• more about #slavery more comments →
    joetato: This Island Earth? Anyone . . . Anyone . . . Mutants? Anyone . . . Anyone . . . Beuller? more »
    karpar: Robotech's Invid bear mention (though they do a great job of oppressing humans once they get the chance). They were initially peaceful, and gladly wel... more »
    Klebert L. Hall: If you're going to use an example from Known Space, it should really "everyone except for the Bandersnatch", under the Masters... Or Possibly "everyo... more »
    tetracycloide: that is quite possibly the worst rendering of a kzinti i have ever seen. why not just put up a lolcat picture instead, would be roughly as fearsome. more »
    Dimbo_Sama: [cache.gawker.com]" rel="lytebox" class="commentImageWhat about the Narns? [cache.gawker.com] Held in a position of slavery for a hundred years by t... more »
    Torley: Also in the artificial beings category: Blade Runner/DADOES' android Replicants, who were called "skin jobs" before the humanform Cylons. more »
    ♥AntiSocialSocialite♥: Great list, but no Thermians? "[Sarris] has tortured our scientists, put us to work in the gallium arsenide mines, captured our females for his own d... more »
    B: What about the Wookies? more »
    Stueymon: Glad to see the vortigaunts made it on here, makes me wonder about other enslaved aliens in games... hmm. do the Gelf count from Mass effect? or for ... more »
    gods-n-clods: Did I not see Skrill form Earth: Final Conflict? Call me dumb, but I did NOT see that one coming (organic arm-lazer symbiotes as highly evolved sentie... more »
    disatess: that x-men poster had one of the best team rosters . more »
    Bill-Lee: No one enslaves humans better than other humans. My favorite example from fiction are the conscripted soldiers from Joe Haldeman's Forever War. more »
    AcceleratedDragon: A Classic from Star Trek [memory-alpha.org] "their skin was exactly half-black and half-white, with some white on the right side and black on the le... more »
    Starlionblue: I can't believe you used a Kzinti from the Star Trek Animated Series. That is not quite what they look like. The covers of the Man-Kzin wars books are... more »
    OW-Holmes:Bringer of Fear: Shoggoths. Of course they weren't oppressed for too long. more »
  • #triviagasm

    The Best of Science Fiction's Oppressed Species

    District 9's crustacean aliens may be the first extraterrestrials to experience South Africa's apartheid, but they're hardly the first species to feel the sting of oppression. We list science fiction's other downtrodden, enslaved, and dehumanized (so to speak) species. More »
  • #economicdystopia

    The Greatest Depressions (and Economic Recoveries) of Science Fiction

    Science fiction never fails to predict bizarre, unwelcome futures and the current global economic meltdown is no exception. We love to imagine all the ways our world will end not with a bang, but with a flood of hemorrhaged garbage cash. Two of this year's scifi film crop, Babylon A.D. and The Road, predict a geopolitical landscape shredded by scarcity. But unlike most politicians, science fiction tales offer a wide range of solutions to economic peril: everything from time-travel-enhanced investments to interstellar hypercapitalism. And yet at the heart of even the most Utopian solution to financial collapse there lurks a tale of human self-destructiveness, a not-so-buried wish to see the species destroyed or enslaved for its economic choices. Do our fantasies doom us to financial failure? More »