Like many of Dick's short stories, "The Adjustment Team" is a tightly wound little nugget of paranoia and weirdness, which explodes in your face and then ends. We folllow a team of unruly bureaucrats, the Adjustment Team, who need to make sure everyone is place for when a synthetic reality is "adjusted" — including one real estate salesman, Ed Fletcher, who's married to a somewhat overbearing wife. Too bad the Adjustment Team relies on a lazy dog to make sure Ed gets maneuvered into the right place at the right time — and Ed catches a glimpse of how unreal his world really is, as everything turns to insubstantial greyness and all the people appear dead or deactivated.

As we reported previously, Universal is making this story into a movie, Adjustment Bureau, starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt, and it's now filming. And as is semi-traditional with Dick's work, Bourne Ultimatum/Oceans Twelve scribe George Nolfi is taking a lot of liberties with the story. Instead of being married, Damon's character single — until he meets a lovely ballerina, played by Blunt. Explains Blunt to MTV:

It's like a modern love story, but it's got an ominous sci-fi backdrop to it It's going to be exciting and disconcerting and strange, which is what I like about [Dick's] work. It's very cool and clever. It's got a really tight script.

She adds that the focus of the story is not so much on Damon discovering that his world is a lie, or figuring out why everything is fabricated, but on the dark forces keeping the couple apart, and their will-they-or-won't-they romance:

The term soulmates is used so casually, but in this case, in this film, it is true. They are sort of destined to be together and they fight fate to be together.

It's just barely possible that this will still be a decent movie — but the phrase "missing the point by several light years" does spring to mind. [MTV]

Variety reports that Unique Features plans to adapt the teen romance, written by Maggie Stiefvater. Shiver, which is part of a planned trilogy, was released just this August, but has already spent six weeks on the bestseller list, scoring with that popular formula of an isolated girl who develops an apparently doomed romance with a supernatural being.

The protagonist Grace was saved in her childhood by a yellow-eyed wolf who turns out to be Sam, a young lycanthrope who spends the spring and summer as a human, but becomes a wolf as the months get colder. On top of that, werewolves spend less time as humans as they age. Naturally, the pair fall in love and seek to keep Sam from reverting to his animal form for good.

Lovers of the supernatural may be eternally crazy for vampires, but with a remake of The Wolfman well underway and MTV's shot at a drama-filled Teen Wolf, it looks like we'll be seeing some fur with our fangs, at least for awhile.

[Variety]

Serial and Parallel Monogamy

What it might look like:
A discovers sex and love at roughly the same time, among his group of friends. Some of them he's met at school; others are people he knows from social networks. He and his friends don't think of hooking up and dating and being friends as different things – it's hard to say where one ends and the other begins. As a result, A has sex which is as casual as meeting up over coffee, and friendships that are as intense as first love. And vice versa.

When he grows up and starts to think about settling down and having a family, his models for love and intimacy are based on what he experienced when he was younger. He considers love, friendship, and sex to be overlapping and interchangeable. For several years, he lives with three close friends. He has sex with two of them some of the time, and eventually one of them decides to get pregnant. The two of them decide to become a monogamous couple to raise the child, but remain living with their two other friends.

Years pass, and A and the mother of his child both fall in love with other friends. They decide to form a poly marriage, where they remain a couple but also have other long-term relationships too. Their two housemates have sex with each other once in a while, but start fighting. One of them moves out, and a new friend moves in. A winds up having sex with the new housemate one night when his two long-term lovers are off vacationing with their kids.

Where will this scenario come from?
In the west, changing norms around marriage have already made serial monogamy a reality for many people. They may be monogamous, but they will have several partners throughout their lives. Add to this the changing ideas about friendship and sex that is popularly associated with the social network generation, and you have a population of people who expect multiple partners drawn from extremely interconnected but casual friendship networks. As a result, long-term romantic relationships start to look more like friendships. The emotions are no less intense, but the structure of the relationships might take on the characteristics of friendships today: Constantly-changing groups of people whose feelings for each other range from talk-every-day closeness to casual meetups at the pub. Stability will be provided by the network, and by a few long-term close connections like A's monogamous relationship and later his two long-term lovers.

The idea that humans will one day live in poly marriages is a popular one in science fiction, and can be found in novels by authors from Ursula Le Guin and Charles Stross, to Octavia Butler, Iain M. Banks, and Robert Heinlein.

The Female Minority

What it might look like:
B is always one of four girls in her classes at school. Everybody else is a boy. At first this seems normal, but then they all go through puberty and she starts to realize that she is the focus of intense attention from all those hormone-charged boys. In the country where she lives, girls are considered less valuable than boys, but you'd never know it based on how the young men treat her. In fact, B manages to grow up believing that girls are more special than boys, because after all she and other young women are the object of fascination and desire among their peers wherever they go.

In college, B falls in love for the first time after going on hundreds of dates and being told no less than two dozen times that she's broken some young man's heart. She's received gifts and plaintive love letters and weird homages but all of it made her feel weird and slightly guilty until at last she meets a man who shares her passion for puzzle games.

Of course, it's so hard for her to know what men are thinking. That's why B's romance almost didn't bloom. On their first date, she tells him all about her favorite kinds of word puzzles and her college classes and where she grew up and he just nods and smiles like all the other young man did. Occasionally she can pry some detail out of him about himself, but half the time when he's talking about himself he's really talking about his family or demurring that her opinions on most things are probably more informed than his. Finally, though, she challenges him to a game of chess and sees that they actually do have something in common.

Years later, he admits that he waited by the phone almost constantly waiting for her to call about a second date. She was busy with exams and didn't manage to get back to him for five days. While she finds having a steady boyfriend a relief – at least she isn't pressured by all the other men anymore – her female roommates in college are enjoying playing the field. They go to meetups and matchup balls and speed date events, amused by all the ways the men get gussied up and try to grab their attention. Her friends explain with bursts of giggles that some men prefer each other's company to these awkward competitions, and there are bars and clubs where no woman ever goes – she only hears rumors of them.

Where would this scenario come from?
In many parts of China, medical technology has merged with traditional beliefs and population control to leave some regions of the country with 150 men to every 100 women. This imbalance was produced after just one generation, and we may see repeats of this scenario in other nations where governments try to limit the birthrate. Many people still regard sons as the only way to continue the family line and ensure that elders will be cared for by a stable breadwinner.

The result of a skewed gender ratio, however, may wind up reversing gender roles. Men who want to get married will find themselves in the position that marriage-minded women were once in: Waiting by the phone, trying to please their dates by not speaking up too much and seeming too opinionated.

Ian McDonald has written about this in his short story collection about a future India, called Cyberabad Days. A twist on this scenario appears in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, where women are plentiful but fertile women are not. Women in Atwood's novel become the property of men, and there is no gender role-reversal.

Neo-Courtly Love

What it might look like:
C and D are raised in an affluent community where everyone goes to church, elders are respected, and a King rules the land. From a young age, C and D have known that they are promised to each other as husband and wife – it was arranged by the priest and the community's prominent families before they were born. All marriages are arranged, except among the poor, and C and D have only seen the favelas from a distance when they pass through the community gates in a tram to travel to a neighboring town or air station.

Nobody expects C and D to love each other, least of all C and D. They will certainly make a home together, raise children, and take care of each others' parents when the time comes. But they will seek love outside the bounds of marriage. They call it courtly love, after the medieval notion that marriage is for duty and romance happens in highly codified, covert ways that everybody knows about but politely pretends not to.

C and D are married when they turn 16, and their families buy them a small starter house in the heart of town, near the shopping mall. C works in her mother's hat shop and D is going to school to become a biotech entrepreneur like his father. Although C and D like each other, they cannot imagine a romantic spark growing between them. Passion has no place in an orderly home.

And so they both discover love a few years after they are married. C meets an intense young man from outside the community who aspires to one day own his own home. He works in the mall as a physician's apprentice, and C's effortless, money-bought beauty embodies everything he hopes to have for himself one day. He sends her secret poems via an encrypted channel; they meet in places nobody will ever find them. D knows she has a lover, but as long as it never interferes with family dinners and she leaves no clues anywhere, he is happy. D has a lover too, a waitress who works at the gentlemen's club where he goes with his father. She always serves him port with a salacious smile, and his liaison with her is looked upon as the sweet folly of a young man.

Where would this scenario come from?
Courtly love, historically, grew out of a society infused with traditions that were so old they felt more like window-dressings than true social mores. It was also associated with the ultra-rich aristocracy, who had time to engage in court intrigue and romance rather than having to work for a living. We can see certain trends like this in our world today, where ancient, devout societies pay lip service to tradition while indulging in decidedly modern activities with a wink.

As strong religious cultures from the Middle East slowly blend with the secular and religious cultures of the West, it's possible we might see the emergence of a neo-courtly love tradition. Especially among the wealthy elites. People who value the old ways, but want to experience Hollywood-style romance, may find themselves in a marriage very much like C and D's.

Authors like Robert Charles Wilson (Julian Comstock) and Elizabeth Bear (Carnival), who have written about neo-traditional cultures, often touch on this idea of people who lead hidden, unconventional lives in conventional society. Steampunk novels and Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age have a touch of neo-courtly love in them, as do many modern fantasy novels like Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Legacy series.

"Beijing Opera Bride," "Sakura Bride," and "Green Tea Bride" via Kimiko Yoshida.

Smith announced back in February that he was about to start work on Hungarian director Benedek Fliegauf's first English-language feature, about a woman (Casino Royale's Eva Green) so stricken with grief after her husband's death that she decides to clone him in the hopes of bringing him back. Now the trailer has been released, along with a more detailed synopsis:

When Rebecca returns to her grandfather's house, she meets her childhood sweetheart Thomas again. Thomas leaves his girlfriend Rose and their love picks up where it left off, until Thomas dies in a car accident. Devastated, the young woman contemplates suicide until she finds consolation in the idea of cloning. Although society does not fully accept it yet, she plans to give birth to Thomas, bringing her lost love to life (again). Living in Rebecca's grandfather's remote old house, Thomas grows up believing his father died in an accident. Rebecca never mentions cloning. In spite of their secret, Rebecca and Thomas lead an almost normal life until Rose finds out about them …

Certainly, with this blurring of lover and offspring, Womb will likely veer into some seat-squirmingly uncomfortable territory, but unlike certain other movies about trying to bring back loved ones via cloning (read: Godsend), it actually sounds like Womb will explore the ethical issues that surround human cloning, and the relationships and expectations that could severely impede a cloned person's individuality. And, though we get disappointingly little Matt Smith in the trailer, Womb could be an excellent opportunity to watch him spread his emotional wings.

[via Quiet Earth]

The Time Traveler's Wife opens August 14. And hopefully we'll get a bigger version of that poster soon. For now, you can watch the trailer in high definition over at Yahoo. [via RopeOfSilicon]

Of course there are about a zillion human/alien pairings in scifi, going all the way back to John Carter's dalliance with that red hot princess from Mars. But some couples stand out (like Hulk and Caiera in the recent Planet Hulk series) and some are forgettable (like Karen Allen and the glowy Jeff Bridges alien in Starman, which is sadly not based on the comic book of the same name). While of course we prefer our human/alien pairings to involve lots of sex, some of the hottest human/alien couples are purely romantic. Their liaisons lead to marriage or children, which doesn't necessarily make them less scrumptious than couples whose trysts are basically excuses for a lot of tentacles and crazy lubrication scenes.

So without further ado, here are nine of the hottest human/alien couples we could think of, and one couple whose horribleness will remind you why some intergalactic smoochfests should never be blessed by starship captains.

Margaret and the invisible aliens who kill her lovers in Liquid Sky
Let's start in the most obvious place, shall we? Liquid Sky is a completely insane movie from the 1980s, about a bunch of punk/new wave models who are addicted to coke, totally genderfucked, wear neon-streaked clothes, and have a lot of gaybiwhatevs sex. Margaret is one such model, pictured fetchingly above, whose main goal in life is to destroy her rival male model (played by the same actress who plays Margeret) and to have a ton of meaningless sex with her freaky girlfriend and a bunch of other cute clubsters. You're whirled in and out of the new wave dreamscape until suddenly a floating pie pan enters the picture, and starts zapping Margaret's lovers to death at the moment they orgasm. At first, Margaret thinks her pussy has the power to kill, and she manages to pick off several of her lovers before targeting her frenemies. But at last she realizes that some aliens are behind the whole thing, and she decides that these aliens are the only creatures who truly care about her. I won't spoil the ending for you, but suffice to say that an insane-looking punk wedding dress is involved.

Thomas Newton and Mary-Lou from The Man Who Fell to Earth
In Nicholas Roeg's movie version of the (very different) Walter Tevis novel, David Bowie plays Thomas Newton, a sexy, geeky, genderfucky 1970s alien (yes, the 70s and 80s were a time of androgynous aliens, and hence an awesome time for love). Trying to save his home planet from a terrible drought, Thomas comes to Earth, a planet he's heard is entirely covered in water. Unfortunately his ship crashes, and he's stuck on our watery ball until he can raise enough money from various alien inventions to build another ship and return home. As he gets unbelievably rich from things like a tiny silver ball that plays music, Thomas slides into human decadence. A young woman named Mary-Lou introduces him to sex and booze, and pretty soon he's revealing his alien side to her with ass-biting and (later) showing her his true (lube-covered) alien form. There is even a lubey alien/human sex scene the likes of which you'll never see anywhere else. Plus, hot young Bowie in full alien mode! On the hotness scale, this couple is in the danger zone.

Dick and Mary from Third Rock from the Sun
Human/alien love went all domestic in the 1990s with sitcom Third Rock from the Sun, where a group of aliens are sent to Earth to study the natives while posing (poorly) as some kind of nuclear family. Dick (John Lithgow), the captain of the team, becomes the family father-figure, taking a job as a physics professor and wooing his office-mate Mary, played with goofy charm by Saturday Night Live alum Jane Curtin. In fact, "goofy charm" is what made this sitcom so terrific, and made the middle-aged romance between Dick and Mary so fun to watch.

Lilith and Nikanj in Lilith's Brood Trilogy
Octavia Butler has written some of the smartest and sexiest science fiction novels you'll ever read. Possibly the most unsettlingly romantic of her works is the Lilith's Brood Trilogy, about a human woman named Lilith who "marries" into a family of alien Oankali who have kidnapped what remains of the human race after we've annihilated ourselves with nukes. Though she genuinely comes to love her new alien family, Lilith's relationship with them is complicated because she realizes she has little choice but to breed with them - she is essentially their captive, and moreover their mating ritual involves intense chemical bonding that she can't resist. The Oankali have three genders, and the ooloi gender is a creature who can insert chemicals into its husband and wife via two specialized tentacles (yes! tentacles!). Lilith and a human man wind up in a relationship with an ooloi named Nikanj. Nikanj's tentacles release chemicals that cause intense pleasure and feelings of bonding. To create children, the ooloi mixes genetic material from itself, the male and female, and creates a child that combines all their traits.

Valerie and Mac from Earth Girls are Easy
A less complicated coupling occurs in 1980s comedy Earth Girls Are Easy, where the mega-cute Valerie (Geena Davis) falls for a furry blue alien named Mac who turns out to look like a smokin' hot Jeff Goldblum after he's depilated. Joining them in this silly romp, filled with song and dance scenes, are Jim Carey, Julie Brown and Damon Wayans. Valerie's doctor boyfriend has been cheating on her, but she's such a nice girl that she still takes her time getting busy with Mac out of respect for ex-doughboy. But when they finally do start making out, you'll be glad she dumped her doc for an alien.

Hulk and Caiera from Planet Hulk
It's hard for Hulk to find a woman who can handle his green side, but when he smash-landed on alien world Sakaar he met his match. 2006 series Planet Hulk, which led into crossover extravaganza World War Hulk, is one of the best Hulk plot arcs in recent memory. Hulk finds himself on a world so savage that his monstery side makes him a hero. He finds true friends among the giant insects and monsters of Sakaar, who are fighting to liberate themselves from the brutal Red King. Caiera is one of the Red King's slaves who fights in his army. Though at first she and Hulk fight - and what a fight it is! - eventually she switches to the side of Hulk and his liberators. They defeat the Red King together, get married, and become king and queen of Sakaar. Of course, Hulk can't stay happy, though . . . the spaceship he came in explodes, killing the whole planet, and he goes back to Earth ready to SMASH the Illuminati who made the ship. And thus World War Hulk began, out of Hulk's amazing romance with a kickass lady from another world.

Max and Liz from Roswell
Late-1990s TV series Roswell was the perfect combination of romantic teen angst and alien weirdness. Imagine Escape to Witch Mountain, but with high school kids instead of elementary school ones. Max and his three siblings are human-alien hybrids, clones of great leaders from their home world who survived the Roswell crash back in the 1950s. Now they're trying to figure out their powers, and get back home to save their people. But how can they do it when there's, like, homework? And cute girls and stuff? Not only did Katherine Heigl get her start in this show, but it clearly inspired Twilight with its Max-loves-Liz subplot. Liz is a human girl, and therefore (sorta) forbidden to Max, but he falls for her anyway - first he revives her from the dead after she's shot, then they go on the run together, and eventually he turns a rock into a diamond and proposes to her. Plus, they are cute as little buttons.

Just check out the fanvid schmoopiness that Roswell inspired!

Willis and Jeriba from Enemy Mine
A human named Willis (Dennis Quaid) crash lands on a harsh, remote world along with an alien named Jeriba (Louis Gosset, Jr.). Unfortunately their peoples are at war with each other, and they don't speak each other's languages. But they are stuck on the forbidding rock for years, exposed to terrifying creatures and even more terrifying weather, so they strike up a friendship that grows into something much deeper. They are clearly in love, though in a chaste way - Jeriba's people have no gender, and create babies via some kind of budding process. Eventually Jeriba has a baby, but dies in the process, leaving Willis to raise "their" baby on his own. Though cheesy in some ways, this movie is still intensely moving, as well as a pretty gutsy exploration of what human/alien love might really be like.

Doctor Who and [Insert Your Favorite Companions Here] from Doctor Who
The beauty thing about Doctor Who is that the Doctor has so many different companions that you can pretty much project any kind of sexual orientation onto him that you want. I prefer to think of the Doctor as bisexual and polyamorous, which is why this picture of him with companions Martha and Captain Jack makes my pervvy little heart go pitter-pat. But if you prefer things all monogamous and hetero, you can focus on the Doctor and Rose. Or you can remove humans from the equation and think about the Doctor with the Master when he was played by John Simm (OMG). Though the Doctor never technically gets romantically involved with any of his companions, he does get emotionally entangled with almost all of them. For a Timelord who never really has any sex (that we see), the Doctor has got to be the sexiest alien in any space-time continuum.

Special Turn-Off Section: Ickiest Human/Alien Couple

Ickiest Couple: Troi and Riker from Star Trek: TNG
Feeling like you need a cold shower after all that action? Well allow me to give you the closest thing there is to a freezing shower to the libido: The coupling of Betazoid Deanna Troi and human William Riker in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Seriously, is there anything more horrendous and woody-weakening than this couple? What happened to Troi and Worf, a couple worth fighting for? Or Riker and the Trill? Seriously, I had to scrub my eyes with sandpaper after Troi and Riker had their naked wedding in that Star Trek movie whose memory I am trying to wipe out. What the hell, people? Some weddings should never happen.

The earlier scifi romance novels tend to rely on the conventions of the genre, with a virginal heroine seduced by a roguish hero – but in space:

Sweet Starfire by Jayne Ann Krentz
Description: Often credited as being the first mainstream futuristic romance novel, Sweet Starfire follows Cidra, a girl from a people called the Wolves. Raised by the alien Harmonics, Cidra lives a sheltered life where she knows nothing but spirituality and peace. That is, until she embarks on a galactic quest with Teague Severance, a rugged Wolf adventurer used to getting any woman he wants.
Excerpt:

This was different, far different, from anything Cidra had ever experienced. She felt her lips urged apart with an aggressive sensuality. She found she couldn't help but respond. Something deep within her seemed suddenly bursting to get out. With a shock she realized that although she had never experienced this kind of thing before, she knew about it. Something that had always lain dormant within her knew everything about this. And the knowledge had nothing to do with what she had always been told about sex.

And, of course, Cidra had been told all about sex by her parents and teachers. They had explained it to her, just as the principles of poetic kinetics and programming theory had been explained. What no one had succeeded in conveying was the sense of anticipation and excitement. No one had told her how her body would grow warm and languid or that there would be a small, curling flame in the pit of her stomach. She shivered, and Severance was immediately aware of it.

Warrior’s Woman by Johanna Lindsey
Description: Somehow nothing quite beats the official description:

In the year 2139, fearless Tedra De Arr sets out to rescue her beleaguered planet Kystran from the savage rule of the evil Crad Ce Moerr. Experienced in combat but not in love, the beautiful, untouched Amazon flies with Martha, her wise-cracking, free-thinking computer, to a world where warriors reigns supreme—and into the arms of the one man she can never hope to vanquish: the bronzed barbarian Challen Ly-San-Ter. A magnificent creature of raw yet disciplined desires, the muscle-bound primitive succeeds where no puny Kystran male had before—igniting a raging fire within Tedra that must be extinguished before she can even think of saving her enslaved world…

Excerpt:

He was well positioned between her legs now, had risen up to do so, his full weight supported by his arms. The biceps bulged and glistened with moisture. There was so much of him to touch, and Tedra loved touching him, looking at him. But right now she wanted to feel him deep inside her.

“If you wait much longer, Challen, I’m going to—”

She gasped as his heat entered her. Stars, there was such tightness, such fullness. She knew her body would accommodate him, but she didn’t think she could wait long enough for it to do so. She didn’t think he could either. His great body trembled in restraint, his muscles quivered, sweat broke out all over him. Either he was in as much discomfort as she, or he was putting on another superhuman effort. The effort was wasted. Despite the discomfort of his entry, of knowing there would be greater pain to come, Tedra wanted all of him and she wanted it now.

“Are you waiting for my permission?”

He made a sound between a growl and a moan, and gritted out, “Permission is not needed of a challenge loser.”

More recently, some authors have tried to more cohesively blend the science fiction and romance elements, often ditching the trope of the sexually inexperienced female:

Moonstruck by Susan Grant
Description: Starship Admiral Brit Bandar and Drakken Warleader Finn Rorkken once fought on opposite sides of a bitter and bloody war. Now an intergalactic treaty has Finn serving as second-in-command to “Stone Heart” Bandar. But as political tensions mount, the one-time nemeses start getting cozy, and soon they’re sharing more than just a spaceship.
Excerpt:

With this stranger between her legs, she could cast her memories back and pretend he was Seff and she his young wife, innocent, full of hopes and dreams, all the things she wasn’t now. They were only teenagers, married less than two years when Hordish marauders came. With this pretty stranger and all the others before him she could lose herself in the sex, almost believing in those moments of blinding, no-strings-attached passion that she was still human. That she could still feel.

“Come here.” She took his head between her hands and kissed him roughly. He returned the kiss with equal intensity, crushing her to the pillow, but something wasn’t right. Something’s missing, she thought. Of course it is, you fool. His passion is staged—it’s what you bought him for. Yours is real.

And, while pairs in mainstream scifi romance do tend to be heterosexual with neatly aligned gonads, some authors have made an effort to incorporate science fictional elements in their actual sex scenes:

Games of Command by Linnea Sinclair
Description: After yet another interstellar alliance, Captain Sass Sebastian ends up serving under the cyborg Admiral Branden Kel-Paten. And, although it’s supposed to be impossible for cyborgs to experience emotion, he soon develops strong, sexy feelings for Sass.
Excerpt:

Her hands curled into his waistband and unsnapped his pants.

Oh, sweet holy gods! only undo his pants faster. He moved toward her instead, before those clever fingers went further and tested the already strained limits of his emo-inhibitors. He grabbed her arms, trying for another kiss, but she was pulling him with her. He caught her against him just as the back of her legs hit the edge of the bed. Her knees buckled, and suddenly she was on her back and he was on top of her, his bare chest against hers. Warmth flowed where they touched. He levered up quickly on one arm, but she’d already locked her hands around his neck. Her impish smile pleaded for a kiss.

He fought the impulse for all of 3.25 seconds, according to the readouts in the lower left corner of his vision. Kissing was good. It was something he was getting better at. It kept her from seeing the patterns of his surgeries. It kept her hands—wrapped around his neck—away from his pants.

Barry has already written a number of science fiction romances set in space, including Unmasked (left). But this is her first Earth-bound series, due to start coming out in mid-2010.

In the X-CEL: New York City series, a shipload of alien shapeshifters have crash-landed on Earth. Some of them are good, but most of them are evil, and they're infiltrating our society. X-CEL is a U.S. task force in charge of putting the shapeshifters on ice before the whole country finds out they're here. A romance strikes up between an X-CEL agent and a female shapeshifter who joins X-CEL, after they become partners. If it sounds a bit like Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, then that's not a bad thing in my book.

Anything about this series could change, including the title, cautions Barry, who's still writing it. "I grew up reading science fiction and brought the love for that genre with me when I started writing romance," she tells io9. "This particular series will be dark and gritty with strong romance and suspense elements."

I got curious about this topic when I saw that rising Christian romance author Deborah Kinnard had sold her novel Seasons In The Mist to Christian publisher Sheaf. Seasons is a time-travel romance set in 1353 Cornwall, and it comes out in spring 2010. I looked at Kinnard's site and saw other books that seemed to bring together science fiction, religion and romance, including Angel With A Ray Gun, which has the best cover ever.

Says Shoup:

Christian sci-fi and fantasy are growing markets... [and] Christian romance is most definitely a growing genre, as is romance in general. It never seems to shrink, just to grow. Historical romances have been around for a long time, and now we're seeing combined genres springing up all over the place—romantic suspense, mysteries with a strong romance slant, sci-fi and fantasy romances, and so on are becoming increasingly hot. I personally feel the growth potential is huge as long as publishers put out excellent stories that really engage readers.

Could this kind of genre-mashing be the future of science fiction? Not necessarily aimed at Christian readers, but aimed at readers outside the usual science fiction book audience. People get very excited when books with science fiction themes hit big with literary readers, but maybe we should be more excited when scifi-ish books break out with Christian readers, romance readers or mystery audiences? [Sheaf House]

What Women Want. Mel Gibson is an immature ad exec who doesn't understand female consumers and is mean to rising exec Helen Hunt. Until one day, he learns to understand the women's point of view.
Scifi element: Gibson gets struck by lightning while wearing pantyhose, and gains selective telepathy: he can "hear" women's thoughts, but not men's. It's not ever really explained what happened.
Creepy subtext: Gibson steals Hunt's ideas, undermines her, and uses his new awareness of women's feelings to become the ultimate slick marketing weenie.
How bad is it? It's hideously painful and awful. The part where Mel Gibson narrates a Nike ad and everyone swoons made me queasy. Here's the trailer:

Shallow Hal. Jack Black is an immature lout who only values women based on their appearance, until a self-help guru puts a whammy on him to make him see women's inner beauty.
Scifi element: It's really not clear. "Life coach" Tony Robbins has some kind of telepathic abilities in this movie, and he's able to restructure Jack Black's brain significantly. It could just be hypnosis, but seems to go a lot further, since afterwards Hal can see people's "inner beauty." It's almost as if Tony Robbins is a telepath who imbues Jack Black with a mild form of telepathy of his own.
Creepy subtext: Well, Gwyneth Paltrow in a fat suit is sort of hard to take. But also she just "happens" to be the boss' daughter, which makes Hal's attraction to her awfully convenient.
How bad is it? It's pretty terrible, what with the fatsuitage and the whole "Tony Robbins has mental powers" stuff. It's the only unbearable Jack Black movie.

I.Q. Tim Robbins is an immature garage mechanic who falls for Meg Ryan... who's the niece of Albert Einstein (Walter Matthau). Even though Meg is engaged to Stephen Fry from Wooster & Jeeves, Einstein decides to get Tim Robbins together with his niece. This involves lots of Einstein riding on Robbins' motorcycle and screaming "wahooo!"
Scifi element: Well, Einstein's plan to help Robbins and Ryan get together involves inventing a fusion-powered nuclear spaceship and giving Robbins the credit for it. That way, Ryan will realize Robbins really has a good heart. Which makes total sense!
Creepy subtext: It's yet another movie about Meg Ryan being engaged to a smart guy, when you know she should really be with the dumb guy instead. That's, like, Meg Ryan's whole career.
How bad is it? I saw it in the theater (why?!) and had managed to repress it totally until just now. One whole side of my body is now having shooting pains reliving the trauma of watching this movie.

My Super Ex-Girlfriend. Luke Wilson is an immature guy who starts dating Uma Thurman, not realizing she's a superhero and a psycho. He really likes Anna Faris, and when he hooks up with her, Uma goes nutso on him.
Scifi element: Uma Thurman is a superhero, who gets her powers from a chunk of meteorite. And a supervillain played by Eddie Izzard somehow knows that the same meteorite can take away her powers as well.
Creepy subtext: Luke helps Izzard to remove Uma's superpowers, even though this will allow Izzard to take over the world and stuff. Because there's nothing more important than getting your ex off your back.
How bad is it? It has a Rotten Tomatoes score of like -1,000.

My Stepmother Is An Alien. Dan Akroyd is an immature scientist who falls in love with a woman and marries her in like two hours, not realizing Kim Basinger is really from another planet! But she may have to leave him and go back to her planet. Can true love triumph? And what about Alyson Hannigan and Seth Green? Will those kids ever get together?
Scifi element: Akroyd somehow zaps another galaxy with his super space telescope. Don't ask me how. And Basinger's mission is to get him to zap her galaxy again, before some ill-explained disaster happens.
Creepy subtext: In her quest to be the perfect wife, Basinger learns about sex from her purse, and then cooks a few dozen dinners at once for Akroyd and his daughter, Hannigan.
How bad is it? It's definitely one of the lower rungs on Akroyd's climbdown into the scary dark place of his career. Not quite Blues Brothers 2000, but close. Here's a clip:

Earth Girls Are Easy. A spaceship crashes in Geena Davis' swimming pool, and out come Jim Carrey, Jeff Goldblum and Damon Wayans. An entire movie based on a comedy song by Julie Brown.
Scifi element: Carrey, Goldblum and Wayans are furry aliens, who turn out to be shockingly handsome once you shave off all their fur.
Creepy subtext: Davis' character is sort of a loser until Jeff Goldblum swoops into her life.
How bad is it? It's pretty cheesy, but it's pretty much just an MTV-esque musical.

Virtual Sexuality. Justine is tired of being a virgin, so she goes to a virtual-reality salon... only to bring her ideal man into existence in the real world.
Scifi element: Justine enters the "Narcissus machine" at the VR salon, which is supposed to reshape your face and body into your ideal appearance, but she decides to create her ideal man instead. But there's a gas explosion while she's in there, and her fantasy of the ideal man comes to life. (As a hologram?) The inventors of the Narcissus machine want to capture this embodiment of women's fantasies, but he's too busy being a studmuffin.
Creepy subtext: Because the "ideal man" is created from Justine's fantasies, when he comes to life he's freaky and effeminate.
How bad is it? It has an average critic score of D. But it's sort of charming, judging from this fan music video:

Mork And Mindy Famous TV show about Robin Williams' alien who comes to Earth and falls in love with Pam Dawber, along with everyone at home. How long before this becomes a hideous movie starring Will Ferrell?
Scifi element: Mork is an alien. He can drink with his finger. After Mork and Mindy get married, they have a kid... who's born as an old guy, Andrew Sean Greer-style, and then ages backwards.
Creepy subtext: Well, Robin Williams' whole cute innocent man-boy schtick gets a little weird.
How bad is it? Parts of it are great, but it went downhill fast.

Groundhog Day. Bill Murray is an immature wretch of a weatherman who finds himself living through the same day over and over. I wouldn't have considered this a romcom, but it appears on several lists of the genre. He does fall in love and end up with Andie MacDowell.
Scifi element: Time travel, although it's never explained and may actually involve magic or karma or whatever.
Creepy subtext: Well, Murray tries to kill himself several times, and acts like a total asswipe to people once he realizes everything will be undone at the end of the day.
How bad is it? It's actually pretty great. Either this is the exception, or it's just not a romcom.

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