Paolo Soleri, who coined the term "arcology" to describe a super-dense hyperstructure that houses tons of people in a sustainable manner, is building Arcosanti, a nascent arcology, out in the Arizona desert between Phoenix and Flagstaff. So far, it's still fairly small, and is supporting itself by making Soleri's ceramic and brass bells — a lot of the cool-looking structures are actually foundries for the bell-making, or casting tons of concrete for more structures.

Journalist Simon Bisson visited Arcosanti, and took a ton of photos. (There are more at his Flickr stream):

The idea of a sprawl-free city seems attractive and smarter for our long-term survival. And the two great barrel vaults look amazing in the middle of the desert, as the sun goes down. But after visiting the site, Bisson has a couple of concerns:

However I'm left with some disconcerting thoughts.

The society that's grown up around Arcosanti reminds me of the guilds that built the great cathedrals of Europe. It's not difficult to see the arcology as a secular cathedral, a project that will take generations to complete and that will never be what Soleri dreamt all those years ago. Perhaps that's not a bad thing.

One thing did seem clear: it's in the wrong place. If arcologies are to replace the urban sprawl of a city with a new, intentional community on a human scale, then the desert (as beautiful as it is) is the wrong place for Arcosanti. It should be in a city, in a Detroit, a LA, a New York, a London, a Moscow, a Hong Kong. It shouldn't be isolated, a new Taliesin for Soleri's architectural disciples. It should be a visible sign of a different way to live, of a new city. Make it La Sagrada Familia, big, vibrant and reaching in the heart of Barcelona, not a hermitage in the desert.

[Simon Bisson on LiveJournal]

When we asked our friends to name their favorite swashbuckling heroes from SF books, first we had to figure out what exactly we meant by "swashbuckling." Here's what we came up with: A swashbuckling hero doesn't necessarily need to pack a sword — although it certainly doesn't hurt. A certain dapperness comes with the territory, or at the very least a unique sense of style. Words starting with "D" came up a lot, including dashing, debonair, defiant, dapper and daring.

What we found was that fantasy is full of swashbucklers — it's one of the hallmarks of the genre — but there are some amazing swashbucklers in science fiction too. (And we threw it open to include "urban fantasy," or anything which takes place in something akin to the modern world or the future.)

Here are our favorite swashbuckling heroes from science fiction books:

John Carter Of Mars (A Princess Of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs)

He's got the sword and the steely gaze, not to mention the old-school charm, and he's also got the mad adventures — the seemingly immortal Virginian gets zapped to Mars upon his "death" and wins the hand of the princess, Deja Thoris. He leads a company of Tharks to defeat the city-state of Zodanga, and then sacrifices his own life to save the atmosphere on Mars. (But then just winds up on Earth again.)

Here are some great Princess Of Mars covers and images, including some great art by Frank Frazetta:

Jack Half-A-Prayer (Perdido Street Station and Iron Council by China Mieville):

Even amongst all the other memorable and weird characters from Mieville's Bas-Lag universe, Jack Half-A-Prayer stands out, with his weird sense of style. One of the Remade, he's got a giant praying mantis arm, but instead of becoming downtrodden and full of self-loathing, he becomes a freedom fighter and a legend, until it finally catches up with him. Here's a great illustration of him that artist Nicholas William Kole created. (More of Kole's great art here.)

"Slippery" Jim DiGriz (The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison):

The first person that came to mind when we thought of this category — a grifter and adventurer who's always twenty jumps ahead of everybody else. Even though the love of a good woman softens him slightly, he never stops being a scoundrel. Still, if he ever runs for president on your planet, you'd be crazy not to vote for him.

Frank Rozvar (The Skies Discrowned/Forsake The Sky by Tim Powers):

As Earth's empire crumbles in the distant future, Frank Rozvar sees his father murdered, and is forced to flee to Munson Underground, the city under the planet's surface. He plots revenge — and it's a good thing he's an expert fencer as well as a stylish bastard. Although, as my friend Bill notes, Powers' early heroes tend to be more "grim and gritty" than "dashing and dapper."

The Librarians (The Greatwinter Trilogy by Sean McMullen):

Many buckles are swashed by these dragon librarians in a post-apocalyptic 40th century setting. They're forever fighting ritual duels, including battles (with very strict rules) in airships. These books are packed with derring-do and Errrol Flynn-esque feats of bravery and cunning.

Duncan Idaho (Dune by Frank Herbert):

This swordmaster in the service of House Atreides is a ladies man and an expert student of the Swordmasters Of Ginaz. The Harkonnens kill his parents and raise him to be hunted for sport — but he gets away. One of Duke Leto's right-hand men, he trains Paul in the arts of war. And when he gives his life to defend Paul and Jessica, he takes down no less than 17 Sardaukar soldiers.

Cugel The Clever (The Dying Earth books by Jack Vance):

A thief and scoundrel, Cugel displays tons of rambunctiousness and skullduggery. But he's also a dab hand with a sword, and he's very dapper with his triple-tiered hat, adorned with a "foppish bedazzlement." His roguish ways and indefatigible charm have won him his own Facebook group.

Speaker-To-Animals (Ringworld by Larry Niven):

One of the coolest of Niven's Kzinti, Speaker-To-Animals is slightly less likely to kill you on sight than other members of his race, but he's still a superb fighter and a total badass. He's too honorable to kill Louis Gridley Wu for meat, even when he's starving. Typical line: "I have a variable sword. I urge calm." Bad. Ass. (Art by A.C. Farley.)

Anthony Villiers (Star Well by Alexei Panshin):

A former viscount, Villiers gets fobbed off by his family and travels around the universe in the company of a giant toad named Torve, having crazy adventures. He's always getting himself caught up in duels and assassination plots, as he moves through the highest levels of galactic society without ever quite having enough money on hand. He's foppish, following the motto "Live as you dress" and doing both of those things well.

Drake Maijstral (Crown Jewels, House of Shards, &Rock of Ages by Walter Jon Williams):

Maijstral is an Allowed Burglar in a distant future when the human race has been conquered by aliens called the Khosali, who have subjected us to their regime of High Custom. Under this complicated set of rules, you can steal — as long as you hang on to the merchandise for 24 hours without getting caught. (One of the Khosali emperors was a kleptomaniac who wanted to legalize theft, hence the odd compromise.) Since all of Maijstral's exploits are recorded and broadcast, he becomes a huge celebrity with a great sense of verve and style.

Hiro Protagonist (Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson):

Protagonist's business card says it all: "Last of the freelance hackers and Greatest swordfighter in the world." He learns of the existence of a new drug called Snow Crash, that's both a computer virus and a reality-altering substance. He's the undisputed champion of in-Metaverse sword-fighting, because he helped write the code which makes swordfighting possible.

E.C. Gordon, aka Scar, aka Oscar (Glory Road by Robert Heinlein):

This war veteran answers an ad that asks, "Are You A Coward," placed by a beautiful woman. Then he goes on a quest and crosses swords with the Never-Born aka the Eater Of Souls, the guardian of the Egg of the Phoenix in Mile High Tower. (For some reason, the Eater Of Souls appears as a 17th century swordsman.)

Beka Rosslin-Metadi (The Price Of The Stars by Debra Doyle and James D. McDonald):

Okay, just look at the jacket, and the red eyepatch. And she's an amazing space pilot, freebooter and spacer by trade — who's turned her back on her famous military family. Until her mom is assassinated, and her father gives her the best spaceship around, the Warhammer, to look for the assassins. She leaves "a trail of kidnappings and corpses across four star systems," and blows the roof off the strongest private fortress in the galaxy. Rock on.

Pham Nuwen (A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge):

Pham grows up in a post-apocalyptic Canberra that's similar to the Middle Ages, complete with swords, daggers and poison. Then the Qeng Ho arrive and he leaves with them. He becomes a legendary commander and Programmer-At-Arms. At one point, Pham Nuwen is held prisoner by some idiots, and he realizes that the computers on the ship had used smart dust long ago — which means he can hack into the computers by blinking, without anyone noticing.

Ed Chianese (Light by M. John Harrison)

Thrill-seeker, adventurer and virtual-reality addict, Ed Chianese "owes money to everyone in the universe." Writes Harrison, "From an early age, Ed Chianese had been some kind of drifter and sensationist. He couldn't remember what planet he came from. 'Maybe it was even this one!' He laughed." With his peroxide hair and cheap tattoos, he's dapper after a fashion.

Giraut Leones (A Million Open Doors by John Barnes):

Giraut lives in Nou Occitan, which is sort of like medieval Europe, with the dueling, the chivraly and the artistic dabbling. But then he goes to live in another one of the thousand human cultures in the far future — the sterile Caledony, which is like a McCarthy-ite, Christian repressive world. So he becomes the rebellious, sword-fighting hero of this crazy world.

Jay Kalam and his cohorts (Legion Of Space Series by Jack Williamson):

Kalam is commander of the Legion, and just in case you miss the Three Musketeers-i-ness of his group of stalwart fighters against the renegade Purple and the evil Medusae, one of his friends is named Samdu (an anagram of "Dumas.")

Owen Deathstalker (Deathstalker by Simon Green):

Heir to a warrior name, Owen Deathstalker lives a quiet life as a historian, until the Empress names him an outlaw, and he's forced to flee, and help organize the rebellion against the Empress Lionstone.

Additional reporting by Mary Ratliff. Thanks to Bill Brickman, Jed Hartman, Chris Hsiang, Andrew Liptak, Dennis Woo, Wayne Nix, Angela Cooper, Zack Stentz, Tim Jones, Jonathan Korman, Tom Marcinko, Espana Sheriff, Richard Kadrey, Chris Hall, Allan Ebalo, David J. Schwartz, @RainOnRoof, Jenn Reese, John Klima, another Tim Jones, Cheryl Morgan and anyone else I missed for the suggestions!

And yes, we're only doing this list because Chip Overclock demanded it.

Evil overlords of braininess:

The Gamesters of Triskelion from Star Trek: I'm willing to bet dollars to quatloos that you've already appreciated this classic tale of gambling addicts who have itchy betting fingers despite not having fingers. If not, then this trailer is all you really need to know.

Mother Brain in Metroid In this NES classic, the boss of the game was giant, disembodied glob of grey matter surrounded by a futuristic security system. If feminist gaming pioneer Samus Aran ran out of missiles, there was no way to beat Mother Brain. The whole "running out of a common item at the final boss of the game" spiel was an infuriating conundrum typical of early Nintendo games.

Brain from Doom Patrol. This brilliant scientist was caught in an explosion which reduced him to a brain, and nothing else. Luckily, Monsieur Mallah, the gorilla he'd uplifted to genius intelligence, loved him and kept him alive inside a tank. Niles Caulder, the scientist who engineered the explosion, later transferred race-car driver Cliff Steele's brain into the robot body he'd built for Brain.

Disembodied brain develops psychic powers:

Donovan's Brain by Curt Siomak, and the 1953 movie of the same title, are about an evil millionaire whose brain is put in a vat, and then he develops mental powers, allowing him to control those around him. The movie co-starred Nancy Davis, the future Nancy Reagan.

The Brain Spawn in Futurama — they're evil overlords, but they also have telekinesis. They're not actually in jars, but they're definitely disembodied. And they try to conquer the Earth, until Fry stands up to their leader, Big Brain (sorry, foreigners):

The Outer Limits, "The Brain Of Colonel Barham" Mea culpa — I wrongly put this one into "robot bodies you can load your brain into" — but it fits way better here. Colonel Barham, an astronaut, volunteers to have his brain loaded into a robot body so he can go to Mars, but then he goes nuts and develops evil psychic powers and controls people with his mind:

Marvel What If, "What If The Fantastic Four Had Gained Different Powers?" In this "what if" tale, instead of getting stretchy-limb powers, the FF's Reed Richards becomes a super-smart disembodied brain, with mental powers. "I promise I will never dominate your brain again," he promises Ben Grimm.



The brain that cheated death:

They Saved Hitler's Brain! You only think Hitler died at the end of World War II — in fact (wait for it), they saved his brain!

Doctor Who, "The Brain Of Morbius" features an evil Time Lord named Morbius who wants to rule the universe — so the Time Lords, instead of giving him the kid-gloves treatment they give the Master, go ahead and execute him. But his followers save his brain and keep it in a vat. The brain is eventually transplanted into a weird hybrid body, with a bubble head:

"William And Mary" by Roald Dahl. William dies of cancer, but he has his brain preserved inside a machine that can keep him alive for 200 years. His wife, Mary, considers taking him home — but only so she can smoke in front of him and watch television, two things he hates seeing her do. This story was made into an episode of the Tales Of The Unexpected TV series.

Packaged for space travel:

The Mi-Go in Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos are fungoid, crustacean extraterrestrials, who transport humans from Earth to Pluto, by removing your brain and putting it in a "brain cylinder."

Operating cities or spaceships:

Spock's Brain from Star Trek is probably the most famous example of this trope — what is brain? Brain is the ultimate city infrastructure planner! (Sexy babes steal Spock's brain and use it to run their city. It makes total sense.)

The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey is all about a girl whose physically disabled so she's put in life support to help run complex systems, and when she hits adolescence, her brain is removed and she becomes the "mind" of a spaceship — until she falls in love. Aw.

Neon Genesis Evangelion's MAGI computer system is run by disembodied human brains.

Tin Man: In this Syfy reimagining of the Wizard Of Oz, the Wizard turns out to be the disembodied brain of the Scarecrow's counterpart, and it runs a doomsday device. (Thanks, TVTropes!)

RoboCop 2: The second RoboCop is really just the brain of a psychopath, transplanted into a robot body. Which works out great!

Krang from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sort of fits this one as well — he gets reduced to just a brain-like entity, and then his ally Shredder builds him a humanoid exo-suit, with his disembodied brain-creature in the tummy. Mmmm tummy brain...

"Becalmed In Hell" by Larry Niven. In this story in the "Known Space" series, the injured Eric's brain is used as the computer of a ship exploring Venus, using the empty fuel tank as a dirigible. When it's time to return to Earth, Eric announces there's a problem, and they have to land. But the "normal" human astronaut, Howie, decides the problem is actually with Eric himself.

Random weird disembodied brain:

The Man With Two Brains features brain surgeon Steve Martin falling in love with a woman's disembodied brain, as he searches for a gorgeous body to transplant her into. As Martin helpfully explains, "I can't fuck a gorilla!"

L'oncle Irvin ("Uncle Irvin") in City of Lost Children featured a talking brain in a tank named . He suffered from migraine headaches, and spouted pearls of wisdom throughout the film.

The Harlem Heroes in 2000 A.D. are a basketball team one of whose members gets destroyed, except for his brain, which is — you guessed it — in a jar. And he still gets to stay on the team.

The Curious Dr. Humpp is a random disembodied genius brain, who can only survive as long as his acolyte siphons off the sexual energy from hot young men and women, and beams these orgones into his cerebellum. We featured a clip here.

Mother Brain in Captain N: The Game Master This Saturday morning cartoon show. She was voiced by Levi Stubbs, better known as the voice of Audrey the carnivorous plant from Little Shop of Horrors.

Star Wars features the B'omarr monks, whose brains live in jars, but sometimes spider droids carry them around, and you can just glimpse them in Jabba's palace if you squint like a Hutt.

Ghost In The Shell features many characters who've kept their organic brains but scrapped everything else. And according to TVTropes, this is a common motif in Dragonball, Kara No Kyoukai, Appleseed, Captain Future and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagan as well.

Additional reporting by Cyriaque Lamar.

According to Publisher's Marketplace, The Moon Maze Game takes place in the same universe as the duo's Dream Park, inside a dome on the Moon, "where gamers who come to enjoy the most challenging of games, designed by the world's most brilliant Gamemaster." But then, the game is sabotaged, and the gamers' lives are put in danger, when two revolutionaries from an African country take over the dome, to hold the son of their country's president hostage. Tor's Bob Gleason bought the book from Spectrum Literary Agency's Eleanor Wood.

Barnes tells io9 the novel's fictional African country is a new one, carved out of the continent after a giant war, around 2020. The country's leader is the last remaining monarch on the continent. The games inside the dome involve both skill and survival, says Barnes: "Problem-solving and combat." Adds Barnes, "Larry and I have collaborated on about nine books over the years. He actually was my mentor in the field."

Panspermia is the term for the most scientifically plausible version of this concept, but it isn't necessarily what science fiction usually presents. The panspermia hypothesis holds that the building blocks of life are not found exclusively on planetary bodies but are instead found scattered throughout the cosmos, and it is these spaceborne particles that are at least partly responsible for life on Earth. There's a little circumstantial evidence for the theory (although far, far more to support the reliable old "Life comes from Earth" hypothesis), and there is something undeniably fascinating about the subtext – the aliens are already here, and we are they. But science fiction barely ever depicts the actual theory of panspermia, mostly because it's just a physical process that takes billions of years to play out and is pretty boring unless you're willing to get really mystical.

What science fiction more properly deals with is exogenesis, which simply states that humanity or its genetic ancestors didn't always live on Earth. That generally means one of two things – either an ancient alien race introduced life to a previously dead Earth (sometimes as part of a larger directed panspermia project) or a bunch of humans from some other civilization colonized Earth, a fact that somehow slipped the minds of their descendants (you know…us). Plenty of science fiction deals with both, including two of the big science fictions works currently in the news. (The occasional spoiler may lie ahead.)

Outlander
One of the most satisfying little details of everybody's favorite Vikings vs. aliens epic is its answer to why Jim Caviezel's character, the alien Kainan, looks exactly like the Norsemen and how he can possibly speak their language.Outlander solves both of these problems by revealing Earth is an "abandoned seed colony" of Kainan's spacefaring civilization. Unfortunately, the whole notion that Earth was colonized by an interstellar race really opens up a far bigger plot hole than the one it was meant to fill. After all, Kainan's people would have had to have "seeded" Earth eons ago. If they could pull off planetary engineering on that sort of scale way back then, you'd think they wouldn't have so much trouble with a bunch of bioluminescent dragons. In the end, it's probably best not to think too much about the logistics of the whole abandoned seed colony concept. Because, ultimately, the very inclusion of the idea in the first place is, like so much of Outlander, awesome.

Battlestar Galactica
In both the original and new versions of the series, humans originally came from Kobol, the legendary planet of the gods, and Earth is just the fabled lost colony. The new series is busy dealing with Earth, so it's entirely possible a couple "What the frak?" moments still lie ahead that will reveal humanity actually did come from Earth. The original series, however, left no doubt that Kobol was where we all came from, as the no-budget god-awfulness that is Galactica 1980 established contact between the Galactica and contemporary Earth. Flying motorcycle chases ensued.

Star Trek
The Next Generation episode "The Chase" sought to acknowledge and explain the genetic improbability of a galaxy full of nothing but humanoid aliens with rubber foreheads. The solution – ancient aliens who, upon finding themselves all alone in the galaxy, seeded various planets with their genetic codes – is surprisingly deft, and actually turns a three-decade failure of imaginations and budgets into something almost elegaic. As one would expect, Picard takes this existence-altering revelation in his usual stride, while the Cardassians look a bit grumpy.

Stargate
Honestly, between all the genetic engineering, forced relocations of ancient humans, and universe-altering civil wars between godlike aliens it all gets a bit difficult to keep track of which species actually came from where. In short, a bunch of plague-decimated demigods maybe used this thing called the Dakara superweapon millions of year ago to shoot their genetic information throughout the Milky Way, which maybe had something to do with humanity's evolution. Or maybe not.

Babylon 5
Since we might as well finish off the sweep of nineties science fiction, the Centauri initially tried to dismiss Earth as one of their lost colonies. Sure, this probably wasn't true, but how else are you going to haze the new interstellar species?

Isaac Asimov
Most aliens seem to create life on Earth for slightly more practical (well, relatively speaking) reasons than the Star Trek aliens' "monument to our existence." Asimov imagined Earth as an eons-old alien experiment not once but twice – in "Jokester", the aliens did it to explore the concept of humor, while in "Breeds there a Man…?" the aliens are engaged in a more vague exercise in genetics. There’s also "Death Sentence", where an anthropologist for the Galactic Federation discovers that a previous civilization created a planet of robots as part of a larger psychological experiment. Realizing the Federation will surely have to destroy the planet as a potential threat, he decides to take his dire warning to one of the robots' biggest cities: New York.

Wildstorm Comics
The Kherubim people sent their genetic seed throughout the universe in a bid to conquer the universe without their genetic descendants even knowing it, which they then followed up by actually conquering much of the universe.

Ringworld, by Larry Niven
It turns out we're all part of a larger plan by the Pak race to create a galaxy full of ultra-lethal, ultra-intelligent superhumans. Apparently, the plan failed because there wasn't enough of the right kind of fruit.

Mission to Mars
In this Brian de Palma stinker, a bunch of Martians that didn't flee their dying planet shot the neighboring Earth – then a barren chunk of rock – full of the building blocks of life because…um, because they wanted to take Gary Sinise on a tour of the universe? (And that was probably the least nonsensical part of that movie.)

Salvage Rites, by Eric Brown
One of the very few times when a race made from directed panspermia confronts their creators, this short story finds a group of Benedictine monks in a cathedral-shaped starship seeking out what is, for all intents and purposes, God.

South Park
In easily the most awesome use of the concept, the anniversary episode “Canceled” revealed Earth for what it really is – one giant reality show. At least in South Park, someone is actually bothering to watch.

Starliner, by David Drake
In this 1992 novel, the narrator explains that no one bats an eyelid at botanists cross-breeding plants from different worlds because panspermia is "no longer a hypothesis but simple observation." Not the most earth-shattering application of panspermia, but still.

Ej-es by Nancy Kress
A rather less mundane spin on that same idea, as members of an interstellar marine corps realize a deadly plague on one planet threatens all the intelligent species in the universe – because panspermia makes them all genetically related.

Doctor Who
The classic "City of Death" features a more accidental case of aliens creating life on Earth. In the midst of all the ridiculously complex art forgery, random acts of violence, Monty Python cameos, and endless location shots that prove the thing really was shot in Paris, writer Douglas Adams somehow squeezes in the origin of all life on Earth. As it turns out, an exploding Jaggaroth ship kickstarted the whole "life" thing. That was nice of them.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
Speaking of Douglas Adams, his most famous work envisions the noblest version of the alien-built Earth. Indeed, the emphasis here is on "built", as Earth is not a planet at all but instead a ten million year old computer program supervised by hyper-dimensional mice designed to determine the question to life, the universe, and everything. Of course, as is so often the case, this wondrous philosophical pursuit was interrupted by a bunch of hairdressers, TV producers, and telephone sanitizers from the planet Golgafrincham, who obliviously managed to replace the native humans and almost wreck the entire program. All of which rather neatly leads us back to wandering, forgetful colonists.

The Hainish Cycle, by Ursula K. Le Guin
In ancient times, colonizers from the planet Hain came to Earth and, for a time, coexisted with its native hominids. Whether the settlers ultimately killed the native Earthlings or simply bred them out of existence is anybody's guess, but the Hainish now consider modern humans their descendants.

Women of the Prehistoric Planet
This MST3K entry builds a whole parable of post-War American-Japanese relations around two rival alien races, time dilation, and giant iguanas, with plenty of sixties-era chauvinism left to go around. After a whole lot of silliness (as that previous sentence probably suggested) the marooned lovers Tang and Linda settle down on the titular prehistoric planet, which they decide to call…well, I think you can guess, but it rhymes with "Mirth."

Earthsearch
The classic BBC radio series had one of the best twists on this idea, as the four teenaged survivors of the massive starship Challenger search for Earth-like planets to colonize. It's slowly revealed that the planet they call Earth has some rather unrecognizable geography, but that the Earth-like planet they finally do discover, with its saltwater oceans covering two-thirds of the planet, sounds very familiar.

The Twilight Zone
But stories don't get much more familiar than the 1963 episode "Probe 7, Over and Out." Astronaut Adam Cook finds himself stranded on a faraway planet just as nuclear war is breaking out back home. He encounters Eve Norda, an alien who cannot understand his language. The pair ultimately agrees to start a new life together on the planet that Eve keeps calling "Irth." Judging by their first names, I’m guessing they'll do just fine.

You shouldn't even bother trying to predict the future of technological progress, argues The Space Merchants author Frederick Pohl:

No sensible science-fiction writer tries to predict anything. Neither do the smartest futurologists. What those people do is try to imagine every important thing that may happen (so as to do in the present things which may encourage the good ones and forestall the bad) and that's what SF writers do in their daily toil.

Chiming in Nancy Kress (Dogs) says it's foolish to try to predict the course of technology more than about 15-20 years out.

Ringworld author Larry Niven is more sanguine, laying down a couple of iron-clad rules for writers seeking to predict a future technology:
1) Think about basic human goals that will never go away, like immortality or instant travel. Then think about how someone could make them happen.
2) You can't invent the car without also inventing traffic jams and gas shortages.

The whole article is worth checking out, if only to see Halting State author Charles Stross say, "Donald Rumsfeld was right." [CIO]

The alien visitor from a doomed world:

The most famous refugee in science fiction is probably Superman, who gets sent to safety when his home planet Krypton is destroyed. It's no coincidence that Superman is also the posterboy for assimilation — his "real" family is the Kents of Kansas, and he thinks of himself as an American. He gets to live the refugee's dream, being totally accepted into a prosperous new world — plus he's physically and mentally superior to everyone else around him, which is a plus. He's the embodiment of the melting pot, even as he has the power to melt you. (And of course, his creators Siegel & Schuster were the sons of poor Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, mainly Lithuania and Ukraine.)

Doctor Who, meanwhile, has the same alien-world story as Superman, but without the assimilation. The Doctor, in the early episodes from 1963, drops hints about being on the run and in hiding, but doesn't explain further. The show's creators had a vague sense, originally, that he was fleeing a space war. But by the time it's explained in 1969, the explanation is much more benign: the Doctor's species are dicks. (No, not Terrance Dicks. Just dicks.) It's not until the show's 42nd birthday that we get back to the idea that he's fleeing a space war (upgraded to a time war.) And his planet has been destroyed, just like Superman's. But like I mentioned, he doesn't assimilate with Earth/British culture — even though he constantly takes on weird British affectations like jelly babies or cricket, they only make him seem like more of an outsider. He's like those Indian immigrants in the TV show Goodness Gracious Me, who anglicize their names and try to be more British than everyone else, only to look more out of place than ever. In many ways, the Doctor is the anti-Superman.

The protagonist who's fleeing war or genocide:

There are also tons of characters who flee a doomed or destroyed Earth, including Arthur Dent in the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series. And John Varley's novels frequently take place in a universe where humans have been forced to flee an Earth invaded by aliens, and have colonized the rest of the solar system as a result.

And then there's Hope Hubris, the hero of Piers Anthony's Bio Of A Space Tyrant series. As the first book's title, Refugee, suggests, Hubris starts out as a humble refugee from the moon Callisto, fleeing to Jupiter, where his family gets killed horribly. This starts him on his path towards becoming the "Tyrant of Jupiter."

The rag-tag fleet of humans:

And then there are plenty of stories in which a straggling mob of people flees from a disaster or massacre in space. Maybe the most critically acclaimed SF show right now — if not the most popular — is Battlestar Galactica, where the Cylons drive the humans out of their homeworld not once, but twice: on Caprica, and then on New Caprica. At the end of season three, Lee Adama makes a huge speech in which he says this has changed humanity from a civilization to a "gang," on the run and doing whatever it takes to survive.

Less organized rabbles also turn up, fleeing wars or political unrest, in books like C.J. Cherryh's Downbelow Station, where swarms of refugees pack into Pell Station in the wake of conflict between the Earth Company and outer stations. And a mob of refugees from a disaster that befalls the H9 colony swarms aboard a cruise ship, only to be exploited by the media, in Eric Idle's The Road To Mars. The TV show Babylon 5 is also full of refugee crises, like the people fleeing the Vorlon attack on Ventari III in "Falling Towards Apotheosis." (We also see a ship full of refugees under attack in the first regular episode, "Midnght On The Firing Line.")

Eco-refugees or disaster survivors on Earth:

Every eco-disaster narrative or post-apocalyptic story includes some kind of refugee motif, with people fleeing the destroyed cities or trying to find a safe haven. Like The Day After Tomorrow, The Postman, Waterworld, or Mad Max. Or Steven Gould's novel Blind Waves. The Martian attacks in War Of The Worlds spawn a huge fleet of refugee ships running away from the carnage. Islanders flee rising sea levels, only to drown or wind up in horrible refugee boat camps, in the 2002 young adult novel Exodus. And of course, there are tons of refugees from the collapsing nations of the world, seeking sanctuary in the U.K., in Children Of Men. Not to mention the Raft of refugees organized by telecommunications magnate L. Bob Rife in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.

One of the most arresting moments in the TV show Jericho is when our heroes find the remains of a refugee train a mile wide, made by people fleeing the frozen north. The refugees have left their icy dead where they lay. (Not to mention the whole gaggle of refugees who settle in Jericho, only to face expulsion again.)

Survivalists:

And the survivalist narrative is a huge part of science fiction. Robert Heinlein not only wrote the novel Farnham's Freehold, about people surviving a nuclear war, but according to the source of all lies, he also wrote "How To Be A Survivor" and other essays on surviving nuclear war. Frederik Pohl deals with similar themes in his story "Fermi And Frost." Also, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle write about a group of survivors barricading themselves into a mountain retreat after a deadly comet strike, in Lucifer's Hammer. Plus there's The Survivors, the TV show Terry Nation made between his work on Doctor Who and Blake's 7 (which is also a refugee show, sort of.)

And then there are the narratives about people going on the run from repressive regimes. Like Logan's Run, where Logan flees the non-stop beautiful-people orgy where they kill you when you reach 30, in search of the mythical Sanctuary. (And in the Logan's Run TV series, he's just on the run, every week, with a rogue android. In Roger McBride Allen's The Ring Of Charon, Marcia MacDougal can only escape from the repressive Naked Purple movement, which has taken over a lunar penal colony, by being declared a refugee when her house burns down.

Fleeing from the future:

And finally there are refugees in time — sort of like the Doctor, except they're fleeing a particular oppressive future through time travel. Just type "refugee from the future" into Google (with the quotation marks) and you get a bunch of weird stories — including various X-Men who have journeyed back to our time to escape one of those Mutants-in-concentration-camps dystopian futures.

I feel as though I've just scratched the surface of science fiction's nearly endless store of refugees here — this post could be twice as long. But these seem to be the main types of refugees in science fiction, and I was somewhat surprised by how many of them I turned up when I started looking.

History is full of mass evacuations and displacements, and we've gotten pretty used to the sight of streams of humans struggling across an unforgiving landscape with whatever they can carry, trying to escape from something or other. But it seems pretty likely the 21st century will see more refugee crises than ever before, as the number of humans on the planet continues to skyrocket and there are more ecological disasters and wars over scarce resources. There will be more and more refugees — possibly including you.

And science fiction is uniquely suited to tell the stories of these fleeing people, because the stark reality of the refugee condition is so awful, we need metaphors to cover it. It's easier to think about people running away from an exploding planet than it is to think about grabbing what you can and running from your home before you get ethnically cleansed. A dollop of escapism — or, in the case of Superman, a truckload — helps us swallow the unthinkable.

Note: The illustration up top comes from Wagner James Au's New World Notes blog, from a report about a virtual "Camp Darfur" in Second Life, which was being vandalized by asswipes spouting racist slogans. So a team of Green Lanterns, most of them extraterrestrial, took it upon themselves to guard the site.

Superman.
He's the last survivor (or one of the half-dozen last survivors) of the exploding planet Krypton. And he's invulnerable to just about everything in the universe, including nuclear bombs and the vacuum of interstellar space — but he can't come anywhere near a radioactive fragment of his own planet without dying. Or, if it's a red fragment, it'll turn him into a dwarf or a dragon. Of course. Also, Superman's pal, the Martian Manhunter, has a terrible vulnerability to fire — but it turns out to be mostly psychological.
Why it's poetic: Come on, he's lost his home planet... and now whenever he encounters part of it, it nearly kills him. The loneliness, the desolation.

Sontarans.
On Doctor Who, the Sontarans are cloned super-soldiers from the distant planet Sontar. They're almost unstoppable (although in their latest appearance they turned out to be pretty darn stoppable once you used non-copper bullets.) And their only weak spot is a small vent in the backs of their necks, which they use to recharge.
Why it's poetic: They're super-warriors, so they must always face their enemies. I mean, they could put a cap or a shield onto their neck-holes, but they choose not to. Because they need their fatal flaw to remind them who they are.

The Klowns.
In Killer Klowns From Outer Space. It turns out you can kill a killer klown by popping their red nose — it makes perfect sense!
Why it's poetic: They wear their most vulnerable part right in front of them, so they can see any attacks coming. Plus, it's like slapstick and murder rolled into one. Dude!

The Martians.
In War Of The Worlds, the invaders can clobber everything that humans can throw at them, and they scoff at our huge weapons systems. But then they're felled by the smallest enemy of all, the common cold.
Why it's poetic: Mostly because H.G. Wells gets so fancy and flowery talking about the "smallest and humblest of all God's creatures" and how it stomped the monsters' asses. (How does he know germs are humble?)

The Fithp
The Fithp are sort of weird super-intelligent elephants who use superior, if borrowed, technology to invade Earth in the 1986 novel Footfall, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. The humans are hopelessly outclassed, but they have one advantage. In the Fithp culture, when two herds fight, one eventually surrenders and gets absorbed into the other herd — so they're not prepared for humans to surrender and then mount a resistance or plan sabotage.
Why it's poetic: Because these super-elephant guys fail to understand the most human of behaviors... sneakiness.

The Colonists
In The X-Files, the aliens seeking to invade the Earth create super-soldiers who have only one weakness: their bodies are torn apart by the magnetic fields of large deposites of magnetite.
Why it's poetic: The alien soldiers are super-human because of their metallic bodies — but those same bodies make them vulnerable to magnetite. Woah.

The Crawling Eye.
Aliens who are basically just huge eyeballs with tentacles invade the Earth and nothing can stop them — until one human figures out the aliens have no defense against the awesome power of fire!
Why it's poetic: Because the eyes are burning! It's a tremendous metaphor for the blindness of power. Or maybe it's just a metaphor for how much you'll be rubbing your eyes with sleepiness as you try to pay attention to this movie.

The Signs invaders.
We've already talked about this a fair bit, but the aliens who decide to attack/invade/kidnap kids in M. Night Shyamalan's Signs have a terrible vulnerability to plain old water.
Why it's poetic: The humblest of beverages! Or maybe, the fact that the aliens can't protect themselves against water without giving up their shape-shifting abilities. So they rely on the chameleon thing, to the exclusion of protecting themselves.

The Alien Teachers
Aliens replace the teachers at Henderson High School in Robert Rodriguez's The Faculty. And it turns out the aliens' only weakness is Zeke the drug dealer's "homebake."
Why it's poetic: It's the humblest of drugs! Oh, wait. I mean, come on. They're impersonating teachers, and they're vulnerable to the students' drugs. That's awesome. Plus, it's proof that drugs really are good for you. And the school drug dealer is your friend. Etc.

Leto Atreides II
In Frank Herbert's God Emperor Of Dune, Leto lives for 3,000 years and becomes nearly unkillable because he's part sandworm. But then it turns out that he's gained the sandworms' vulnerability to water.
Why it's poetic: He inherits the weaknesses as well as the strengths of the worms. Dude, come on!

Stitch:
Stitch, from Lilo and Stitch, is a super-awesome alien koala creature. Except that he can't swim.
Why it's poetic: Stitch's super-dense body makes him indestructible, but also means he sinks like a rock. Oh noes!

The Tenctonese.
The aliens from Alien Nation could be burned, and even killed, if they came into contact with salt water. What is it with aliens and water of various types? (Thanks Roraz!) Science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer has an incredibly complicated explanation of how the Tenctonese's weakness actually makes sense.
Why it's poetic: You can't cry on their shoulders... or if you do, they'll definitely feel your pain.
Note: In the course of putting this blog post together, I found this post at Everything2, which was pretty helpful in coming up with some examples.

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).
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• 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).
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• 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.
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• 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.
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• Sprinkle Zamphour.
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• 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.

National Defense Magazine reports that Niven offered his advice while in a public discussion with his longtime collaborator Jerry Pournelle:

Niven said a good way to help hospitals stem financial losses is to spread rumors in Spanish within the Latino community that emergency rooms are killing patients in order to harvest their organs for transplants.

"The problem [of hospitals going broke] is hugely exaggerated by illegal aliens who aren't going to pay for anything anyway," Niven said.

"Do you know how politically incorrect you are?" Pournelle asked.

"I know it may not be possible to use this solution, but it does work," Niven replied.

Other authors in SIGMA include Greg Bear (Darwin's Radio, Eon), Sage Walker (Wild Cards), and Eric Kotani (Between the Stars).

Science Fiction Mavens Offer Far-Out Homeland Security Advice [National Defense Magazine]

Arthur C. Clarke has three long-awaited books on the list, including the intriguingly titled Mars Brat. But the king of announced-but-not-released novels is Jerry Pournelle, who has a whopping six books on the list including the Spartan Hegemony. To be fair, three of those are collaborations with Larry Niven, who's also keeping us waiting for the collaborator-free Ghost Ships. Harlan Ellison has two books on the list, but does anybody really care about him any more?

The Most Eagerly Awaited And Long Overdue SF Books [SF Signal]

5. Sun of Suns, by Karl Schroeder. Rebel, former pirate, and kickass airbike rider Hayden lives in Virga, a giant bag of air floating in space, built by a post-human society. The air is heated by high-tech suns dragged around by city-states that create their own gravity by building on the inside of vast, spinning tubes. Virga is a kind of eighteenth-century world of kings, despots and pirates, and many of the city-states horde sun power — they'll attack out any nation that tries to assert independence by building its own sun. Most people remain dependent on a few big sun-owning nations for their warmth; those who refuse to toe the line live in the cloud-draped sunless reaches of "winter." Hayden, whose mother was killed after she built a pirate sun, is out to change all that, even if it means killing the leader of Slipstream, one of Virga's most powerful nations. The characters may be a little two-dimensional, but you'll keep reading just to visit the vast, globular floating oceans, the strange cities, and bizarre barren outposts in Virga. Plus, pirate battles in zero gee! Sun of Suns is the first in a trilogy, and the second novel just came out in hardback.

4. Ringworld, by Larry Niven. A classic 1960s world-building epic about aliens on a quest to find out more about a vast artificial Dyson ring built around a dying sun. This is the novel that inspired the people who created the game Halo, which also takes place on a ring world. Expect strange weather, bizarre vistas from on and below the massive structure, and alien encounters that feel very Star Trek (but at a time when Star Trek was still the shit).

3. Lilith's Brood, by Octavia Butler. This trilogy of novels by MacArthur winner Octavia Butler is about what happens to humanity after earth is destroyed in some kind of nuclear apocalypse, and all the human survivors are rescued by powerful, mysterious aliens called the Oankali. Three-sexed, the Oankali reproduce via a third sex called the TK, which mixes genetic material inside its own body and creates offspring. All their technology is biological too. Lilith, one of the human survivors that the Oankali enlist to help them deal with the other human survivors, discovers that the Oankali recreate their species every few hundred years by merging their genetic material with other species. And the humans are next on their list of species to merge with. Set aboard vast biological ship-words and a newly geo-engineered Earth, Lilith's Brood traces three generations of humans and Oankali as they have children together — children who grow more alien to both species with each generation. Yes, it's a very complicated and subtle allegory about colonialism. And yes, it's an amazing tale of the unknown. Enjoy it for either, or for both.

2. Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville. It's a world where bureaucrats raise demons with steam-driven machines, and "thaumaturgists" remold human bodies with their hands. A strange kind of species-transforming weather called The Torque occasionally rips through, converting humans into half-insects, half-birds, half-seamonsters. It's been years since a Torque came through, and all the different post-Torque human groups live separated into nineteenth-century style ghettos in a city whose polyglot heart is in a train station called Perdido Street. Everything is steaming along normally in the city — anarchists print subversive pamphlets, artists date across species lines, and scientists study winged creatures from around the globe. But trouble comes to town in the form of dream-eating moths who suck people's minds out, and the only creatures who can stop them are a mad scientist, his half-insect lover, a sentient garbage dump, and a trans-dimensional spider.

5. The Dispossessed, by Ursula LeGuin. A classic novel by one of the supreme world-builders in SF, The Dispossessed is a tale of two planets: one is a lush, economic powerhouse ruled by greed, consumerism, and a rich elite; the other a desert planet full of the descendants of rebels who fled the first planet two centuries before. It has scant resources but is governed by a feminist-anarchist belief system that preaches collective ownership, gender equality, and sexual liberation. Shavek, a physicist from the anarchist planet, is one of the first to visit the home planet in many generations, and his experiences traveling between worlds reveal chinks in the Utopia he's left behind — and unexpected benefits on the corrupt home world, where scientific innovation flourishes in an atmosphere of capitalist competition. What's stunning about this novel is that LeGuin avoids simplistic judgments, and shows in honest detail how even the most progressive culture can be corrupt. And even the most corrupt culture can foster creative brilliance.

Famous names: Larry Niven, John Byrne

Crunchy goodness: 1

Spinoffs/Sequels/Copycats: This one-off graphic novel introduced the character of Ganthet, the all-powerful Papa Smurf knockoff who became super important in the 1990s Green Lantern comics.

The shit: The Green Lantern titles, which had always featured zany cosmic shit and space opera, finally get a story written by Niven, a real science fiction author.

Life lesson: There are some things humans were never meant to understand... like the plot of this comic.

Bureau 42: Comic Review