io9: James Bond

Are Spy Movies Science Fiction?

Charlie Jane Anders — Mon, 05 May 2008 14:45:00 PDT

We don't talk much about the cloak-and-dagger genre here at io9. We haven't touched on the new James Bond movie, despite the scifi-sounding title (Quantum Of Solace.) We've barely even talked about Get Smart. (We did celebrate the history of James Bond's scifi plots, including Moonraker's fantastic space battle. But we're up in the air about how much of the spy genre belongs within the geodesic dome of science fiction.) Maybe you can help us settle the question.

James Bond's Greatest Space Battle

charliejane — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 11:20:34 PST

Squads of NASA commandos laser-blast space terrorists in this awesome set piece from Moonraker, James Bond's Star Wars knockoff. My favorite part: when the astronauts get killed in this zero-G environment, they sometimes start falling, as if their willpower alone had been holding them up. Moonraker marked the apex of James Bond's career as a science hero, but click through for some of the other James Bond scifi highlights.

The actual plot of Moonraker is surprisingly boring. There are some fancy orchids, and this beardy Nazi guy wants to use them to make a toxin that kills humans so he can breed cute blond people in miniskirts, and Zzzzzzz... But the effects work is pretty great, especially this sequence. The dozens of people floating between the space shuttle and the space station look totally boss. It's the only scene that lives up to my childhood memories.

Other great moments in James Bond's science fiction movie career:

You Only Live Twice (1967). A giant spacecraft is gobbling up U.S. and Soviet space capsules from Earth orbit. Bond discovers that Blofeld, operating out of Japan, is capturing spacecraft to try and provoke World War III. Also, this movie features miniature rocket launcher guns.

Diamonds Are Forever (1971). Blofeld again, this time trying to collect a bunch of diamonds so he can build a giant laser satellite to hold the world to ransom.

The Man With The Golden Gun (1974). Count Dooku has three nipples and he wants to steal a new solar power gadget that could revolutionize energy technology. We're not sure why. We got stuck on "Dooku has three nipples."

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). The villain, Stromberg, has a massive undersea base and he wants to start a new underwater civilization by nuking the Earth's surface.

Goldeneye (1995). Bond's former spy colleague wants to take control over a huge satellite-based weapons system and use it to destroy the Bank of England.

Die Another Day (2002). Another satellite-based weapons system, the Icarus. This time it's trying to detonate a section of the minefield between North and South Korea, allowing the North Koreans to invade.

An All-Electric Navy Warship

Kevin Kelly — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 11:45:24 PST

The Navy is developing an electrical warship that will draw all of its power from an on-board nuclear power plant, but it unfortunately looks nothing like Captain Nemo's Nautilus, which also ran on electric power. However, it does look a hell of a lot like the stealth ship from the James Bond flick Tomorrow Never Dies, meaning that the Navy is turning to ten-year-old Bond films for inspiration. Still no word on a grappling-hook watch.

10 Ways To Destroy The Earth Without Nukes

charliejane — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 14:30:17 PST

You can't really call yourself an evil genius unless you've got a clever scheme for wrecking our planet once and for all. And no, using nuclear weapons doesn't really count as "clever." Nukes are so 1950. Here's a list of the 10 coolest ways to smash Earth, or at least render it uninhabitable, without splitting any atoms.

Crash another planet into Earth. In an episode of the Transformers cartoon, the villain Megatron tried to bring his home planet, Cybertron, into Earth's atmosphere. The Cybermen also brought their home planet Mondas close to Earth in Doctor Who, and tried to suck the life-force out of our planet, which is sort of similar.

Freeze it to death. In Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle, a substance called ice-nine freezes all water on Earth, causing the extinction of most creatures, including humans, within a few days.

Poison it. In the James Bond classic Moonraker, Hugo Drax distills the poison from a rare orchid and puts it inside globes, which he plans to launch from a space station to points all over Earth. The result: total obliteration.

Cause the sun to go nova. Evil Star, a Green Lantern villain, wanted to plant a device in the Earth's sun that would make it go nova, so he could feast on the stellar energy. The NOVA bomb in Halo: First Strike would do the same thing.

Materialize another planet around it. In the Doctor Who story "The Pirate Planet," a giant hollow planet materializes around smaller planets and crushes the life out of them, then strips them for all their mineral wealth.

Bombard it with garbage. In the Futurama episode "A Big Piece of Garbage," New York launches a giant ball of its trash into space in 2052 — only to have it crash back towards Earth, threatening destruction, years later.

Set up giant mirrors in space. This aspiring mad scientist has a plan to create a giant balloon in space, then cut it in half and coat each half with a reflective surface. If positioned the right way, they could reflect a ton of sunlight on a specific point on Earth.

Biological warfare. In the latest season of Heroes, the Company created a nasty virus that would kill almost the entire human race. And that white Samurai guy was so mad that Hiro kissed his GF that he decided to unleash it.

Killer robot army. In the classic video game Robotron 2084, a swarm of killer robots succeeds in wiping out the entire human race. Only one humanoid mutant remains to fight them off.

Knock it off its perch. Doctor Impossible plots to throw the Earth out of its orbit around the sun in Austin Grossman's novel Soon I Will Be Invincible. "As the Earth grows colder, my power becomes apparent, and the nations submit," he says. And the eponymous monsters in Zombies of the Stratosphere plot to send the Earth off course so Mars can take its place.