The time-traveler hypothesis , also known as chrononaut UFO , future humans , extratempestrial model and Terminator theory is the proposal that unidentified flying objects are humans traveling from the future using advanced technology . Some notable people have given recent public exposure to the hypothesis, such as retired NASA aerospace engineer Larry Lemke , Wisconsin congressman Mike Gallagher , and American filmmaker Steven Spielberg .
99-463: Repo Man is a 1984 American science fiction black comedy film written and directed by Alex Cox in his directorial debut . It stars Harry Dean Stanton and Emilio Estevez , with Tracey Walter , Olivia Barash , Sy Richardson , Vonetta McGee , Fox Harris , and Dick Rude among the supporting cast. Set in Los Angeles , the plot concerns a young punk rocker (Estevez) who is recruited by
198-765: A computer -like screen , computer viruses , video chat , tanning beds , home treadmills , and more. In 1963, the time travel-themed Doctor Who premiered on BBC Television. The original series ran until 1989 and was revived in 2005. It has been extremely popular worldwide and has greatly influenced later TV science fiction. Other programs in the 1960s included The Outer Limits (1963–1965), Lost in Space (1965–1968), and The Prisoner (1967). Star Trek (the original series), created by Gene Roddenberry , premiered in 1966 on NBC Television and ran for three seasons. It combined elements of space opera and Space Western . Only mildly successful at first,
297-428: A space opera , went on to become a worldwide popular culture phenomenon , and the second-highest-grossing film series of all time. Since the 1980s, science fiction films , along with fantasy , horror , and superhero films, have dominated Hollywood's big-budget productions. Science fiction films often " cross-over " with other genres, including film noir ( Blade Runner - 1982), family film ( E.T.
396-524: A spiritual successor , Repo Chick , was released in 2009. In the Mojave Desert , a policeman pulls over a 1964 Chevrolet Malibu driven by J. Frank Parnell. The policeman opens the trunk, sees a blinding flash of white light, and is instantly vaporized, leaving only his boots behind. Otto Maddox, a young punk rocker in L.A., is fired from his job as a supermarket stock clerk. His girlfriend leaves him for his best friend. Depressed and broke, Otto
495-439: A " sense of wonder ". According to Isaac Asimov , "Science fiction can be defined as that branch of literature which deals with the reaction of human beings to changes in science and technology ." Robert A. Heinlein wrote that "A handy short definition of almost all science fiction might read: realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on
594-457: A 2023 interview with Stephen Colbert from The Late Show , American filmmaker Steven Spielberg also mentions the theory. A number of motives for the time-travelers are put forth in the different media where the hypothesis is discussed, such as historical or paleoanthropological interest to study our own past, as well as tourism . The 1966 Sherwood Schwartz TV series It's About Time portrays 20th-century astronauts being sent back to
693-696: A Day . Jordan Peele 's 2022 horror movie Nope references " futuristic humans coming back in time to stop us from destroying the planet ." The 2014 movie Interstellar contains deus ex machina beings who built the tesseract environment inside the supermassive black hole Gargantua and possibly placed the wormhole near Saturn that will lead the crew of the Endurance to three potentially habitable exoplanets . These "superior" entities – called bulk -beings by American physicist Kip Thorne in The Science of Interstellar , and referred to by
792-529: A car repossession agency and gets caught up in the pursuit of a mysterious Chevrolet Malibu that might be connected to extraterrestrials. A satire of America under the Reagan administration , consumerism and the Atomic Age , Repo Man was developed by Cox in partnership with his fellow film school graduates from UCLA , independent producers Jonathan Wacks and Peter McCarthy . His inspiration for
891-421: A car with something in the boot. Dead extraterrestrials, a neutron bomb or something even more bizarre?" The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a 98% approval rating based on 51 reviews, with an average rating of 8/10. The site's critical consensus reads, " Repo Man is many things: an alien-invasion film, a punk-rock musical, a send-up of consumerism. One thing it isn't is boring." On Metacritic ,
990-573: A colleague of Frank Drake at the SETI Project Ozma , believes that a cryptic signal is of extraterrestrial origin, when it fact it had been sent thirty-four years into the past by humans in the future. In his 1984 science fiction/fantasy novel Birds of Prey American author David Drake describes six sterile and mutually telepathic sisters who time travel back in time to save humanity from an intelligent but monstrous alien species similar to social insects . The plot suggests that in
1089-553: A convenience store shootout with the punks that leaves Bud wounded and punk Duke dead, Otto takes the Malibu back to Helping Hand and leaves it in the lot. The car is stolen again, and a chase ensues. By this time, the car is glowing bright green. Eventually, the Malibu reappears at the Helping Hand lot with Bud behind the wheel, but he ends up being shot. The various groups trying to acquire the car soon show up; government agents,
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#17327721468921188-535: A great and influential film. In 1954, Godzilla , directed by Ishirō Honda , began the kaiju subgenre of science fiction film, which feature large creatures of any form, usually attacking a major city or engaging other monsters in battle . 1968's 2001: A Space Odyssey , directed by Stanley Kubrick and based on the work of Arthur C. Clarke , rose above the mostly B-movie offerings up to that time both in scope and quality, and influenced later science fiction films. That same year, Planet of
1287-677: A journey to the Moon and how the Earth 's motion is seen from there. Kepler has been called the "father of science fiction". Following the 17th-century development of the novel as a literary form , Mary Shelley 's Frankenstein (1818) and The Last Man (1826) helped define the form of the science fiction novel. Brian Aldiss has argued that Frankenstein was the first work of science fiction. Edgar Allan Poe wrote several stories considered to be science fiction, including " The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall " (1835), which featured
1386-554: A man sent back to prehistoric Earth where he interacts with an ape-like ancestor , A few years later, in 1887, Camille Flammarion published Lumen , a novel featuring an alien soul traveling through different worlds and historical periods. Although traveling back in time is almost-universally considered physically impossible, theoretical research has explored whether it might be possible. It has also been speculated by scientists such as J. Richard Gott , Ronald Mallet and others that humans may someday be able to time travel to
1485-422: A new perspective , which also draws parallels between the time travelers and elements of the pseudoarchaeological notion of ancient astronauts and Ooparts , and many others. In their 1998 book The Day After Roswell , US Army officer Philip J. Corso and American novelist William J. Birnes reported that German physicist and engineer Dr Hermann Oberth believed the craft recovered at Roswell could have been
1584-498: A reward for graduating from college to a televangelist , he decides to take the repo job. After repossessing a flashy red Cadillac, Otto sees Leila running down the street. He gives her a ride to her workplace, the United Fruitcake Outlet. On the way, she shows him pictures of aliens that she says are in the trunk of a Chevy Malibu. She says they are dangerous due to the radiation they emit. Meanwhile, Helping Hand
1683-525: A sequel was reported to be going into development with the working title Repo Chick . The story would be set in 2008 and the resulting boom in repossession that extends far beyond cars and homes. On February 13, 2009, Cox announced on his blog that shooting had finished and the film was in post-production. The bulk of the film was shot in front of a green screen , with backgrounds filmed and composited-in during post-production. Science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to SF or sci-fi )
1782-452: A similar position about the iconic representation of the Grey alien from reports of UFO abduction and close encounters, stating that extraterrestrials from an alien world could not have evolved a physiology so similar to humans'. " UFO reports are not necessarily caused by visits from space travelers... If time and space are not as simple in structure as physicists have assumed until now, then
1881-560: A song titled Aliens (Are Only Us from the Future) entirely dedicated to the subject. The track had been performed during Yes's In the Present world tour , but was never released, until the band's bassist Chris Squire decided to finally published it in 2012 together with English rock band Genesis ’s guitarist Steve Hackett and Travis singer Fran Healy as co-writer, calling it simply "Aliens", on their only studio album, A Life Within
1980-464: A thorough understanding of the nature and significance of the scientific method ." American science fiction author and editor Lester del Rey wrote, "Even the devoted aficionado or fan—has a hard time trying to explain what science fiction is," and the lack of a "full satisfactory definition" is because "there are no easily delineated limits to science fiction." Another definition comes from The Literature Book by DK and is, "scenarios that are at
2079-451: A time machine. On April 27, 2012 History aired the "Time Travelers" episode from season 4 of the series Ancient Aliens produced by Prometheus Entertainment , available on Netflix since 2022. In the same year, the "Time Benders" episode from season 18 of the same series aired on History , exploring other aspects of the concept and featuring more speakers, including American professor of biological anthropology Michael P. Masters from
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#17327721468922178-422: A time when the earth is deserted due to a long nuclear war in the 21st century and humans are an endangered species with alien-like deformities. Some of these plot elements are similar to another earlier episode The Time Trap , where similar events such a post-nuclear dystopian Earth and a rising world order led by a tyrant take place in the 51st century, year 5060. The English progressive rock band Yes wrote
2277-495: A total estimated readership of at least 1 million), making it the world's most popular science fiction periodical . In 1984, William Gibson 's first novel, Neuromancer , helped popularize cyberpunk and the word " cyberspace ", a term he originally coined in his 1982 short story Burning Chrome . In 1986, Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold began her Vorkosigan Saga . 1992's Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson predicted immense social upheaval due to
2376-532: A trip to the Moon . Jules Verne was noted for his attention to detail and scientific accuracy, especially in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870). In 1887, the novel El anacronópete by Spanish author Enrique Gaspar y Rimbau introduced the first time machine . An early French/Belgian science fiction writer was J.-H. Rosny aîné (1856–1940). Rosny's masterpiece
2475-582: A very palatable form... New adventures pictured for us in the scientifiction of today are not at all impossible of realization tomorrow... Many great science stories destined to be of historical interest are still to be written... Posterity will point to them as having blazed a new trail, not only in literature and fiction, but progress as well. In 1928, E. E. "Doc" Smith 's first published work, The Skylark of Space , written in collaboration with Lee Hawkins Garby , appeared in Amazing Stories . It
2574-629: A world of harmony and conformity within a united totalitarian state . It influenced the emergence of dystopia as a literary genre . In 1926, Hugo Gernsback published the first American science fiction magazine , Amazing Stories . In its first issue he wrote: By 'scientifiction' I mean the Jules Verne, H. G. Wells and Edgar Allan Poe type of story—a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision... Not only do these amazing tales make tremendously interesting reading—they are always instructive. They supply knowledge... in
2673-476: Is Les Navigateurs de l'Infini ( The Navigators of Infinity ) (1925) in which the word astronaut, "astronautique", was used for the first time. Many critics consider H. G. Wells one of science fiction's most important authors, or even "the Shakespeare of science fiction". His works include The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of
2772-704: Is a genre of speculative fiction , which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology , space exploration , time travel , parallel universes , and extraterrestrial life . It often explores human responses to changes in science and technology. Science fiction is related to fantasy , horror , and superhero fiction and contains many subgenres . Its exact definition has long been disputed among authors, critics, scholars, and readers. Subgenres include hard science fiction , which emphasizes scientific accuracy, and soft science fiction , focusing on social sciences. Other notable subgenres are cyberpunk , which explores
2871-482: Is considered extremely implausible by mainstream scholars and is generally regarded as unorthodox even among fringe conspiracy theorists who argue that UFOs are extraterrestrial spacecraft or interdimensional phenomena . The notion of time travel from the future to the past is thought to have been introduced for the first time in literature by French botanist and geologist Pierre Boitard in his popular 1861 book Paris avant les hommes (Paris before Men), featuring
2970-621: Is not only possible, but real." British astronomer and science writer David J. Darling has stated that the extraterrestrial hypothesis and the time-travel hypothesis are equally reasonable yet highly unlikely and unnecessary and that, although certain aerial phenomena have indeed eluded identification, there is no apparent reason to justify the claim that they're artificial and/or not of this world. Furthermore, he added that "if some UFOs are 'alien' craft, it's just as reasonable to suppose that they might be time machines from our own future than that they're spacecraft from other stars. The problem
3069-400: Is offered a $ 20,000 bounty notice for the Malibu. Most assume that the repossession is drug-related because the bounty is far above the actual value of the car. Parnell arrives in L.A. driving the Malibu, but he is unable to meet his waiting UFO compatriots because of a team of government agents led by a woman with a metal hand. When Parnell pulls into a gas station, Helping Hand's competitors,
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3168-635: Is often called the first great space opera . The same year, Philip Francis Nowlan 's original Buck Rogers story, Armageddon 2419 , also appeared in Amazing Stories . This was followed by a Buck Rogers comic strip , the first serious science fiction comic . Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future is a " future history " science fiction novel written in 1930 by the British author Olaf Stapledon . A work of unprecedented scale in
3267-512: Is one of the most influential examples of social science fiction , feminist science fiction , and anthropological science fiction . In 1979, Science Fiction World began publication in the People's Republic of China . It dominates the Chinese science fiction magazine market , at one time claiming a circulation of 300,000 copies per issue and an estimated 3–5 readers per copy (giving it
3366-599: Is the 'if.' (...) Outside of the popular mythos of flying saucers and archetypal, big-brained aliens, there's precious little credible evidence that they exist. So, my issue with the (Masters') book is not the ingenuity of its thesis, but the fact that there's really no need for such a thesis in the first place." Referring to the Rendlesham incident , science writer and UFO skeptic Ian Ridpath wrote that time-traveling UFO allegations from retired sergeant Jim Penniston's hypnosis session may have been influenced by him watching
3465-568: Is wandering the streets when Bud drives up and offers him $ 25 to drive a car out of the neighborhood, supposedly for his wife. Otto follows Bud in the car to the Helping Hand Acceptance Corporation, where he learns the car he drove was being repossessed. He refuses to join Bud as a "repo man," and goes to see his parents. After learning that his burned-out ex-hippie parents have donated the money that they promised him as
3564-592: The Huffington Post published an article describing the time-traveler hypothesis and often referencing the Ancient Aliens episode. In the article, the author also reports an online conspiracy theory about how U.S. Navy Commander George W. Hoover allegedly revealed to his son, George Hoover Jr. and later to ufologist William J. Birnes , that the Roswell incident may have involved human beings from
3663-900: The Montana Technological University in Butte, Montana and British journalist and Ministry of Defence civil servant Nick Pope . Pope linked the Rendlesham Forest incident in the UK and the Cabo Valdés Case in Chile with the time-traveler hypothesis , a connection he also explored in his 2014 book (written with John Burroughs, USAF , Ret., and Jim Penniston, USAF, Ret.) Encounter in Rendlesham Forest: The Inside Story of
3762-482: The Russian writer and paleontologist Ivan Yefremov presented a view of a future interstellar communist civilization and is considered one of the most important Soviet science fiction novels. In 1959, Robert A. Heinlein 's Starship Troopers marked a departure from his earlier juvenile stories and novels. It is one of the first and most influential examples of military science fiction , and introduced
3861-555: The Solar System or elsewhere and that, even if they did exist, it was even more unlikely that they would be humanoids . His article was cited and analysed, alongside evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky ’s similar view on the implausibility of the evolution of humanoid extraterrestrial life forms, in the famous 2014 collection of essays Archaeology, Anthropology and Interstellar Communication edited by astrobiologist Douglas Vakoch and published by NASA in 2014. In
3960-401: The extraterrestrial hypothesis represents a potential solution to Fermi's paradox , the time-traveler hypothesis provides an alternative explanation for the absence of future time travelers . In an interview with Nova on PBS , astrophysicist and skeptic Carl Sagan stated that there's a possibility that time travelers from the future are already here and we simply don't have the means or
4059-451: The information revolution . In 2007, Liu Cixin 's novel, The Three-Body Problem , was published in China. It was translated into English by Ken Liu and published by Tor Books in 2014, and won the 2015 Hugo Award for Best Novel , making Liu the first Asian writer to win the award. Emerging themes in late 20th and early 21st century science fiction include environmental issues ,
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4158-551: The technological singularity , space travel and genetic enhancement have also been identified as potential factors capable of altering the evolution of humans in the future, leading to different transhuman and posthuman scenarios. Human beings have reported unknown objects in the skies since antiquity . In the 1890s, a wave of mystery airships sightings was reported throughout the US, followed by Foo fighters and ghost rockets during World War II . The modern UFO era began in
4257-554: The 4th Street bridge over the Los Angeles River was in the background. When Parnell and Leila are in nearby phone booths talking to each other, the scene is located at the corner of Wilson and Violet in Los Angeles. Repo Man garnered widespread praise upon its release, and is widely considered to be one of the best films of 1984. In 2008, the film was voted by a group of Los Angeles Times writers and editors as
4356-559: The Apes (the original), directed by Franklin J. Schaffner and based on the 1963 French novel La Planète des Singes by Pierre Boulle , was released to popular and critical acclaim, its vivid depiction of a post-apocalyptic world in which intelligent apes dominate humans . In 1977, George Lucas began the Star Wars film series with the film now identified as " Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope . " The series, often called
4455-583: The Extra-Terrestrial - 1983), war ( Enemy Mine - 1985), comedy ( Spaceballs - 1987, Galaxy Quest - 1999), animation ( WALL-E – 2008, Big Hero 6 – 2014), Western ( Serenity – 2005), action ( Edge of Tomorrow – 2014, The Matrix – 1999), adventure ( Jupiter Ascending – 2015, Interstellar – 2014), mystery ( Minority Report – 2002), thriller ( Ex Machina – 2014), drama ( Melancholia – 2011, Predestination – 2014), and romance ( Eternal Sunshine of
4554-511: The Glass Darkly , and The Cryptid Factor co-hosted by New Zealand journalist David Farrier , comedian Rhys Darby , producers Dan Schreiber and Leon Kirkbeck. In 2020 WatchMojo published a video on the topic. In the same year, TNW also published an article about Masters' extratempestrial model. In June 2022, British ESA astronaut Tim Peake mentioned the time-traveler hypothesis in an interview on Good Morning Britain . In
4653-495: The Rodriguez brothers, take the Malibu. They stop for sodas because the car's trunk is hot. While they are out of the car a trio of Otto's punk friends, who are on a crime spree, steal it. After visiting a nightclub, Parnell appears and tricks the punks into opening the trunk, killing one of them and scaring the other two away. Later, he picks up Otto and drives aimlessly, before collapsing and dying from radiation. After surviving
4752-464: The Spotless Mind – 2004, Her – 2013). Science fiction and television have consistently been in a close relationship. Television or television-like technologies frequently appeared in science fiction long before television itself became widely available in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The first known science fiction television program was a thirty-five-minute adapted excerpt of
4851-559: The States and Empires of the Moon (1657) and The States and Empires of the Sun (1662), Margaret Cavendish 's " The Blazing World " (1666), Jonathan Swift 's Gulliver's Travels (1726), Ludvig Holberg 's Nicolai Klimii Iter Subterraneum (1741) and Voltaire 's Micromégas (1752). Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan considered Somnium the first science fiction story; it depicts
4950-590: The Summer of 1947, days after the United States announced plans to re-industrialize Germany over strenuous Soviet objection, sparking the Cold War . Amid fears of a Soviet response, civilian pilot Kenneth Arnold reported witnessing a formation of supersonic aircraft. Wartime prohibition of live "man on the street" broadcasts having ended, Arnold's sighting was covered nationwide on radio and print media. In
5049-485: The UFO scientists, and the televangelist. Anyone who approaches it bursts into flames, even those in flame-retardant suits. Only Miller, an eccentric mechanic at Helping Hand who had explained earlier to Otto that aliens exist and can travel through time in their spaceships , is able to enter the car. He slides behind the wheel and beckons Otto into the Malibu. After Otto settles into the passenger seat, it lifts straight up into
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#17327721468925148-458: The World's Best-Documented UFO Incident , published by St. Martin's Press . The two episodes feature, among others, ufologists Giorgio A. Tsoukalos , Sean David Morton , authors Erich von Däniken , David Hatcher Childress , Philip Coppens , and theoretical physicist Ronald L. Mallett , discussing the time-traveler hypothesis in the contexts of pseudoarchaeology and pseudohistory . In 2013,
5247-521: The Worlds (1898). His science fiction imagined alien invasion , biological engineering , invisibility , and time travel . In his non-fiction futurologist works he predicted the advent of airplanes , military tanks , nuclear weapons , satellite television , space travel , and something resembling the World Wide Web . Edgar Rice Burroughs 's A Princess of Mars , published in 1912,
5346-614: The air and flies away, first through the city's skyline (Miller telling Otto what Bud had said earlier, "The life of a repo man is ALWAYS intense.") and later into space. Numerous scenes were filmed around the Downtown Los Angeles , such as south of downtown in the Garment/Fashion District and southeast of downtown in the Arts District . Early in the film when Otto was walking along the tracks,
5445-563: The alleged beings piloting the UFOs, the overall idea has been dubbed "the time-traveler hypothesis" by executive director of nonprofit Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), Jan Harzan. The time-traveler hypothesis and the interdimensional hypothesis overlap by a certain degree. People in the ufology community, such as former MUFON director for the state of Pennsylvania John Ventre in an interview with KDKA News Radio , as well as American parapsychologist and engineer Harold E. Puthoff , refer to
5544-667: The boundaries of time" and that their "often-humanoid appearance may suggest a link between the way we look today, and what we might look like thousands of years from now." In his 2019 book Identified Flying Objects and subsequent 2022 volume The Extratempestrial Model , Dr Masters explored more in depth various aspects of the time-traveler hypothesis, including fringe ancient astronauts theories and possible future development scenarios of human anatomy such as brain growth , craniofacial evolution , bipedalism , paedomorphism and more. Masters and his theory were featured on various podcasts, such as Sean Patrick Hazlett 's Through
5643-421: The cast; the film's ending notably differed from what had originally been written. The soundtrack, headlined by a main theme composed and performed by Iggy Pop , is noted as a snapshot of 1980s hardcore punk ; Cox wanted the music to underscore the life of repo men. Despite a troubled initial release due to Universal's skepticism towards the film's commercial viability, Repo Man received widespread acclaim, and
5742-403: The characters of the movie as "they" – are later revealed by the protagonist Cooper to be humans from the future who evolved to exist in five dimensions , guiding him and his daughter Murph through the necessary steps to crack the equation of quantum gravity and save humanity. Although in his books and publications Dr Masters uses the neologism " extratempestrial " to describe his model and
5841-413: The concept of powered armor exoskeletons . The German space opera series Perry Rhodan , written by various authors, started in 1961 with an account of the first Moon landing and has since expanded in space to multiple universes , and in time by billions of years. It has become the most popular science fiction book series of all time. In the 1960s and 1970s, New Wave science fiction
5940-506: The creation of microrobots and micromachinery , nanotechnology , smartdust , virtual reality , and artificial intelligence (including swarm intelligence ), as well as developing the ideas of "necroevolution" and the creation of artificial worlds. In 1965, Dune by Frank Herbert featured a much more complex and detailed imagined future society than had previously in most science fiction. In 1967 Anne McCaffrey began her Dragonriders of Pern science fantasy series. Two of
6039-519: The days and weeks following the Arnold sighting, a nationwide craze swept the nation as over 800 copycat sightings were published in the English-speaking press. 1947 sources speculated that the sightings resulted from novel US or Soviet technology , misidentification of mundane objects , or behavioral effects like mass hysteria ; Fringe sources suggested that the sightings were a sign of
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#17327721468926138-519: The eighth-best film set in Los Angeles in the last 25 years. Entertainment Weekly ranked the film seventh on their list of "The Top 50 Cult Films". Roger Ebert gave the film 3 stars out of a possible 4, and wrote: I saw Repo Man near the end of a busy stretch on the movie beat: Three days during which I saw more relentlessly bad movies than during any comparable period in memory. Most of those bad movies were so cynically constructed out of formula ideas and "commercial" ingredients that watching them
6237-431: The end of the world , were angelic or demonic, or were vehicles carrying people from other planets or other "dimensions" . Contactee and Alien Abduction folklore often describe encounters with human or humanoid figures and abductors . In his 1964 article The Nonprevalence of Humanoids George Gaylord Simpson claimed that it is extremely unlikely that there exists any form of extraterrestrial intelligence in
6336-439: The episodes, ran from 1959 to 1964. It featured fantasy , suspense , and horror as well as science fiction, with each episode being a complete story. Critics have ranked it as one of the best TV programs of any genre . The animated series The Jetsons , while intended as comedy and only running for one season (1962–1963), predicted many inventions now in common use: flat-screen televisions , newspapers on
6435-527: The field came to associate the term with low-budget, low-tech " B-movies " and with low-quality pulp science fiction . By the 1970s, critics within the field, such as Damon Knight and Terry Carr , were using "sci fi" to distinguish hack-work from serious science fiction. Peter Nicholls writes that "SF" (or "sf") is "the preferred abbreviation within the community of sf writers and readers." Robert Heinlein found even "science fiction" insufficient for certain types of works in this genre, and suggested
6534-463: The film came from his own experiences working with repossession agent Mark Lewis. Originally conceiving of it as a road movie , Cox reconfigured the story to take place mostly in Los Angeles to maintain its budget. Michael Nesmith of The Monkees came on board the project as an executive producer , and secured a negative pickup deal with Universal Pictures . Principal photography ran through summer 1983, during which Cox encouraged improvisation from
6633-539: The film received a score of 82 based on 21 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim", and was given the "Must-See" badge. Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films American Film Institute Lists The soundtrack features songs by various punk rock musicians such as The Plugz , Black Flag , the Circle Jerks , Suicidal Tendencies , Iggy Pop (with Steve Jones , Nigel Harrison , and Clem Burke as his backing band) and others. The film score
6732-762: The first science fiction novel . Some of the stories from The Arabian Nights , along with the 10th-century The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter and Ibn al-Nafis 's 13th-century Theologus Autodidactus , are also argued to contain elements of science fiction. Written during the Scientific Revolution and later the Age of Enlightenment are considered true science-fantasy books. Francis Bacon 's New Atlantis (1627), Johannes Kepler 's Somnium (1634), Athanasius Kircher 's Itinerarium extaticum (1656), Cyrano de Bergerac 's Comical History of
6831-646: The first true science fiction novel . Jules Verne and H.G. Wells are pivotal figures in the genre's development. In the 20th century, expanded with the introduction of space operas , dystopian literature, pulp magazines , and the Golden Age of Science Fiction . Science fiction has been called the "literature of ideas ", and continues to evolve, incorporating diverse voices and themes, influencing not just literature but film, TV, and culture at large. Besides providing entertainment it can also criticize present-day society and explore alternatives, and inspiration
6930-401: The future humanity evolves to be quite different from its present form and that the six sisters, along with many other future humans, had become more similar to the insectoid aliens, somewhat of a hybrid between hominids and worker ants or bees , in their attempt to fight them for survival. In Michael Crichton 's 1987 novel Sphere (and subsequent film adaptation of the same name ), what
7029-460: The future rather than aliens and that he believed those "beings" were not extraterrestrial, but rather "extratemporal" in nature. The article goes on linking Hoover's story to other alleged UFO sightings and UFO abduction accounts with similar statements and reports about aliens actually being "humans of the future who have found the technology to overcome the limitations of light speed and time travel paradoxes that keep present day humans from breaching
7128-486: The genre, it describes the history of humanity from the present onwards across two billion years. In 1937, John W. Campbell became editor of Astounding Science Fiction , an event that is sometimes considered the beginning of the Golden Age of Science Fiction , which was characterized by stories celebrating scientific achievement and progress . The "Golden Age" is often said to have ended in 1946, but sometimes
7227-477: The implications of the Internet and the expanding information universe, questions about biotechnology , nanotechnology , and post-scarcity societies . Recent trends and subgenres include steampunk , biopunk , and mundane science fiction . The first, or at least one of the first, recorded science fiction film is 1902's A Trip to the Moon , directed by French filmmaker Georges Méliès . It
7326-405: The interface between technology and society, and climate fiction , addressing environmental issues. Precedents for science fiction are argued to exist as far back as antiquity, but the modern genre primarily arose in the 19th and early 20th centuries when popular writers began looking to technological progress and speculation. Mary Shelley 's Frankenstein , written in 1818, is often credited as
7425-532: The intersection of other more concrete subgenres. Damon Knight summed up the difficulty, saying "Science fiction is what we point to when we say it." Forrest J Ackerman has been credited with first using the term "sci-fi" (analogous to the then-trendy " hi-fi ") in about 1954. The first known use in print was a description of Donovan's Brain by movie critic Jesse Zunser in January 1954. As science fiction entered popular culture , writers and fans active in
7524-528: The knowledge to recognize them as such, or have other names for them, such as " UFOs or ghosts or hobgoblins or fairies " and that he doesn't think " that the fact that we're not obviously being visited by time travelers shows that time travel is impossible. " The time-traveler hypothesis is considered pseudoscientific. American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has referred to the hypothesis as illogic. UFO skeptic Robert Sheaffer criticized Masters' work because it relies on "the belief that time travel
7623-415: The late 1940s and the 1950s are included. In 1942, Isaac Asimov started his Foundation series , which chronicles the rise and fall of galactic empires and introduced psychohistory . The series was later awarded a one-time Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series". Theodore Sturgeon 's More Than Human (1953) explored possible future human evolution . In 1957, Andromeda: A Space-Age Tale by
7722-503: The late 1980s, evolutionary biologist and historian of science Stephen Jay Gould put forth his famous thought experiment that if evolution was rewound and played back again it would likely take a very different course and humans would never evolve, which in addition to his declared view against human-oriented evolutionary teleonomy , helped shaped the established view that if intelligent extraterrestrials did exist, they would likely not resemble humans. Biologist Jack Cohen has assumed
7821-519: The movie are revealed to be humans from the future. In the fifteenth comic book of the Belgian series Blake and Mortimer , The Strange Encounter (2001), British physicist Philip Mortimer and Dr. Walt Kaufman from SUFOS (section of UFO Studies) investigate the corpse Major Lachlan Macquarrie disappeared in the Battle of Saratoga in 1777 after the appearance of three mysterious lights and reappeared in
7920-564: The mysterious clue found on Major Macquarrie, they hypothesize that the alien could be from Pluto only to instantly realize that his physiology is unsuitable to survive the planet's harsh environment. Later, the dwarf-like alien scientist Dr. Z'ong reveals to Mortimer that commander Basam Damdu , absolute dictator of the Yellow Empire from The Secret of the Swordfish , along with his army, including Zong himself, are humans from 8061,
8019-478: The novellas included in the first novel, Dragonflight , made McCaffrey the first woman to win a Hugo or Nebula Award . In 1968, Philip K. Dick 's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was published. It is the literary source of the Blade Runner movie franchise . In 1969, The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin was set on a planet in which the inhabitants have no fixed gender . It
8118-923: The past. Many authors and researchers have speculated about the future evolution of mankind. In 1888 English author H. G. Wells published his famous science-fiction novella The Time Machine featuring a future evolution of humans and is generally regarded as one of the first modern instances of both time travel and speculative evolution . Other writers on speculative evolution include Edgar Rice Burroughs , British philosopher and science fiction writer Olaf Stapledon with his 1930 " future history " novel Last and First Men , American author Kurt Vonnegut in Galápagos , British writer Stephen Baxter in Evolution , Turkish artist and author Cevdet Mehmet Kösemen in All Tomorrows and others. Climate change ,
8217-614: The play RUR , written by the Czech playwright Karel Čapek , broadcast live from the BBC's Alexandra Palace studios on 11 February 1938. The first popular science fiction program on American television was the children's adventure serial Captain Video and His Video Rangers , which ran from June 1949 to April 1955. The Twilight Zone (the original series), produced and narrated by Rod Serling , who also wrote or co-wrote most of
8316-507: The podcast It's Probably (not) Aliens , specifically debunking the concept as it was exposed on the ‘Time Travel’ episode of the Ancient Aliens series. When asked about the plausibility of UFOs being future humans, Queensland University quantum physicist Fabio Costa told Popular Mechanics : "In a sense, traveling back in time requires two doors, one in the future and one in the past. You can only travel back if someone has opened
8415-404: The present under the same circumstances, wearing a baldric inscribed with the words "Yellow King, 8061, Danger, Light, Plutonian, H, Poplar trees , Temple 1954". The same night of the autopsy, Mortimer fights an intruder wearing identical 18th century clothes and anachronistic items to Macquarrie. In the clash, the intruder falls and dies, revealing alien-like features under a human-suit. Based on
8514-737: The question ‘where do they come from?’ may be meaningless: they could come from a place in time. " Jacques Vallée , The Invisible College , p. 29 – 1975 It is unclear exactly when the hypothesis in its complete form was first proposed. Early versions surfaced between the '70s' pseudoscientific literature and the 90s internet culture , at times associated with the idioms "chrononaut UFOs", "time traveling humans" or simply "future humans". Examples include contributions by Jacques Vallée in his book The Invisible College , Radford University anthropology professor and former Forbes contributor David S. Anderson, Jenny Randles ' 2001 book Time Storms , James Herbert Brennan 's 1997 book Time-travel:
8613-561: The sci-fi film Official Denial (which aired in 1993 and released on video in May 1994, a few months before Penniston's claim surfaced in September of the same year), suggesting a Life imitates art situation, with the film causing Penniston's false memory . In February 2022, American futurist and science communicator Isaac Arthur discussed the odds against the time-traveler hypothesis on episode 23 Are Aliens Just Time Traveling Humans of
8712-618: The series gained popularity through syndication and extraordinary fan interest . It became a very popular and influential franchise with many films , television shows , novels , and other works and products. Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–1994) led to six additional live action Star Trek shows: Deep Space Nine (1993–1999), Voyager (1995–2001) , Enterprise (2001–2005), Discovery (2017–2024), Picard (2020–2023), and Strange New Worlds (2022–present), with more in some form of development. Time-traveler UFO hypothesis The time-traveler hypothesis
8811-411: The stone age after traveling around the earth faster than the speed of light. The astronauts have to contend with the suspicions and superstitions of local cave-dwellers, who regard their advanced technology as sorcery. The astronauts eventually repair their space capsule and return to 1967 with the prehistoric family they befriended. In Gregory Benford ’s 1980 novel Timescape , scientist Saul Shriffer,
8910-515: The term speculative fiction to be used instead for those that are more "serious" or "thoughtful". Some scholars assert that science fiction had its beginnings in ancient times , when the line between myth and fact was blurred. Written in the 2nd century CE by the satirist Lucian , A True Story contains many themes and tropes characteristic of modern science fiction, including travel to other worlds, extraterrestrial lifeforms , interplanetary warfare, and artificial life . Some consider it
9009-470: The time of writing technologically impossible, extrapolating from present-day science...[,]...or that deal with some form of speculative science-based conceit, such as a society (on Earth or another planet) that has developed in wholly different ways from our own." There is a tendency among science fiction enthusiasts as their own arbiter in deciding what exactly constitutes science fiction. David Seed says it may be more useful to talk about science fiction as
9108-454: The two interchangeably. Dr Masters has stated that he considers his extratempestrial model a subcategory of the interdimensional hypothesis. Indeed, from a more scientific standpoint – albeit controversially – within the framework of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics , temporal paradoxes could be avoided if the time traveler would move from one dimension , or parallel universe , or timeline, to another. Similarly to how
9207-408: Was an ordeal. Repo Man comes out of left field, has no big stars, didn't cost much, takes chances, dares to be unconventional, is funny, and works. There is a lesson here. Neil Gaiman reviewed Repo Man for Imagine magazine, and stated that "one of last year's cult movie successes was Repo Man [...] and it's not hard to see why. A lobotomised nuclear scientist is driving around Los Angeles in
9306-488: Was created by Tito Larriva , Steven Hufsteter, Charlie Quintana and Tony Marsico of The Plugz . Iggy Pop volunteered to write the title song after his manager viewed a screening of the film. Chris Bones saw the script on Cox's website and asked, and received, permission to adapt the script into a graphic novel . The book, Waldo's Hawaiian Holiday , was released in March 2008 by Gestalt Publishing . On December 3, 2008,
9405-399: Was deemed by critics to be one of the best films of 1984. It has since gained a cult following , particularly surrounding Cox's re-edited version of the film for television due to its deliberate inclusion of surreal overdubs to replace profanity . A stand-alone sequel based on an unproduced screenplay by Cox, Waldo's Hawaiian Holiday , was published as a graphic novel in 2008, while
9504-404: Was influential on later filmmakers , bringing a different kind of creativity and fantasy . Méliès's innovative editing and special effects techniques were widely imitated and became important elements of the cinematic medium . 1927's Metropolis , directed by Fritz Lang , is the first feature-length science fiction film. Though not well received in its time, it is now considered
9603-484: Was known for its embrace of a high degree of experimentation, both in form and in content, and a highbrow and self-consciously " literary " or " artistic " sensibility . In 1961, Solaris by Stanisław Lem was published in Poland . The novel dealt with the theme of human limitations as its characters attempted to study a seemingly intelligent ocean on a newly discovered planet . Lem's work anticipated
9702-408: Was the first of his three- decade -long planetary romance series of Barsoom novels , which were set on Mars and featured John Carter as the hero . These novels were predecessors to YA novels , and drew inspiration from European science fiction and American Western novels . In 1924, We by Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin , one of the first dystopian novels, was published. It describes
9801-465: Was thought to be an alien craft at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean turns out to be a ship built by humans from the future. In 1993, Syfy (at the time "Sci-Fi Channel") produced their first original TV film, Official Denial , directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith and written by Bryce Zabel , in which a man named Paul Corliss, played by Parker Stevenson , is abducted by aliens who at the end of
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