The Fiction: The Motorway

In Martha's second trip on the TARDIS in the new Doctor Who, the Doctor takes her to New New York. Much like its present-day namesake, this city is trapped by traffic.

In fact, the only living residents of the city have been stuck in a quagmire called "the Motorway" for decades, all trying to get to a better place. Some even resort to kidnapping so that they can drive in the HOV lanes, which they've heard can cut years off their travel time. Once Martha is kidnapped she finds out they'll make it the ten miles to their destination in a short six years.

The Reality: Traffic and congestion.

It's been said that Americans spend an average of over 100 hours a year commuting, so it's no wonder that scientists are constantly trying to find ways to improve the driving experience. Writers are always imagining new ways for their heroes to get from point A to point B. But how many of those writer's dreams are coming true? Read on.

The fiction: Computer driven cars

Seen in: I, Robot
Pros: You can read, nap, or solve crimes while you're traveling. Accident cleanup is a snap.
Cons: Should the computer system decide to become murderous, you're in a lot of trouble.

The Reality: The Darpa Challenge

(image courtesy of the Team VictorTango website)

DARPA presents prizes to teams creating cars that drive on their own using "various sensors and positioning systems." Their 2007 challenge asked the vehicles to navigate an urban environment and "executing simulated military supply missions while merging into moving traffic, navigating traffic circles, negotiating busy intersections, and avoiding obstacles." Three and a half million dollars in prizes were awarded and six teams finished the course.

The Fiction: Mag-Lev Cars

Seen In: Minority Report
Pros: You can pave everything and make it a road, giving D.C. residents as many lanes than they could ever want. Pull right up to your 200th floor apartment.
Cons: Imagine an accident at those speeds, on the side of a skyscraper. Makes car chase a lot more dangerous.

The Reality: Mag-Lev trains.

While we haven't started putting mag-lev systems in cars yet, we have put them into trains. Japan has the most famous trains using the technology, where magnets are used to both levitate and propel the train. Using magnetic levitation for travel has a lot of advantages, including speed. Not to mention the potential benefits to the environment, and the noise reduction. As we pointed out earlier, the future of rail transport in the U.S. might very well lie with mag-lev technology.

The Fiction: Flying Cars

Seen In: The Fifth Element, many many others
Pros: No need for roads anymore, the sky is open to everybody.
Cons: The sky is open to everybody. The view becomes nothing but cars, and traffic is a nightmare still.

The Reality: Hovercraft

Vehicles that float on a cushion of air are actually more popular and widely used than most people think. They're good for going over any terrain, and they're used by militaries around the world. It also is the technology on this list that you are most likely to make in your own garage, if all the YouTube videos are any indication. It is unlikely that the flying cars in science fiction are powered by jets of air, but so far it's the closest thing we've got.

The Fiction: Vehicle A.I. that talks to you

Seen in: Knight Rider
Pros: Can let you know when it needs maintenance, keep you entertained on long drives, drive for you if you need to beat up some bad guys.
Cons: Can get a little snippy. Might lock you out.

The Reality: turn by turn GPS, cars that talk to each other

While we're not quite to the point where our vehicles are having conversations, we do have plenty of robotic female voices telling us to "turn left" and after we make a wrong turn, they scold us with a "recalculating." But GPS systems have become commonplace. What's the next frontier of the technology? Cars that converse with each other.

In this video from cNet, we see that systems are being designed where two vehicles will send signals back and forth in order to keep track of their distance from each other, their speeds, and other relevant information. The same system can also get information from stop lights to relay to the driver, letting you know if you really should try to gun through that yellow light, or maybe you should try to stop.

Does it seem like these innovations are too far outside our grasp? Well there are two famous fictional cars that science has managed to replicate, at least to some degree:

The Fiction: The Batmobile

The Reality: Voice recognition software, OnStar, and "the Tumbler."

The Batmobile's features change from model to model, in fact there is even a website devoted solely to tracking the changes in the vehicle. There have been numerous defensive innovations, as well as offensive weaponry installed over the years. While most cars aren't driving around with side-mounted spherical bombs, the Batmobile has long had voice recognition software. Now the Ford Sync system comes standard in many of their models, one of the many ways our cars are starting to obey our vocal commands.

In a set of ads using the Batman/Batman Returns style Batmobile, audiences discovered one feature that they could have installed in their own cars: OnStar. Of course, Batman has had hands free calling to his support network (namely Alfred) for years.

The most important thing to note is that when Christopher Nolan brought his own spin to the Batmobile in Batman Begins, the "Tumbler" was actually a functional vehicle. According to The History of the Batmobile:

"Their primary focus was to make this Batmobile as real as possible: at 9 feet wide and 15 feet long, the car weighed in at 2.5 tons but was still capable of 0-60MPH in under six seconds with a top speed of 110MPH. Thanks to its unique design, it is also capable of making unassisted jumps up to 30 feet."

One of the best car shows in the world, Top Gear, was able to actually have the car in the studio for a segment where they talk about its actual working features. There's a rumor that The Stig even took it on a lap around the track:

The Fiction: James Bond's Scuba Car from "The Spy Who Loved Me."

The Reality: The sQuba Submarine Car

James Bond was able to tool around underwater in a modified Lotus Espirit without getting his impeccable suit damp. The sQuba Submarine Car is not quite so watertight, but it still is a car that handily swims around underwater, just like the vehicle in the film. As Jalopnik reports:

"Though you're not going to stay dry if you want to go diving, because theres no airtight canopy to enclose you. To breathe, you'll have to wear a scuba mask connected to the car's integrated compressed-air tank. But who cares?! This is a car that goes underwater!"

You can read a complete write up of the car here.

See the car in action and learn about all its other features:

Since the sQuba is just a concept car at the moment, if you want a car that will travel land and water, you might have to settle for an amphibious car. In one of their most infamous segments, the gentlemen at Top Gear were challenged to make their own amphibious cars, and then cross the English Channel. You might be surprised at the results:

What's next in the future of transportation? The best place to find out is probably the science-fiction section of Netflix.

Minority Report's Samantha Morton and The Wire's Dominic West have joined the cast of the Disney version of Edgar Rice Burroughs' classic novel. So now we're sure that future crime in Baltimore won't be a problem for the movie.

Morton and West are joining the already-announced co-stars of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins, as well as Willem Dafoe. Morton will play Dafoe's daughter, Sola, while West's character will be the Zodangan prince Sab Than, who feels that Mars' rule should be his.

Also joining the cast will be Rome's Polly Walker, as Sarkoja, described as "a merciless, tyrannical Thark."

The movie is expected to start production early next year.

Threesome on journey to 'Mars' [Hollywood Reporter]

1. John Anderton, Minority Report

The Setup:

In the year 2054, John Anderton is the chief of Washington DC's elite precrime unit, which uses three psychics to predict when murders will occur and thus prevent them. Arrested for a murder he actually did sort of commit (which is way rarer than it sounds), Anderton is placed in suspended animation in the Precrime holding cells. The case seemingly closed, his longtime mentor Lamar Burgess goes to comfort Anderton's estranged wife Lara, but accidentally lets slip a crucial detail that suggests he knows far more than he is letting on.

Lara, finally believing John's claims of a deeper conspiracy, goes to free him from his cell. It's then full speed ahead to the film's conclusion, where Anderton confronts Burgess and places him in a no-win situation, where the only way to save his beloved Precrime will mean destroying it forever. Burgess kills himself rather than face such a prospect, and Precrime reforms itself, setting free everyone it was holding captive. But did Anderton ever actually get released from his cell, or was this all just a fantasy he created?

The Case For:

Somewhat unusually for a project rooted in a Philip K. Dick short story, Minority Report isn't particularly interested in the nature of reality, at least not in the way we're talking about here. Instead, most of the film concerns itself with debating predetermination versus free will, which is a different philosophical question from whether or not the events we experience are real. As such, it doesn't really make much thematic sense, and there's only the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence to suggest Anderton fantasized the whole thing.

Besides, this is Steven Spielberg we're talking about, not David Cronenberg (but more on him in a little bit). It just isn't really his style to reject the reality of his own films. If anything, Spielberg's fantasy and science fiction oeuvre is defined by accepting everything as real, no matter how preposterous.

The Case Against:

Still, that really is an impossibly easy ending. After spending a solid ninety minutes doing nothing but running and hiding from the implacable Precrime officers, the escaped John Anderton has no trouble leaving their facility or breaking into the impressively ritzy social event Burgess is at. Everything just falls into place a bit too neatly, considering pretty much nothing came easy for the first two-thirds of the film. Perhaps the end of Minority Report is a bit like the end of Adaptation - its sheer implausibility is the biggest clue that it isn't exactly happening the way you see it.

Chances That It Really Happened:

90%. A lot of recent Spielberg films have had somewhat weak conclusions, including Munich, War of the Worlds, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and you don't see anybody claiming those endings didn't happen. Well, plenty of people prefer to believe Kingdom of the Crystal Skull never happened at all, but that's a different issue.

2. Bender, Futurama

The Setup:

In the episode "Obsoletely Fabulous", Bender is sent back to the factory to receive an upgrade that will make him compatible with the new Robot 1-X. Unwilling to go through the painful, personality-altering upgrade, Bender goes on the run, eventually winding up on an island full of obsolete robots. Forsaking his own technological nature, Bender downgrades himself, replacing his metal parts with wood.

After launching an attack on civilization, Bender and his primitive cohorts end up at the Planet Express building, where they manage to do far more harm than even Bender really intended. All of his friends trapped in a raging inferno, a now useless Bender is forced to call upon the aid of Robot 1-X, finally making him realize the new robot has his uses. At that point, he snaps back to the factory, where he is informed the whole thing was just a hallucination, his robotic mind's way of coming to terms with and accepting Robot 1-X. This forces Bender to ask the philosophical question:

If that stuff wasn't real, how can I be sure anything is real? Is it not possible, nay probable, that my whole life is just a product of my or someone else's imagination?

It's a valid question - is any of Futurama real?

The Case For:

Absolutely, yes, all of it is real. By which I of course mean no, none of it is. Much as I'm sure it pains all of us to admit it, Futurama is just a TV show. So, technically speaking, I suppose none of it is actually real. But that's not what we're dealing with here. Much as Bender's line represents a great bit of meta humor, it isn't really meant to call into question whether the "actual" events of Futurama are any less real than any other TV show in the same way that, say, the "Normal Again" episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer did. Am I the only one who's horribly confused by all of this? If nothing else, I need to find some more synonyms for "real."

The Case Against:

The end of the episode finds Bender walking back into the slums of New New York City, which he chooses to see as a beautiful meadow full of friendly woodland creatures. Beyond the fact that that sort of seems like an odd choice for Bender's perfect world, Bender's newfound belief that "reality is what you make of it" really does suggest that, on some metaphysical level, Futurama is all just some idle fantasy.

Chances That Futurama Really Happened:

90%. In the end, you've got to trust in the robot technician's brusque response to Bender's philosophical query: "No, get out. Next!" A man that coolly competent probably has a pretty good handle on the ways of the universe. Now, as to whether Leela ever really recovered from the space bee sting, well...that's another matter entirely.

3. Ed Straker, UFO

The Setup:

In, "Mindbender", one of the best episodes of this British cult classic about an elite but underfunded paramilitary force fighting mysterious aliens (which I've already waxed lyrical about in a previous post), SHADO recovers a bizarre artifact from the surface of the Moon. All those who touch it experience ultra-realistic hallucinations. After two men are killed because they started shooting at fellow SHADO personnel, thinking they were the enemy, Commander Ed Straker takes possession of the strange object.

It isn't long before Straker hallucinates as well, as a heated argument with General Henderson is interrupted with a director yelling, "Cut!" Utterly confused, Straker finds himself on a television set filming a TV show that looks an awful lot like UFO. He wanders around the studio, stumbling into a theater showing previously shot footage. Straker watches in horror as he sees some of the most traumatic moments of his life - all moments previously shown in the series itself - up on the screen as mere entertainment.

Unable to cope with this strange new world, Straker rushes back to his office set and desperately tries to make it return to normal. To his great relief, everything finally snaps back to normal, and he is once again Commander Ed Straker. But still...did he actually stumble upon reality, however briefly?

The Case For:

This is the same fundamental problem we faced when grappling with Futurama. What's the difference between a show acknowledging the fact that it's a TV show and a show suggesting everything we see is an illusion? I guess it's all a matter of degree, and the more and more elements from real life the show draws upon, the harder it is to dismiss the idea that the TV show is really just a TV show.

For instance, one of Straker's costars joins him in the theater to watch the raw footage. On UFO, the character was Colonel Paul Foster, but here he introduces himself as Mike. The actor who played Foster? Michael Billington. It's little details like this that suggest "Mindbender" really was trying to push Straker's hallucination as close to the actual production of UFO as it possibly could. At a certain point, doesn't the false version of reality get close enough that you might as well consider it the real thing?

The Case Against:

Then again, there are plenty of elements that don't match up with the actual behind the scenes of UFO. "Mindbender" would have been much more, well, mindbending if they had given the actor who played Ed Straker the same name as the man who really portrayed him. Considering that was Ed Bishop, they even could have had some somewhat amusing gags over the fact they shared the same first name.

Instead, Straker's actor name is Howard Beale, who was also an actor that, in his cover job as a movie executive, Straker had had to reprimand earlier in the episode. Much as the episode does some truly crazy, fourth wall shattering stuff for something made in 1971, there aren't nearly enough dualities for this to perfectly mirror the real making of the show, and as such it's hard not to conclude it is just a hallucination after all.

Chances That UFO Really Was All An Illusion:

15%. I'd be a lot more conflicted if they'd just been a little more meta. Although Straker's reaction to seeing his entirely life as a TV show really is heartbreaking.

4. The Red Dwarf crew, Red Dwarf

The Setup:

In the series five finale "Back to Reality", the crew find themselves under attack from a giant squid. Facing certain death, they suddenly awaken in a virtual reality gaming center. There, they are told they've spent the last four years playing a total immersion video game, and not playing it particularly well either. Returning to their miserable lives in a fascist state, the four friends aren't completely sure they can face their newfound existences and prepare to commit suicide together.

Luckily, they don't have to, as the ship's computer Holly is able to pull them back from the brink of despair. As it turns out, that squid that was attacking them had release a hallucinogenic toxin that caused them to experience the same hopeless fantasy as a group. The squid's effects disrupted, they are able to escape and resume their adventures. But is the world of Red Dwarf any less illusory than that of the fascist state?

The Case For:

The idea that they actually were playing a video game for four years doesn't really hold up to any serious scrutiny. Kryten alone is deeply problematic, as he didn't appear until the start of series two, when he looked and sounded vastly different (because a different actor played him), and it wasn't until the third series when he became a regular. I mean, I suppose the total immersion game could have had an entire part where one character plays housekeeper on a dead ship for the first year, especially if the players were doing a really terrible job, but it doesn't make a lot of sense.

Anyway, it's not even like UFO, which retained some slight ambiguity in that Straker didn't suddenly snap out his hallucination - he instead had to return to his office and actively choose to return. The Red Dwarf crew doesn't go back to the VR machines; indeed, we actually see them back in the real world for a few seconds before they realize where they are, as they continue to act like they're stuck in the fascist world. That's pretty conclusive visual evidence.

The Case Against:

Still, the possibility that Red Dwarf is just a slightly malfunctioning virtual reality simulation might be one way to explain all the massive, inexplicable changes to the show's continuity. For instance, the show quietly moved the characters' home century from the 21st to the 23rd, and Christine Kochanski somehow morphed from Lister's secret obsession (played by C.P. Grogan) to his ex-girlfriend (played by Chloe Arnett). Even if the despair squid simply created things that weren't there, it might well be possible that they simply returned to another layer of the game. After all, I've heard the levels of immersion involved are pretty total.

Chances That They Really Did Go Back To Reality:

65%. At a certain point not long after this episode, the show sort of stopped existing for me anyway.

5. Sam Lowry, Brazil

The Setup:

Mild-mannered bureaucrat Sam Lowry discovers love thanks to a clerical error, and his single-minded pursuit of what is quite literally the girl of his dreams makes him an unintentional enemy of the state. About to be tortured by his best friend Jack Lint (played by Michael Palin, in one of the all-time great underrated performances), Sam is suddenly rescued by domestic terrorist and freelance air conditioning repairman Harry Tuttle. Lowry and Tuttle proceed to blow up the Ministry of Information, but then things get a bit weird (to say the least). Sam ultimately escapes with his beloved Jill, and the two can now live happily ever after. But did any of it actually happen?

The Case For:

Completely depends on which version of Brazil you saw. Terry Gilliam's cinematic bad luck is the stuff of legend, and he faced studio interference on Brazil from the very start. Unwilling to accept Gilliam's bleak ending, Universal chairman Sid Sheinberg took his grim 142-minute version and cut it down to a breezy 94 minutes, complete with a happy ending where Sam does indeed go off to live in peace with Jill. This so-called "Love Conquers All" version appears on the Criterion release of Brazil, and was once shown in syndication on TV because its much shorter running length made it easier to market.

The Case Against:

Well, you see, the biggest thing missing from the "Love Conquers All" cut is a final scene between Jack Lint and the Deputy Minister of Information, Mr. Helpmann. The two look sadly at Sam, still strapped to the torture chair, and remark that he is "gone" - incurably insane. In other words, any legitimate version of Brazil ends with it completely clear that the happy ending is a product of Sam's broken mind. Which, considering all the crazy things that happen during his escape, is really the only plausible explanation anyway.

Chances That He Really Escaped:

5%, if only as a slight nod to the power of television syndication.

6. Allegra Geller and Ted Pikul, eXistenZ

The Setup:

Legendary game designer Allegra Geller has to go on the run with her de facto bodyguard Ted Pikul when an assassin shows up at a focus group for her new fully immersive masterpiece eXistenZ. The pair jump into an exponentially more bizarre adventure where it becomes impossible to know for certain what's in the real world and what's just the game. Finally, Geller realizes Pikul is the real assassin and kills him, only to find herself awaking as a member of the focus group for the actual game TranscendenZ, programmed by the actual legendary designer Yevgeny Nourish. The entire movie up to that point had all been a game, or so it would seem.

Allegra and Ted are seemingly content with their gaming experience, but then they pull Yevgeny aside to ask him whether he should pay for all the harm he has done and will do to the human race. They then shoot kill him and the head of the focus group in front of a stunned crowd of their fellow testers. They then prepare to kill another tester, who is forced to ask: "Hey, tell me the truth - are we still in the game?" So how about it? Did they ever make it back to reality?

The Case For:

Ooh boy. Let's see now. Well, there's the fact that a lot of the actors in the film only use their real accents in the final scene. That might be taken as a clue that the focus group for TranscendenZ is real, if only in the sense that the characters now actually sound like real people. Look, I honestly have no idea whether anything in eXistenZ is real or imaginary, but I do know one thing: Christopher Eccleston's American accent is the fakest thing in cinematic history.

The Case Against:

It just would seem to fundamentally go against director David Cronenberg's brutally ironic, unsparing sensibilities for the characters to ever escape the game. In fact, I think it's debatable whether there even is such a thing as "the real world" in eXistenZ, and even more debatable whether it makes much of a difference. Honestly, I'm pretty sure the question of whether they're in the real world or not is the least important part of eXistenZ.

And just so we're clear - yes, this argument has come down to a metaphysical quandary on the one hand and the ninth Doctor's terrible accent on the other. Just as it should be.

Chances That They Really Got Back To Reality:

I'm not sure. I guess you'd have to define reality first.

Paradox, announced recently by the Beeb, is described by its director, the critically acclaimed Simon Cellan Jones, as "an electrifying white knuckle ride [that will] will leave the audience asking themselves dark, complicated questions about fate, the future and who controls it." Starring onetime Eastenders star Tamzin Outhwaite, the series follows a police detective whose beat includes crimes that haven't happened yet. Whether or not the show will include Samantha Morton as a bald psychic named after a famous mystery writer has not yet been revealed.

The BBC is already buzzing about the show, with a spokesman calling it "a fresh spin on the crime genre [featuring] a fantastically bold idea." Shooting on the new series begins next month.

Outhwaite to star in sci-fi drama [BBC News]

I-WAY is a project funded by the European Union that uses existing technology, much of it off-the-shelf, to detect, combine and analyze tons of information about traffic. Cameras spot back-ups, accidents and lane closings. Sensors within cars note speed and braking data. They can even detect unsafe driving behavior, such as frequent lane changes or excessive speed. On top of that, sensor packages inside cars monitor the driver's heart rate, steering wheel grip and eye position.

The key to all this data acquisition is a computer system that can analyze it all, take stock of the situation, and issue warnings in real-time. Drivers can use their awareness to drive more cautiously if a high risk is present. Highway officials could use the information to adjust lane closings or traffic lght patterns to remove some of the elements causing the risk.

I-WAY is still in the testing phase, but it was designed to use low-cost technology already proven to work. It just combines the technology in an innovative way. We could see this in use on certain highways in a few years. I can't wait until I get my first ticket for an unsafe lane change I didn't actually make yet. Image by: InfoMofo.

Preventing Traffic Accidents Before They Happen? [Science Daily]

Science fiction helped to invent product placement, with Steven Spielberg's shoehorning of Reese's Pieces into E.T., making them the official candy of penis-fingered growly alien visitors. But that wasn't actually the first instance of product placement in the genre.

What was? It's hard to say, but one of the earliest instances was the overexposure of Sugar Puffs cereal in 1966's Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. The movie version of the classic Doctor Who story starred Peter Cushing as the eccentric time-traveler, who visits a ruined future London where the killing-machine Daleks have taken over. There's no food or clean water, and the survivors of the Dalek attacks live in total squalor. But hey... did we mention Sugar Puffs cereal is sugary and delicious? Sugar Puffs helped to finance the movie in exchange for having their posters visible throughout.

Also, 2001: A Space Odyssey features prominent references to, and fake ads for, Pan-Am, IBM and Howard Johnson. But those were simply companies that director Stanley Kubrick thought would still be around in a few decades. As far as I can find out, no money actually changed hands — in fact, Kubrick contacted 50 companies and asked them to submit logos and designs for what their products might look like in 40 years.

Also this nifty bit of Marlboro promo in a Superman II fight scene predates E.T. by a couple of years. Kneel before our cool, refreshing smokes:

But yes, E.T.'s focus on Reese's Pieces may well have been the first high-profile example of product placement in a science fiction movie. The media reported widely that M&Ms had turned down the chance to be in the mega-hit, and Reese's Pieces reaped some extra publicity from all the coverage. The candy's sales spiked 65 percent after the film came out, and kids wrote to Steven Spielberg with fan art that featured Reese's Pieces prominently:

But there's also a lot of exposure for Coca-Cola, Coors beer, Speak'n'Spell and Pez candy, among other brands, in the movie. Here are some more screen shots:

Around the same time, TV's Knight Rider showed us the way forward in science fictional product placement: people will always want to buy the supercars they see featured on screen. (See below for Transformers and the new K.R.) General Motors gave the show's makers models of the new Trans Am, which they decked out as KITT, and people rushed to buy their own KITTs.

But E.T. and Knight Rider were like babies, or maybe monks, compared to the Back To The Future trilogy. Seriously, google "Back To The Future worst product placement" and set aside an hour or two to look at all the lists of the "worst movie product placement of all time" that include the BTTF trilogy. References to Pepsi are jammed into the first two films (like when Marty tries to order a Pepsi Free in 1955), his mom thinks he's named Calvin Klein, and the films ram Nike, Pizza Hut, AT&T, Hasbro and Mattel down your throat. (The DeLorean gets a free pass, because it's actually funny.)

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home took advantage of its present-day setting to pimp Michelob beer — the official beer of the Federation — and of course, Scotty gets to know an Apple Macintosh better. The Trek franchise liked that product-placement money so much, Kirk and his crew go camping in Levis jeans in Star Trek V. Meanwhile, Apple got sluttier and sluttier, getting some first-class pimping in Mission Impossible and Independence Day — where a Mac notebook is the key to stopping the alien invaders. And then in Blade Trinity, one character goes to the iTunes music store to assemble a playlist for her ipod, which she listens to while fighting vampires. There's also a nice Apple plug in I Am Legend.

Another movie which wins a spot in the product-placement hall of shame is Demolition Man. Sylvester Stallone gets woken up in the future, and finds that Taco Bell/Pizza Hut has won the "franchise wars" and now all restaurants are Pizza Huts:

One of the first television series to be accused of shoving consumer items in your face was Babylon 5, which stuck a gigantic Zima sign over the alien boxing ring in the episode "TKO." Series creator J. Michael Straczynski insisted the show got "not a dime" for the Zima plug, and it was just for the lolz.

Men In Black got a lot of flak for its relentless pushing of the Ray-Ban Predator 2 sunglasses, which tripled in sales to almost $5 million after the film came out. And Men In Black II is another proud moment for product whoring. An alien intruder arrives on Earth and needs to assume a form to confuse us humans. So of course her/its eye lights on a Victoria's Secret ad:

And then there's the famous taxi chase in The Fifth Element, which leads up to the cops getting showered with McDonald's cartons. Good thing they still have Mickey D's in this dystopian future:

One trend in the 2000s has been movies featuring fake advertisements for real products as part of the plot, sort of a throwback to 2001. Who helped pioneer this? None other than Steven "Reese's Pieces" Spielberg, who has Tom Cruise walk through a mall full of personalized ads in Minority Report.

Michael Bay also crams The Island full of fake ads, including a Chanel ad that stars the woman Scarlet Johnasson was cloned from.

I, Robot pushed Converse's Chuck Taylor shoes so much, there's a whole Chuck Taylor web page devoted to the film. (The movie gets four Chucks out of five.) I have blotted this movie out of my memory, but apparently all Will Smith does in it is wave his "antique" Chuck Taylors around and talk about how fast he can run away from the killer robots, thanks to his Chucks. If you saw this movie and liked the shoes, could you buy your own pair? Gosh, I think so!

I could be here all day discussing the wealth of car product placement in recent movies. The Lost World: Jurassic Park features a new kind of Mercedes Benz SUV, and Steven "man-whore" Spielberg lovingly, frames a shot so you can see the Mercedes logo really clearly. That Steven. The Matrix Reloaded is such a great Cadillac ad, with its freeway chase, that the DVD even has a featurette about the product placement. Terminator 3 is brought to you by Lexus and Toyota. I Am Legend is one big ad for the Ford Mustang. Transformers is basically built around promoting GM's latest car models, and the second film is already getting buzz around the new Chevy Volt and Corvette models. The Dark Knight is plastered with Ford. We have a new Knight Rider show, which is basically a Ford Mustang infomercial as the car transforms into different Ford models. Fringe is also chock full of Ford.

Heroes has had product placement for Sprint, Apple, Dell and other brands, but also especially Nissan.

A new growing category of product placement in science fiction, rivaling cars and computers: phones. After all, if you're under attack by aliens, you really need to be able to reach your comrades in a hurry. Hence, Jericho's and Heroes' constant whoring for Sprint, Superman Returns' constant Samsung and Virgin whoring, Cloverfield's Nokia love, etc. etc.

It's pretty amazing. Judging from our research, there's been more product placement, and more blatant product placement, in 2008 than in the past few years combined. We could literally spend an entire post just listing all the product placement this year. And it's getting way more blatant, especially on television. As we mentioned above, Sarah Connor Chronicles set a new high-water mark with its hour-long Dodge Ram commercial last week. Smallville devoted an entire episode last spring to Stride gum, and how it can turn you into a superhero. And then there's Eureka, which has apparently been finding ways to feature Degree For Men in every. single. episode. this season, including the one where Degree provides protection from a lethally hot second sun.

Where will it end? How much lower can we go? In the interests of ironic dystopian amusement, I can hardly wait to find out.

Additional reporting by Katharine Duckett.

It's happened to all of us. We read a novel that blows us away, and a few years later its title appears on posters underneath the face of Harrison Ford or Natalie Portman. But at some inevitable point in that darkened theater, the movie takes a turn we didn't expect. Our eyebrows go up, our lips turn down, and the disappointment begins. Maybe the wrong director or writer can curse an otherwise excellent project — or maybe some things were just never meant to be filmed. Here are 10 books that we think should never have been committed to celluloid.

DUNE by Frank Herbert

There's no doubt about it: Herbert's Dune is a bona fide classic. It won the first ever Nebula award and the 1966 Hugo award, and most consider it to be the best-selling sci-fi novel in history. Set in a future where a feudal empire controls the planets of the unvierse, the novel tells the story of young nobleman Paul Atreides and his family's rule of the desert planet Arrakis. Arrakis is the only source of "melange," an addictive spice that lengthens lives and makes interstellar travel possible. Herbert's book explores the power struggles that arise around the spice, and the complexity of human society that exists even in the far future.

Big shoes to fill for a film producer. Yet in 1984 David Lynch wrote and directed a movie version of Dune, rescuing it from development hell and plunging it into bad-adaptation hell. Reviews panned the movie — Roger Ebert deemed it "the worst movie of the year," and others expressed similar disgust. Despite the movie's 40-million-dollar budget, its effects were notably cheap, and the screenplay did not hold up to the challenge of translating a four-hundred-page book to screen. You'd think you couldn't go wrong with Patrick Stewart, Sting, and Jürgen Prochnow, but evidently you very much can.

FAHRENHEIT 451 by Ray Bradbury

Who could forget Fahrenheit 451, "the temperature at which book-paper catches fire, and burns …"? Bradbury's classic 1953 novel takes place in a dystopian future where television has entirely replaced the printed word, and firemen burn books instead of saving lives. The author himself has stated that the point of the story was to showcase how owning a TV set can destroy all interest in literature — so making a movie version seems pretty damn ballsy to say the least.

With that in mind, the 1966 film, helmed by French icon François Truffaut, seems doomed from the start. It certainly didn't help that there were many notable omissions, like the disappearance of the novel's nuclear war (which is, let's face it, a pretty big cut). Julie Christie plays the main character's wife and his illicit lover, which adds an extra level of pointless weirdness. The bottom line is, there are plenty of books for which you can tell your friends to "just watch the movie." But in the case of Fahrenheit 451, that probably makes you kind of fascist. Just sayin'.

V FOR VENDETTA by Alan Moore and David Lloyd

The book is probably one of the best graphic novels ever produced. Detailing the adventures of a masked anarchist and his sweet blond protégée, Moore's writing also delves far deeply beyond his two main characters into complex themes of fascism, anarchy, identity, and the meaning of life itself. Nobody is without a story to tell: Even his villains are creepily sympathetic. By the end of the comic, every reader will have at least one Lloyd image burned in their brain, and be wondering — with no small amount of fear — exactly how much control their government does have.

Enter the movie. For the Wachowski brothers, the boys who gave us the two-thirds-sucky Matrix trilogy, setting this story to film was easy. They just had to cut out all of the character depth, change Moore's nuanced portrayal of British fascism to the cookie-cutter Hollywood standby of Suited White Men, and (of course) turn the subtle, understated relationship of the main characters into romantic pining. But hey, at least they got the costume right.

A WRINKLE IN TIME by Madeleine L'Engle

Though it's often marketed as a young-adult fantasy novel, make no mistake: This book is without a doubt a sci-fi classic for all generations, an incredible tale that deftly blends science, speculation, and humanity. L'Engle's 1962 story invented the concept of a "tesseract" — the fifth dimension, a phenomenon that folds the fabric of space and time. It introduced a mother who cooks dinner on a Bunsen burner, a father whose research leaves him imprisoned on another planet, and a brother and sister whose loving relationship turns out to be the most important thing in the universe.

Mostly we make an effort to ignore it, but it's true: Many of the great sci-fi writers were (and are) better at dreaming up nifty science ideas than they were at weaving together a compelling story. L'Engle, however, belongs in no such group. Her work was never meant to be a crappy Disney movie, and yet in 2003, a crappy Disney made-for-TV adaptation appeared that one critic described as "lightweight, saccharine, rather slow going most of the way, and somewhat simplistic" as well as "sometimes clunky, and... often uninspiring". Let us speak no more about it.

THE MINORITY REPORT by Philip K. Dick

Dick's 1956 short story introduced the chilling concept of "precrime," a police system whose officers arrest would-be murderers, rapists, and thieves before they get a chance to do their dirty deeds. His futuristic New York City is a world where three future-seeing mutants control who goes to prison and who doesn't, and free will is a gray area — a luxury that not everyone possesses. One veteran cop, after seeing a prediction that he will kill someone he doesn't even know, is having none of it.

So what did Steven Spielberg's 2002 movie add, besides a gross eye transplant? Well, for one, it brought in Tom Cruise — balding, out-of-shape 50-year-olds are never attractive narrators as far as Hollywood's concerned, no matter what they might be able to share with us in real life. The setting's different, too, and names have been changed, but at least it presents the idea with a lot more nifty special effects and a lot less storytelling, right? And that, my friends, is frighteningly endemic of the print-to-film adaptation.

I, ROBOT by Isaac Asimov

This is a revolutionary sci-fi classic, a collection of nine short stories exploring the limitations and dangers of human-created artificial intelligence. Asimov's 1950 publication of I, Robot established the Three Laws of Robotics, supposedly unbreakable rules which govern the actions of these metal beings, and his short stories read like the best sci-fi mind puzzles you will ever find.

2004's movie adaptation was undeniably well done, and it ended up being one of the best of the year — due in no small part to Jeff Vintar's tight script and the total awesomeness of Will Smith and Chi McBride. Asimov certainly meant to get us thinking, so one could imagine he'd be pleased that his work inspired a smart sci-fi thriller like this. As it happens, however, the main plot of the movie is actually lifted from a 1939 short story by Eando Binder that bears the same name; Asimov's publisher gave his collection the same title, against Asimov's wishes. The Three Laws of Robotics were only added to the script after the film's producers secured the rights to Asimov's anthology. This project, then, has been plagued from the beginning by intellectual property snafus: It's a confused collaboration of several minds, and it seems that not all the minds involved were properly credited. And since it's caused most of the problems, can we let go of that title already?

WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE by Philip Gordon Wylie and Edwin Balmer

It's a crusty old staple of hard sci-fi, a 1933 novel that first saw print as a magazine serial. Wylie and Balmer's story begins with a South African astronomer, Sven Bronson, who discovers that a pair of rogue planets are headed for Earth's orbit. Only a small group of scientists believe his claim; they work to build two ships that will carry the beginnings of a new human settlement to one of the rogue planets, which is projected to replace Earth in its orbit. This is the kind of pre-NASA speculation that works best in old-fashioned typewriter font on yellowed paper.

But of course, Hollywood felt the need to put it in Technicolor. The film adaptation did win an Oscar for special effects, but it was 1951, so you decide for yourself if that's impressive. The movie's story doesn't so much explore sci-fi ideas as showcase human hysteria when tidal waves sweep the Earth and survivors are chosen by lottery — and it naturally also allows for the most groan-worthy of romance subplots. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the way the film's hero pushes his handicapped financier off the boarding ramp as the ship leaves, despite the fact that he funded the entire project. "Politically incorrect" doesn't begin to cover it. Apparently there's a remake of the film scheduled for a 2010 release — isn't one mistake supposed to teach you a lesson?

STARSHIP TROOPERS by Robert Heinlein

War sucks, and Heinlein proved it with his 1960 Hugo-award-winning novel. Told from the point of view of Johnnie Rico, a young soldier, this futuristic tale explores a world where only veterans can vote or hold public office — and where humankind battles endlessly with giant bugs. Rico's flashbacks to his time at school, and his experiences in the military, serve to illustrate the total destruction that war causes.

In the book, the bugs barely ever appear; Rico views them only through a giant battle suit. For the 1997 film adaptation, though, that was not an option — after all, there ain't a moviegoer born of woman who doesn't want to see giant grasshoppers. Special effects left little screen time for Heinlein's philosophy discussions, but director Paul Verhoeven admitted he never got past the first few chapters of the novel anyway. If he hated the story that much, what do you think was keeping him from writing and directing his own friggin' screenplay?

THE POSTMAN by David Brin

Originally published as two novellas (both of which won Hugo awards), this post-apocalyptic story grapples with the concepts of survivalism, civilization, and hope. In a world destroyed not by disasters but by its own people, one man discovers a worn-out United States Postal Service uniform — and discovers that his fellow humans are so desperate they'll even take hope from that. The complete novel, published as the two novellas combined, was named the best science fiction novel of the year in 1986 in the John W. Campbell awards.

And then Kevin Costner decided to direct and star in a film adaptation. The 1997 story, while still broadcasting a message of hope, centered that message more around the Postman as a war hero — and don't forget his tagalong baby mama. The New York Times blasted the movie for its "bogus sentimentality" and "mawkish jingoism," but Roger Ebert warned that we "shouldn't blame them for trying." Well, I think perhaps we should.

THIS ISLAND EARTH by Raymond F. Jones

The year 1952, I'm sure, saw many new creations in sci-fi, but I'm willing to bet that almost none of them were as silly as the interociter — an alien transmission device, which despite its apparent sophistication is about as big as a truck. Jones gave us the interociter in his novel This Island Earth, which told of an alien race that recruited Earth's greatest thinkers for a group called the "Peace Engineers." Not surprisingly, the "Peace Engineers" were actually helping the aliens wage an intergalactic war. On a planet that had already seen the genius of 1951's The Day the Earth Stood Still, this should not have seemed a good candidate for a film adaptation.

Since the movie version of This Island Earth now gets most of its viewings in the form of Mystery Science Theater 3000's lampoon, the folly of bringing it to film is assured. Plastic skulldomes, toilet thrones, and raspberry bushes are not the stuff of eternal movie classics. Before you adapt a book, my advice is to run it through a quick Mike-Joel-Crow-Tom Servo test. You might be surprised how much money you save on camera equipment and actors.

Robby the Robot, star of 1955 special effects blockbuster Forbidden Planet and later a main "charater" on the TV show Lost in Space, was the creation of legendary production designer Robert Kinoshita. Apparently one of his biggest inspirations for the globular humanoid bot was washing machine tubs. Kinoshita had worked on those before his career in the movies. The comparison sounds strange to us today, until you look back and see what washing machines looked like in the 1940s, when Kinoshita worked on them. This picture shows the odd similarities, with the bulbous roundness and strange silver knobs sticking out.

The HAL 9000 computer which famously refused to open the pod bay door in the 1969 movie 2001 was inspired by surveillance cameras which filmmaker Stanley Kubrick saw around London as CCTVs were being put in place. Author Arthur C. Clarke, who worked with Kubrick adapting his novel for the screen, confirms that HAL was inspired by "television cameras in cities" in an interview.

Here is a rather odd reverse-inspiration. The exoskeleton that Ripley used to fight big mama alien in Aliens is frequently mentioned by the designers for exoskeletons that might be used by soldiers or disabled people. Here you can see Ripley's cool device, and the exoskeleton for soldiers it inspired.

Since the special effects designers for Machine City in Matrix: Revolutions were located in San Francisco, it's probably no surprise that they based it in part on the San Francisco skyline. Effects designer Craig Hayes said in an interview that one of the first things he and his crew did was go out on the San Francisco Bay, about 8 miles from San Francisco, to see how the city would look from a distance. That gave them a sense of how to build Machine City from Neo's point of view as he zoomed into it.

Here you can see the hot fudge sundae that became the T-1000. Director and effects maven James Cameron said that when he was first conceiving of the liquid metal Terminator, he thought a lot in terms of texture. How should it ooze? How should the reflections look? In an interview, he admitted:

I wanted the effect of the T-1000 to look like a spoon going into hot fudge; it dimples down, then flows up over and closes. That's the look I wanted. You have to work with the viscosity in order to get that look just right.

When Steven Spielberg set out to make futuristic computers for Minority Report, he didn't mess around. He went straight to a research group at MIT, called the Tangible Media Group, which thinks up next-generation interfaces. The group told him that gesture-commands would be the wave of the future, and even showed him a bunch of prototypes — some of which are now in use, several years later. You can see an early gesture-controlled prototype here, on the left. And there's Tom Cruise doing his Minority Report gesture thing on the right.

And finally, there are the eXistenZ "metaflesh game pods," created by David Cronenberg for his dizzying movie about virtual reality games that plug right into your spinal column via a creepily biological bio-port installed (oh so Cronenberg style) right above your butt. Cronenberg has said a lot about how current technology is heading towards a merging with biology. So it's no surprise that his game pods look exactly like biological rehashings of late-1990s Playstation controllers that he would have seen every day while making this movie.

Picture of Port of Oakland by John L. Polos. Picture of fudge by Ms. Info. Picture of San Francisco skyline by Mike. Image spiffing by Stephanie Fox. Additional reporting by Nivair H. Gabriel.

The whole idea that our actions are determined ahead of time is more metaphysical than scientific, although some have claimed that quantum mechanics proves our decisions have already been made. But the idea of "fate," or "unshakeable prophecies," really belongs more in the realm of mythology and gods than in a story about a rational, observable universe. As soon as you start talking about someone being unable to escape his/her destiny, suddenly there's a guy with a white beard talking for like ten hours. Like this guy:(What I really want to know is, why hasn't anybody made an animated gif of the Architect doing a funny dance, with all his hand gestures?) So here's a list of the main types of SF stories about predestination, which I was always fated to write:

We're just following a program. That's what I think the Architect is saying at the end of Matrix: Reloaded. Neo is just the latest "One," acting out a program that leads to the Matrix and Zion being rebooted so that another version of the same cycle can happen again. Every choice Neo makes is just part of his program, except that this time around Neo actually saves Zion instead of rebooting it. I think.
Everything is ultimately predictable. If you have enough data about the present, you can make iron-clad predictions about the future. The only reason we don't know the future is because we don't have the raw data on every single factor that will lead to future events. In the first season finale of Blake's 7, the nearly omniscient computer Orac is able to make a dead-accurate prediction that a ship that looks like the Liberator (but isn't) will blow up. Orac never predicts the future again, for some reason. In another episode, "Weapon," a mascara-wearing psycho-strategist, Carnell, can predict everyone's future actions completely — but his predictions fail because he's lacking a crucial piece of info.

In Paycheck, Ben Affleck builds a machine that can absolutely predict the future. He uses it to witness his own fate (before his memory gets wiped), and gives himself a bunch of tiny items that allow him to kill all suspense get out of every jam he gets into. But then, in our totally nonsensical clip from earlier today, he suddenly decides that the machine's predictions really only come true because people find out about them and inadvertently make them come true. (It makes no sense to us either.)

The vision of the future. Our hero gets a glimpse of a future event, and has to accept it or change it. It's usually something worse than just "You'll have a colostomy bag in a few years." Sometimes, it's only a possible future and we can totally change it, but sometimes it's presented as an unshakeable reality. In the Robert J. Sawyer novel Flashforward, physicists accidentally send everybody's consciousness twenty years into the future, and one of the physicists learns he'll be murdered. Sawyer has written that Flashforward is about the unsettling notion that "the future is just as fixed as the past."

But in Minority Report (the Dick book, and to some extent the movie), it's made clear that the precogs are only seeing one of a few possible timelines. Otherwise, even imprisoning the pre-criminals wouldn't be able to prevent them from committing the crimes they're destined to commit.

Time travel. Heroes actually takes a belt-and-braces approach to future predictions: Isaac paints his precog vision of New York getting toasted, but Hiro also travels forward and sees it first-hand. But Heroes also tries to have it both ways about whether Isaac's paintings are "fated" to come true: New York doesn't get toasted, but everyone still acts as though HRG can't possibly escape getting shot in the eye. Maybe predictions that include actual time travel are more mutable, because you're only visiting a possible future?

In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, Billy Pilgrim becomes unstuck in time, visiting his own past and future. He finds he can't change either one. He knows when he'll die, and can't change it. But he can announce the fact at a speech right beforehand, which seems like changing the future somewhat to me.

In most time-travel stories, the maxim "any future is only one of many possible futures" tends to come up, because an immutable future is a recipe for boring stories. At some point, the writers on Doctor Who realized that any story taking place in Earth's history must have zero suspense, because we "know" that Earth is fine in the twentieth century. So Robert Holmes inserted a scene into "Pyramids of Mars" where the Doctor proves that Earth in 1980 will be a barren wasteland if he doesn't stop the monstrous Sutekh in 1911. Similarly, in "The Unquiet Dead," the Doctor tells Rose that there's nothing stopping him from filling Victorian England with walking corpses, even though her "present" doesn't include that piece of history.

So here's the part where we settle the question of fate vs. free will once and for all. Ready? Okay. The bottom line is, in order to predict everyone's future actions absolutely, you would need an infinite amount of data. You would need a model of the universe the size of the universe. And you can't have time travel without the ability to change the timeline, or else you couldn't interact with the past at all. You'd be unable to touch anything or move anything, even minor things, because it's all part of established history. You couldn't even disturb the air molecules or step on anything. And if you can change the past, you can change the future. Any questions?

In Minority Report, newspapers constantly update themselves, thanks to miracle e-paper. While you look at the cover of this e-paper version of USA Today, the headline changes from "Molecular nano-technology?" to "Precrime Hunts its Own!"Minority Report takes place in 2054, but we could have the technology to make this type of paper happen as soon as 2015, a Washington Post reporter predicts. And here's a prototype.

One of the earliest interactive newspapers turns up in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, where it's called the mediatron:

Bud took a seat and skimmed a mediatron from the coffee table; it looked exactly like a dirty, wrinkled, blank sheet of paper. "'Annals of Self-Protection,'" he said, loud enough for everyone else in the place to hear him. The logo of his favorite meedfeed coalesced on the page. Mediaglyphics, mostly the cool animated ones, arranged themselves in a grid. Bud scanned through them until he found the one that denoted a comparison of a bunch of different stuff, and snapped at it with his fingernail. New mediaglyphics appeared, surrounding larger pictures in which Annals staff tested several models of skull guns against live and dead targets.

The second-to-last episode of Journeyman featured our time-traveling newspaper reporter landing in 1984, where he drops a digital camera. When Dan returns to the present, everything has changed because someone reverse-engineered his digital camera. Everybody's using fancy nano-tech and smart electronic paper. It sucks that we don't get a really good look at the newspaper Dan works for in this alternate 2007 before he changes the timeline back.

Artist Neville Page was one of the designers of the jetpack used by the precog cops in the movie Minority Report, but he wanted to take the design a bit further and created this pinup in the process. He meant it to be tongue-in-cheek, and he's his own biggest critic: "It is safe to say that with police officers like her, one might be inspired to commit crimes in the hopes of being arrested. So perhaps this is not such a good costume idea after all."

We'd have to disagree with him there as far as costumes go, but as far as the uniform for a civil servant, this one might be a tad too distracting. Plus there's no way you'd want to see the 300 lb. Sergant McGillicuddy in that thing. Especially since he got that nasty skin rash.

The Batmobile from Batman Begins. This was the first on-screen version of Batman's muscle car that didn't just look like a cheesy toy car. Instead of the stretched-out roadster of previous movies, director Christopher Nolan opted for a compact, tank-like design. In "attack mode" the driver shifts to the middle of the car, in a more secure prone position. This car doesn't look like it's only designed to impress Kim Basinger.
Top speed: 110 mph, plus jet engine and adjustable control surfaces let it jump 30 feet without a ramp.

The DeLorean from the Back To The Future movies. This car's main superpower is making those movies look incredibly dated. But it also travels in time if you feed it enough plutonium. And after a visit to the year 2015, it also gains the ability to fly, with wheels that turn sideways and become thrusters.
Top speed: A regular DeLorean could reach 124 mph. It needs to reach 88 mph to time-travel.

The flying taxi from The Fifth Element. It looks just like a regular cab, but it can fly. It handles amazingly well, judging from some of the teeny openings Bruce Willis manages to steer it through during the high-speed cop chase. And it can stop on a dime to hide behind billboards.
Top speed: Unclear, but it's fast. The original movie script says: "Korben and his flying taxi are absolute masters of the air. The cops have trouble following him."

The self-folding car from that SciFi Channel ad. Long after people have forgotten Flash Gordon and Tin Man, they'll still be passing around this ad. It looks like a regular pick-up truck, until the driver presses a button. Then it folds up to the size (and weight) of a golf ball.
Top speed: no clue.

The Whomobile on Doctor Who. Stranded on Earth in the early 1970s, the Doctor started dressing like Prince. Except instead of driving a little red Corvette, he pimped out an antique roadster named Bessie to go super fast. Then he built his own spaceship-looking car. With huge honking fins! Because, of course, an alien trapped on Earth has to stay incognito at all costs.
Top speed: 150 mph (in real life), plus the Whomobile can fly (using dodgy greenscreen.)

The Spinner from Blade Runner. Deckard's cop car flies, but also has vertical take-off and landing (VTOL). It uses regular internal combustion, plus antigrav and a jet engine. It also directs air downwards to create lift. And it has a pretty sweet glass cockpit.
Top speed: Deckard mentions a fellow cop was going 150 mph when he went off a cliff.

KITT, from the Knight Rider TV show and TV movies. KITT was a Pontiac Trans AM with a super-computer that could talk to Michael (its driver) and even drive itself. (Plus KITT prints money in one episode, which could be handy.) The new Knight Rider, airing in February, will feature a new KITT that can launch a mini-car drone and fire a rocket launcher
Top speed: 300 mph, plus a "turbo boost" lets you jump over obstacles.

The Lexus from Minority Report. Lexus designed a special flying car for Tom Cruise to zip around the city of 2054 in. The car includes an electric engine, body panels that change color at a voice command, doors and ignition that require a DNA match, and "auto valet."
Top speed: According to Lexus, this car can get up to about 350 mph. We have a winner!

If you're not satisfied with Robin Williams' head, you can also get his eyes and arm (also from Bicentennial Man) as well as some sort of weird animatronic prop. Also on eBay:

• A ton of props from Southland Tales, including a belt worn by Sarah Michelle Gellar, Gellar's character's business card, an American flag, dog tags worn by Janeane Garofalo's soldier character and a wedding cake topper.
• A weird-ass tumbler that John Travolta drank out of in Battlefield Earth. Probably still coated in his saliva.
• A sign from the precog police station in Minority Report.
• A crew-member uniform from Star Trek: Generations You could wear it to a Halloween party. But instead you'll probably just keep it in an acid-free box and fondle it occasionally.
• The "tachyon admitter" the Fantastic Four used to separate the Silver Surfer from his surfboard in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.
• Conference-room furniture from the Transformers movie. Just think, you could, ummm... use it in your conference room.
• A rubber pick-axe and crampons from Alien vs. Predator.
• A sign, in some alien script, from Ultraviolet.
• A zombie plague victim mask from Resident Evil: Extinction.