Here's a complete list of all the methods we found for jogging your memory from science fiction tales, from the least fantastical to the most. (The end of the list, sadly, includes some items that you're unlikely to be able to find at your local office supply store.)

Use an acronym.

Suppose you've got a beautiful blue time machine that goes by the ungainly name of Time And Relative Dimensions In Space — you can always shorten it down to TARDIS, which is much easier to remember. That's what the Doctor (and his granddaughter Susan) did in Doctor Who.

The same goes for Marvel Comics' super-secret spy organization, the Supreme Headquarters, International Espionage, Law-Enforcement Division (S.H.I.E.L.D.) The only problem with acronyms is, people will change what they stand for when you're not looking — S.H.I.E.L.D. now stands for Strategic Hazard Intervention, Espionage Logistics Directorate in the comics, or Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division in the movies.

There's also the General Unilateral Neuro-link Dispersive Autonomic Maneuver (GUNDAM), and lots of other examples, here.

Write yourself a post-it note.

This may be the most foolproof method out there. In Star Trek: Voyager, Chakotay falls in love with a member of a species that erases itself from your memory after a while — and also somehow deletes all computer records. To guard his memories of their torrid, torrid love affair, Chakotay writes himself a paper note explaining everything that went on.

Similarly, in Scott Westerfeld's novel Uglies, Tally Youngblood undergoes the surgery to become a Pretty — but first she writes herself a note explaining all the plans she made to reverse the surgery. Because she won't remember them after she's become a Pretty.

In the movie Push, Nick gets someone to erase his memories and the memories of all his friends, so the mind-readers can't follow their plans. But he writes letters for himself and everybody else, to help them remember at the crucial moment — and there are instructions on how long to wait before reopening the letters.

And this technique is also used by Gwen Cooper in Torchwood (with so-so results), Noah Bennet on Heroes and Kurt on Odyssey Five. There's a great list over at TVTropes.

Keep a diary:

This is one step further than just writing a little note to yourself. In Gene Wolfe's novels Soldier in the Mist/Soldier of Arete, the protagonist loses his memory every single day. And he doesn't realize that his ability to converse with gods, ghosts and other mythic figures is unusual. He writes himself a detailed diary, and the first line of it is, "READ THIS EACH MORNING."

Lost's Daniel Faraday keeps a diary too, and seems to use it to remind himself of a lot of stuff he's forgotten as a result of some time-travel experiments that went wrong. Among other things, he doesn't remember writing the stuff about Desmond Hume being his constant.

Make up a song:

That's what Draycos does in Timothy Zahn's novel Dragon And Thief: A Dragonback Adventure. Draycos sees Jack being taken away on a spaceship, and needs to remember the words written on the ship's side — but they're in English, a language Draycos doesn't know. Says Draycos, "Alien symbols are difficult for one unfamiliar with them to memorize. But I am a poet-warrior of the K'da, and so as you were taken aboard the ship, I composed a song." For example, to describe the letter A, his lyric goes, "Two soldiers lean to, with joined hands." Or to describe the letter O, he sings, "Squeezed ring of fire, and what is more/A fire burns within its core." If you have an easier time remembering goofy song lyrics than unfamiliar symbols, this could work for you.

Leave yourself some objects to trigger a memory:

In Paycheck, Ben Affleck sees his own future, but then has his memory erased. So he leaves himself an envelope full of tiny objects, including a nail and an old penny, and a lottery ticket. They mean nothing to him — until he realizes that they're each incredibly useful at just the right moment. And they do help jog his memory, sort of. The Doctor on Doctor Who is constantly tying a knot in his hanky to remind him of things — but then he has to leave another knot in his hanky to help him remember why he made the previous knot.

Make yourself a video:

That's what Arnold Schwarzenegger does in Total Recall — he's forgotten his true identity as an agent of Mars intelligence (or maybe there was never anything to forget?) And now he leaves himself a video to explain everything — except maybe his past sellf isn't quite telling the exact truth.

Rodney McKay also leaves himself a video message in Stargate Atlantis after everybody loses their memories in the episode "Tabula Rasa." He tells himself to find Teyla quickly, or hundreds of people are going to die.

Create a memory key or "memory palace":

This one is a bit more involved. In John Crowley's modern fantasy novels, the Aegypt tetralogy, we meet the real-life philosopher Giordano Bruno, who had created a complex occult memory system, based on assigning graphical images to different pieces of information, allowing you to access them easily later. One such scheme involved concentric circles, and could allow you to set aside tons and tons of information. The Aegypt novels include the adventures of Bruno, who becomes the librarian of the Secret Library of San Domenico, keeping track of the huge collection of heretical texts using his amazing memory powers:

He knew and remembered every book, where it lay in Fra' Benedetto's cases, who had asked for it, and what was in it. In his vast and growing memory palace, the whole heavens in small, all that took up next to no room at all.

Also, in Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, Tzu creates a "toy cupboard" in his mind, among other techniques for creating an order for random facts:

He learned to memorize longer and longer lists of things by putting them inside a toy cupboard the tutor told him to create in his mind, or by mentally stacking them on top of each other, or putting them inside each other. This was fun for a while, though pretty soon he got sick of having all kinds of meaningless lists memorized. It wasn't funny after a while to have the ball come out of the fish which came out of the tree which came out of the car which came out of the briefcase, but he couldn't get it out of his memory.

The Mentats, or human computers, in Frank Herbert's Dune seem to use a variety of techniques, including memory keys (and sapho juice) to remember tons of information with perfect clarity. There's a Yahoo group where would-be Mentats have posted advice on how to train your mind to be as clear as that of a Mentat — or a Vulcan.

Tattoo yourself:

It works for the guy in Memento.

Take smart drugs:

It's pretty amazing what you can do with smart drugs, but in Woody Allen's story "Think Hard, It'll Come Back To You," a smart drug called Cranial Pops can help you recall any weird bit of information that may have gotten away from anyone, allowing you to be the hit of a party — until they wear off and you crash.

Use hypnosis:

Lots of science-fiction heroes use hypnosis as a memory aid. In Robert Heinlein's Citizen Of The Galaxy, Baslim hypnotizes his foster son Thorby, so he can memorize a coded message to the Space Police, as well as a letter to a space captain to help Thorby get off the planet. When Claire forgets her assault by Ethan on Lost, the castaways use hypnosis to help her remember, and Fox Mulder on X-Files uses hypnosis to remember his sister's abduction by aliens.

More complex spins on the idea of jogging your memory using hypnosis include the hypnotic trigger that sets off River Tam and activates her killing-machine programming in Serenity:

And the images that make Chuck Bartowski suddenly recall bits of spy information stuck in his brain, in Chuck:

Wear video goggles or use image-recognition capability:

In David Brin's Earth, people wear True-Vu lenses that record everything they see, so they can recall stuff later. And in Amitav Ghosh's novel The Calcutta Chromosome, an object recognition computer can wring out all the details about objects you've seen. Science-fiction author Charles Stross suggests soon it'll be cheap and easy to store visual data on everything you've seen all day for a year, raising all sorts of questions about the boundaries between private memory and public records. Already, researchers have developed smart video goggles that will track what you see.

More way out solutions:

You could get a storage system in your head containing all the information you need to safeguard, as in Johnny Mnemonic by William Gibson (and the movie of the same name.) You could burn your own initials into your brain to remind you that you erased your own memory, like Zaphod Beeblebrox in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. You could use Wonder Woman's magic lasso to restore your memories, if you know where to track her down. You could transfer your memories into someone else, like Data in Star Trek: Nemesis or Spock in Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan. You could record your memories, like the people in Strange Days, or the dolls in Dollhouse. You could use a de-neuralizer to restore your memory, like Agent J in Men In Black II.

Top image: Citizen Of The Galaxy by Phil Golyshko. Additional reporting by Josh C. Snyder and Cyriaque Lamar.

So here are the most insane SF soaps we could think of — but I bet we missed some good ones. What are your favorites? Pipe up in comments with the lurid details!

Top image by Dennys Ilic. Additional reporting by Josh C. Snyder.

Heroes

You can pick any character from this show and get a headache trying to figure out all the story twists he or she has gone through. Take Matt Parkman: He's trying to keep his marriage together — No, wait! Now he's living with Mohinder and co-parenting Molly the mutant-detecting girl! — No, wait! Molly is out of the picture! And now Matt is becoming an African-esque shaman! — No, wait! Now Matt is in love with Daphne the speedster, who's the Love Of His Life! — No, wait! Now Matt is back with his wife, and will never think about Daphne again! — No, wait! Etc. etc. etc. My favorite, though, is probably Peter's girlfriend trapped in an alternate dystopian future — whom we will never mention again! Ha ha ha ha urk. (Matt Loves Daphne wallpaper from Fanpop.)

Alias

This show started off pretty coherent — but around the third brainwashing or the tenth revelation that Sidney's mother's cousin was really the spy behind brainwashing Sidney to think her half-sister was a chicken. I defy anybody to explain to me the tangled backstory of the Bristow family.

The Cat Who Walked Through Walls by Robert A. Heinlein:

I made a dreadful mistake: This was the first Heinlein book I ever read — and it may have ruined me for Heinlein forever. In the late Heinlein novels, every character ever shows up, and they mostly have sex together, interspersed with a lot of drama and philosophizing. It's a sequel to The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress as well as Number Of The Beast, and features characters from several other books — including Jubal Harshaw, Lazarus Long and Hazel Stone, and it turns out that all of Heinlein's characters have previously unsuspected connections to each other. As reviewer James W. Harris puts it:

Having all of his "good" guys sound like a convention of smarmy talking wife-swappers is just gross. I hate to sound like a teenage girl, but damn, Heinlein's kissy-kissy talk and innuendo just made me want to puke. And making his classic characters act out in this limp-dick porn flick is just tragic. Having them go on and on about how they were going to kill people for bad manners is just a little psycho to me. Evidently a lot of people and situations annoyed the hell out of Heinlein and he used this book to vent. Some people want to call this satire but I think that's whitewash.

Maybe Heinlein lost his mojo and these multiverse stories were the best he could do. Personally, I thought The Rolling Stones was a perfect novel, and bringing back Hazel Stone was a fictionally fuck-up of an idea, ditto for the cast of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Maybe I am a prude because I just don't want the Hazel Stone, grandmother of Castor and Pollux, joking about being stretched out of shape by giant 25 centimeter cock.

All of Heinlein's personally favorite characters get put into a fictional juicer and blended into weird rabble of sex obsessed mob that chirp a weird innuendo patter and are almost impossible to tell apart. When I read these multiverse stories I can't help but believe that horniness was driving Heinlein crazy. These later stories are preoccupied with sex, killing people, responding to annoying people, the reliability of witnesses, rude people deserving capital punishment, and so on.

Venture Bros.:

At least this show is ridiculous on purpose — the ultra-demented story of the Venture clan has gotten more and more involved, with Sergeant Hatred's struggle against his pedophilic past taking center stage, and deformed clones and weird villain love affairs aplenty. Most of all, there are the labyrinthine family elements crossing over into everything, like the revelation that Dean was also the head of the Guild. The same characters and their families end up being connected in ever more improbable and weird ways, making our heads spin.

Battlestar Galactica:

I have four (or possibly five) words for you: "Hotdog is the father." Whaaa? There's also the great way Baltar went from being a slimy scientist to being a slimy politician to being a slimy cult leader — and what happened to the baby that Baltar and Six were going to have together? Oh and while we're on the subject, what about Saul Tigh being crazy-chicken in love with Caprica Six — until she has a miscarriage, and then he never thinks about her again? It all makes you want to grip your television and scream (in a Krazy Starbuck voice) "You're going the wrong way!"

Sonic The Hedgehog (comics):

According to the always great TVTropes website, this comic-book tie-in to the popular video game went whirling off on crazier tangents than a flying hedgehog on crack. To quote TVTropes:

The Archie Comics Sonic The Hedgehog series twisted Sonic's love life into a Gordian Knot: Originally hooked up with Sally Acorn, she got stuck ruling the country and shoved the relationship to the side to focus on her new duties, prompting Sonic to fall in with Mina Mongoose, starting a rivalry between the two women for Sonic's affection. He then started seeing Fiona Fox on the side, which not only pissed off Mina and Sally, but Tails, as well, who had a crush on her due to falling in love with a robotic duplicate created by Robotnik several years earlier (don't ask). Eventually, Mina got her own boyfriend, Sally got Sonic once again, and Tails got tossed into a brick wall by Fiona, who gave them all the finger to have a relationship with Sonic's evil clone from another universe. And that's not even counting the mini-tangle between Antoine, Sally, Bunnie Rabbot, and Antoine's evil clone from the same universe Fiona's new beau comes from.

Got it? Great.

Gundam Wing:

Okay, let's get this straight... Relena Darlian discovers she's really adopted, and her real name is Relena Peacecraft, one of the last survivors of the pacifistic (duh) Peacecraft tribe. And then it turns out that Zechs Marquise is her long lost older brother. Meanwhile, she gets obsessed with Heero, a young whackjob who keeps announcing he's going to kill her, not unlike the "I'm going to rape you" guy in Welcome To The Dollhouse. And that's just scratching the surface of the most confusing, tangly saga of all time, involving endless backstory and weird family crap.

Angel:

I was going to do Charmed, Angel's fellow WB series which had the whole "my ex-husband is a half-demon" thing, but Angel is so much more ridiculous — mostly because of Cordy, who is in love with Groosalugg, until she's in love with Angel instead, but meanwhile she's turned into a half-demon and then she becomes a Higher Power, until she comes back and has sex with Angel's son — who, as someone points out, is practically her stepson since she helped care for him as a baby — and then becomes pregnant and evil — until she gives birth to an evil god. Nothing on parent show Buffy was as incestuous and ridiculous as Cordy's arc on Angel. Oh, actually, wait — Cordelia was pregnant twice on Angel.

Robotech:

Sure, it was supposedly about the giant mechas, but it was really all about the tragic loves and the tormented Rick-Minmei-Lisa love triangle. To quote Wikipedia,

In early 2013, while sitting at an outdoor cafe, [Lisa] contemplates the love triangle between the three of them when she overhears two men talking about how women were "dealt all the aces" when it comes to relationships, to which Lisa says to herself "that's all you know...here's one woman who would trade every ace in the deck for one Rick Hunter.

Sigh. Twoo Love. Here's a great fanvid featuring the music of White Town. Yay!

X-Men (comics):

This, of course, is the most insane soap opera imaginable. At this point, the X-men have had illegitmate babies from the future, secret love affairs, doomed passions and multiple bad transcriptions of all sorts of accents, from Cajun to Scottish. My favorite ridiculous soap-opera twist might be Madrox's night of passion with two female members of X-Factor: Siryn and Monet, resulting in a pregnancy that isn't quite a normal pregnancy. But then there's also the whole insane Rogue/Gambit thing, the Scott/Jean/Wolverine/Emma love doodaddle, and of course Professor X turning out to be secretly in love with Jean Grey. That's just scratching the surface, really. If you want more info, check out the X-Men relationship map — which is probably already out of date!

Our research intern, Cyriaque Lamar, pored over the most wretched and bizarre book covers that ever defaced the bookshelves, and came up with the absolute worst and most inappropriate. Normally, I feel a little trepidation about saying we've collected the cheesiest or wrongest "of all time" — but in this case, it only feels right. So here are Cyriaque's picks, with his erudite commentary.

Cheesiest Book Covers:

Most Inappropriate Book Covers (Maybe NSFW):

Additional reporting by Cyriaque Lamar.

This has been the dream of science-fiction fans and science-fiction authors since the days of "Clone Of My Own" (which is usually attributed to Isaac Asimov, but who knows if it's actually by him?) "Clone Of My Own" goes:

Oh, give me a clone
Of my own flesh and bone
With its Y chromosome changed to X.
And after it's grown,
Then my own little clone
Will be of the opposite sex.

Clone, clone of my own,
With its Y chromosome changed to X.
And when I'm alone
With my own little clone
We will both think of nothing but sex.

There are about 29 versus more, but you get the idea. Actually, after reading authors like John Varley and Ursula K. Le Guin, the whole idea of the "opposite" sex has been thrown into question — surely, once we can all reconfigure our bodies at will, eventually we'll have some sort of sex tesseract.

But for now, here are the ways that science fiction offers, for us to meet our opposite-sex duplicates (and in some cases, have sex with them):

1) Cloning.

House Of Suns by Alastair Reynolds:

Abigail Gentian, a wealthy woman, decides to explore the vastness of the stars — she she has herself cloned a number of times, and some of the clones are male while others are female. They all share Abigail's memories, and Abigail herself joins them without knowing which of them is the "real" her. And these "shatterlings" have sex — a lot. Especially in the novella Thousandth Night, there are tons of orgies in which all of the clones get together, making it a certainty that the "real" Abigail has been with her clones.

Time Enough For Love by Robert A. Heinlein:

Lazarus Long is the world's oldest human, and he decides not to undergo rejuvenation therapy, thus sentencing himself to death. His descendants convince him to keep on living, but he'll only do it if he gets to have a new experience — so two of his descendants become impregnated with opposite-sex clones of Lazarus. And after the opposite-sex clones of Lazarus are born, Lazarus raises them as his own daughters... and then has sex with them, of course.

"Nine Lives" by Ursula K. Le Guin:

This Nebula-nominated novelette, first published in Playboy, features a set of clones of a man named John Chow who died in a car accident, and some of them are female:

"All chips off the old block," Martin said valiantly. "But how can . . . some of you be women . . .?"

Beth took over: "It's easy to program half the clonal mass back to the female. Just delete the male gene from half the cells and they revert to the basic, that is, the female. It's trickier to go the other way, have to hook in artificial Y chromosomes. So they mostly clone from males, since clones function best bisexually."

Sadly, nine out of ten clones are killed, forcing the remaining clone to deal with unaccustomed solitude.

The Ophiuchi Hotline by John Varley:

The character Tweed has clones who are male and female clones of the same individual, called Vaffa or sometimes Hygeia. They're super-strong, super-big and lethal.

NYX and various other X-Men comics:

X-23, a female clone of Wolverine, first appeared in the X-Men: Evolution animated series, but then made the leap to comics, just like Harley Quinn. Despite looking kind of silly, she's manage to stick around long enough to get her own miniseries and have her backstory explained. I don't think she and Logan ever hooked up, but they have fought, which is almost the same thing when you come down to it.

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy:

As Zaphod Beeblebrox explains, the girl Lintilla "has now been cloned over five-hundred-and-seventy-eight-thousand-million times - and has thus created a problem in some quarters." All of the Lintilla clones are female — but the anti-clones, sent to get rid of the infestation of female clones, are male versions of Lintilla called Allitnil. When a Lintilla and an Allitnil come together, he gets the Lintilla to "agree to cease to be" — but Arthur Dent takes a liking to one of the Lintillas, and kills her particular Allitnil.

Hunted by James Alan Gardner:

Edward York is an illegal clone of one of the Admirals on the High Council, and due to genetic problems he's a bit stupid. But a female clone of the Admiral, named Samantha, turns out super-smart and resourceful. Together, Edward and Samantha travel, as brother and sister, travel to the planet Troyen to try and negotiate a peace between two alien species, the Mandasars and the Fasskisters.

Kyle XY:

Kyle and his fellow vat-baby Jessi aren't strictly speaking clones, because I think they had different genetic stock — as far as I can remember, Kyle came from Adam and Jessi came from Sarah. But they do come from the same vat, and they resulted from the same super-baby program. So they could be considered akin to clones, sort of. Worth mentioning, anyway.

Ultimate Spider-Man: Ultimate Clone Saga:

Can't believe I forgot this one, since I have the trades at home. In the Ultimate version of the Clone Saga, they clone Peter Parker several times... including a female version called Jessica Drew. And Jessica has all of Peter's memories — S.H.I.E.L.D. wants to erase Jessica's memories and set her up with a new identity, but she escapes and takes on the identity of Spider-Woman. Thanks, kwschuttler!

2) Alternate universes

Parallellities by Alan Dean Foster:

Max, the main character of this novel travels through the multiverse, and finally meets an alternate female version of himself — and has sex with her. Later, he manages to find an entire planet populated by copies of himself. As the back cover copy explains:

Now Max was lost in a virtual sea of collateral worlds, confronting man-eating aliens, dinosaurs, talking frogs, dead Maxes, girl Maxes, old Maxes, even ghost Maxes. His only chance to escape the space-time continuum was to find Boles and hope the loony genius could rescue him. But how could he be sure which world was real, which Max was Max, and which Boles was the Boles who could stop the madness—or trap Max in the wrong world forever. . . ?

Red Dwarf, "Parallel Universe":

Our gang finds a device that's supposed to transport them home to Earth instantly — but instead it zaps them into an alternate universe. There, they meet alternate versions of themselves, including female versions of Lister and Rimmer (and Cat's counterpart is a Dog.) Rimmer has to fight off his female counterpart's sexual advances, while Lister actually does wind up in bed with his female version, Deb. And because in this alternate universe, it's the men who get pregnant, Lister winds up carrying his alternate self's baby.

Sliders:

Thanks to Xicer for pointing out this one: in the episode "Double Cross," Quinn meets an evil female duplicate of himself from (of course) another universe, and almost makes out with her:

Transition by Iain Banks:

This dimension-jumping novel mentions that it's quite common to enter the body of your alternate-universe self and find that the alternate self is the opposite sex. This is a known syndrome, which causes some discomfort or confusion among the universe-hoppers whom it happens to.

3) Time travel

"All You Zombies" by Robert A. Heinlein:

This story features a young man who's tricked into impregnating his younger, female self — because it turns out he had a futuristic sex change at some point, which the reader doesn't realize at first. And then it turns out that he's actually the child of that union, meaning that he's his own mother and father — the mother of all time paradoxes, in other words.

The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold:

Daniel Eakins travels backwards and forwards in time many times, meeting himself and having sex with himself — over and over and over. But after a ton of trips, he actually meets an alternate-universe version of himself who was born female, and they shack up together at the beginning of time. It goes great for a while, until they get fed up with each other, and then Daniel's time-traveling female counterpart manages to erase herself completely from Daniel's timeline, so Daniel can never find her again.

Needless to say, this post would not have been nearly as fascinating without TVTropes.org, the fountain of all greatness. Additional reporting by Josh C. Snyder.

Connor MacLeod from Highlander.

Born in 1518, he is an Immortal, doomed to walk the Earth and watch everyone he loves grow old and die — but eventually, he must battle the few other remaining Immortals for the Prize. And in the end, wait for it... there can be only one.

Captain Jack Harkness from Torchwood.

He's just your average run-of-the-mill con man from the 51st century, until he dies, and the temporarily all-powerful Rose Tyler brings him back to life. Only now, he's a "fixed point in time and space," eternally young and invulnerable forever, no matter what. His wife dies of old age, his daughter is the same age as him, and eventually (maybe) he'll be just a head in a giant jar.

Jenny Sparks from Stormwatch and The Authority.

Born in 1900, she stops aging when she reaches her 20th birthday. Maybe its to do with the fact that she's a being of pure electricity. In any case, she befriends Hitler, visits an alternate universe where she marries an alien prince, and finally gets to join two of the Wildstorm Universe's biggest super-teams, until she finally dies at age 100.

Wolverine, from the X-Men.

Logan used to be just a guy with a tremendous healing ability, but recent comics (and his new movie) revealed that he's actually ageless, and fought in the Civil War and every big war since then. He can smoke as many cigars as he wants, and he never gets weird cigar-related wrinkles. Various comics have shown him surviving long past the end of the world, or at least vastly outliving all his compatriots.

Enoch Root in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle and Cryptonomicon.

One of the great mysteries of Cryptonomicon was how Enoch Root managed to show up, hale and hearty, 55 years after he dies in 1945. We eventually do learn that Root has the secret of rejuvenation, which he uses to keep himself (and sometimes others) alive.

John Carter of Mars, from the novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Even before he gets whisked off to Mars, aka Barsoom, he's mysteriously gifted with eternal youth. And no matter how many times they try to kill him, he always comes back. (Although sometimes, he comes back on Earth instead of Barsoom.)

Nick Fury and (maybe) his Howling Commandos, from Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Nick Fury (the comics version, not the movie version played by Samuel L. Jackson) fought in World War II, where he gave his eye for his country. But he's miraculously still young and spry in the present day — and he didn't get frozen in an iceberg, like Captain America. Instead, Nick Fury got exposed to something called the "Infinity Formula," and (at least in some versions) so did his men, including "Dum Dum" Dugan — who's now been going by "Dum Dum" for 70 years.

Lazarus Long, from Time Enough For Love by Robert Heinlein.

Born in 1912, Lazarus Long is the third generation of a selective breeding experiment by the Ira Howard Foundaiton, so he lives for nearly two thousand years in good condition — with only the occasional rejuvenation treatment required. And he eventually finds out that he actually can't die.

Claire Bennet, from Heroes.

The cheerleader doesn't really seem to need saving — it turns out that even scooping her brains out can't kill her, and it's been hinted she'll stay young and healthy forever. At least, Sylar believes that hundreds of years from now, only he and Claire will still be running around, and eventually they'll fall in love. Or something.

Richard Alpert, from Lost.

Is he a hero? We're still not sure. He's definitely taken part in some questionable decisions, but who hasn't on this show? In any case, he's mysteriously ageless, whether we see him in 1954 or the present day. Here's hoping we find out his secret this coming season.

Runners up: Superman (who ages in some versions but not in others), Kane from the sword-and-sorcery novels by Karl Edward Wagner, Wonder Woman, Samantha from Bewitched, Dorian Grey, The Endless from Sandman, Thor, Takeshi Kovacs from Richard K. Morgan's novels, John Amsterdam in New Amsterdam, Peter Pan, Earthworm Jim, Aes Sedai from the Wheel Of Time, Kai on Lexx, and a host of robot/cyborg characters.

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown. Thanks also to Matt Jones, Ron Hogan, Ekaterina Sedia, Jason Shankel, Missy Feigum, Hiya Swanhuyser, Victor Infante, Jefferson Robbins, Jessy Randall, Stephen Tiano, Becka Robbins, Jennifer Brissett, Ashley Edward Miller, Andrew Liptak, Paul McEnery, Ryan Britt, Yoz Grahame, Shannon Rosa, Espana Sheriff, Lisa Heselton, Lane Kneedler, Naomi Alderman, Darren McKeeman, Robert Hewitt Wolfe, Shane O'Brien, Hanne Blank, Lucas Zen Hannon, Mariah Bear, Lun E'Sex, Micky Shirley, Swill Magazine, and anyone else I forgot!

One of our favorite blogs, Biology In Science Fiction, posted some random thoughts about science fiction books, including the recipe for making Stranger In A Strange Land a slim pamphlet:

Stranger in a Strange Land would have been much much shorter if in Heinlein's future America effective birth control had been invented before a manned expedition was sent to Mars.

She also points out it could be a fantasy book, without changing the plot, if "Michael Valentine Smith had been raised by wizards instead of Martians."

She also explains the main problem with Asimov's decision to link his robot novels and the Foundation series: it makes "the humanity's expansion onto many worlds, the creation of the Galactic Empire and its replacement by the Foundation ultimately due to the meddling of a couple of mind-reading, mind-influencing robots. I'd like to think that we'll conquer the universe without the nudging of telepathic robot nannies." [Biology In Science Fiction]

Orbit is seeking suggestions for a title and blurbs, to come up with the worst book cover of all time, and I bet we can help:

Over the next few weeks we'll be asking for your help coming up with the most ridiculously bad high-concept SFF book cover in the universe – think Wyvern II: The Wyverning, or Martian Under the Doormat. (We know you can do better) Once we've settled on the titles we'll work out the reading line, the blurbs, and cover elements. And then, with your help, our fearless Orbit US Creative Director Lauren is going to design a cover for it that will present it in all its mad glory.

I have great faith in the ability of the internet to spawn some truly awful science fiction book ideas. But just in case someone is lacking for inspiration, here are some truly hideous covers to make your eye-sockets bleed:

The genre: Military science fiction
The book: Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein.
Actually, Wikipedia and Fandomania credit the earliest beginnings of military SF to George T. Chesney's 1871 Germany-invades-England tale "The Battle Of Dorking" and George T. Griffith's serialized "The Angel Of Revolution," plus the works of H.G. Wells. But the book that everybody refers to as the touchstone of military SF, the book which really launched the themes of futuristic interplanetary warfare and examining the military as a social entity, was Heinlein's Starship Troopers. As Fandomania's survey puts it, this 1959 book "put Military Science Fiction on the radar."

The genre: Cyberpunk
The book: Neuromancer by William Gibson.
There's some debate about who really "invented" Cyberpunk as a genre. As this cranky essay (PDF) notes, Asimov was the first writer to consider the ramifications of artificial intelligence seriously. Bruce Sterling helped shape the genre with his 1986 anthology Mirrorshades. Bruce Bethke invented the term "cyberpunk" with his 1980 short story called "Cyberpunk." But even Bethke admits:

I never claimed to have invented cyberpunk fiction! That honor belongs primarily to William Gibson, whose 1984 novel, Neuromancer, was the real defining work of "The Movement." (At the time, Mike Swanwick argued that the movement writers should properly be termed neuromantics, since so much of what they were doing was clearly Imitation Neuromancer.)

Gibson's Neuromancer gives us the fusion of noir with brain-computer interfaces and dystopian paranoia, which spawned so many imitators.

The genre: Gothic science fiction
The book: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Commonly acclaimed as the first science fiction novel in general, Frankenstein was the first novel to meld the burgeoning gothic lit genre with the themes of abuse of science. Brian Aldiss, in his seminal work of SF criticism The Billion-Year Spree, claims that SF was "born out of the gothic mode" with Frankenstein. As CUNY professor Lilia Melani puts it:

In 1818, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus introduced the theme of the dangers of science and created the obsessed scientist, who was to develop into the mad scientist, and the archetypal Monster. Frankenstein has been called the first science fiction novel; she of course thought she was writing a novel of terror.

Gothic science fiction has come to mean any science-fictional story with terrifying elements, a horrendous monster or some kind of science-fictional explanation for a horror trope, like vampires created by a bio-engineered plague.

The genre: First contact with an alien race
The book: Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke. This was a tough one - even if you only define "first contact" as being a scenario where human society, as a whole, comes into contact with an alien species (and not just one solitary human explorer) you still have tons of early stories about aliens showing up. Some would say the earliest notable "first contact" novel is H.G. Wells' The War Of The Worlds. But let's say that a crucial component of the "first contact" story is that the aliens are friendly - or at least reasonably well-intentioned. Otherwise, you just have an invasion or war story. In that case, Childhood's End, with its super-advanced Overlords showing up and guiding humanity to a higher plane of existence and merger with the Overmind, although somewhat disturbing, is still a more benign story than Wells'. And thus a more proper precursor to books like Carl Sagan's Contact and Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis saga.

The genre: Utopian science fiction
The book: Stories of utopian futures are enjoying a bit of a resurgence, with the upcoming Shine Anthology pushing for a more optimistic futurism. But the first future utopian novel (as distinguished from, say, More's Utopia, which is the account of a fictional realm) is The Mummy!: Or a Tale of the Twenty-Second Century by Jane C. Loudon. In this happy future, everyone wears neon hats:

The ladies were all arrayed in loose trowsers, over which hung drapery in graceful folds; and most of them caried on their heads, streams of lighted gas forced by capillary tubes, into plumes, fleurs-de-lis, or in short any form the wearer pleased; which jets de feu had an uncommonly chaste and elegant effect.

Other wonders include "the steam-powered automaton surgeons and lawyers (who speak briefs fed into tubes in their bodies) and the delivery of letters by cannon-balls, which are shot into large nets erected in each village." She even predicts a sort of Internet. Everyone travels around in giant blimps, and it's a happy, egalitarian society. There's also Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, in which a young man goes to sleep in 1887 and wakes up in the Socialist utopia of the year 2000 - Bellamy's book may have been more influential, along with H.G. Wells' A Modern Utopia. (Thanks to Liz Henry for the suggestions.)

The genre: Apocalyptic fiction
The book: The earliest apocalyptic novel is probably Shelley's 1826 novel The Last Man. But the first really popular novel of global devastation, and the one which helped to spawn a ton of imitators, is Nevil Schute's 1957 novel On The Beach. As you'd expect from that date, it's all about nuclear holocaust, which devastates the Northern Hemisphere and leaves the last survivors in Australia and New Zealand, drinking way too much wine while awaiting the end of everything. It became a film and also helped shape our atomic anxiety into a rich seam of fiction that endures today in novels like The Road.

The genre: Steampunk
The book: Infernal Devices: A Mad Victorian Fantasy by K.W. Jeter. Jeter not only invented the term steampunk, in an interview around the time this 1987 novel came out. A weird comic twist on the Victorian adventure novel, Infernal Devices stars George, a young watchmaker who discovers that his father was the greatest inventor of all time - even creating a clockwork automaton version of George. The clockwork duplicate of George plays the violin better than Paganini and has greater sexual prowess than George himself, leading to all sorts of wacky adventures as people mistake George for his automaton twin. Other books that could claim to be steampunk pioneers include Anubis Gates by Tim Powers (1983) and Homunculus (1986) by James Blaylock. But to be fair, the book that really popularized the steampunk genre was 1990's The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.

The genre: Time travel
The book: The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. This is sort of a gimme, I guess. The best-known early time-travel saga, and still one of the best, Wells' story launched a whole flotilla of time vessels into the distant future as well as the past. Like War Of The Worlds, it has been adapted into movies and various other formats, and the Eloi/Morlock dichotomy has become a sort of shorthand for a type of future dystopia rife with exaggerated social division.

The genre: Alternate history
The book: Histoire de la Monarchie universelle: Napoléon et la conquête du monde (History of the Universal Monarchy: Napoleon And The Conquest Of The World.) Screw those "Hitler wins World War II" books. How about this popular "Napoleon won the Napoleonic wars" book, published back when Napoleon was still a living memory? Louis Geoffroy imagines Napoleon's First French Empire defeating Russia and then going on to invade England in 1814. Result: Game over. Napoleon rules the world.

The genre: Posthuman space opera
The book: Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks. I have no idea what book launched the "space opera" genre originally - that might be a question for another day. And there's some debate over which book inspired the resurgence of space-opera books loosely called "the new space opera." But to me, it's probably more accurate to call this genre "posthuman space-opera," since it so frequently deals with artificial intelligences, augmented humans, beings who live for millions of years, and generally a set of characters who far exceed the capabilities of a regular human. And for my money, the first really influential star-spanning novel about a civilization of A.I.s (the Minds) and superhumans whose concerns are much farther reaching than our pathetic horizons was 1987's Consider Phlebas. I freely admit this may be a bit of personal bias showing through, since Phlebas was the first novel I read which really knocked my head off and made me see the awesome potential for this type of story.

So what are you waiting for? Go out there and create some more new genres!

Top image from Consider Phelbas cover.

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown.

BEST:

Spot, Data's Orange Tabby Cat from Star Trek: The Next Generation
Who: Data's number 1 friend that didn't wear a Devo-esque visor on his face.
Why he's awesome: He's probably one of the only cats in the universe that has an infinitely advanced AI at his beck and call.
Bonus points: Anything that pisses Riker off is a big plus in my book.

Willis the Bouncer from Robert Heinlein's Red Planet
Who: A sound mimicking furry ball that every kid should have as a friend.
Why he's awesome: In a 1960's era future, when a dog just won't cut it, the only way to really impress the kids at school is with an alien that doubles as a soccer ball. And here's a clip from the Fox miniseries adaptation.

R2D2, Star Wars
Who: The yin to C3PO's (annoying) yang that brings logic and light to any situation through a series of flickering lights and bleeps.
Why he's awesome: He's a moving trashcan that manages to be more likeable than most of the Star Wars palz extended cast.

Porthos, Captain Archer's Beagle from Enterprise
Who: Easily one of the more tolerable characters on Enterprise. Mostly because he didn't talk.
Why he's awesome: He's a beagle! How can beagles not be cute? Also, I feel like after the unfortunate Scotty related transporter incident, he deserves a nice memorial.

Ampersand, Y the Last man
Who: The world's ending, every man is dead, you're an aspiring escape artist pining away for your lost girlfriend and you're all alone. What do you do? Have crazy monkey antics with your favorite jungle friend with a punctuation mark as a name.
Why he's awesome: Not to spoil too much, but he may or may not be humanity's key to getting the XY's back in action.

Lockjaw
Who: Marvel's own alien bulldog and member of the non-human branch of the Avengers.
Why he's awesome: He's super strong, can eat anything and once latched onto the Thing.

Dog the Robot from Half Life 2
Who: Alyx Vance's No.1 go to robotic buddy who helps when your path is blocked by other dimensional beings or just wants to play fetch with your grav gun.
Why he's awesome: He's a giant robot with the personality of a dog. Do you need more?

Pen Pen, from Neon Genesis Evangelion
Who: A genetically altered super smart penguin that lives with Misato Katsuragi during the Angel apocalypse.
Why he's awesome: While the series has moments of intense despair and darkness, you can always count on jerky, anime humor involving naked people and penguins to brighten your day.

K-9 from Doctor Who
Who: Dr Who's multi-generational robotic canine companion.
Why he's awesome: He's gotten a series of spinoff stories and was even parodied on South Park.

Nibbler from Futurama
Who: Nibbler is part of an ancient race of Nibblonians who protect the universe from giant glowing brains that make everyone stupid. Er, Stupid-er.
Why he's awesome: He can eat about 1,000 times his body mass to, uh, produce dark matter.

Gaspode, from Terry Prachett's Discworld series
Who: A talking dog with human intelligence that attempts to bring "Hollywood" to Discworld.
Why he's awesome: He's an endless source of snarky remarks and regularly uses his speech to manipulate humans when he needs food.

CJ-7
Who: A puff ball with a body that guaranteed to produce family friendly fun times.
Why he's awesome: CJ-7 can help you repair torn relationships with certain parental figures and bring people back from the dead.

Einstein, Doc Brown's dog from Back to the Future
Who: You might be under the impression that a certain Family Ties alum might be the Doc's best time traveling friend in this series, but you'd be wrong. This adorable little terrier follows Doc whenever her goes.
Why he's awesome: As long as you ignore the craptacular animated television series, Einstein is always cute, helpful and never obnoxious.

Ein, Cowboy Bebop
Who: A super brained corgie that gets stranded on the Bebop.
Why he's awesome: Although they never really get into it in the series, Ein is a "data dog" that possesses super intelligence that allows him to answer phones and steer cars.

Bubastis, Ozymandias' lynx from Watchmen
Who: When you're a super genius David Bowie impersonator with the world at your fingertips what do you do next? You create a genetically engineered psychedelic colored lynx as a companion.
Why he's awesome: He takes one for the team for the sake of furthering an evil plan for his master.

Gizmo, Gremlins
Who: The main furry faced protagonist of the Gremlins series.
Why he's awesome: While I'm pretty much a fan of all the gremlins, I can't deny the greatness that is Gizmo channeling his inner Rambo.

Seymour from Futurama
Who: Seymour is a part of one of the most tear jerking episodes of Futurama involving Fry recounting the story of the most loyal dog that ever lived.
Why he's awesome: Did you see the last scene? He's the most loyal dog that ever lived! Also, we can rest easy knowing that alternate timeline Fry gave Seymour a great life.

Bronx from Gargoyles
Who: Bronx is the dog version of the Manhattan gargoyle clan. During the whole series you only see one other gargoyle beast, but unlike Budeka, Bronx gets a whole episode devoted to him befriending an Amish kid.
Why he's awesome: Gargoyles are already pretty high on the cool supercreatures scale, but add a dog personality to the mix, and you've got gold.

Roach from WALL-E
Who: They weren't lying when they said that after the world ended there would be nothing left but cockroaches. Fortunately, the end of the world also gave them charming personalities!
Why he's awesome: Making me want a roach as a pet is an epic win in my book.

Kevin and Dug from Up
Who: Kevin is a rare, brilliantly colored giant bird that Carl and Russell accidentally find in Paradise Falls. Dug is sweet golden retriever with a collar that allows him to talk.
Why they're awesome: It takes a lot to make slapstick giant birds funny, but Pixar does a magnificent job. And Dug? He's exactly what I imagine an actual talking dog to sound like. SQUIRREL!

WORST:

Tribbles from Star Trek
Who: Fuzzy, purring little meat pets that take over the original Enterprise.
Why they suck: Pets rocks were bad enough, why would they think that a massively multiplying furry pet rock would be better?

ALF
Who: Alien puppet that takes over a really lame sitcom in the 80's. If ever you want to torture someone without the use of waterboarding, show them and episode of ALF… or Small Wonder.
Why he sucks: Look me straight in the eye and tell me you didn't scream in horror when you saw that clip.

Snarf, Thundercats
Who: A fat alien cat that ends every sentence with an annoying "snarf!" sound.
Why he sucks: Is he a lizard or a cat? I'm going to go with meth induced demonic lovechild.

Teddy from A.I.
Who: An animatronic intelligent Teddy Rucksbin from the future that accompanies David in a search for the Blue Fairy.
Why he sucks: Ok, now I understand that some people might take issue with Teddy's position on the worst list but he's a toy that's alive. That's pretty much the worst nightmare of most 8-year-old kids. And me.

Slimer from Ghostbusters
Who: A green ghost that terrorizes the Ghostbusters team by covering everything in slime.
Why he sucks: For those of us born in the mid 80's and watched the Ghostbusters cartoon first, we expected to see cool ghost antics when we finally saw the movie. Instead, we were greeted with a grotesque blob that was pretty evil.

Div-x from Penny Arcade
Who: You might remember the Sony Dix-X player, an ahead of its time technical marvel.
Why he sucks: According to Penny Arcade Comics, he's a foul-mouthed drunk that's teetering on the edge of killing us all.

Pets from Children of Men
Who: When the world's gone infertile, people turn to animals to provide comfort in the end of humanity.
Why they suck: I have nothing against the animals in Children of Men, personally, but seeing all the dogs, cats and birds cluttering people's homes can be an ominous image.

Selacious Crumb from Star Wars
Who: He's a little fox-lizard thing that hangs out with Jabba the Hut and laughs at all his lame jokes.
Why he sucks: Everybody hates the skinny jerk in the corner with the stupid laugh.

Gleek from Superfriends
Who: The alien monkey pet of the Wondertwins.
Why he sucks: Usually if he was featured in Superfriends, you could count on him popping out to end the episode on a lame joke.

Independence Day Dog from Independence Day
Who: If you're like me then you probably laughed at the idea of a ball of flame chasing a golden retriever down a tunnel.
Why he sucks: Was it really necessary to have a slow motion explosion behind a dog? And wouldn't all that heat ultimately cook them all in that storage locker?
Then Again:...he's immune to explosions. And that's pretty cool. Dodging fire like that, he's like a canine Neo. Maybe he should have been best?

Space Buddies
Why they suck: I'll just point you in the direction of this.

Queequeg, X-files
Who: A Pomeranian adopted by Dana Scully and eaten shortly after by the legendary Big Blue.
Why he sucks: He was found snacking on his previous owner.

Krypto
Who: Superman's dog. Enough said.
Why he sucks: I hate pet versions of superheroes. Also, why does he need a cape?

Muffit from the original Battlestar Gallactica
Who: Caprica used to have a variety of tracker dogs but sadly, none of them survived the Cylon attack. Instead a group robotic dogs are created to replace them.
Why he sucks: Is he an ewok? A fuzzy, metallic gremlin on meth? You decide.

MAD Cat from Inspector Gadget
Who: Dr. Claw's chortling fat feline.
Why he sucks: He's the quintessential evil cat meant to taunt the hero. Plus Dr. Claw regularly beat the crap out of him and he seemed to be ok with that.

Frank the Dog from Men in Black
Who: An alien stool pigeon using the guise of a small pug.
Why he sucks: He made me remember "Who Let the Dogs Out" existed.

Gir, Invader Zim
Who: Invader Zim's mentally disturbed robot helper that was given to him as either a joke or sabotage. Probably both.
Why he sucks: Yeah, yeah Gir is really cute, but he's amoral, evil and would gladly watch you die a fiery death while bursting into a fit of giggles.

Astro, The Jetsons
Who: The Scooby Doo knockoff of the 21st century.
Why he sucks: It might have worked with the Scooby Gang, but there's only room for one charismatic dog with a speech impediment ‘round these parts.

Lamar, Half Life 2
Who: The neutered headcrab that resides in Dr. Isaac Kleiner's laboratory.
Why he sucks: Crabs are rarely a good thing. Head crabs are a double whammy of bad.

Joshua from Dark Angel
Who: A transgenic dog-man with an affinity for painting and crappy comedic timing.
Why he sucks: There was only one good thing that came out of season two of Dark Angel and that rhymes with Smensen Shackles.

Honorable Mention: Blarp from the Lost in Space remake.

Space opera is best described as a genre of science fiction that is about adventure, often pitting the protagonists against powerful opponents, with broad themes, characterizations and actions throughout. The actual science that defines science fiction is not necessarily at the forefront of the story.

Military science fiction, on the other hand, is about conflict of the worst kind, involving all-out warfare. Oftentimes, the main characters are part of a military organization and are involved in conflicts much greater than their own parts, but they might be pivotal to the overal conflict to some degree.

To be very fair, there is a lot of overlap between the two different sub-genres. Stories that may fall firmly within the space opera side may also carry elements of military science fiction, whereas the opposite is very true, in a number of cases.

Of all the space opera stories that come to mind, Star Wars is right up there at the front, although that's not necessarily the first one out there. Physical flaws aside, the six films span a very epic story of the rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker and his redemption. We see the fall of a massive government undermined from within, the rise and fall of an Empire and the rise and realization of new heroes and destinies, all set in front of a backdrop of a series of galactic wars. While combat is certainly one of the most intensive, exciting and interesting parts of the Star Wars saga, I've never really thought of it as a strictly military story.

The intentions and themes between the two genres are what often sets them apart. Military science fiction tends to attempt to provide commentary on real-world events, placing the conflict out of context for readers to pick on on themes that mirror those found in real life. Starship Troopers looked out of the Second World War, and examined themes such as facism and a society where all-consuming, total war was necessary. World War Two was the closest that the United States and the world has ever come to a total war, and it is unsurprising that these themes would be at the forefront of authors' minds. Beyond that, however, there is a larger theme that I've often found within most of the military science fiction stories that I've read, and it parallels the sort of mentality that is required in a military force - the Other.

For a military to function, there is an absolute requirement of cohesion, of uniformity and of discpline. During the 1300s to the 1400s, an event in Europe occured, now refered to as the military revolution, when European armies adopted rank and file formations, formalized and standarized training and uniforms, all stemming from the invention of the firearm. Armies seek to break up individuality and provide a group mentality, of teamwork. Otherwise, it would be unable to function correctly. In doing, so, enemies are vilified - just look at what enemy Japanese, German, Vietnamese and Iraqi soldiers have been called in recent conflicts - and in doing so, they are labeled the Other. They are against what you are against, and oftentimes, the others in military SF stories are portrayed as insectoids, an extremely alien figure, completely dehumanized. Protagonists often reconcile or examine these relationships and their role in any interactions, whether it's questioning whether their duties are right and justified, or even looking at this dehumanization and uniformity within society. Othertimes, such as in Timothy Zahn's Cobra books or Ender's Game, the central characters themselves are the others - changed by their training and/or enhancements, that place them at odds with society.

In contrast, Space Opera is about construction, inclusion. Where Starship Troopers looked at the world aflame after the Second World War, Asimov's Foundation Trilogy looked at the world rebuilt, watching as a society fell apart, and was restored through the actions of the characters. While military actions or simple melees have often been a part of these stories, they lack the central elements (although they might incorporate them) that define military science fiction. Other broad themes are incorporated as well - the swell of discovery, seen throughout the Ringworld stories, is another major theme that I would like to point to. In some of the more sophisicated modern stories, such as Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross, we witness the efforts of humanity to rebuild under strict guidelines of the Singularity, with broad politicial overtones, punctuated by action and excitement.

Both military science fiction and space opera are about culture, but it is the methods in which they both approach their stories that helps to set them apart. space opera looks to culture through the eyes of construction, of vast worlds and the connections that hold society together, overall looking to inclusion, while Military science fiction examines what happens when those bonds break, and the disintigration of society, and seeking to examine the exclusions found in society.

Star Wars concept art above by Ryan Church.

1. Your mother falls for you.
When Marty McFly heads back to the Fifties in Back to the Future, I'm fairly certain winning his mother's affections wasn't on his to-do list, especially since he needs her to fall in love with his father in order to be, you know, born in the first place. Also because it's his own mother. It's bad enough as a teenager to have to contemplate your parent's love life; the last thing you really want is to become a participant. And Marty McFly might be a lot of things, but he isn't the guy from Reason #2, who . . .

2. You fall for your own mother.
Sure, Oedipus did it, but we all know how well that went. So when Lazarus Long, the protagonist of Robert A. Heinlein's Time Enough for Love, finds himself doing just that, he should have an inkling it's a bad move. Long accidentally jumps into 1916 when he'd been aiming for the Twenties, and he falls in love with his own mother. In order to avoid the object of his affections, Long enlists in the army and ends up a combat soldier in World War One. (Un)fortunately, he survives and returns to consummate his love. Awkward. (Basically, he manages to end up fighting in war that he didn't really want to and still manages to do his own mother. This makes a strong case against time travel right here.)

(2B. You are your own mother: Heinlein also wrote the short story titled "—All You Zombies—" in which the protagonist somehow manages to be both his own mother and his own father due to a lot of relatively convoluted circumstances, including emergency sex changes and baby-stealing. Thus convincing me that sexual relations and time travel do not mix.)

3. Your mother thinks you're having an affair with your father.
Actually, "Father's Day" (Series 1, Episode 8 of Doctor Who) gives out a whole laundry list of reasons you should never voluntarily go back in time to meet your parents. Rose wants to be there for her father, Pete, on the day he dies, but when she saves him, she seriously messes up time and Reapers (flying creature who eat temporal paradoxes for lunch—literally) descend. When she and her father meet up with her mother, her mother, Jackie, assumes Rose to be her husband's hot young mistress. Rose's father explains that, no, Rose is his daughter, and Jackie reads it as one of those "Surprise! I have a secret lovechild from my dark secret past" things, à la an episode of As the World Turns. Pete hands Rose her baby self, but Rose having physical contact with another her causes further paradoxing. (Perhaps an addendum to the rules of time travel should be, "Don't touch yourself.") Actually, this whole situation is starting to sound like a soap opera. But with paradox-eating monsters.

4. You disappoint your mother and she doesn't even know who you are.
In Episode 4 of Life on Mars (UK), Sam Tyler, still stuck back in 1973, runs into his own mother, Ruth, while trying to take down a gangster named Stephen Warren that has half the police force in his pocket. Warren even tried to pay off Sam, who takes the money very, very reluctantly. When he learns that his mother's having money trouble, he tries to alleviate his guilt by offering her the money. She is, of course, offended, additionally reading him as one of those dirty bribe-taking cops. Lucky for Sam, she has no idea he's her son, so her opinion of Sam Tyler hasn't been lowered any. Just her opinion of a cop she thinks is named Bolan. (Who knew that Sam was a glam rock fan? Additional note: In the equivalent episode of the US remake, Sam's mother is named Rose. That's right. Rose Tyler.)

5. Dramatic Irony
In "In the Beginning" (Supernatural, Season 4, Episode 3), the angel Castiel (who I notice dresses exactly like Loomis from the original Halloween film) sends Dean Winchester back in time to 1973, telling him to "stop it." Stop what? He really doesn't say. And I'm noticing that 1973 seems a popular year to meet your parents. Anyway, Dean meets his father, John, and basically tells him which car to buy, before running in to his mother and learning that (Surprise!) she comes from a family of hunters, and (Surprise! Irony!) it's a lifestyle she would never wish on her own future children. Which is, of course, part of the appeal of John: he's not a hunter, just a nice, normal guy. Again with the dramatic irony. Anyway, by the end of the episode, she's made a deal with the Yellow-Eyed Demon that seals Sam's demon baby fate (and her own doom) in exchange for John's (nice, normal, non-hunter) life. After which, Castiel shows up and tells Dean he couldn't have stopped that from happening anyway. He just told Dean to try in order to prove that you can't. Methinks Castiel needs to find less jerktastic ways of proving his points. But, hey, at least Dean got an experience that O. Henry probably couldn't have written better.

6. Your mother-daughter meet-up becomes a bad after-school special. Literally.
In 1977, Francine Pascal of Sweet Valley fame wrote Hangin' Out with Cici, a Young Adult novel that tells the tale of an adolescent girl named Victoria who thinks that her mother is too strict and doesn't understand her. Clearly, her mother has no idea what it's like being thirteen. One day, however, she finds herself suddenly in the past, where she meets a cool girl named Cici, who's apparently the most awesome new friend Victoria could have asked for. It's no surprise, then, that Cici is Victoria's mother, who does in fact know what being thirteen is like. Touching, right? So touching, in fact, that in 1981, it was made into an ABC Afterschool Special, entitled My Mother Was Never a Kid. I figure the lesson was supposed to be something touching about parental relationships, but what it really teaches you is that time travel can happen anytime, anywhere, without warning or reason.

The Purple Cloud: In M.P. Shiel's 1901 science-fiction classic The Purple Cloud, a Scottish preacher warns that God doesn't want us to explore the North Pole, and will strike down anyone who tries. But an explorer named Jeffson doesn't listen, and somehow he unleashes a deadly purple cloud, which wipes out the entire human race, except for Jeffson and a hawt young woman. Shiel sent this masterpiece off to a publisher, William Blackwood And Sons - which rejected it, but then published a very similar novel under the title The End Of An Epoch, Being The Personal Narrative Of Adam Godwin, The Survivor, by A. Lincoln Green. In Green's book, a man named Adam goes to work for a microbiologist, Dr. Azrael Falk, who claims he can immunize the body against all diseases - but he's actually developing a super-baccilus that will kill everyone. Meanwhile, Adam's fiancee Evelyn is traveling to the North Pole with her father. When the super-germ gets released, only Adam (who's immunized) and Evelyn (who was in the North Pole during the epidemic) survive. (Do you see what he did there? Adam and Evelyn?) Shiel cried foul, but had no recourse. Luckily, the Purple Cloud got a more worthy copy years later, when Stephen King used it as a major inspiration for The Stand. (Unlike Green, King acknowledges borrowing from Purple.) And then, in turn, author Robert R. McCammon was accused of stealing from The Stand for his book Swan Song.

Phantoms: Two sisters, Dawn Pauline Dunn and Susan Hartzell, wrote a couple of books, The Crawling Dark and Demonic Color, under the name Pauline Dunn. Too bad both books - especially Crawling - stole huge chunks of prose, plus ideas, from Dean R. Koontz's novel Phantoms, about a whole town that disappears overnight. The publisher withdrew the book (although it's on Amazon for 40 cents) and Koontz forced them to take out a half-page ad in Publisher's Weekly apologizing.

Star Crash: Peter David recounts (via Scott Edelman) that he was working for a publishing house, Elsevier Nelson, which put out a novel called Star Crash by an unknown author. Turns out it was copied, word for word, from a 1960s novel by comics writer Gardner Fox.

We wound up getting back the entire advance from the plagiarist and sending it to Fox, along with any future royalties and a guarantee that the book would carry his name on it should it go back to press. DC put us directly in touch with Gardner. Considering the circumstances, he was extremely gentlemanly about it. His attitude was that it was found money for him; the book had been out of print for ages and all of a sudden it was generating new revenue for him.

Death In The Spirit House: Two writers, Ron Montana and Craig Strete, collaborated for a time, and then Montana later accused Strete of ripping off his novel, Death In The Spirit House. The case became a huge brou-ha-ha, with writers taking both sides, but author Sheldon Teitelbaum investigated and decided that it was more a misunderstanding than a case of out-and-out theft. (And Teitelbaum, who seems to have some history with Harlan Ellison, blamed Ellison for escalating the feud and hooking Montana up with his attorney.)

The "Rum Tum Tugger" fiasco: Writer Ann Melrose copied a Chet Williamson story, "To Feel Another's Woe," including large passages verbatim. She did change the story from first to third person, and her characters are auditioning for Cats instead of Streetcar Named Desire. Melrose had the nerve to send her re-engineered story off to editor Ellen Datlow - who had published the Williamson original, and immediately recognized the inferior copy.

Future Cop: Remember the classic TV series Future Cop, starring Ernest Borgnine as a human police officer who teams up with an android? Me neither. But Harlan Ellison and Ben Bova sued, saying it was too similar to their short story "Brillo," also about a human teaming up with an android cop. (Isn't that also awfully similar to Asimov's Caves Of Steel?) They won a "piffling" $285,000 settlement, according to Ansible, which added: "I am waiting keenly for Dr. Who or some such huge-budget production to plagiarize my own 'Sex Pirates and the Blood Asteroid.'"

Alien: Author A.E. Van Vogt sued 20th Century Fox, claiming the movie Alien ripped off his classic novel The Voyage Of The Space Beagle. Fox supposedly settled out of court.

The Unfriendly Ghost Writer: When people accused Lanaia Lee (aka Mary Kellis) of stealing wholesale from David Gemmell's book Dark Prince for her novel Of Atlantis, she stood by the originality of her work. At first. Then she blamed her agent, Cheryl Pillsbury, who had hooked her up with a ghostwriter, Christopher Hill. Hill "fixed up" Lee's novel, by patching it with some bits of Gemmell. Lee tried to play on people's sympathies, pointing out she was a stroke victim, and Pillsbury threatened her critics with "wiccan curses."

Beware Falling Suns: Cecelia Holland accused author William James of ripping off a few of her novels for his space-opera trilogy. It's not like he did anything obvious, like calling one of his novels Before The Sun Falls, when one of her books was called Until The Sun Falls. Oh wait. He did.

The Third Eye: A woman named Sophia Stewart accused Warner Bros. and a bunch of other people of ripping off her 1983 story, The Third Eye, for both The Terminator and The Matrix. She said she had provided it to studio people, and also sent it to the Wachowskis in response to a 1986 ad seeking science-fiction stories for them to turn into comic books. She also posted some Matrix-looking excerpts on her site:


It was reported in 2004 that Stewart had won her case, but apparently it was actually dismissed because she failed to show up for a hearing and had produced no evidence.

The Invisible Rip-off: Someone who has a bit more standing to accuse The Matrix of copying is Grant Morrison, author of comics series The Invisibles. Morrison told an interviewer that it's well known the Wachowskis gave copies of the Invisibles collections to their designers and told them to copy from them:

It's not some baffling 'coincidence' that so much of The Matrix is plot by plot, detail by detail, image by image, lifted from Invisibles so there shouldn't be much controversy. The Wachowskis nicked The Invisibles and everyone in the know is well aware of this fact but of course they're unlikely to come out and say it.

He added that the main problem with the two sequels was that the Wachowskis didn't steal enough from The Invisibles this time around.

There Can Be Only One: When a 12-year-old Quebecois girl, Marie-Pier Cote, wrote a novel, Laura L'immortelle, everyone greeted it as a precocious miracle. She got lots of attention in the news media - until someone uncovered that she hadn't written the book at all - she had plagiarized a Highlander fan fic. That's just embarrassing, on so many levels.

Terminator With A Glass Hand: Harlan Ellison sued James Cameron and the makers of Terminator, claiming the movie ripped off a couple of Outer Limits episodes he'd written: "Demon With A Glass Hand" and "Soldier." Cameron and producer Gale Ann Hurd, and put an ad in Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. Says Ellison's own website: "Ever since then, Cameron is said to go ballistic if Ellison's name is mentioned."

The Super-Lawsuits: As we detailed in this post, the Man Of Steel has been a tireless champion... of his own intellectual property. Fox Publications hired Will Eisner to create their own Superman, who was called Wonder Man. Eisner also created the Superman-ripoff Master Man for Fawcett. National Publications was energetic in pursuing all of these wannabe-Kryptonians in court.

Eragon's Destiny: George Lucas has never sued, but Christopher Paolini's Eragon books, also known as The Inheritance Cycle, are widely acknowledged as a Star Wars ripoff. The similarties extend to some very minute details (although Paolini undoes the part where the Luke character's father is the Darth Vader character, instead making the Obi-Wan character his dad.)

Nosferatu: The 1922 film Nosferatu movie could be generously called an "unauthorized remake" of Dracula, because F.W. Murnau and company couldn't get the rights to Stoker's novel.

Elementary Plagiarism: That Star Trek: The Next Generation episode where Data and Geordi take on Professor Moriarty on the holodeck? Technically plagiarism, because the Sherlock Holmes canon hadn't passed into the public domain yet, something that took the writers by surprise when they received an angry letter from the Arthur Conan Doyle estate. (The Trek writers were able to settle the matter enough to use Moriarty in a follow-up episode.)

The Trouble With Flatcats: Writer David Gerrold might have accidentally lifted the Tribbles (from Star Trek's "The Trouble with Tribbles") from the flatcats of Robert Heinlein's The Rolling Stones. Heinlein read the script, and sent a note back saying "I felt the analogy to my flat cats was mild enough to be of no importance," and that the idea wasn't really original with him in any case.

Miniature: The Twilight Zone episode "Miniature" (starring Robert Duvall) was shelved for twenty years, after an author sued for plagiarism. It was finally reaired in 1984.

J.K. Rowling has been accused of plagiarism many times - most notably by Nancy Stouffer, a woman who claimed she'd invented the word "muggle." (Even though it appears in the Oxford English Dictionary as dating back to 1205.) She lost so badly, the judge ordered Stouffer to pay $50,000 and never accuse Rowling of plagiarism again. (I also saw something about a woman who sued Stephen King, saying he flew past her house in his private airplane and took pictures of her writings, so he could copy them. But I couldn't find any details.)

The Island Horror: Director Robert Fiveson accused Michael Bay's The Island of being a straight-up rip-off of his 1970s schlock fest Parts: The Clonus Horror. Fiveson sued, and Dreamworks settled out of court for $1 million.

Player Piano: Kurt Vonnegut said he "cheerfully ripped off" the plot of Brave New World for this novel - and Aldous Huxley, in turn, stole it from Eugene Zamatian's We.

Is plagiarism getting worse in science fiction? Samuel Delany seems to think so. He says, in his book About Writing:

[E]ven the nature of plagiarism has become a new order of problem in the last thirty years. From the eighties through the present, writers from age fifteen to age thirty-five have regularly handed me stories that were pastiches of William Gibson's Neuromancer, Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings, or, more recently, Rowling's Harry Potter. Many do not even bother coming up with new names for the characters. Some have actually been quite skillfull. But all these young writers were quite surprised when I told them there was no hope of publishing such work outside a specifically fan context. More than one told me: "But whenever you read about movies or television, or even best sellers, everyone always says what producers and publishers want is something exactly like something that's been successful. That's what I thought I'd done..."

Of course, there's nothing wrong with lifting a few ideas here and there. Isaac Asimov explained, in an interview, that he doesn't mind people borrowing his ideas, as long as they don't steal his stories:

As a matter of fact, we authors in SF are more or less friends; we inhabit a small, specialized world in which we are comfortable, and the general feeling is that ideas are common property: if one SF writer thinks up something which is very useful, another may put it into his own words and use it freely. Nobody in SF is going to accuse any other person in SF of using his ideas; in fact, we borrow so generously that there's no way of telling whose idea it was originally. For instance, in my novel The Caves Of Steel, it was very important to the plot to have moving sidewalks, with an elaborate system of side strips that enabled you to work up to the speed of the sidewalks or to work down to the surrounding, motionless medium. This had already appeared some years before in Heinlein's "The Roads Must Roll." Well, I borrowed it without any worry at all. I'm sure that Heinlein in reading my novel would have recognized his system, but who knows where he got it from? He never said anything. It'd be different if I used the details of his plot and worked up a story that was so like his that nobody could fail to see it - that's plagiarism. But just to use the idea and build your own plot or story about it - why, we do that all the time. And they do it from me, too - you know, they use the three laws of robotics - and they're welcome. I have no objection.

Additional reporting by Alasdair Wilkins.

Germain from A Game of Universe by Eric Nylund:

Germain's life isn't that great now - he's an assassin who absorbs the personalities of his victims, until they all start battling for control of his body - but it beats his childhood. He was born on a hellish planet, and then his father killed his mother and whored his brother out to miners. (He was too young to join his brother at the time.) And then he accidentally killed his brother, who was in the middle of trying to rape him. Later, he freaks out over a misunderstanding and kills his mentor by mistake. Oops.

Bean in Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card:

Okay, you thought Ender Wiggin had it bad, but what about Bean? He was genetically enhanced to give him mental powers, but the enhancement, via "Anton's Key," means he'll die at age twenty. He gets kidnapped but escapes, and becomes a street urchin on the streets of Rotterdam, where he falls in with a rough gang. And then the muscle they recruit for their gang kills the gang's leader. Bean ends up going to Battle School, where he's sucked into the fight against the Buggers.

Bertran and Nela in Sideshow by Sheri S. Tepper:

Ack! Maria and Lesky are so desperate to have babies, she takes an untested fertility drug... which leaves her with a pair of conjoined twins, who are both intersexed. (Born with ambiguous genitalia.) But Lesky is determined that at least one of his kids will be a boy, because the Virgin Mary told him so. At Lesky's insistence, the doctors give one of the twins a penis and the other one a vagina, meaning that they'll be joined together but opposte sexes. Emeritus surgeons from the medical school get recruited to do the work, on the theory that they'll be long retired or dead by the time anybody gets around to suing. So whenever dad wants to take Bertran fishing or to a sports game, Nela isn't up for it. Not to mention the fuss over which bathroom and locker room to use. Lesky realizes, far too late, that the twins are genetically identical, which means making one a boy and the other a girl was kind of a weird idea. You can read the whole thing here.

Thorby in Citizen Of The Galaxy by Robert Heinlein:

First he's sold into slavery, then he's sold off to a blind beggar who's missing an arm and a leg. But the beggar, Baslim, turns out to be a super-spy, who puts Thorby to work... until Baslim gets captured and kills himself before he can be interrogated. Then Thorby is shipped off to a Free Trade ship, where he has to learn the ropes the hard way.

David Rice in Jumper by Stephen Gould:

His dad beats his mom so hard, she winds up in the hospital and then runs away. Leaving Davy along with his alcoholic dad, who uses him as a punching bag... until he realizes he can teleport. So he goes to New York, where he finds he can't get a job or a place to live, because he has no Social Security number or birth certificate.

Lauren Olamina in Parable Of The Sower by Octavia Butler:

Lauren is one of many young protagonists in post-apocalyptic fiction who have a rough time, what with the scarce resources, the crazy violence and the collapsing society. (There's a whole thriving genre of post-apocalyptic young-adult novels. Plus there's Cormac McCarthy's The Road, of course.) But Lauren has it worse than most, because she has hyper-empathy, allowing her to feel the pain of all the injured and dying people around her. Not to mention, her home gets burned down and her family is killed.

Darth Bane, from Star Wars: Path Of Destruction:

Pity Dessel, the youngster whose dad beats the crap out of him and calls him "bane" as a nickname. He's raised in a poor, harsh mining colony where he's trapped with his mistreating father. He accidentally kills a Republic soldier who accuses him of cheating at cards, so he has to go off and join the Sith training program, which is not much fun at all.

Pretty much everyone in The Children's Hospital by Chris Adrian:

The world is destroyed by a flood, and the only people left alive are the patients, staff, and a few visitors, in a children's hospital. Most of the kids have terrible, painful ailments, which they struggle to live with after the end of everything. Meanwhile, Jemma, a med student, is emotionally scarred by the suicide of her brother, who took care of her and taught her when she was little.

David from Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg:

You might think growing up with telepathic abilities would be totally awesome, but apparently it sucks]. Growing up, David gets stigmatized as a weirdo by the other kids, and his powers get misinterpreted when they manifest. He learns to hide his abilities, but they keep him from having a normal relationship with the other kids, because he can tell what they're thinking.

Mark Vorkosigan from the Miles Vorkosigan novels by Lois McMaster Bujold:

As my friend Stephanie puts it, "Miles has a fairly bad childhood, but his clone twin brother Mark has one of the most abusive childhoods in literature, and then gets kidnapped and tortured by a sadomasochistic clone lord until he splits into four personalities."

Cat in Psion, Catspaw and Dreamfall by Joan Vinge:

As my friend Laurie says, :The protagonist is an orphaned child, half-human, half-Hydran, and telepathic in a society that has persecuted Hydrans and all those with psi abilities." Plus he's a mistreated street punk, who lives in dirt and flees the carrion crews who want to enslave him as "contract labor." Early on, he gives up his last marker for a short-lived beautiful dreamtime, which leaves him gasping and bereft. A typical sentence early on goes: "His drug-heavy body jerked with panic."

So there you go - just read these books, and tell your therapist goodbye!

Additional reporting by Alasdair Wilkins. Thanks also to Twitter pals kittystryker, gerryblog, beckastar, whump, PhilDarnowsky, cecilseaskull, miniver, heatherlyshaw, kiala and LunaticSX, and Facebook pals Tim Chevalier, Tara O'Shea, James Limbach, Kathleen Warnock, Richard Hartzell, Stephanie Lee Jackson, Sam J. Miller and Laurie Beth Brunner. You guys rule!

Note: Most of the stories below are anecdotal at best, and based on rumor and urban legends. Where possible, we've provided actual documentation.

L. Ron Hubbard's "start a religion" bar bet:

This one is commonly dismissed as a myth... but it's also like kudzu on the Internet. Supposedly, L. Ron Hubbard bet Robert Heinlein that he could make a ton of money by starting a fake religion. (In one version, Heinlein bet that his own invention, non-monogamy, would be more successful.) Or maybe Hubbard made the bet with Philip K. Dick. Or Arthur C. Clarke. Or George Orwell. Or John W. Campbell. No, wait - it was Ray Bradbury.

The Lewis-Tolkien time-travel wager:

Legend has it, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien had a bet, that they would each try writing in a new genre, to stretch both of their writing styles. Writes Bruce L. Edwards in his book C.S. Lewis:

A simple flip of a coin determined that Lewis would try his hand at a space-travel story and Tolkien would try time-travel.

As a result, Lewis wrote the space trilogy: Out Of The Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength. Tolkien, on the other hand, wrote in a 1968 letter that his effort "ran dry." Writes Edwards:

Tolkien's typical method of composition led to a not surprising end: his initial attempt to write a tale of time-travel became overly complicated and burdened with detail and it was eventually left as an unfinished work. He called it The Lost Road and it was a tale of a present day English father and son who, through the son's visions and dreams, are able to travel back [through] time to meet another father and son, similar to them, who are living at the time in Middle-earth's history when the star-shaped island of Númenor is destroyed.

The Númenor tale wound up as part of Tolkien's The Silmarillion, but he never finished the actual time-travel story. So yes, Lewis won the bet.

The unnamed SF writer who wrote an intentionally bad book:

Rumors abound that a famous science fiction writer bet that he could write an intentionally terrible book and it would be a hit, because the public's taste was so bad. And indeed, the book in question was a huge hit. (This wager is supposedly mentioned in the foreword to Spider Robinson's Callahan Chronicles, but not the name of the author.)

Asimov's impossible isotope:

The Internet has lots of unsubstantiated reports about Isaac Asimov's trans-universal novel The Gods Themselves. Either Asimov wrote it in response to a dare, to write a novel "about an impossible isotope of iron." Or he wrote in response to people saying he couldn't write about aliens or sex, which is sort of like a bet. There's also the famous Asimov-Clarke treaty, where Asimov agreed to call Clarke the best science fiction writer, as long as Clarke called Asimov the best science writer.

Update: reader Jacob Kaufman says Asimov actually wrote the novella that became part of The Gods Themselves in response to Robert Silverberg saying that science fiction should be about the human dimension, not "Plutonium 186," picking a science-fictional term at random. Asimov laughed, because there's no such thing as Plutonium-186, and there can't be in this universe. But then he became intrigued and decided to write about a universe in which Plutonium-186 existed, and came into this universe as a free (but unstable) source of energy. (More details on that here.) And Asimov didn't write the book in response to people saying he never wrote about aliens or sex, but he did include those elements in the middle section, for that reason. Thanks, Jacob!

Michael Crichton's Beowulf wager:

The Jurassic Park author wrote one of his best novels, Eaters Of The Dead, in response to a wager that he couldn't write a version of the Beowulf saga and make it relevant to a modern audience. The resulting book is presented as a lost manuscript written by an Islamic envoy kidnapped by Vikings in 932.

Harlan Ellison's jazz record wager:

In 1960, Harlan Ellison was already a major up-and-coming science fiction writer, but he fancied himself a jazz expert as well. One day, he got into an argument with jazz columnist Ted White over whether a 1939 Mildred Lewis album featured backing music by John Kirby or John Lewis. Ellison was so sure of himself, he bet his entire record collection - and if he lost, he'd only collect one record from White's collection. In the end, Ellison settled the bet... at gunpoint. You can read the whole account in White's famous essay "The Bet."

James P. Hogan's win and loss:

Libertarian science fiction author James Hogan is a betting man. First, according to his own website, he wrote his first novel on a bet with a coworker that he couldn't write an SF novel and get it published. (He won five pounds that time.) But also, according to this other site, Hogan also bet that his novel, Inherit The Stars, would be better than the Arthur C. Clarke story that provided the basis for 2001: A Space Odyssey. (I'm guessing he lost that one.)

Additional reporting by Alasdair Wilkins.

Around 200 of Allan Grant's Life Magazine images are online now at Google, and they show some of the wirework that went into the lunar exploration scenes. Plus you can see how the film used little people in astronaut outfits in the background, to create a greater sense of perspective. In addition to working on the film as screenwriter and technical consultant, Heinlein also published a "Destination Moon" novella around the same time.

Tons more photos at the link. [Beamjockey, via BoingBoing]

Note: I'm not suggesting that any of these things are actually planks on John McCain's campaign platform, any more than the "liberal dystopias" I posted a while back were Obama's positions. Neither candidate is running for president on a "dystopia now" slogan, as far as I know. As with the liberal dystopias, this is a collection of broad-brush conservative ideas taken to their furthest extreme. Okay? Then here we go:

Corporations will own your ass.

I couldn't really put this vision of the future better than The Onion:

Having read the futuristic accounts of William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, and Philip K. Dick, the path our future shall take will be bleak, indeed — but in a much different way.

When the ongoing trend of corporate mergers reaches critical mass in 2030, the scant handful of corporations that remain will be too powerful to resist and will ultimately supplant all government. National borders will crumble, replaced by warring corporate armies who deploy vat-grown Yakuza assassins to take down enemy CEOs in the name of commerce.

I literally could not possibly list all of the corporate-dominated dystopias in science fiction. Think Blade Runner, Neuromancer, or Metropolis. This site argues passionately that a weakened state and the rise of super-powerful corporations which are practically states in themselves is a crucial component of cyberpunk. Walter Jon Williams' books Hardwired and Voice Of The Whirlwind are both about soldiers of fortune and fighters who live in worlds ruled by corporations.

Wikipedia's list of corporate-dominated dystopias in film includes the Alien films, Charlie Jade (TV), The Final Cut, Fortress, Hardware, The Island, Johnny Mnemonic, Max Headroom, One Point O, Parts: The Clonus Horror, Resident Evil, RoboCop, Rollerball, Soylent Green, Super Mario Bros., Tank Girl, Total Recall and The Truman Show.

Probably my favorite corporate-dominate dystopia is in Max Barry's Jennifer Government, where your job is the most important thing about you and your last name is the name of the company you work for. (This is also Superman's favorite book.) There's still a government, but it's weakened and has very little enforcement power over the big corporations, which have grown ever more immoral. To the point where they'll pay someone to organize a "gang-related" shooting at a Nike product launch to give the newest Nikes more cache. Anyway, Jennifer Government writer Max Barry has created an online game called NationStates, and one of the fictional nations includes The Corporate Dystopia Of Wu Corporation:

The Corporate Dystopia of Wu Corporation is a massive, economically powerful nation, renowned for its complete absence of social welfare. Its hard-nosed, hard-working, cynical population of 6.219 billion are ruled with an iron fist by the corrupt, dictatorship government, which oppresses anyone who isn't on the board of a Fortune 500 company. Large corporations tend to be above the law, and use their financial clout to gain ever-increasing government benefits at the expense of the poor and unemployed.

Another favorite dystopia: The Company, in the Doctor Who story "The Sunmakers." Everybody works for The Company, which houses everyone on Pluto and supplies artificial suns and a habitable biosphere, and in return you have to work all the time. The Company levies extra taxes for everything including your death. (Yes, it's a satire of excessive taxation, but it's also a corporate-dominated world.) There's also the awesome dark alternate universe in Charlie Jade, where corporations control everything, chip implants are mandatory, and people are divided into castes. Really, I could be here all year listing corporate dystopias.

It's God's country, and you just live here (unless you blaspheme.)

Church and state are no longer separated, and the state becomes a golden throne for the church to look down on the huddled masses from. One of the classic theocratic dystopias is The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, where a quasi-Christian theocracy overthrows the U.S. government and imposes sumptuary laws governing how woman can dress. Pre-marital sex is illegal, and sexual deviance is punishable with corporal — or capital — punishment.

There's also the newly published young adult novel Bad Faith by Gillian Philip, which her husband (I think) describes as "an eerily good picture of what I imagine the USA would be like if Sarah Palin was in charge." In the gloomy future, the One Church runs everything, and gangs of extremists run around beating up anyone who defies the One Church's authority. In the Robert Heinlein story "Revolt In 2100," a small band of Americans rises up against an evil future theocracy. Suzette Haden Elgin's Judas Rose series also includes an evil Christian theocracy that oppresses women.

Allen Steele's novel Coyote also starts out in an authoritarian right-wing theocratic version of the United States, known as the United Republic. (It later collapses in on itself.) Besides religious fanaticism, the other factor driving the rise of the Republic is the paranoid fear of terrorism. And then in Cave Of Stars by George Zebrowski, the Pope takes over the world! And it's bad.

And then there's the fantastic government of the Reverend Jimmy Joe II, who oppresses you in the name of the Lord. Lordy! His regime involves throwing people in prison, where they get beat up by dominatrixes, in the fantastic movie Storm Rebel. You can watch a couple of amazing clips from it here.

You support the troops (by letting them stomp all over you.)

In novels like Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers and Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, a militaristic future Earth is at war with alien bugs, and the military wields great power. (In Troopers, you can't exercise full citizenship, and vote, unless you've served in the military.) There's also the all-male militaristic society of A World Without Women by Day Keene and Leonard Pyun.

And then there's Star Wars, especially episodes II and III. George Lucas wasn't exactly subtle in his depiction of a society that gets dragged into an endless war, and the state needs more and more power to pursue its enemies. Freedom dies, not in silence, but to thunderous applause, yadda yadda. And there's the anime movie Ellcia, where unscrupulous people dig up the remains of a super-advanced society and use its advanced technology to found a new militaristic dystopia called Megaronia. No, really — Megaronia.

In Marge Piercy's feminist science fiction classic Woman On The Edge Of Time, our heroine travels to a happy shiny feminist utopia, where men breastfeed and everybody wears hemp underwear. But she also visits an alternate future, a horrendous dystopia where the military control everything.

There's also the whole swathe of narratives where the security state gets out of control, and everyone trades their freedom for security. People are under constant surveillance by a thuggish leadership, as exemplified by Alan Moore's graphic novel V For Vendetta.

We're all forced to go back to some horrendous idealized version of the 1950s.

Just think Pleasantville — a monstrous idealized version of the repressive, horrendous past, when people still thought Doo-wop was music. In this movie, Spider-Man gets a special remote control from a weird old guy, and it zaps him and his sister inside his favorite sitcom, which is an obvious Leave It To Beaver riff. At first, Spidey is overjoyed, but he eventually sees how repressive that B&W conformity really is, and he finally joins his sister in rebelling against the crushing sameness. Luckily, you can make a tree burst into flames just by masturbating.

We didn't sign the Kyoto Accord, and now the planet is trashed.

You could argue that the huge genre of eco-disaster SF represents a dystopia where conservatives have triumphed over nature, our greatest enemy of all. There are almost too many eco-disaster SF stories to list, from Wall-E to Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis series. I went to a reading by Kim Stanley Robinson a while back, where the theme was ecological destruction, and he said he'd written too many works on that topic to choose just one. So he read selections from seven different eco-catastrophes he'd written. There's no shortage of thrilltastic science fiction ecology disaster movies, including The Day After Tomorrow and Waterworld.

Top image from Mark Bult. [Russian Science Fiction]