According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word "prequel" was actually invented for science fiction by Anthony Boucher, writing in the Magazine Of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1958. But prequels have become ever more common in recent years, with prequels to The Thing and I Am Legend also in the works.

Star Trek and Wolverine may turn out be the greatest movies ever - and Caprica was way better than I'd hoped. But let's face it: most prequels are awful. And by prequel, I mean something that takes us back before the start of a saga, to show us the events that led up to the saga's beginning. So Phantom Menace is a prequel, but Batman Begins isn't. Okay?

So... starting with least sucky, and working our way up to suckiest, here are 10 science fiction prequels that are already out there:

10) Wild Seed by Octavia Butler. This is one of my favorite novels ever, so it's hard to believe Butler actually wrote it after three other novels in the Patternmaster series. It tells the relationship between a telepath named Doro and a shapeshifter named Anyanwu. Their telepathic descendants later become ultra-powerful in the novels Mind Of My Mind and Patternmaster, which Butler wrote earlier but are set later.

9) Prelude To Foundation by Isaac Asimov. One of Asimov's later Foundation books was actually a prelude, telling the story of Hari Seldon's early years. And Seldon turns out to have hung out with R. Daneel Olivaw, who's operating under the name Demerzel. By all accounts, it's pretty worthwhile addition to the saga, although this guy says "the characters seem unusually shallow, even for Asimov," and maybe we didn't need to know that much about Seldon's early life.

8) Caprica. Like I said, this was way better than I'd hoped. This Battlestar Galactica prequel, newly on DVD, is a slightly overwrought melodrama, but it does explore interesting questions about artificial intelligence and the difference between a digital copy of a person and the "real" person. The least interesting thing about it is how it's going to connect with BSG.

7) When The Tripods Came by John Christopher. Did we really need to know how the alien Masters conquered humanity? The original Tripods trilogy starts out with humans already conquered, and then fills in the details of how it happened. But author Brian Aldiss insisted it wasn't credible these aliens could have conquered 20th century humans, with our awesome technology. So Christopher went back and wrote a prequel, explaining how the Masters took us over using mind control via a television show called The Trippy Show. Not really an essential addition, and it slightly dilutes the awesomeness of starting with humanity already crushed.

6) Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom. Not nearly as bad as Crystal Skull, but not nearly as good as Lost Ark, this movie is actually the earliest cinematic Jones story, despite coming out after Raiders. It has a few highlights, like the early poisoning sequence, the subterranean train chase and the gun/knife fight. But it's mostly cheesy and dull where Raiders was sharp and fun.

5) The Dune Prequels by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. Frank Herbert wrote six Dune books. And since his death, his son and Anderson have written 10,000 books, mostly set before the original novels. They include Lost Lunch Menu Of Dune and We Were Going To Have A Jihad But Then We Found That Lunch Menu And Decided To Get Lunch Instead, Of Dune. Just check out David Louis Edelman's review of the prequels, in which he calls them out for pointless unpleasantness, turning Baron Harkkonen into a cartoon, and making "a much-studied and richly detailed universe a smaller place."

4) Cube Zero. I don't know much about this prequel to the first two Cube films, but it looks totally awesome. Check it out:

3) The Aliens Vs. Predator films. These are essentially prequels to the original Alien films, since they take place on present-day Earth, before humans have spread out across the stars. And if Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem had been a hit, the directors planned a third AVP film which would have linked the series to Alien directly. Thank goodness for small mercies. The first AVP film is pointless, if fun. The second one? My. Head. Hurts. I watched it sober, and still have no idea what was going on, especially with the Turducken-like PredAlien hybrid.

2) Star Trek: Enterprise. The new Trek movie already has a huge advantage: It can't be as annoying as this look at the "original" Enterprise, with constant sequences of underwear-clad decontamination and people's arms getting pregnant. I still don't understand what the "temporal cold war" was about (why was it a cold war?) and who that shadowy figure was. And later episodes spent way too long giving us the origins of Khan, the Klingon head-bumps, and Vulcan pacifism. Even the producers thought the show was so boring, it would be better to end it with Riker and Troi playing dress-up.

1) Star Wars: Episodes I-III. Ack. I don't even know where to start. I actually spend way too much time in the shower trying to figure out how these could have been compelling movies, instead of blah. I think the biggest problem is that we never once root for Anakin Skywalker, or care what happens to him. It would be a challenge to make us root for the guy we know is going to become Darth Vader, but that's the challenge you take on when you decide to tell this story. Instead, George Lucas punts, making Anakin an unlikable twerp from day one.

For some reason both of the big "Star" franchises are addicted to prequels. With Star Trek, it's the pre-Kirk show Enterprise, and now the young-Kirk movie directed by J.J. Abrams. Star Wars, meanwhile, had its dull prequel trilogy, and now it's plugging in the gaps between episodes two and three — and episodes three and four — with two new TV shows.

Here are our reasons why prequels are actually bad for the human race:
Prequels are anti-creativity. When you decide to go back and fill in minor gaps in your backstory, you're saying there's no point in going forward. There are no more interesting stories to tell about what happens after the last installment of your storyline. That's not just false, it's actually an insult to writers everywhere. I can think of 100 ways to continue Star Wars after Return of the Jedi. And John Ostrander's addictive Star Wars: Legacy comic proves that there's still plenty of scope to move forward until that "long ago" era catches up to our own.

Prequels are anti-futurist. The great joy of science fiction is that it encourages us to look to the future, to what happens next. Prequels tell us that the future isn't that great, there's really nothing to see beyond what we've already seen. Why not just take a nice detour back into the past, and revisit some of the stuff we've already seen?

Prequels are anti-heroic. There's no point rooting for the good guys in a trilogy, because their future is already set in stone. This can be a bleak future, like the fact that we know Anakin will become Darth Vader. Or a happy one, like our certainty that the Federation will come to pass after Star Trek: Enterprise. When you make a prequel, you're coming down firmly on the side of predestination. There's no point in anyone sticking their neck out heroically, because future history is already set in stone. (The new Star Trek movie may avoid this problem by allowing history to be changed. J.J. Abrams has hinted strongly that the Trek universe may wind up being quite different after the time travel in his movie rewrites history.)

Prequels are all about trivia. We've already warned of the dangers in trying to answer fans' minor niggling questions, and prequels are more likely to do this than any other kind of story. You may already know that Captain Kirk outwitted the Kobayashi Maru test, but did you know what kind of boxer shorts he was wearing when he did it? No? Well, allow us to show you. No, thanks. I want to know what happened after the war with the Dominion and after Janeway crippled the Borg and after the Romulan government was destroyed. Which brings me to the final problem:

Prequels are small and personal. I love small, intimate portrayals of people's lives. But that's not what I look for from movies with "Star" in the title. (Well, maybe A Star Is Born.) By their nature, though, prequels have to be about a few people, not a larger topic. We already know the Federation will be formed and the Starfleet uniforms will get more pajama-like, so the only question in our mind when we watch Enterprise is, "Will Trip Tucker sacrifice his life in a totally contrived moment during a pirate raid on the ship?" By taking all of the bigger issues off the table, prequels force us to focus entirely on the characters. Who usually, sad to say, don't hold up to it that well.

Famous names: Scott Bakula, Jolene Blalock, Connor Trineer, John Billingsley, Dominic Keating, Linda Park, Jeffrey Combs, Brannon Braga, Rick Berman

Crunchy goodness: 2

Stunt casting: Quantum Leap's Bakula as the intrepid captain, who never quite loses his dazed look, as if wondering where he's ended up this time.

Life lesson: Humans may be new to interstellar travel, but our ballsy shoot-first-ask-questions-never attitude is worth way more than the Vulcans' hundreds of years of experience.

Deadliest spoiler: Trineer sacrifices his life so Captain Archer can survive to give a speech to the new Galactic Elk's Club.

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