contagium
Land of the Dead
The Wickeds
Zombiez
Boy Eats Girl
Bubba’s Chili Parlor
Day X
Dead at the Box Office
Dead Creek
Dead Life
Dead Men Walking
Die You Zombie Bastards!
Die Zombiejäger
Le divan vert
Doom
Hood of the Living Dead
House of the Dead 2
Livelihood
Living Dead Lock Up
Pot Zombies
Raiders of the Damned
Return of the Living Dead 4: Necropolis
Return of the Living Dead 5: Rave to the Grave
Rise of the Undead
The Roost
Severed
The Stink of Flesh
Swamp Zombies
(Tôkyô zonbi) Tokyo Zombie

2006: 34
After Sundown
Awaken the Dead
Automaton Transfusion
Awakening
City of Rott
Dead & Deader
Dead in the Water
The Dead Live
Deadlands: The Rising
Die and Let Live
Doomed to Consume
Dorm of the Dead
Electric Zombies
Enter the Zombie
Fido
Gangs of the Dead
L’isola dei morti viventi (Island of the Living Dead)
Last Rites of the Dead
Meat Market 3
Mortuary
Night of the Dead: Leben Tod
Night of the Living Dead 3-D
The Plague
The Quick and the Undead
Shadow: Dead Riot
The Slaughter
Slither
Special Dead
Storm of the Dead
Stoned Dead
War of the Dead
Wicked Little Things
The Zombie Diaries
Zombies by Design

2007: 33
28 Weeks Later
American Zombie
Awaken the Dead
Beneath the Surface
Brain Blockers
Days of Darkness
Dead Heist
Dead Moon Rising
The Dead Undead
Evil Keg
Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane
Forest of the Dead
Forever Dead
Living Dead Lock Up 2: March of the Dead
The Mad
Motocross Zombies from Hell
Mutation-Annihilation
Otto; or Up With Dead People
Planet Terror
The Rage
REC
Resident Evil: Extinction
Risen
Street Team Massacre
Undead or Alive
Undead Ted
Wasting Away
Z: A Zombie Musical
Zibahkhana-Hell’s Ground
Zombie Farm
Zombie Town
Zombies Gone Wild
Zombi: La creazione (Zombies: The Beginning)

2008: 9
Quarantine
Day of the Dead
Diary of the Dead
Outpost
Sabbath
Retardead
House of the Damned
Zombie Strippers
Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!

We've labeled all the futuristic features of this home, and color-coded it so you can see which gadgets don't exist (red), sort of exist (yellow), and are in your kitchen right now (green). Below, you can see which movies each device came from, and a bar graph that measures how many greens the movie got vs. reds. We also included domestic vehicles like cars in our "home of the future."

The documentary New Horizons turned out to be most accurate — at least when it came to domestic improvements that are possible with modern technology. This reel commissioned by General Motors focused on realistic advances in the automotive industry, looking only 20 years ahead. After all, why overreach? Googie’s had yet to be built in its landmark style, and human spaceflight was but stardust in scientists’ eyes.

In all the flicks, two of the most accurately-predicted items were large screen TVs and videoconferencing. Wireless technology, implied often by The Jetsons, is now ubiquitous. Less popular devices available today include the Master Cook (in the form of kitchen computers), fins on cars, and thumbprint entry.

Though the Scene Screen doesn't exist as such, it gets a yellow because it could be created by the do-it-yourself crowd. Just set up a projector display for your window. And you can create a Garden Center by winching a hydroponics rig above your dining room table.

In the red zone are a lot of technologies we wish we had — or maybe not. You’ll have to wait for the three seashells, walk-in Orgasmatron, and gigantic fruit (though we’re already genetically modifying produce) — but anti-grav space boots probably aren’t on the way anytime soon.

Of course, what would a piece on everyday life in the future be without mention of the notorious flying car? The roadable aircraft in development today leave us with hope… as well as something to be desired. Even the promising Moller Skycar falls short, lacking the ability to be driven as an automobile.

The self-driving, self-repairing, foam spewing car technology of Demolition Man is also unavailable to today’s motorist. When compared to the domestic conveniences afforded to us now, this film’s gorgeously grandiose vision of modern LA was the least in tune view of the future reviewed (we’ve got at least a couple of decades before 2032 to fix that, but we’d better get cracking).

Personally, I’ll be happy with a simple populuxe revival.

The categories in the chart should be pretty self-explanatory. But here's some explanation anyway:

We love our heroes to be super rich, and to have an excuse for self-pity. If your fabulously wealthy parents got killed in front of you when you're a kid, so much the better. (Seriously, a tragic past seems to be a crucial ingredient for many escapist heroes, because it lets you project all your own real-life pain onto your hero, even as you're imagining rising about that pain and becoming a mega-adventurer. )

And it makes us happy when our heroes have two or more devoted acolytes/sidekicks, who follow almost without question, and awesome gadgets. Superhuman powers means what it says. "Gets laid" doesn't just mean your hero hooked up one time.

"Marked for greatness" requires slightly more explanation. If your hero is the subject of a prophecy (like Starbuck), or is "the One" like Neo, then he/she is marked for greatness. Captain Kirk wasn't marked for greatness on the original Star Trek TV show, but we have a strong suspicion that the new Trek movie, by revisiting his origins, will show that he was marked for great things from the beginning.

"Not tied down" doesn't just mean being single: it means that you get to roam around having adventures. And at the end of an adventure, you jump in your spaceship and zoom off to the next adventure somewhere else. Captain Kirk wasn't tied down, but Captain Sisko was.

"Becomes a god or king" means your character ends up with a lot of people looking up to him/her. The Hulk, for example, is destined either to become a ruler, the Maestro, or the last survivor of Earth. Captain Kirk becomes an admiral, but more importantly he becomes a legend in his own time. The Doctor becomes the last of the Time Lords, and gets called a god a lot. Neo turns into the blind buddha Jesus monster, or something.

First, two caveats: most of these satellites are representative of an entire class of satellites. There may be others that serve similar functions, but the satellites listed are exemplars. Also, the list is obviously U.S.-centric. If you live in Europe or Asia, there are likely different satellites that fill the roles of these all-star orbiters.

Hubble Space Telescope - By taking thousands of breathtaking photos unhindered by the blurring effects of Earth's atmosphere, the Hubble has brought the beauty and mystery of space to more people than any other observatory, not to mention the massive amount of scientific research accomplished with it.

Galaxy 14 - This communications relay carries digital TV signals for much of the east coast, including ESPN, Lifetime, Sci-Fi, CNN, A&E and my personal favorite, the History Channel.

GOES-12 - From its high-altitude geosynchronous orbit, GOES-12 keeps a constant watch on weather conditions in most of North America.

The Moon - Tides, werewolves, the Apollo Program: without our natural satellite, we'd have none of these things.

KH-13 - This U.S. spy satellite is so secret, even the name is probably wrong (the government started giving them random names after people caught onto to the KH numbering system). Who knows what black budget, cutting edge satellite intelligence gathering devices are capable of these days?

GPS IIR11 - The U.S. government's NAVSTAR program brought global positioning abilities first to the military, then to the general public. It takes a constellation of these things for the system to work, so IIR11 is just one cog among many. Without it, there'd be no geocaching!

GoldenEye - With the ability to fire an EM pulse that could have wiped out an entire nation's financial records, GoldenEye is typical of fictional satellites and representative of our fears of orbiting weapons.

International Space Station - It's a symbol of international cooperation and a frontier outpost in the quest to colonize space. The low orbit maintained by the ISS makes it one of the easiest satellites to spot with the naked eye.

NOAA 17 - Unlike the GOES satellites, the NOAA satellites have asynchronous orbits, spinning around the globe to spot developing weather patterns that affect billions of people.

LANDSAT 7 - NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey teamed up in the 1970s to create a catalogue of Earth images shot from space. Since then, not only has the data improved with huge advances in digital photography, but numerous companies (including Google) have licensed the images for their mapping software.

Graphic by Stephanie Fox.

Sources: The Landsat Program

NAVSTAR - GPS Block IIR

Geostationary Satellites

Galaxy 14 at 125.0°W

Crowning a moon champion ain't as easy as it seems when Saturn alone has 59 of them. Fortunately the field got smaller when we considered five key points all moons should have on their resumes. It may be hard to stomach having Charon up there — it's questionable that it's even a moon — but someone had to be the goat.

And now, the winners in the individual categories:

BEST FEATURE NAME: Despite tons of creative feature names, Europa wins by a wide margin with Rathmore Chaos. It sounds like a level of Hell from Dante's Inferno, but like most of the outer system, the Chaos is a cold place. In fact it's a jumble of broken up ice that's evidence of the moon's active ice tectonics...and maybe a liquid water ocean below.

POTENTIAL FOR COLONIZATION: Phobos gave Earth's Luna a run for it's money; it's low gravity and proximity to the Red Planet make it worthy of it's full score. But in the end the deck's stacked against the Martian moon — the stated goal for NASA's next generation of manned spaceflight is to return to the moon...to stay.

ACTIVE GEOLOGY: This is a toughy. Uranus' moon Miranda doesn't have active geology, but scientists speculate that the whole moon may have been obliterated by impacts, then reassembled itself. You know, like T-1000 in Terminator 2. Charon, Triton, and Enceladus all look like they've got actively erupting cryovolcanoes of frigid ammonia, water, or liquid nitrogen which is cool, but it knocks Titan down a notch in uniqueness. Jupiter's Io wins for it's self sacrifice though; riddled with volcanoes, the firey moon is literally gutting itself, spewing 1 ton of sulfur dioxide into space every second.

MOVIE/BOOK: The hands-down winner is Earth's Moon, which has been in books and movies since the art forms were invented. It's hardly a fair fight, so the prize goes to Jupiter's Ganymede. The largest moon in the solar system (that's right, bigger than Titan!), it haunts tons of Philip K. Dick's books.

POTENTIAL FOR LIFE: Cryovolcanoes are going off all over the solar system's icy moons, and where there are volcanoes, there's liquid. Most of the liquid is in the form of methane, ammonia, nitrogen, or some other substance that Earth-life wouldn't want to swim in, but who knows what sort of strange aliens could be out there?

That said, Europa's icy shell is made of old-fashioned H2O, and features like Rathmore Chaos look a lot like shifting pack ice here on Earth, which floats on a big ocean of salty water, which in turn contains tons of critters. There's a good chance the same is true on Europa, meaning....

the prize for THE OVERALL AWESOMEST MOON IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM goes to EUROPA!!! Honorable mention to TItan for a strong showing, but it just goes to show...don't mess with the moon with the water oceans under the ice!

Sources: Lunar and Planetary Institute

The Cascadia Astrobiology Institute

Science Direct

WIkipedia

The Nine Planets Solar System Tour

Let's go through some of the insights this chart offers.

ATOMICS/DEADLY ATTACKS: As you can see, there is a very clear historical connection between atomic bombs and atomic testing and giant monster movies, so that truism turns out to be correct. After a long period of no giant monsters in pop culture at all, we get a sudden burst of giant monsters in the 50s, many of which are explicitly created by "atomic tests" (see: the ants in Them, the dinosaur in Behemoth, Godzilla, and more). What's interesting is that there appears to be about a 10-year lag between the disaster and the first movies dealing with it. A similar lag happens between disasters of the 1990s and early 2000s and the giant monster explosion of the 00s. Interestingly, the biggest explosion in giant monster movies since the 1950s is going on in the 00s, perhaps as a response to global terrorism and human-caused disasters (see below).

PLAGUES: "Call of Cthulhu," which is about a giant monster who haunts people's dreams and drives them mad, could probably be linked to the "sleepy sickness" plague that was sweeping the United States at the time Lovecraft first thought up his tentacly menace. The disease made people appear to sleep all the time, and did drive them insane. But generally, as we can see later in the timeline, plague doesn't appear to spawn giant monsters. In fact, the HIV/AIDS plague has probably resulted in more human-sized monster tales: witness the explosion in vampire and zombie stories during the 1990s and 00s. So, generally, plague disasters don't cause giant monster movies.

NATURAL DISASTERS: One of the biggest natural disasters of the 20th century, the Yellow River floods in China in the 1930s, gave us no giant monsters. King Kong, the most popular giant monster of the 1930s, was probably inspired by Westerners "discovering" gorillas in Africa in the early 20th century. But the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami seems to have had an effect: two of the biggest giant monster movies of the last year have both involved beasts from the ocean.

HUMAN-CAUSED DISASTERS: Yes, human toxic spills and pollution seem to trigger giant monster movies. Most of the giant monsters in the 1970s and 80s are related somehow to pollution, and come soon after several widely-publicized oil spill disasters. Note that the 70s and 80s were also a time of human-sized toxic creatures, like the Toxic Avenger, the bears in Prophesy, the whatevers in CHUD, and so on. So these disasters inspire both giant and regular-sized monsters. I think the explosion in 00s monster movies may also be a result of the same lag we saw between atomics in the 1940s, and giant monsters in the 1950s. A lot of toxic disasters happened in the 80s and 90s, and suddenly a bunch of giant monsters pop up in the 00s.

Chart by Stephanie Fox.

SOURCES:

Chemical Disaster in Bhopal [Greenpeace]

Oil tanker leaks [BBC]

AIDS number one cause of death for men in US in 1992 [Kaiser Foundation].

AIDS in Africa numbers [WorldStats]

Atomic Tests causing deaths [CNN]

What we found: As you might imagine, the real surge in literary novels with science fiction themes came in the past five or six years, after literary journal Conjunctions published its "New Wave Fabulist" issue and magical realism was on the wane. There were literary novels with SF themes, like David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, which didn't really fit into the general subject areas of "alternate history," "time warp," or "post-apocalyptic." We were most interested in seeing which years featured the most literary novels featuring those themes.

Of those three subcategories, alternate history was the most consistent, with literary authors using it to explore how wars could have gone differently, but also other topics. Not surprisingly, you saw more alternate history novels at the start of this period, when the U.S. was active in Somalia and still bombing Iraq, and then at the end, when we had invaded Iraq. Alternate history is traditionally a fairly conservative genre, with authors like Newt Gingrich dabbling in it and exploring how things could have turned out worse if we hadn't stiffened our spines. But a recent spate of alt-history novels is more liberal, exploring a world where the Aztecs never fell (Atomik Aztex) and a world where the Jews got a homeland in Alaska and we avoided the Middle East conflict (Yiddish Policemen's Union).

There was a boomlet in time-travel fiction, and stories about time acting strange, in 2003-2004, with Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife proving a huge mainstream hit. This was the peak of the Bush-era resurgence in conservativism, with a lot of mainstream nostalgia about World War II and the Greatest Generation.

And then was a boom in post-apocalyptic fiction in more recent years, with three huge classics of the genre hitting in 2006. In particular, Cormac McCarthy's The Road has become the poster-child for the literary-authors-going-speculative trend. These books coincided with the Indian Ocean Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and a worsening Iraq conflict. But there's been a lull in the post-apocalyptic genre since then as well.

Cylons have thinned an interplanetary civilization down to 50 thousand members, and as season four begins the humans have been reduced to roughly 41 thousand. We even know roughly how many days it's been since the first Cylon attack. In our chart, we've correlated each population change with an event, including when each new Cylon is revealed.

All this information comes directly from the show, where most episodes begin with a population number. Numbers are also frequently bandied about in trials and policy debates. Many of these numbers were faithfully recorded, in great detail, by the amazing folks behind the Battlestar wiki. Is this emphasis on hard numbers a reflection of the U.S. obsession with numbers of dead in Iraq, or is it just part of a general trend toward realism in science fiction?

Image by Stephanie Fox. Special cylon reporting by Nivair Gabriel.

As you can see, Trek's crews have always treated the Prime Directive like a speed limit on the Interstate. But the high point of Prime Directive violations was the late 1990s, which surpassed even the late 1960s of Kirk's cowboy-ism.

At the same time, the United States was reducing its troop presence around the world. Why did Starfleet start interfering more, even as America was throwing less of its weight around? The late 1990s was an era of military spending cutbacks and base closures, when the U.S. seemed to be less influential without the threat of the Soviet Union to rally our own citizens, let alone our allies.

I know what you're going to say: It's all down to Star Trek: Voyager's Captain Janeway and her "anything goes" approach. But first of all, Janeway's not the only culprit. Ben Sisko on Deep Space Nine also played fast and loose with the Directive more in the late 1990s than in its earlier seasons. And the Federation also threw its non-interference principles out the window, in different ways, in both 1998's Star Trek: Insurrection and 2002's Star Trek: Nemesis.

But also, consider that Voyager is a metaphor for the U.S.' more confusing situation after the Cold War. Instead of being one superpower facing another (like the Klingons, Romulan or Borg) suddenly the Voyager is isolated in a quadrant full of independent players, each of whom has its own agenda. Just as the Soviets were replaced with Bosnians, Serbs and Kosovans and the U.S. had to form alliances to deal with messy situations, Voyager faces a bunch of warring races and Janeway has to strike deals with different races to escape in one piece.

All of which makes us wonder: If Star Trek were on the air as a television show now, and it took place during an era where the Directive applied, would we see fewer violations? After all, U.S. troop levels in other countries have rebounded, and we're once again involved in a massive confrontation overseas. Would a 24th century Trek step more lightly around the galaxy, to counterbalance the United States' greater use of force?

Illustration by Stephanie Fox. Additional reporting by Nivair H. Gabriel.

Here is our Martian woman's spec:

First, our woman is tall, a little pear-shaped, with really thick legs. This shape compensates for the reduced gravity.

She has a very lightweight exoskeleton covering her whole body. The exoskeleton has to keep her warm, keep her pressurized, shield her from solar wind, and absorb lots of sunlight. So it can be thin, but laced with heated mesh. It should have a nanofabric outer shell laced with lead to repel x-rays and other cosmic rays. And the upper half should have super bendy, ultra-thin solar cells that are constantly sucking up solar energy.

In her boots and strapped to her thighs, she has water drilling/processing packs. A cannulated drill can extend out of it, go deep under martian crust, suck up water, run it through a filter to get the salt and acid out, and then store it close to her body to keep it liquid so she can sip from it.

She also has a photosynthesis rig on her back. This is a light, thin backpack that converts the C02 from the atmosphere and some of the water from her leg pack into sugars and oxygen for our Martian. So it's a combination breathing apparatus and feeder.

Image by Stephanie Fox. Additional reporting by Nivair Gabriel.

To some extent, it's understandable that space adventures play fast and loose with physics. After all, who wants to watch Han Solo spend years on the journey to Alderaan, only to find that the planet has twice Earth gravity and he can barely stand up, much less swagger?

The categories of mistakes in our report card should be pretty self-explanatory, but just in case, I'll expand on them a little bit:

• There's no sound in space
• Not all planets have Earth gravity
• Planets should have diverse climates, instead of one unified climate across a "desert planet" or "forest planet."
• It shouldn't be too easy to communicate with alien creatures, without some kind of high-technology "translator" explanation.
• And it definitely shouldn't be too easy for humans to interbreed with aliens.
• Humans exposed to vacuum without a spacesuit shouldn't explode or shatter. And a "hull breach" where the ship's crew is exposed to vacuum should kill everyone instantly.
• You can't have fires in space, unless there's oxygen leaking out somehow.
• Asteroids or other objects shouldn't be able to float close together without falling into each other's gravity
• People shouldn't be able to dodge lasers and other speed-of-light weapons
• And there's no reason why someone would move in slow-motion in zero gravity.
• Faster-than-light travel is probably not ever going to be possible.

Healey writes:

The BMI range of Marvel women is much less varied than that of all other groups and tends to the low end of the "normal" BMI range. This result is surprising, considering that many of the women sampled are martial artists or extremely capable physically and should, if anything, have a BMI that indicates a higher body fat level than is actually present.

The BMI range of Marvel men is more varied and tends to just over the upper limit of the "normal" BMI range. However, it is still less varied than that of the "real world" male and female groups.

We stress that given the physical and biological vagaries of the Marvel Universe and the relatively small sample sizes involved, these results are not conclusive. Data comparing male and female athletes from both world might provide more accurate comparative results, and we suggest this as a point for further research.

However, advance data indicates that Marvel women are portrayed as having a disturbingly low BMI compared to the healthy BMI range of their male counterparts. Furthermore, the range of body types expressed by Marvel women is surprisingly small. The distribution of BMIs in Figure 1 is by far the sharpest, with little variation from the mean compared to Marvel men, and far less variation than we see in actual men and women. This is true to a lesser extent for males in the Marvel universe as well.

The Marvel male is predisposed to be on the heavy side of healthy, which can be explained by the increased muscle mass of intense physical acitvity. The average Marvel female is approaching underweight despite a presumably active lifestyle. This may corroborate sociological and literary observations that in the Marvel Universe, women must fulfil criteria for being attractive by Western standards before fulfilling the criteria of biological realism.

The "real" age of Marvel Universe persons is frequently altered by the powers or mutations of individuals, non-Euclidean time, cryogenics, magic, biochemical solutions, alternative dimensions, radiation, cloning and resurrection. The 20-29 year old age range was chosen as the most appropriate range comparison for the apparent physical age of most adult Marvel characters.

Comparative Sex-Specific Body Mass Index in the Marvel Universe and the Real World [paper]

The data is most striking for the period of 1995-1998, when the U.S. economy was at its bounciest. But there's also a nice spate of dystopian films in the mid- to late-1980s, when "morning in America was at its sunniest. There was also a spike in 2002-2006, during a fairly expansionary period.

So what's going on here? A few explanations suggest themselves. Movie execs may greenlight dystopian films during economic downturns, and their immediate aftermath, but it may take a few years for those films to work their way through the development process and hit your screens. But it's also possible that when things are at their brightest economically, people feel the most insecure because they know the good times won't last forever. So boom times are when people most need stories about people surviving the bad times. Or maybe it's just that film-makers are a contrary bunch, who want to rub your face in the dirt just when you're feeling your brightest.

Here's our list of dystopian films for each year. Feel free to let us know what we left out, or shouldn't have included:

2008
Cloverfield (D)

2007
I Am Legend (D)
28 Weeks Later (D)
Resident Evil: Extinction (D)

2006
V for Vendetta (D)
Idiocracy (D)
Children of Men (D)
Ultraviolet (D)

2005
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (D)
Batman Begins (D)

2004
The Day After Tomorrow (D)
Stepford Wives (D)
Resident Evil: Apocalypse (D)

2003
The Matrix Reloaded (D)
The matrix Revelations (D)
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (D)

2002
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (D)
Minority Report (D)
28 Days Later (D)
Equilibrium (D)
Resident Evil (D)

2001
Planet of the Apes (D)
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (D)

2000
Battlefield Earth (D)

1999
The Matrix (D)
Existenz (D)

1998
Pi (D)
The Truman Show (D)
The X-Files (D)

1997
Alien: Resurrection (D)
Fifth Element (D)
The Postman (D)
Starship Troopers (D)
Gattaca (D)

1996
Escape from L.A. (D)

1995
Waterworld (D)
Mortal Kombat (D)
Johnny Mnemonic (D)
Judge Dredd (D)
Strange Days (D)
Twelve Monkeys (D)
Tank Girl (D)

1994
none

1993
Jurassic Park (D)
Demolition Man (D)
Robocop III (D)

1992
Batman Returns (D)
Alien 3 (D)
Freejack (D)

1991
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (D)

1990
Total Recall (D)
Handmaid's Tale (D)

1989
Batman (D)

1988
The live (D)

1987
Robocop (D)
The Running Man (D)

1986
Aliens (D)
The Fly (D)

1985
Brazil (D)
Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (D)

1984
The Terminator (D)

1983
none

1982
Blade Runner (D)
Videodrome (D)
Liquid Sky (D)

1981
Time Bandits (D)
Heartbeeps (D)

1980
The Empire Strikes Back (D)

1979
Alien (D)

1978
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (D)

Image by Stephanie Fox.

Methods: We compiled a complete list of cyberpunk novels and movies, by date, from a variety of sources including Wikipedia, the Cyberpunk Review, Amazon.com's cyberpunk lists and various other sites. Then we tallied the number of novels (red line) and movies (blue line) per year. We were hoping for a nice smooth curve, but it didn't happen. We're sorry the chart turned out so zig-zag, we were as surprised as anybody.

Results: Cyberpunk has gone in waves, judging from our data. Novels in the genre have had a few high points. The biggest peaks for novels were the late 80s (eight novels in 1988), and then the mid-90s (an average of 6 novels per year from 1993-1996). Cyberpunk films had a peak in the late 80s-early 90s, followed by a brief lull. There were ten cyberpunk movies each in 1993 and 1995, and then another lull. The genre had a resurgence at the movies from 2002-2004, and then quieted down again.

How do we define cyberpunk? We tried not to. We pulled our list from as many reliable-looking sources as possible, and only left out things that seemed like obvious outliers. (On the Cyberpunk Review site, some of the movies on the cyberpunk list were listed as having a "low" level of cyberpunk themes, and seemed to be obviously reaching. So we left those movies out.)

So what does this tell us? Maybe cyberpunk is less of a fad than it used to be. Or maybe because we're now living in a cyberpunk era with virtual worlds, nonstop cybersex and evil corporations, we no longer view those things as elements of science fiction. What do you think?

In general, we noticed the Doctor is more likely to overthrow the government on alien planets, or in the distant future. When he visits present-day Earth or our history, he's an arch-conservative. (He ousts Harriet Jones as prime minister of England in "The Christmas Invasion," but that's not the same as destroying the whole government.) Also, the Doctor acted out way more during the Thatcher era than any other period. During the Blair/Gordon Brown eras, he's been quite well-behaved.

Methods: We counted the number of stories in each season where the Doctor overthrows the status quo. (For example, in "The Savages" and "The Happiness Patrol," he encounters a stable society and leads a revolution.) Then we divided that number by the total number of stories in that season, for a percentage. Then we included other events at the time that could explain the Doctor's changing politics.

The numbers you see are kilowatt hours used per year, and the money is amount spent. Red is for devices that stand by in passive mode, and blue is for ones standing by in active mode. Oops, I think I own all the ones that suck most. But I love my plasma screen electron-guzzler! Good magazine [via TreeHugger]

Here is Davis' list of ways LA is destroyed in literature, with number of occurrences, for your contemplation:

Nukes, 49
Earthquakes, 28
Hordes (invasion), 10
Monsters, 10
Pollution, 7
Gangs/terrorism, 6
Floods, 6
Plagues, 6
Comets/tsunami, 5
Cults, 3
Volcanoes, 2
Firestorms, 2
Drought, 1
Blizzard, 1
Devil, 1
Freeway, 1
Riot, 1
Fog, 1
Slide, 1
Bermuda grass, 1
Global warming, 1
Sandstorm, 1
"Everything," 1

Needless to say, Davis moved out of LA to Hawaii several years ago.

The researchers also assumed that we'd be using the same disease-fighting methods we used in the SARS outbreak. This map doesn't mean that huge chunks of the world will soon be wiped out by a pandemic. It's actually, according to the researchers, a warning. They want national health organizations to be aware which areas of the world need better systems for handling viral outbreaks. That way, flu doesn't reach epidemic proportions and shoot all over the world. Of course, if governments handle the next epidemic it the way they did in 28 Weeks Later and Resident Evil: Extinction, this "help" might come in the form of nukes.

Predicting Outbreaks [BMC Medicine]