If you liked Star Trek... And who didn't like J.J. Abrams' breezy reinvention of the 1960s space adventure show, focusing more on the coming-of-age of Kirk and Spock, and their journey from rivals to friends? Anarcho-syndicalists, that's who.

...You'll Love Ringworld by Larry Niven. The defining "big object in space" novel, Niven sees your scary Romulan drilling platform and raises you a huge ring-shaped world orbiting a star, with "shadow squares" to provide a day/night cycle, and many weird ecosystems and cultures thriving on it. And if you enjoy that, delve into more classic space opera by Heinlein, Clarke, E.E. "Doc" Smith, David Weber and Lois McMaster Bujold.

If you liked Wolverine... Maybe you enjoyed the way the latest X-Men spinoff used the experiences of a lonely mutant to talk about the ravages of war. Maybe you just liked the purer distillations of mutant angst and feeling like an outsider in non-mutant society. Or perhaps you just liked the sexy mayhem.

...You'll love Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey. The tale of a lonely mutant in a town on the U.S.-Mexico border, this novel's young female version of Wolverine named Loup blew us away. She's been genetically engineered not to feel fear, and she becomes her town's secret superhero.

If you liked The Dark Knight... Who didn't love The Dark Knight's reinvention of superhero comics' "grim and gritty" cliches in an even more noir, even more mind-blowing vein? Whether you were into the portrayal of a Gotham City that destroys the best among its citizens, or you just liked the brooding, this film was instantly iconic.

...You'll love Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey, or just about anything by Richard K. Morgan. If you love noir anti-heroes squaring off with madmen for the future of a city that doesn't deserve saving, then you'll want to spend some serious time with Sandman Slim — sure, the city in question is L.A., and that's automatically less cool than the fictional Gotham. But still, the hero who's crawled out of Hell and now fights his power-mad former friend is the best fix for your Nolan Batman addiction right now. And for more noir, check out Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs novels as well as his noir fantasy The Steel Remains.

If you think you'll like James Cameron's Avatar... Okay, you can't really know if you're going to like Avatar yet, since it's just a couple of trailers and one preview day so far. But a lot of us are pretty pumped up about the cool concept, of a human put into a hybrid alien body to interact with cool blue aliens... not to mention all the war-machine technology and battle scenes.

...You'll love The Color Of Distance by Amy Thomson. Why not try another take on the idea of a human who's transformed into an alien-human hybrid to live among aliens? Juna is a human who lands in the rainforests of the planet Tendu, whose pollen gives humans deadly allergies. Juna's atmosphere suit gets ruptured and she nearly dies, but the planet's elders save her by transforming her into something like one of them. She learns their skin-color-based language and grows to understand their weird culture, and accept her own half-alien self.

If you liked Hancock... Maybe you liked the look at a more flawed superhero. Maybe you liked the alienation, or the feeling of futility in spite of great power. Maybe you enjoyed the cynicism.

...You'll love Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman. In any case, you should definitely check out this smarter, cooler look at what superheroes would be like in the real world. Where Hancock fobs you off with repeated gags and muddled mythology, Grossman (an io9 contributor) gives you real psychological complexity and sharp characterization.

If you liked The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button... It sure did look impressive: a love story involving a man who ages backwards, and somehow keeps finding the same woman over and over again as she ages forwards in time. Set against the backdrop of history as it was, maybe you liked the epic feeling.

...You'll love Confessions Of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer. This is definitely a case where a book did it first, and way better. (Yes, Button was nominally based on a HAITE story by F. Scott Fitzgerald.) Greer both pioneered and perfected the "backwards-aging love story" concept, without ignoring the potential creepiness of a boy who looks like an old man having a crush on a girl his own age. Heartbreaking and epic, this is the story Button should have been.

If you liked Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen... Umm... Well, you might have enjoyed the battle scenes and huge robots fighting alongside military hardware. You might have been into the love story between Shia and Megan, or Shia learning to grow up and accept responsibility. Oh, whatever. Let's assume you liked this movie for the big robots and military hardware.

...You'll love Hammer's Slammers by David Drake. This 1979 story collection, as much as Heinlein's Starship Troopers, is a landmark in the history of military science fiction. And it has the big hardware in spades — most notably the giant super-tank that the Slammers roll around in, which comes equipped with a massive 20 centimeter power gun that fires high-energy copper plasma. You might also really dig the Jon and Lobo novels by Mark Van Name, which are about a guy who makes friends with a giant artificially intelligent battlesuit, and they go off having adventures together.

If you liked Knowing... Maybe you liked the weird clues and all the numbers that secretly predicted all the disasters in the world. But most likely, you liked it for the same reason people seem to be liking 2012: for the apocalypse.

...You'll love Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. For a somewhat more light-hearted look at the end of days, you really can't beat this book. Or if you want a post-apocalyptic novel which shows how America continues after everything has collapsed and we've reverted to slavery and other nineteenth century institutions, try Liberation by Brian Francis Slattery.

If you liked Monsters vs. Aliens... With its A-list cast and zany monsters banding together to save the world, who didn't like this movie? Plus, it had a super-basic, but still welcome, message about being yourself and how it's OK to be different and all that stuff.

...You'll love Monster by A. Lee Martinez It's got the same spirit of fun, and a similar misfit cast of characters who save the day despite being weirdos. But it's maybe a little less kid-friendly, and the eponymous Monster is more of a slob who gets rid of the paranormal creatures threatening all the normal people, even though he'd rather just crash on the couch and drink beer. His paper gnome companion will definitely remind you of a cartoon character, and could easily be voiced by Hugh Laurie or Will Arnett in the movie version.

If you liked District 9... With its look at otherness, and the predicament of a human who accidentally gets infected with alien DNA and starts losing his privileged status, District 9's alien-ghetto tale was full of metaphors for the way humans treat each other.

...You'll love Mind Of My Mind by Octavia Butler. Nobody wrote about hierarchy, oppression and otherness better than Butler. And Mind Of My Mind deals with the idea of losing your humanity and becoming something unfamiliar and terrifying with incisive brilliance.

If you liked Moon... You probably got into the chilling depiction of loneliness on our only satellite and the slow madness that overtook our hero, played by Sam Rockwell. But you probably also loved the depiction of two Sam Rockwells, and the questions of identity this doppelganger story raised.

...You'll love Ophiuchi Hotline by John Varley. If you want a really thought-provoking tale about cloning, you'll definitely want to check out Ophiuchi Hotline. Varley deals with a far-future society where only the dead can be cloned legally, then plunges us into a world of outlaws whose cloning goes far beyond the permissible.

If you liked Wanted... It probably wasn't for any vestigial supervillain trappings. In its movie version, this film was mostly about a man realizing he's inherited his dad's gunman powers, and getting inducted into a society of super-assassins. But more than anything, it was about becoming an ubermensch and realizing that the "little people's" rules don't apply to you.

...You'll love Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks. If you really want a story of a super-assassin who has gone beyond traditional morality, you should check out the tale of Horza, a shapeshifter who has rejected the super-advanced Culture and is willing to do whatever it takes to win. Or if you just want the tale of an ubermensch who comes into his power, read Frank Herbert's Dune for the tale of Leto Atreides II.

Those are our book recommendations for the movie addicts in your life. What are your suggestions?

Thanks to Graeme, Meredith and Annalee for suggestions!

Reading the news that Iain M. Banks' story "A Gift From The Culture" is being adapted by the writers/directors of the "psychobilly" thriller White Lightnin', I begin to understand why some people are such purists about seeing their favorite books adapted to the big screen. Not that that story, in itself, is my favorite — I don't think I've read it at all. It's in the anthology The Space Opera Renaissance, edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, which I never managed to pick up a copy of. (And generally, Banks' short fiction hasn't worked for me as well as his novels — I read his story collection State Of The Art, and was non-plussed.)

But Banks' books, and especially his Culture novels, loom so large in my science-fiction cosmology that I'm terrified that a movie version will tone down the strangeness of the Culture. Consider Phlebas, the first Culture book, was also the first book I'd ever read which contained an interstellar society so advanced, it was almost unimaginable — and yet still managed to spin out a story that was exciting and made sense to my puny Human 1.0 brain. It would be a shame if the Culture movie left out, or toned down, the Culture's "Minds," the super-powerful A.I.s that do a lot of the heavy lifting in this super-society. Or the Culture's propensity for extreme body-modification, among other things.

(We posted a great primer to the Culture last year, which you can read here.)

The plot synopsis for "A Gift From The Culture" doesn't reassure me that much, since it could easily be turned into a standard "alien among us" thriller. Basically, it centersaround Wrobik, a member of the Culture in exile, who's now living among humans as one of us. Wrobik used to be a woman, but became a man as part of her exile — but he still prefers men, so he's in a gay relationship. He incurs some gambling debts, and to pay them off, the thugs want Wrobik to commit an act of terrorism — using a gun that only a member of the Culture can fire, to shoot down a starship. Wrobik decides to flee town instead, but then the thugs take his boyfriend hostage, upping the stakes. Will Wrobik choose to save his boyfriend, or destroy the spaceship?

I don't know how the story ends, except that SF Signal complains in its review of the anthology that Wrobik's dilemma "probably could have had a more satisfying resolution." (Update: As various people have pointed out, this story was also in State Of The Art. And in fact, I have read it. It just made very little impression, and it's been years.)

This film could be utterly fascinating, if they keep both the same-sex relationship and the fact that Wrobik used to be a woman. And even a few big-screen glimpses of life inside a General Systems Vehicle would be amazing. I just hope our first (and probably only) cinematic look at the Culture doesn't turn out to be a waste. [Screen Daily via Slashfilm via SF Signal]

The idea of traveling between alternate realities is a common theme in speculative fiction. Multiverse stories are a logical extension of allohistory, and a close relative of that other grand old convention, time travel. The idea is often explained as inspired by the Many-Worlds Interpretation first formulated by Hugh Everett in 1957, but its use in literature and storytelling has been long with us. Jorge Luis Borges used the theme in his 1941 story "The Garden of Forking Paths". There are earlier examples in Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World of 1666 (recently revisited by Alan Moore) and in one of the stories in the One Thousand and One Nights. Ancient multiverses can be found in the Hindu cosmology and the nine worlds of the Norse mythos were around long before Jack Kirby.

Right from the start, Banks' Transition has superficial similarities to Michael Moorcock, especially the Jerry Cornelius stories. Both books feature amoral agents with shifting loyalties, flitting between versions of Earth. They party down in exotic locales, averting or causing global calamity — like rock stars trashing an infinity of hotel suites. Victorian airships and super-assassins abound. The theory goes that all of Moorcock's fiction is one big multiverse, from the Sword and Sorcery worlds of Elric of Melniboné or Corum Jhaelen Irsei to the decadent Dancers at the End of Time. All the various characters in these works are aspects or avatars of a stock cast of meta-players often compared to the Commedia dell'Arte theater tradition with its tricksters, oafs, and backstabbers. Jerry Cornelius is a 20th Century face of the slightly mis-named Eternal Champion. He's an anarchist secret-agent, a super-slick antihero whirling in a blaze of intoxicants and ready fuck anything that fucking moves. David Bowie as Doctor Who, turned up to fuckin' twelve! While quite entertaining, it should be no surprise that these quintessential examples of SF's New Wave movement can be a wee bit disorienting. Product of the times.

For a speculative fiction ride of sex, drugs, and rock&roll that's less experimental (ahem, easier to read), I prefer Mick Farren, singer of the proto-punk band The Deviants, White Panther Party member, and Elvis scholar. Out of print, but well worth the hunt, are his multiverse romps in The DNA Cowboys Trilogy and Necrom, some truly weird fun shit. The dimension-tripping demon Yancey Slide from those adventures also turns up in the more recent Kindling and Conflagration He also wrote the Victor Renquist novels, a series of vampire novels that aren't totally lame. 2002's Underland has the CIA, vampires, and Nazis duking it out with flying saucers in the Hollow Earth beneath Antarctica. Yeah. Hell, just track down anything you can by Mick Farren.

Along with Moorcock, two other Monsters of Multiverse Literature ( or "Mul-Lit") are The Amber Chronicles by Roger Zelazny and the series that inspired that, World of Tiers by Philip José Farmer. They have much more of a fantasy feel than the above, especially because of an overuse of courtly language in the former and centaurs and other classic monsters in the latter. You'll also find plenty of complex machinations by powerful groups or families (Zelazny is notorious for Daddy Issues) and decadent, lusty adventure (more of Farmer's bag in trade, but evident in both). I enjoyed both of these series as a teen, but to be honest that was a long time ago and my impressions are murky at best. I recall the fiveTiers with more fondness, but that might be due to the risqué covers by Boris Vallejo. I can assert with some authority that the reader should stop after the first five Amber books, do not read the second series, do not collect the recent stuff written by John Gregory Betancourt. Sadly, Amber suffers from a terminal case of Herberts' Syndrome.

The quirky standalone Roadmarks by Zelazny could be considered a multiverse book. In it, the space-time continuum is an actual highway accessible to a few. The protagonist tools around the centuries in a dusty old pickup running guns to the Persians at Marathon. Occassionally he passes Hitler, his VW bug parked at the side of the road looking for the weed-choked off road to where he won WWII. I'm going to try and fit in some Amber andTiers, maybe revisit Riverworld too, just for old time's sake.

Now that I'm thoroughly soaked in nostalgia, allow me to wax rhetorical on multiverse comic books I always liked. Yes, they're old, I'm old; get used to it, and get off my urine-covered stoop.

The capes-and-tights set is plagued with multiverses, and they're always having Ultimate Critical Infinity Wars — boooring. A refreshing change from all that was the " Zenith" strip in2000 AD (1987-1992). This was young Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell's contribution to the British superhero deconstruction attack of the 1980s. It had battles between multiple Earths, hippie/fascist versions of the same superheroes, the Lloigor from the Cthulhu Mythos, and a hero who was a real asshole. Yeowell's brushy B & W artwork was a sweet counterpoint to the usual 4-color superhero look, too.

For graphical goodies of a more science fictional bent, you cant go wrong with the ligne claire and spacey psychedlia of Jean Giraud better known as Moebius, co-creator of Métal Hurlant magazine. The Airtight Garage is a series of artificial pocket universes built into the asteroid Flower 51. They are the playgrounds/battlefields for the likes of Lady Malvina, Major Gubert, the crew of the spaceship Ciguri, and Jerry Cornelius. Hey, whaaa? Yep, Moorcock allowed other artists, writers, and musicians the use of the character in a sort of Open Source deal. For a while Marvel had a problem with that and the character was renamed Lewis Carnelian for a while. Weird. There are songs about Jerry by Blue Öyster Cult and Hawkwind, but I digress. Moebius returned to the Airtight Garage in '96 with Man from the Ciguri from Dark Horse. All lots of fun.

Bryan Talbot's The Adventures of Luther Arkwright is also often compared to Moorcock, and in many ways improves upon him. Frankly, when you want to read about sexy psychic spies fighting transdimensional evil, it's hard to top the Arkwright stories. I love Talbot's vision of alternate Britains, like the one where Cromwell's Revolution still rages on and the Puritans terrorize the skies from massive airships. The complex plot jumps around jarringly in the original series, before finally coalescing, as you begin to see the multiverse as Luther does. There is also an audio version with the voices of David Tennant and Paul Darrow, I've never heard it — but wow, fangasm. The later 1999 sequel, Heart of Empire from Dark Horse again, follows the story of Luther's daughter in a much more linear fashion, with absolutely gorgeous art and much of that retro-Victorian futurism the kids like.

I have a particular fondness for the idiosyncratic doodles of doom by of Matt Howarth. His anarchic city-world of Bugtown is the home of indestructible assassins, rockstars, giant sharks, and nuclear goddesses; all of whom flit through the most surreal and impossible alternate universes imaginable. The series Those Annoying Post Brothers and Savage Henry are just packed full of crazy. Many experimental underground musicians make regular appearances in Howarth's work. There are adventures featuring Conrad Schnitzler, The Residents, and Micheal Moorcock collaborators, Hawkwind. Geez, that guy gets his beard into everything. Howarth also draws great aliens that look really alien, like cacti crossed with really uncomfortable furniture. Look for the very funny SF Konny & Czu strips.

"So Grey", I hear you say, " how about something less reminiscent of your college-dorm lava-lamp days? Something more, y'know [describes a circle in the air] for the kids?"

Well, the most well known Young Adult books with multiverse themes would probably be Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. Chris Roberson should be getting a lot more attention for his time-space tripping adventures of the Bonaventure-Carmody family in novels likeHere, There & Everywhere, Paragea, and End of the Century. Oh and big surprise, Roberson has worked with Michael Moorcock often.

For something different, try Changing Planes by Ursula K. LeGuin. This is a collection of bright and witty capriccios about a woman who discovers how to shift to alternate worlds by being bored and dyspeptic in airport waiting rooms. As usual, LeGuin makes many wry observations about society and class. There's one story about a civilization of flightless avian people and their transcontinentaln migrations...the ending is beautiful. I could mention Dark Tower series by Stephen King or Charles Stross' The Merchant Princes but I'm just not into them, so I won't. Philip K. Dick's doesn't make the cut either: that's really only a duoverse.

I really loved Neal Stephenson's Anathem and it's all about the multiverse, but does it really belong with these other stories? Well of course it does! If for no other reason than it's completely different from the Michael Moorcock imitators. Yes, all the action takes place in one cosmos — going to another world is a one-way trip and requires a big honkin' generation starship. There is the mystery of Fraa Jaad, who appears to be able to move at will between the slightest possibilities. I noticed something odd, even though Stephenson beats us about the head and neck with tons of higher mathematics and metaphysics, he's awfully vague about the actual mechanism for traveling from one reality to another. This is probably the smartest move. Some writers do a lot of handwaving about Quantum and dress it up in blinky lights and an Einstein-Rosen bridge. But usually, it just boils down to closing your eyes and clicking your heels three times. How very apt for a thought experiment.

Multiverse stories are becoming more prevalent on TV these days. That kid from Stand by Me fought Nazi cavemen from Dimension X or whatever in Sliders. The color coded Charlie Jade looked interesting, but I haven't watched it yet. Lost has used the Many Worlds Interpretation, but they will try just about anything these days.

I see Leonard Nimoy is going back and forth in alternate worlds a lot these days (in Fringe and the Star Trek movie.) Glad to see that sort of thing again.

Somebody asked me recently if multiverses were the Next Big Thing in Speculative Fiction? I like the multiverse concept and would like to see different takes on it, that aren't all about decadent ubermensch and their interdimensional power struggles.

And honestly, we don't need Next Big Things. Trendy conventions in writing are a symptom of a lack of originality. Speculative fiction itself should be a glorious sprawling multiverse exploring all manner of settings and styles. Right now, too many of the worlds in the new book section are getting too recognizable, I'm looking at you Contemporary Urban Fantasy! And you with the top hat and goggles, we've talked before about this, you need to seek help.

So yeah, this trip down multiverse lane has been fun — but I think it points out a flaw in sub-genre stories. Why do they all start running together? Why so many Shadowy Conspirancies, Power Hungry Libertarian Scensters and Moral Relatavisim in a majority of these alternate reality adventures. The Multiverse must have more possibilities than that.

Special thanks to Alan Beatts and Chris Braak for their helpful ideas.
Top image from Heart of Empire by Bryan Talbot, 1999.

Commenter Grey_Area is known on many worlds as Chris Hsiang. He brachiates through the endlessly forking branches of possibility frightening all the turtledoves.

Spoilers ahead.

Transition (Orbit Books) is not part of Banks' beloved Culture series, which take place in a galaxy packed with thousands of alien civilizations. Indeed, Transition wasn't even released as an Iain M. Banks novel in the UK - there he published it under his more literary nym, Iain Banks. But in the U.S., the book is being released as an Iain M. Banks joint, probably because that nym is more well-known here and the plot is science fictional (though one could argue that it's more like fantasy or magic realism).

Transition is a hallucinatory thriller about what happened to Earth - and specifically, Europe - in the time "between the fall of the Wall and the fall of the Towers." In other words, during the feverish years between the demise of the Berlin Wall that marked the end of communism's hold over Europe and the demise of the Twin Towers in New York City that marked the beginning of the "war on terror." When a novel begins with such heavy-handed references, you worry that it's about to become cliched balderdash about How The World Is Changing. Luckily, that is not the case here. Though Transition is an intensely political novel, it is not about party politics or East vs. West or the end of the state or anything that you might read about in the UK Guardian.

Instead, it is about a group of renegade dimension-hoppers who dare to take on a shady, multiverse-manipulating institution called variously the Concern or L'Expedience. In Transition, it turns out our Earth exists in a massive deck of possible other Earths, many of which are accessible to people who are "aware" and have access to a transition-enabling drug called septus. The Concern, which exists on an alternate Earth called Calbefraques, is the sole manufacturer and dispensary of septus. And it trains special agents in the art of "flitting," transitioning between worlds, in order to mold events "for the better" across the multiverse. Sometimes this means saving a physicist from stepping into a building that is about to blow up. Other times it means assassinating people. In our main character Temudjin Oh's case, it means assassinating a lot of people.

Oh is especially talented, which means he's been singled out for recruitment by two women who are vying for control of what the Concern does across the multiverses. Madame D'Ortolan and Mrs. Mulverhill are both intensely powerful, well-connected and politically savvy. They also both have the special power of bringing people with them into another universe by having sex with them - and both want Oh to be their special agent. The problem is that Oh isn't quite sure what either of the women stands for. They ask him to go on missions that are unexplained. D'Ortolan asks on the part of the Concern, which she controls; and Mulverhill asks on behalf of a secret group that opposes her. Maybe killing the guy in his hot tub will save one version of Earth from a future dictator, or maybe it will prevent something good from happening, like world peace or a new scientific breakthrough. Oh isn't sure and mostly he doesn't care. Except when he begins to realize what D'Ortolan is really up to in her secret labs.

Strange and dreamy, the novel is shattered into fragments of perspective: We flit from one person's mind to another and plunge into alternate Earths that are very close to our own. In one, we learn why one man became a torturer for a Muslim-dominated government in a world riddled with Christian terrorists. In another, there is universal healthcare and a mental patient never worries that he'll be kicked out of the hospital where he lives and put on the street. In some worlds, Mandarin is the dominant language. In others, English. Several versions of Earth were destroyed by a gamma ray burst, after a ruler declared her or himself world leader and built a castle inside a bubble on the top of Mount Everest. In other Earths, humans never evolved.

To move from Earth to Earth, the agents must jump into the bodies of people who live in their destination dimension. Which means that Oh is literally jumping from perspective to perspective as he transitions through the stack of possible worlds.

This is all done with Banks' usual crazy, I'm-going-to-do-something-giant panache. In his hands, even the most preposterous battles, mega-objects in space, and (in this novel) bizarre permutations on reality take on a mesmerizing lucidity. Though we know almost nothing about the labs that produce septus, or the way the multiverse works, we believe in it. And we're drawn into the battle between Madame D'Ortolan and Mrs. Mulverhill, which in the end turns out to be something like the battle between Earth and the Culture. Not literally, mind you. There is no Culture here. There are just warring ideologies.

D'Ortolan, who has lived for 200 years by transitioning into younger bodies, represents the raw, libertarian lust for personal gain. And Mulverhill characterizes D'Ortolan's position tartly in this way:

Libertarianism. A simple-minded right-wing ideology ideally suited to those unable or unwilling to see past their own sociopathic self-regard.

Whereas Mulverhill promises something akin to what the Culture has - a chaotic do-goodery which attempts to help people in finite ways while acknowledging it is impossible to make the entire universe a perfectly good place.

Unfortunately, D'Ortolan is willing to engage in wanton destruction to get what she wants, while Mulverhill tries to persuade people to be good using reason - along with a little sex and sword-fighting. As Oh comes into his full powers, and shuffles the deck on the multiverse, the action goes trippy and fun.

While some of the philosophizing in Transition comes across as a bit vague and twee, for the most part the novel feels vital and inventive in a way that Banks' last novel Matter didn't. The worldbuilding is deft, funny, and pointed. Banks' overall point is that Earth at every single moment hovers between thousands of possible futures and presents. And this idea is both well-observed and gracefully shown.

Best of all, Transition will make you remember that you don't need to go into outer space to discover another world. Your Earth is only one of billions.

Transition via Amazon

Banks tells the Guardian:

I'm getting less money for my next book contract. But I've heard of writers having their advances cut by 80%, and others getting nothing. You know, 'Sorry; we just don't want you any more.'

And in response, he will put out a book a year, instead of a book every 18 months. Which is good news — as long as Banks can keep the quality up. And the Guardian also says the literary side of his writing career has been in a bit of a slump in the past decade, but that seems to be over.

Iain Banks writes under two pen names: Iain Banks, and Iain M. Banks. The books without the "M" are classified as mainstream literary fiction, the books with the "M" are sold as science fiction. We just got done singing the praises of the M-less literary works and their potential appeal to science fiction fans, but the Guardian article says his most recent three literary novels — The Business, Dead Air, and The Steep Approach To Garbadale — were "lackluster" and left many people wondering if Banks' literary output had run out of steam. (Banks admits to the Guardian that Dead Air is full of rants and self-indulgence.)

Meanwhile, Banks' science fiction books, especially Look To Windward and Matter, have been as good as ever. His new book, Transition, is being marketed in Britain as another literary work, and "is being talked about as a return to form." But it'll be sold in the United States as a science fiction book, with the M, because, says Banks, "I sell better as a science-fiction writer over there." Since the novel takes place in a series of alternate worlds, either label might fit. [Guardian]

Iain M. Banks and Iain Banks, of course, are the same man, who uses the "M" to differentiate his science fiction work from his mainstream, literary novels. I first discovered Banks when someone recommended his sardonic space opera Consider Phlebas, which was the one book that launched me on a new spree of reading and writing SF. But after reading Phlebas and some of his other novels about the Culture (a star-spanning, super-advanced civilization that meddles in the affairs of "lesser" societies) I hunted down several of Banks' novels that lacked that tell-tale speculative M. Not surprisingly, they're just as wonderful as his speculative novels — and they're often just on the edge of the fantastical. (True story: I went to a London bookstore in the late 1990s and bought so many Banks books, they gave me an Iain Banks poster, showing him standing on a staircase. It hung in my bedroom for several years, through a couple moves.)

The protagonists in Banks' literary novels often exist on the edge of our world, in a kind of surreal outer dimension where reality fits a bit more loosely than it does in our world. Often, that's because his chararacters are a bit insane, or because they're venturing into an insane world. Besides the dysfunctional, secretive families that you'd expect in literary fiction, his novels frequently feature weird cults and strange religions (and yes, there's often a smidge of ambiguity about whether their ritualistic magic is actually real or not) and he often depicts bizarre conspiracies and power plays.

I should confess that I last read a ton of Iain (no M) Banks about a decade ago. I have a bunch of them in front of me as I'm writing this: The Wasp Factory, The Bridge, The Crow Road, Complicity, Whit, A Song Of Stone and The Business. But my memories of the novels are a bit hazy, so I'm using Wikipedia and the time-honored art of flipping through books to find the good parts. Mostly, looking back at these books, I'm reminded how powerful they all were, and how much like his science fiction they are. Except the main difference, actually, is that if anything, his mainstream literary novels are weirder — since he doesn't have to do the heavy lifting of introducing alien species and complicated space politics, he's free to make his characters and storylines that much more unreal.

My favorite Iain Banks novel is Whit, the story of a young girl who grows up as the Elect Of God in a cozy techno-phobic cult in Scotland. She's supposed to inherit the leadership of the cult eventually, but her brother Allan is trying to muscle her out. And her grandfather, the cult's founder and leader, turns out to be a lying dirtbag who tries to sexually assault her at one point, in a completely disturbing scene that sticks in your mind forever afterwards:

He gave a grunt and twisted his hand free of mine; it dived between my tightly clenched legs, trying to finger my sex; I heaved and wriggled out from underneath him, rolling away over the bed; he grabbed at me, catching my ankle as I tried to stand, bringing me down on all fours. 'Submit, Isis, submit! Prove your love for God!' He tried to mount me from behind but I wrestled him off.

And yet there's something genuinely transformative as well as horrifying about Whit, as Isis ventures out from her sheltered religious community into the "real" world and sees "Babylondon" from the vantage point of someone who's used to seeing magic everywhere. And Isis' journey learns to her discovering her own voice and taking on the power her exalted religious title always implied, so that by the end of the book she has as much stature as any great fantasy heroine.

Whit isn't the only novel where ritualistic behavior leads us inside a world of strangeness and transgression, that could almost be an alien society: his first novel, The Wasp Factory, has a young protagonist who kills three younger children in bizarre, inventive ways, and then slaughters a number of animals ritualistically, in a way that's supposed to reveal the future. (And there's a dark secret twist, which I won't spoil here.) And one of my favorite Banks novels, Complicity, has a demented serial killer with somewhat less of a ritualistic spin (but more of a political one), who narrates his crimes in the second person, making us into the serial killer. As much as Zakalwe or any of the Culture's other hired assassins stand in for our own killer instinct, Banks tries, in his M-less novels, to take us deeper into the mind of a killer and open for us the secret doors in the walls of the world we always suspected we could open if we were capable of taking other people's lives.

Even more surreal is The Bridge, in which Alex has a car crash while contemplating the Forth Bridge, and falls into a coma. There, he falls in and out of dreams, including ones where he's caught in a kind of virtual world called The Bridge, where time and space have no meaning. There are carnivorous fish swimming around beneath the Bridge, and weird women come and bring him unlikely food items. Occasionally, tiny ogres come running out of the nearby forest and have orgies with the women, lasting days. In a separate set of reveries, Alex dreams he's The Barbarian, a kind of Conan-esque character who narrates in a kind of pastiche of Scottish dialect: "Took oot ma sord; ye canna fuk around with these weird forrin punters. Put the tip at his throate; he didnae seem botherid though." Yes, he's a barbarian who uses semicolons.

The other novel that jumps out at me as especially memorable is The Business, an Illuminati-esque conspiracy thriller about a secret organization that controls everything in the world, which has at various points owned the Roman Empire and controlled the Catholic Church. And now The Business wants to own a country, so it can have a seat on the United Nations. The more up-and-coming executive Kate Telman learns about the people she works for, the more insane and far-reaching it gets, and the murkier the ethical waters she swims into. That's really the other major strand that jumps out of Banks' ostensibly non-science-fiction writing, besides tearing down the tissues of reality: as you might expect from someone who wrote a novel called Complicity, he's very very interested in people who are coopted by power, or who fantasize about having more power than they actually have. Not unlike the far-reaching Minds of the Culture, Banks' "mainstream" protagonists are often too powerful for their own good. As Kathryn, the narrator of The Business, tells us:

We always think we are right and — search as I have — there is no evil under the sun that somebody somewhere won't argue is actually a good, no idiocy that hasn't got its perfectly serious defenders, and no tyrant, past or present — no matter how bloody — without some bunch of zealot schmucks to defend him or his reputation till the last breath in their bodies — or preferably somebody else's.

Last year, we gave you our favorite opening sentences from science fiction novels — but when we decided to do the same thing for endings, it turned out to be harder to find as many great ones, until we did a bit more digging. Why are great endings rarer than great beginnings?

In some ways, a great opening line is easier than a great last line. Everybody understands the need to draw the reader in, to craft a beginning that both seduces and informs the uncommitted. A first line gives you hints of what the story will be about, but also establishes a tone. But a last line has to wrap up the last bits of story, leave you with as much closure as the writer wants you to have, and give a feeling of a final grace note. And a lot of science fiction novels seem to end with a bang, or a last order of business, or a final thought — but a line that wraps things up, storywise, and leaves you with a sense that the story continues, past the horizon? That's a tad rarer.

So we spent hours sitting in various bookstores and our own book collections, rifling through the science fiction books to find the last lines that stay with you after you've put the book down. (I sat on the floor of a Border's for a couple hours. Shudder.) And here's what we came across, including a few fantasy ones as well. (Special thanks to Alexis Brown, who devoted tons of time to the search for the perfect final note.)

It goes without saying, there may be spoilers here. (Although perhaps not surprisingly, many of the best last lines are the ones which give the least away, because they do the least plot wrangling.) Also, we're cheating slightly, in some cases, and giving you the last paragraphs of novels, rather than just the last sentence. So here are our favorites:

Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly:

"Stooping Down, Bruce picked one of the stubbled blue plants, then placed it in his right shoe, sliping it down out of sight. A present for my friends, he thought, and looked forward inside his mind, where no one could see, to Thanksgiving." It's a lovely surreal ending to a weird, unsettling book, and the blue plant that Bruce puts in his shoe is one of the seedlings of the mysterious drug Substance D. What's he going to do with it? I love the fact that in a novel about surveillance and fractured personas we have to be told, at the last, that nobody can see inside Bruce's mind.

Matthew De Abaitua, Red Men:

"She moved on to the question of what she would dream about, if she could decide on a good dream before going to sleep, and if the dream would obey her wishes and stay good all through the night." Another novel about fractured psyches and surveillance and people confronting their dark side, and it ends with a child's wish to control her own dreams — and we linger on how simple, and yet how difficult, that actually is.

Iain M. Banks, Against A Dark Background:

"A little later the monowheel vehicle spun backward out of the sewer outfall, pirrouetted vertically like a saluting mount, swung down across the greasy slope of stones at the base of the House's walls, dodged uncoordinated gunfire from a nearby tower, and accelerated quickly across the tide-flooding sands." Jesus. Read that aloud. It's a poem. And the imagery is so vivid, you can see the monowheel's dance, in your head. It's epic.

Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere:

"And they walked away together through the hole in the wall, back into the darkness, leaving nothing behind them; not even the doorway." It's interesting how many of these last lines are a literal departure, into darkness or into the void. Anyway, it's a really haunting last sentence.

William Barton, When Heaven Fell:

"Then the pipers piped and the drummers drummed and we all marched away into the sky." The main character is fighting in the alien army that conquered the human race, and they finally may have found an even more powerful enemy to go fight. I just love the ring of "marched away into the sky." Why isn't William Barton worshiped as a god, again?

Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow:

"Unaware of his own movement, schooled by old habit, Vincenzo Giuliani rose and went to the windows, and stood looking, for how long he had no idea, across a grassy open courtyard to a complex panorama of medieval masonry and jumbled rock, formal garden and gnarled trees: a scene of great and beautiful antiquity." It's a wonderfully melancholy last sentence for a novel that ends with dreadful sadness and contemplation of almost unimaginable brutality. The universe is even older, and even harsher, than anything we have on Earth, and yet there's beauty as well.

William Gibson, Pattern Recognition:

"She kisses his sleeping back and falls asleep." Supposedly it's a major taboo to begin a novel with a character waking up, but in this case, ending a novel with falling asleep, especially after a kiss, just feels right.

Cory Doctorow, Little Brother:

"She kissed me then, and I kissed her back, and it was some time before we went out for that burrito." It's like the end of a Roger Moore James Bond movie, where he's finally in bed with the main girl, and we pan back slowly, giving them some privacy for their much-deserved nookie. Except Doctorow's version is funnier, and the burrito thing is a nice callback to the crucial burrito scene earlier in the book.

The Killing of Worlds (Succession, Book 2) by Scott Westerfeld:

"A kiss could change the world." Another kiss, and this one full of hope that the personal can have a transforming effect on the universe.

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451:

"When we reach the city." Super short, but one of the most discussed last lines in literature, for its possible religious symbolism among other things. It's inspired a whole blog.

Charles Stross, Saturn's Children:

"And none of them need fear being eaten by memories of Rhea." I just love the "eaten by memories" thing.

Brian Francis Slattery, Liberation:

"The Vibe doesn't say a word, for it's been done with him for years; but in his daughter's breathing, the calls of birds from the vines draped over branches, the thickening sky talking about the rain, the insects landing with rustles and whispers on their faces and hands, the ruts in the road that connect La Paz with his wife sleeping on the warping porch at the edge of the ravine, he thinks he hears the answer." One last rolling boulder of a sentence from this thundering novel, that leaves you wondering just what that answer might be.

Larry Niven and Edward M Lerner, Juggler of Worlds:

"In the skies over Atlantis, two suns were gone." And if that doesn't leave an image in your mind after you close the book, there's no helping you.

Frank Herbert, Dune:

"Think on it, Chani: the princess will have the name, yet she'll live as less than a concubine-never to know the moment of tenderness from the man to whom she's bound. While we, Chai, we who carry the name of the concubine-history will call us wives." Both Alexis and I picked this one out separately — it's just such a great chunk of intrigue. Although I was torn between this one and Children of Dune, which ends with another great quote: "One of us had to accept the agony, and he was always the strongest."

The Prefect, Alastair Reynolds:

"'Dreams,' Demikhov said. 'Beautiful human dreams.'" It's actually really hard to end a novel on a line of dialogue without feeling hokey or as though the interplay of dialogue and narration is just stopping, but Reynolds does it amazingly well.

Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time:

"But they never learned what it was that Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs Who, and Mrs Which had to do, for there was a gust of wind, and they were gone." It's just so fairytale-like, with the nice use of "for" and the gust of wind. And the mystery lingering after you close the back cover.

Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games:

"I take his hand, holding tightly, preparing for the cameras, and dreading the moment when I will finally have to let go." One of our favorite books of the past year, and it ends with the greatest test yet to begin. And "let go" has so many different meanings here, it's amazing.

Margaret Atwood, Oryx And Crake:

"Zero Hour, Snowman thinks. Time to go." You can see why this book is getting a sequel, since that's another ending that feels like a beginning.

Arthur C Clarke, Childhood's End:

"No one dared disturb him or interrupt his thoughts; and presently he turned his back upon the dwindling sun." Another one that both Alexis and I picked out separately, for its image of the sun dying away.

Roger Zelazny, The Guns of Avalon:

"We moved on through the cavern to the stairs where the dead men lay and went round and round above him in the dark." Another one which ends with a sense of motion and departure, with the narrator leaving into the dark.

Otherland Volume Three: Mountain of Black Glass by Tad Williams:

"She learned on the balcony railing, waiting for the end of the world." There are some last lines that would also make great first lines, and this is definitely one of them.

H.G. Wells, War Of The Worlds:

"And strangest of all is it to hold my wife's hand again, and to think that I have counted her, and that she has counted me, among the dead." It makes me want to go back and re-read that book right now.

George Orwell, 1984:

"He loved Big Brother." You can't get much sharper, darker, or bleaker than that final statement.

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein:

"He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance." Another last line that's a departure, and that features someone disappearing into the darkness, in a poetic, haunting way.

Vernor Vinge, Rainbow's End:

"Then he was down the elevator and back on the sunny plaza. And hovering immanent all around him were the worlds of art and science that humankind was busy building. What if I can have it all?" Of all the endings we looked through, this is the one that felt the most cinematic, for some reason. You can just feel the camera panning back to show the future being built and the big question hovering in the air.

Austin Grossman, Soon I Will Be Invincible:

"When your laboratory explodes, lacing your body with a super-charged elixir, what do you do? You don't just lie there. You crawl out of the rubble, hideously scarred, and swear vengeance on the world. You keep going. You keep trying to take over the world." More books should suddenly veer into second person, as if this is all of us going on this journey of vengeance together — it just amps up the awful power of that last evil oath.

Ken MacLeod, The Sky Road:

"Whatever the truth about the Deliverer, she will remain in my mind as she was shown on that statue, and all the other statues and murals, songs and stories: riding, at the head of her own swift cavalry, with a growing migration behind her and a decadent, vulnerable, defenceless and rich continent ahead; and, floating bravely above her head and above her army, the black flag on which nothing is written." The image of conquest, culminating with the blank, black flag, is just so rich and hangs around long after you put the book down.

Suzette Haden Elgin, Native Tongue:

"One of the things he planned to do, before he left this fancy hell, was figure out how to get into the Interface and go for a swim with those whales in that beautiful blue water. Round and round and round, in a lovely endless loop." Another really sticky image, this one a bit surreal and full of color.

Top image is cover of The Sky Road by Ken MacLeod, art by Mark Salwowski. Additional reporting by Alexis Brown.

Even as more women are becoming astronauts and getting to pilot the space shuttle, science fiction has shown tons of women taking the helm. Here are some of the most awesome, in no particular order:

Lady Sharrow in Against A Dark Background by Iain M. Banks

We don't get to see combat specialist Sharrow doing that much piloting in this book — but when she does take the controls, she makes it count. The one sequence where she does some fancy flying is one of the best moments in the book.

Carolyn Fry from Pitch Black.

I don't know how I managed to forget her — I actually had her on my list, and had grabbed this cool pic of her in advance. She manages to bring a dead ship down in spite of incredible odds — and sure, she tries to jettison her passengers. But she's just being sensible, after all.

Sue Parsons from Virtuality

As with Sharrow, Sue Parsons spends most of her screen time doing other things — mostly, like all the other characters on this show, bickering and freaking out about virtual reality nightmares. But when she does actually get to handle the Starship Phaeton's controls — watch out. She does an incredibly complex series of maneuvers while giant bombs are going off in her wake. Makes all the drama totally worth it.

Jenna, from Blake's 7.

This smuggler is the best pilot around — there's no competition, except maybe that arrogant twerp Del Tarrant. Jenna manages to take the controls of the Liberator, the most super-advanced ship in space, and master them almost immediately. And she's able to take it on manual and do some fancy flying, on occasion.

Saint-Emxin from Battle Beyond The Stars.

She's a mean Valkyrie fighter pilot, who more than holds her own in the movie's crucial Star Wars-inspired firefights. Han Solo not only couldn't pull off her headgear, he also couldn't outfly her. (I almost included Padme Amidala in this list, since she pilots a ship in Attack Of The Clones — but could Amidala really hold her own against Saint-Exmin? I think not.)

Tak from Invader Zim.

The "hideous new girl" shows up hoping to do a better job of invading Earth than Zim, and she has the ability to hypnotize humans into doing her bidding — but she also pilots her own ship.

Faye from Cowboy Bebop

Faye is an awesome fighter pilot, and even held her own in a dogfight with Spike. Runner-up status also goes to space trucker V.T., aka Victoria Terpsichore.

Carol "Foe Hammer" Rawley in Halo.

She does some pretty nifty flying as the pilot of Pelican transport Echo 419 on the UNSC Pillar of Autumn. She specializes in doing lots of missions involving hostile insertions and rescues, making her stand out from the rest.

Ana Khouri in Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds.

This assassin joins the crew of the Nostalgia For Infinity, intent on killing one of the crewmembers, but then two different digital entities fight over control of her, and thus of the ship. Also a killer pilot is the ship's de facto captain, Illia Volyova.

Mary Raven from Ignition City.

This grounded space pilot journeys to Earth's last spaceport, Ignition City, to find out what happened to her dad, in this new comic by Warren Ellis and Gianluca Pagliarani. Space-jockey Mary Raven is determined to find out what happened to her dad, and she won't leave Ignition City until she gets some answers.

Lt. Shane Vansen from Space: Above And Beyond.

According to this site, she's "one of Earth's most celebrated pilots," piloting the SA-43 Hammerhead space fighter into battle.

Corp. Ferro in Aliens.

Okay, sure, she gets killed after speaking only a couple lines of dialogue. But she has cool sunglasses, and she manages to put the ship down through a lot of turbulence.

Carmen Ibanez in Starship Troopers.

Many of the badass pilots in this movie are women, and Carmen (Denise Richards) is the most memorable of them. She's a pilot in the SICON fleet, who pilots the drop ship, and even helps on the ground when things get rough.

Col. Wilma Deering in Buck Rogers In The 25th Century.

She doesn't just look good in a slinky jumpsuit, or boogieing next to Buck — Wilma's an ace fighter pilot in her own right, and a lot of episodes see her flying off solo to deal with the bikini-clad menace of the week.

Aeryn Sun in Farscape.

She's a formidable fighter generally, but she's also a former Peacekeeper pilot, and some of her best moments involve her taking the helm of a ship — like the season two finale, when Crichton is flying away with Scorpius' mind controlling him, and Aeryn chases after him in her own ship.

Yoninne Leg-Wot from The Witling by Vernor Vinge.

We don't actually get to see much of her piloting skills, since she and her companion Ajao Bjault get stranded on the planet full of telekinetic aliens early on. But she does turn out to be resourceful, and despite being unattractive by Earth standards, she helps win over the "witling" of the story's title, Prince Pelio.

River in Serenity.

Okay, so Serenity's real pilot is, and always will be, Wash. But you can tell, at the end of the movie, that River is gearing up to be a pretty great pilot in her own right. And in the series of movie sequels that unspool in my daydreams from time to time, she's piloting the ship all the time.

Manda in Burning The Ice by Laura J. Mixon.

Manda CarliPablo's stigmatized because she's the only colonist on a barren gas giant who's not a twin or triplet — her other clones died before they were "born" — but her isolation turns out to be a good thing, as she becomes the best pilot in the colony and explores the unexplored regions of this new world — discovering an alien race along the way.

Turanga Leela from Futurama.

Despite being captain, she's also always ready to take the helm of the Planet Express ship, and her lack of three-dimensional vision doesn't seem to interfere with her amazing piloting skills.

Jaina Solo from the Star Wars expanded universe.

The daughter of Han Solo and Princess Leia didn't just inherit her mom's Force powers — she also became a kick-ass pilot, like her dad. She flew the Millenium Falcon on a few occasions. When she got caught flying the Merry Miner, an unarmed mining ship, during the Yuuzhan Vong war, she managed to dodge the aliens' attacks until help arrived. And then she became one of the New Republic's most valued starfighter pilots.

Captain Beka Valentine from Andromeda.

Thanks to everyone who suggested adding her — Beka Valentine is, among other things, the Andromeda's first officer and pilot, taking advantage of her better-than-human reaction times and strength.

Tanni from Mutineer's Moon by David Weber

Here's the key sequence:

"And," MacMahan added gently, "Tanni will be your pilot."

"What?!"

"Tanni will be your pilot," MacMahan repeated mildly. "I'm speaking now as the commander of a military operation, and I don't have time to be diplomatic, so both of you just shut up and listen... we can't afford anything but our very best pilot behind those controls. You're good, Colin, and your reaction time is phenomenal even by Imperial standards, but good as you are, you have very little experience in an Imperial fighter.

Tanni, on the other hand, is a natural pilot and the youngest of our Imperials, with reaction time almost as good as yours but far, far more experience. The overall mission will be under your command, but she's your pilot and you're her electronics officer, or neither of you goes."

Kathryn Fairly in Space Camp.

A group of teenagers get to go aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis during a test-firing of its engines. But the mean android named Jinx decides to — what else — jinx them by making the space shuttle blast off for real. They're stuck in orbit, without enough oxygen to get home. And Kathryn (Lea Thompson), who was struggling with the "multi-axis trainer" that's required for shuttle pilots, manages to ace the real-life situation that simulator creates: a flat spin after the shuttle's reorbit burn. She brings that bird down safe and proves she's an awesome pilot.

Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica.

As I said before, these are in no particular order — but if they were, Starbuck would be #1 in any list. She's clearly the best pilot among Battlestar's flyboys and -girls. Adama always refers to her as his best pilot, and she pushes herself harder than anyone else. Kat may have tried to challenge Starbuck's impressive kill rate, but she never really had a hope.

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown. Special thanks to Pete Gofton, Brian Williams, Erin Souza, Ira Wile, Jordan Hoffman, Austin Grossman, Ekaterina Sedia, and @soapboxx on Twitter.

But first, a couple quick notes. There are obviously way more examples of alien writing systems out there, but these are all ones that have been "deciphered" such that we can actually write in them. There are some major alien languages that remain mysterious, including the Gallifreyan omegabet, which allegedly has millions of characters. I've provided links to fonts based on these alphabets; if you don't know how to install fonts on your computer, here is a handy guide. With that out of the way, and following a brief but very honorable mention to J.R.R. Tolkien's Tengwar script from Lord of the Rings, let's get started on some alien alphabets...

1-2. Alienese I and II, Futurama

As part of their truly gargantuan effort to make the 31st century a fully realized universe, series creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen (well, mainly David X. Cohen) created Alienese, an alien alphabet that was primarily used to write humorous graffiti in the background of scenes. The alphabet has precisely the same twenty-six letters and base ten number system as English , and the writers didn't create an Alienese language to go along with the alphabet, so everything it said was in English (the main point of Alienese was to do in-jokes, after all). All of this allowed Futurama fans to decipher the alphabet within about thirty minutes of the show's premiere, forcing the writing staff to come up with a more fiendish challenge, which became Alienese II.

Instead of the simple letter substitution of the first alphabet, this second alphabet uses a modular addition system, where the symbol to represent a given character changes based on the letter before it. Here's how it would work in English: say you want to write "Fry." First assign each letter of the alphabet the numerical value that is one less than their position in it, so A = 0 and Z = 25 (the reasons you have to do this are too complicated and boring to go into). You first choose the fifth letter, which of course is "F." For "R", the seventeenth letter, you combine the values of "F" and "R", which is 5 + 17 = 22, which means you use "W." With "Y", you add 24 to 22, which gives you 46. Since there are only 26 letters, you subtract 46 - 26 = 20, and so the final letter is "U". Thus "Fry" is spelled the equivalent of "Fwu" in Alienese II. Oh, and don't worry - none of the rest of these alphabets are even remotely this complicated.

You can download the fonts here (although you'll have to do your own addition with Alienese II). You can also instantly convert between English and either language here. If you're still a bit confused about modular addition, you can check out a more detailed primer here.

3. Ancient, Stargate

After the insanity of Alienese II, here's a nice straightforward alphabet used by the Ancients on Stargate. It's a fairly close phonetic match for the English alphabet, although "f" and "u" are represented by the same character, so there are only 25 letters total. Supposedly, the letters can take on new meanings when written upside-down. As far as numbers go, the Ancients actually used a Base 8 system, but they invented two additional numerals so that they could more easily deal with races that used a decimal system. There are no symbols for punctuation in the Ancient alphabet. The makers of Stargate were somewhat inconsistent in how they used the alphabet, occasionally writing context-appropriate messages in English, but more often simply using the language for in-jokes.

Download the alphabet here. And, because I'm trying to encourage this sort of thing, here is a link to the Gospel of Matthew transliterated into the Ancient alphabet.

4. Ath, Crest of the Stars by Morioka Hiroyuki

This Japanese science fiction trilogy, along with its sequel Banner of the Stars, dealt with the Abh, an interstellar but strongly feudal race that was originally bioengineered by a highly nationalist faction in far future Japan. They speak Baronh, a language based on ancient Japanese. Created as slaves, the Abh at first had no written language, but upon gaining their freedom created Ath, a relatively independent alphabet that nevertheless had some basis in Japanese kana scripts.

You can get the font here.

5. Interlac, DC Comics

In the 30th century era of the Legion of Superheroes, Interlac is the common constructed language of the United Planets. Considering the hugely diverse backgrounds of the Legion and their penchant for fighting evil on faraway alien planets, a lingua franca like Interlac is a very real necessity. Although the language was first used in a 1969 issue of Adventure Comics, it wasn't until 1984 that Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen standardized the alphabet into the consistent set that it is today. Recently, the titles of the five JLA and JSA books that made up the Lightning Saga were written in Interlac. And, in a sign of great cosmic respect, the Guardians use Interlac to write the Book of Oa.

Download the font here.

6-8. The Klingon Alphabets, Star Trek

Klingon is probably the most famous science fiction language. Developed by linguist Marc Okrand for the Star Trek movies, Klingon is officially written using our alphabet. However, Klingon ships often have markings on them that clearly look like letters, which has led Klingon enthusiasts to search for a proper Klingon alphabet. This came when an unidentified figure from Paramount used the letters seen on the show to make an alphabet, which he or she then sent to the Klingon Language Institute. This alphabet, known as pIqaD, does not have a set correspondence between its letters and the English alphabet equivalents. The Institute has proposed the mapping seen above, but official sources say this is incorrect.

A more official, albeit more bizarre, Klingon alphabet was originally developed by the Astra Image Corporation for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. These were also later used for the Skybox trading cards made for The Next Generation. Although there are still 26 phonetic values, just like in English, there are now only ten letters, meaning various characters double, triple, and sometimes quadruple up in possible meanings. This of course means that many words, some with directly opposite meanings, will look identical. Nevertheless, this alphabet is the one most often used by Star Trek production teams when adding Klingon lettering.

Finally, there is the so-called Klinzhai script, which comes from The U.S.S. Enterprise Officer's Manual, published in 1980. Based on concept art and other fragments seen in The Original Series, the alphabet has the major disadvantage of being formalized before Marc Okrand constructed the Klingon language, making it difficult to correlate with what is now "known" about the sounds of the Klingon language.

Get the first pIqaD here along with several other Star Trek alphabets of varying degrees of officialness. Unfortunately, I can't find a font for the second pIqaD. You can download Klinzhai here. And, for the Star Trek fan who has everything except a Klingon keyboard, here is a Klingon keyboard.

9. Kryptonese, DC Comics

Kryptonese automatically gets points because it's the only writing system on this list that's a syllabary, not an alphabet. It grew out of several fan letters that attempted to rationalize the various squiggles used in the fifties and sixties to represent the language of Superman's destroyed home planet Krypton. Exasperated by the barrage of letters, DC editor E. Nelson Bridwell tried to end the unsolicited alphabets by explaining in one issue that Kryptonese actually had 118 letters. In a development that should stand as a lasting tribute to linguistic geekiness, Bridwell immediately started receiving proposals for 118-character Kryptonese alphabets. Bridwell, himself a lover of trivial minutiae, decided if the job was to be done, he really should be the one to do it, and set about combing through old comics to find 118 unique squiggles that he could designate as the various sounds of Kryptonese. Although this exercise was, of course, completely arbitrary, the end result was the massive syllabary you see above.

Unfortunately, there are currently no fonts available online for Kryptonese, partially because its non-alphabetical nature would make it difficult for most keyboards. But here is a great site covering its history and mechanics.

10. Kryptonian, DC Comics

One of the many things removed from continuity by Johnny Bryne's Man of Steel reboot was Kryptonese. In its place came Kryptonian, which was a 26 letter alphabet that simply corresponded with the English alphabet. This new alphabet was introduced in 2000, and ever since any Kryptonian you might see in comics (the current World of New Krypton arc has a bunch of examples) are English phrases transliterated into Kryptonian. This also allowed the comics to finish the task of justifying why there's a big "S" on Superman's costume, as the Kryptonian "S" sort of looks like the Man of Tomorrow's symbol. (It's also a symbol of hope on Krypton.) And to think I had simply assumed the "S" just stood for Superman.

Get the font here. You can also go here to check out a truly wondrous attempt to go beyond a simple letter substitution scheme and create a complete, linguistically consistent Kryptonian, complete with nine vowels and twenty-four consonants.

11. Mandalorian, Star Wars

The Mandalorians are best known as the warrior culture that trained Jango Fett and provided the inspiration for both the Fett family's armor and that of the Clone Troopers. In the Expanded Universe books, the Mandalorians have been developed as a fearsome third faction in the war between Jedi and Sith, sometimes following the Sith, but more often content to auction off their deadly services to the highest bidder. Karen Traviss, author of the Star Wars: Republic Commando series, is currently working on developing the Mandalorian language, Mando'a, into a fully functional language. The alphabet you see above comes from the Visual Dictionary companion to Attack of the Clones.

You can download it here.

12. Marain, The Culture books by Iain M. Banks

Banks's series considers the Culture, a utopian society where various alien societies have been brought together in relative harmony under the benign governance of the Minds, a set of highly sophisticated AI. The Minds considered language a vital part of ensuring peace between species, and so they created Marain, a new language with no clear connections to any previously extant tongue. For the Marain alphabet, the Minds used binary as an inspiration, using a 3x3 grid of nine circles, with each circle either blackened or left blank. Lines were then drawn between the dots to construct the symbol, as can be seen in the chart above. Although there could theoretically be as many as 512 unique characters in the Marain alphabet, these 32 symbols in particular were chosen because then can be rotated and flipped without looking like any of the others, making all of them completely unique and distinguishable.

Download the font here under the entry for December 21. For a more comprehensive explanation from Banks as to how the Marain writing system works, go here.

13. Zentradi, The Super Dimension Fortress Macross

This anime series from the early eighties concerned first contact between humans and the Zentradi, giant humanoids created eons ago by a mysterious protoculture to serve as their galactic warriors. The series's creators, Studio Nue, constructed a Zentradi alphabet for the TV series, which they then supplemented with a full-fledged Zentradi language for the followup movie.

You can get the font here.

Unsurprisingly, none of the writers involved - Paul Cornell, Iain (M.) Banks, Ken MacLeod and Ian Watson - feel constrained by real-world science, but all acknowledge that it's worth being somewhat aware of what's happening. Cornell sees it as a war between factions within the SF community... for good reason:

The mundane movement is challenging writers to drop ideas that once promised to be scientific ones, but are now considered as fantasy - faster than light travel, telepathy etc - and to concentrate on the problems of the human race being confined to an Earth it is using up. But this is as much an artistic movement as an ethical one. The existence of such a movement, though, suggests that science fiction feels a sense of mission. Unlike its cousin, fantasy, it wants to be talking about the real world in ways other than metaphorical.

Watson has problems with the mundane school of thought:

A recent, undoubtedly short-lived school of thought, mundane science fiction, wishes to stick to the facts and eschew any flights of fancy such as starships or aliens. How very boring of them, say I. What, no zany thought experiments? Zaniness is an important part of science fiction, as well as operating within a certain framework of rationality.

Banks has the best response, however:

My new book is a mainstream novel that borrows science fiction tropes. It plays with the idea that there are an infinite number of different worlds. So it's using speculative hard science. And it's important to the book that there's a degree of respectability about the idea of the multiverse, or the many-worlds theory. But in my science fiction, I merrily break as many laws as I can get my hands on. Especially faster than light travel - I have my starships going at unfeasibly high speeds. Sometimes I pay no attention whatsoever to what's possible and realistic. It really depends on the novel.

How sci-fi moves with the times [BBC News]

Says the Guardian, in its intro:

It is sometimes assumed that science fiction, fantasy and horror must mean spaceships, elves and vampires - and indeed, you'll find Iain M Banks, Tolkien and Bram Stoker on our list of mind-expanding reads. Yet these three genres have a tradition as venerable as the novel itself. Fiction works through metamorphosis: in every era authors explore the concerns of their times by mapping them on to invented worlds, whether they be political dystopias, fabulous kingdoms or supernatural dimensions.

It's definitely an interesting list — probably different from what most American newspapers or critics would have chosen. There's a lot of literary stuff, some of which everyone recognizes as science fiction (like Margaret Atwood and Michael Chabon) and some of which nobody does (Henry James, Herman Hesse). Oddly, both Iain M. Banks and his literary twin, Iain Banks, make the list. It's probably weighted a bit too much towards earlier works, but it contains a surprising number of ninteenth century titles, enough to be provocative. There's some stuff in there which is more properly fantasy, like Harry Potter and The Sword In The Stone.

Oh, and they misspelled Samuel Delany's name. Oops.

Mostly, though, it's a pretty great list — it does what a list of must-read books should do, which is make you rethink the shape of the genre. Not just by debating which books they left out and which they shouldn't have included, but also by making you think about how far back the genre stretches, and how much it's changed in recent years. The recent authors on the list include rising stars like Alastair Reynolds and China Mieville, as well as some literary stars like Nicola Barker. You can sort of see an arc, from 19th century fabulism through 20th century pulpiness, back to a kind of fabulism in the 21st century. Or maybe I'm just projecting a bit.

Easily as interesting as the main list are some of the side articles, like Michael Moorcock's list of the best dystopias (which contains few surprises but is still an interesting bit of analysis.) And Roz Kaveny's list of radical novels. Susanna Clarke names her favorite world-building series. And there's the best of J.G. Ballard, an author who belongs on any must-read list. [Guardian]

The Stage, the British weekly newspaper for actors, is reporting that well-respected actors like Derek Jacobi, Jason Isaacs and Alex Jennings will be taking part in the new BBC season of sci-fi radio plays to be broadcast across the corporation's various networks this March. In addition to previously-announced adaptations of Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama and Iain M. Banks' State Of The Art, the season - spread across BBC Radio 3, Radio 4 and digital channel BBC 7 - will include new original works from Kim Newman and Mike Maddox, amongst others... but what explains the sudden popularity of the genre amongst big-name actors like Jacobi? A familar face, according to Jeremy Howe, BBC Radio 4's commissioning editor - Doctor Who:

There is a queue of people wanting to be in science fiction, because it’s seen to be sexy [thanks to the success of the series].

Of course, not everyone has the looks of David Tennant... but considering it's radio, who can tell?

Jacobi and McCormack to star in BBC radio’s sci-fi season [The Stage]

It's hard to quibble with their picks for best movies and books. Being mostly Brits, the New Scientist group put Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy at the top of the novel heap. Iain M. Banks would have won, but his vote was split among a few of his books. (Including Feersum Enjinn. Really?) Frank Herbert's Dune also came close to winning. The best movie, according to the NS crew, was Blade Runner, followed by 2001: A Space Odyssey, Solaris and Serenity.

The "worst" lists might be a tad more controversial. The worst SF books include 3001, Arthur C. Clarke's fourth and final book in the Space Odyssey series, and L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics. The worst films were The Blob and David Lynch's Dune. Several people apparently also voted for The Matrix (the original) for worst film, but others named it one of the best. One person said of The Matrix:

It has one of the worst backplot elements ever: using people as power sources. I could write an essay on how ludicrous that is.

Finally — and here's the part where some people may disagree violently — the New Scientist staff named Primer the "most incomprehensible" science fiction movie.

"Well worth watching," said one of our editors, "though you might be excused for wondering if it makes any sense at all."

You can vote for your own favorite books and movies, and give your reasons, at this link. Or you could just write a diatribe about why Primer really does make sense, if you watch it eight times. Shape-shifting robot image by Mondolithic Studios for New Scientist. [New Scientist]

He continues:

Finding the set of genes that code for xenophobia in general - these days usually expressed though sexism, racism, homophobia, anti-semitism, Islamophobia, Romaphobia and so on (and on, and on) - and knocking them out. Possibly then we'll be nice enough for the Culture or something like it. Of course maybe inventing true AIs will be enough, always assuming that they're as benign - and yet sympathetically interested in us - as they are taken to be in the Culture.

I love it when a progressive author comes out in favor of genetic engineering like this. GMO humans are a huge can of worms that Banks just blithely opened before hurling those squirmy nematodes all around the room.

Banks isn't the only progressive scifi author to advocate extracting our xenophobic tendencies via genetic engineering. In her series Lilith's Brood, Octavia Butler describes how a group of (mostly) benevolent aliens think the basic problem with humans is that we are hardwired to be both intelligent and hierarchical, which is the most dangerous combination imaginable. They have to genetically alter humans to remove their hierarchical tendencies.

Could We Evolve into the Culture? [via Biology in Science Fiction]

The Pan-Galactic Gargleblaster. The cocktail from Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy which says:

[T]he effect of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick. The Gu ide also tells you on which planets the best Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters are mixed, how much you can expect to pay for one and what voluntary organizations exist to help you rehabilitate afterwards. The Guide even tells you how you can mix one yourself. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy sells rather better than the Encyclopedia Galactica.

• Take the juice from one bottle of that Ol' Janx Spirit.
• 
  
• Pour into it one measure of water from the seas of Santraginus V - Oh, that Santraginean sea water, it says. Oh those Santraginean fish!!!
• 
  
• Allow three cubes of Arcturan Mega-gin to melt into the mixture (it must be properly iced or the benzene is lost).
• 
  
• Allow four litres of Fallian marsh gas to bubble through it (in memory of all those happy Hikers who have died of pleasure in the Marshes of Fallia).
• 
  
• Over the back of a silver spoon float a measure of Qualactin Hypermint extract, redolent of all the heady odours of the dark Qualactin Zones; subtle, sweet, and mystic.
• 
  
• Drop in the tooth of an Algolian Suntiger. Watch it dissolve, spreading the fires of the Algolian suns deep into the heart of the drink.
• 
  
• Sprinkle Zamphour.
• 
  
• Add an olive.
• 
  
• Drink... but... very carefully...

Finagle's Folly: A cocktail which McCoy makes for Kirk on the 10,000th occasion that Kirk is depressed over losing control over his ship. (In this case, to a supercomputer in "The Ultimate Computer.") McCoy brags that his cocktail is famous "from here to Orion." But Kirk tastes it and grimaces. (Scotty probably would have liked it.) Oh, and apparently, Quark on Deep Space Nine makes a decent Finagle's Folly as well.

The Mother Teresa. In one of Spider Robinson's many Callahan's Crosstime Saloon novels, which all take place in a bar as you might imagine, he invents a type of martini called the Mother Teresa, because it has a prune resting in the bottom of the glass.

The Bull Shot. Larry Niven's version of Callahan's Crosstime Saloon is called the Draco Tavern, and the bartender sells all sorts of weird drinks (including "Green Kryptonite") to various alien visitors. One of the most popular drinks seems to be the Bull Shot, which Niven describes as "consomme and vodka." This is especially popular with the Glig, "grey and compact beings." (It's short for "Gligstith(click)optok.")

The Flaming Rum Monkey. Author Pat Murphy mentions the Flaming Rum Monkey in her metafictional odyssey Adventures In Time And Space With Max Meriwell, which features Murphy's pseudonym Mary Maxwell as a fictional character. Mary makes a habit of ordering a Flaming Rum Monkey to see what the bartenders will come up with, since they have to invent one on the spot. But in fact Murphy has come up with a recipe for a Flaming Rum Monkey, and here it is:

Put a teaspoon of brown sugar, a sprinkling of cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon, and a teaspoon of coconut syrup (the kind used in pina coladas) in a warm mug. Add a little boiling water—just enough to dissolve the sugar. Let the mixture steep for a minute. Pour in two ounces of dark Jamaican rum and one ounce of dark creme de cacao. Fill the mug with boiling water and stir.

Now for the flames! Put a pinch of brown sugar in a big spoon. Fill the spoon with 151 rum. To warm the rum, hold the spoon over the mug filled with hot water.

Light the rum in the spoon. Tip the spoon into the mug. The mixture in the mug will burn with a lovely blue flame.

Don't singe your eyebrows. Don't burn your tongue. Blow out the flames and try a sip of your Rum Monkey. Hot, sweet, and touched with coconut. Enjoy your Rum Monkey and dream of possibilities.

Star Wars Cocktail. Want to make one of those weird drinks they're drinking in the Cantina scene in the original Star Wars? This site claims to have an actual recipe — and it sounds like the most revolting drink imaginable. Equal parts Southern Comfort, Amaretto, Sweet'n'Sour mix, and Sprite... you might as well just smoke some crack and drink the entire contents of the Slurpee machine at the movie theater. Which might be just the ticket for enjoying Clone Wars, you never know.

The "foaming cocktail". Actually, we don't know the name of the drink Za orders in Iain M. Banks' The Player Of Games, but it's referred to as a "foaming cocktail." And here's what he actually orders:

I'd like a double standard measure of staol and chilled Shungusteriaung warp-wing liver wine bottoming a mouth of white Eflyre-Spin cruchen-spirit in a slush of medium cascalo, topped with roasted weirdberries and served in a number three strength Tipprawlic osmosis-bowl, or your best approximation thereof.

The baby jellyfish - small, pale blue, with cuboid bells and four clusters of tentacles trailing from each corner - slips down easily. Boris winces momentarily as the nematocysts let rip inside his mouth, but in a moment or so, the cubozoan slips down, and in the meantime, his biophysics model clips the extent of the damage to his stinger-ruptured oropharynx.

"Wow," he says, taking another slurp of sea wasp margaritas. "Don't try this at home, fleshboy."

Adrenalin and Soma. The favorite cocktail of cowardly thief Vila on British space opera Blake's 7. It sounds like a weird mixture of uppers and downers — like an Irish coffee — but it always seems to make Vila quite mellow.

Note: I was almost done compiling this list when I came across this helpful post from Lev Grossman at Time.com, and its equally helpful comments. (Although the person who thought the ship in Farscape was called "Moira" cracked me up.)

Mogo the Green Lantern planet, from Green Lantern. Created by Alan Moore in his classic "Mogo Doesn't Socialize" short comic strip, Mogo is a whole planet wearing a green-lantern ring and defending the galaxy against wrongdoers. He's been brought back in recent issues of Green Lantern Corps. and has actually managed to communicate with the otherLanterns, despite the whole "not socializing" thing. How does he travel around? How does he defend all the planets in his sector of the galaxy? It's not clear to me, but here are some more details, including a link to scans of his first appearance.

Ego The Living Planet, from Thor and various other Marvel Comics. Which sentient planet is bigger, Ego or Mogo? It's hard to say. But I'm going to come down on the side of Ego being more awesome, because he cruises around and acts sleazy — as in one of his most recent appearances, where he falls in love with Earth and tries to seduce the entire planet (which has become sentient). In a smackdown between Ego and Mogo, my money is on Ego, even though Mogo has the magic alien ring. You know Ego would fight dirty, because everything he does is dirty.

The Beast With A Billion Backs from Futurama, "The Beast With A Billion Backs." The second direct-to-DVD Futurama movie involves our heroes contacting another universe, and then they encounter a planet-sized tentacle monster, voiced by David Cross. And Fry becomes pope of a new religion. (There are also planet-sized creautres in Tarkovsky's Solaris and in the GWAR mythos.( Here's the trailer.

Unicron from Transformers. We can only hope Michael Bay tries to take on this concept at some point — a mechanical planet who transforms into a humongous giant robot in space. And then he goes around eating other planets. In his first appearance, he was voiced by Orson Welles. I love how, in his planet form, he has giant metal horns sticking out. Party on, Unicron. But could he beat the planet-eating Galactus?

Gaea from John Varley's Titan. A planet-sized entity orbiting Saturn, Gaea is a "sentient space habitat that may or may not be batshit insane," as Bookslut puts it. The controlling intelligence of Gaea presents itself as a middle-aged woman who's obsessed with classic movies. In the second book of the Gaea trilogy, she offers miracle cures to humans whom she deems worthy, and in the third she provides a refuge for humans fleeing Earth's nuclear war.

Marvin The Paranoid Android, from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Well, he's always reminding us his brain is the size of a planet, although we never actually see this mega-brain.

Solaris, The Tyrant Sun, from DC One Million. The "One Million" event, in which the Justice League traveled forward to the 853rd century to meet their curiously similar counterparts, was probably the 17th most demented thing Grant Morrison has written, and that's saying something. A giant artificial sun, Solaris causes his own creation in the late 20th century (thanks to a time-travel paradox) and then becomes one of Superman's arch-enemies. Finally, in the 500th century, Solaris becomes a good guy, but never quite gets over his jealousy of our solar system's "real" sun. So he plots to kill the original Superman, in a plot involving a galactic super-Olympics. To be honest, I've read this comic three times and still don't understand it.

Evil Nebula, from Captain Simian And The Space Monkeys. Half-human, half-black hole, Lord Nebula could run over Mogo and Ego and barely even notice. And the Evil Nebula thinks big — in the first episode, he decides he wants to absorb the entire universe into himself. ("It's an ego thing.") But he's not too big to come up with a monkey enemy for Captain Simian, the vicious Rhesus-2. Plus he's voiced by Michael Dorn, which is full of win.

The Behemothaurs from Iain M. Banks' Look To Windward (2000). Lev Grossman suggests these in his blog post. And StrangeHorizons describes them as "miles-long symboitic gasbags." They live in a massive drifting weightless

The Cloud, from The Black Cloud by Sir Fred Hoyle. In this classic 1957 novel, a Jupiter-sized interstellar cloud floats into our solar system and threatens all life on Earth. Scientists struggle to communicate with the Cloud — and they succeed. It turns out the Cloud has a "brain" made out of complex networks of molecules. And the Cloud turns out to be sort of size-ist towards poor limited humans:

[I]t is most unusual to find animals with technical skills inhabiting planets, which are in the nature of extreme outposts of life... Living on the surface of a solid body, you are exposed to a strong gravitational force. This greatly limits the size to which your animals can grow and hence limits the scope of your neurological activity.

The spaceship-eating amoeba, from Star Trek, "The Immunity Syndrome." An 11,000 mile single-celled creature, this huge but pretty monster has to be destroyed before it reproduces and eats the entire galaxy. There's also an episode of the Trek animated series, "One Of Our Planets Is Missing," where they go inside a similar huge creature that's draining their power and munching on planets. But in that case, Spock manages to communicate with the creature, which is another one of those size-ist jumbo sentients and doesn't believe that such tiny creatures as ourselves could be intelligent. You could also make a case that the massive planet-crusher in "The Doomsday Weapon" is sentient, although it's never made clear. And another giant Trek baddie, of course, is the "crystalline entity" who stars in some of the most boring TNG episodes. Oh, and then there's V'Ger from The Motion Picture.

Jane from the Ender's Game saga by Orson Scott Card. An artificial intelligence, Jane occupies the entire galactic ansible network and is the only one who can make faster-than-light travel possible. Her one weakness is that when the Galactic Congress shuts down the galaxy-wide internet, she shuts down too.

The Calebans, from Frank Herbert's Dosadi Experiment and Whipping Star. Huge, unimaginably advanced creatures, the Calebans manifest themselves as stars in our universe. They give humans the secret of the "jump door," which allows you to teleport anywhere in space instantaneously. As Timothy O'Reilly writes:

[T]he Calebans are as close to infinite beings as he can imagine. Their visible embodiments are stars, and on a deeper level the Calebans are one gigantic consciousness that forms the topological matrix of the manifest universe. The jump-doors are simply an expression of their pervasive existence behind or apart from space.

The answer is obviously complicated. For some people, torture puts any story beyond the pale: a couple of weeks ago, scifi writer Karen Joy Fowler told me in an interview that she refuses to watch Battlestar Galactica because there's too much torture in it. But millions of movie fans have turned near-future flick Hostel, about an imaginary Eastern European country that houses a torture-entertainment center for the rich, into a cult hit and franchise. And the TV series 24, which is also a near-future dystopia, also has millions of drooling fans who don't seem to mind that superspy Jack, our main character, is constantly torturing people with everything from ugly lamps to fists.

Enough has been said about torture porn that I don't need to repeat the arguments too much here. They all boil down to one question: Does watching torture make us more likely to tolerate it in real life?

I had a brilliant professor in college who always answered that question with a roll of her eyes. "Look," she would say, "If it were true that we always did what the media told us, then every single advertisement would work. We'd buy everything we see advertised." Because she's right about that, we know it's not the case that everything we see in the media leads to behaviors in real life. The question of torture then boils down to whether it's necessary for a given story.

Let's look at one of the most famous examples of torture in scifi. Canadian flick Cube, which came out in the late 1990s, was your classic, Saw-style "a bunch of strangers trapped in a weird place have to solve puzzles to escape horrible grody death" kind of flick. For people raised with videogames, a form of entertainment where you solve puzzles to avoid dying, the scenario was familiar. And the puzzle was even pretty cool: the characters have to figure out a sequence of prime numbers in order to escape from a giant cube building full of rooms that move around all the time. As they're figuring out the prime number sequence, they venture into rooms that stab them, poison them, chop them up into little cubes, and generally spew gore everywhere. Do we need the torture along with the cool math game? I'd say yes. The entire movie depends on the audience understanding the characters' urgency, but at the same time the scenario is surreal enough that bringing in the torture enhances our sense of bizarre otherworldliness.

But how about Wes "Scream" Craven's The Hills Have Eyes, a classic cult movie from the 1970s that was just remade into a less-than-amazing franchise? In the original, gritty-freakout movie, a family whose truck breaks down is waylaid by atomic cannibal mutants in the desert. The torture is campy and hideous at the same time. In fact, the entire point of the movie is really the torture, and the escape, of our normal American family. Like Hostel, The Hills Have Eyes is literally about torture and what it can do to you. So the movie couldn't exist without torture, and in fact the torture itself is the point. How will people be dismembered? Where will the blood splatter? Will they really DO that? Without torture, there would be no movie.

Let's return to Battlestar Galactica's torture with these two examples in mind. Unlike The Hills Have Eyes, BSG is not about torture. It's about a horrific dystopia where torture has become part of everyday life. Like Cube, BSG uses torture to explore the urgency of the situation its characters are in. So do we need the torture to feel that urgency?

One might ask the same question about a scene in Iain M. Banks' novel The Algebraist, where we are treated to an intense scene of torture in order to show how evil one particular character, Luseferous, really is:

[Luseferous] had decreed that the final punishment of the assassin should be his own teeth . . . Accordingly, his four canine teeth had been removed, bioengineered to become tusks which would grow without ceasing . . . These great finger-thick fangs had erupted out of the bones of his upper and lower jaw, puncturing the flesh of his lips, and had continued their remorseless growth. The lower set curved up and over his head, and after a few months worth of extension, came to touch his scalp near the top of his head, while the upper set grew in a scimitar-like paired sweep beneath his neck . . . Both sets of teeth then started to enter the assassin's body, one pair slowly forcing themselves through the bony plates of the man's skull, the other entering rather more easily into the soft tissues of the lower neck . . . The fangs burrowing through his skull and into his brain were the ones which would shortly, and agonizingly, kill him . . . This unfortunate, nameless assassin had been unable to do anything to prevent this because he was pinned helpless and immobile against the wall of the chamber . . . his nutrition and bodily functions catered for by various tubes and implants . . . The fellow's ears and mind still worked.

Perhaps it could have been less detailed, but I would not have remembered it so vividly if it had not. Similarly, I would not have felt the horror of the humans' and Cylons' situations without seeing Six tortured by humans, and Baltar tortured by Cylons. I am not sure if making something memorable is justification, but it is certainly emotional realism. And in a genre whose entire narrative substance is the unreal, the science fictional, a dose of emotional realism can be potent indeed.