Rock has Muse knocking out sci-fi rock operas. Dance has Daft Punk - the most famous robot duo since C3P0 and R2D2. Pop had the Carpenters' "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft" and Bowie's "Space Oddity". But when will hip-hop finally get it on with sci-fi? When will these two sexy, popular, creative genres stop this incessant flirtation and get it on?

With all the spliffs rolled over the years by some hip-hop greats you'd imagine we'd have been sent on a few more "intergalactic, planetary" journeys by now. Where's our rhyming visionary who explores the unreal, while somehow keeping it real, like the best sci-fi manages to do?

Can you imagine the videos if hip-hop and sci-fi ever truly mind-melded? The ghetto could be reimagined as District 9 - recognizable but with a twist that makes you think. But artists could also imagine a utopian, inspirational vision. Why limit a ho to one booty? Getting high might be good for you, and free. Skateboards could hover and cars bounce on air. Graffiti could be tagged in 3D space, liberating street art from the street itself. Bitches might be goddesses in the future, all manner of dope shit.

If it's any consolation, country music isn't exactly bursting at the seams with epic sci-fi double-albums either, although, as with safe cosmetic surgery in pill-form, I can't wait.

Until we find our hip-hop Carl Sagan or Arthur C. Clarke we have the dedicated amateurs around the world who find inspiration in science, whether science fiction or science fact, and then post the results, no matter how earthbound, on Youtube. Brave pioneers, we salute you.



CRANK DAT SCIENCE FICTION...

America's SyFy channel has seen the future, recruiting the "stars" of their TV movie "Sand Serpents" to record a full rap and promo video. The results were suitably b-grade. If only Coolio had done this when he starred in the channel's "Pterodactyl" flick...






Roughly 12 million views on Youtube prove that the force was indeed strong with Jason Brannon's Star Wars Gangsta Raps...






The Anomalies crew gets crunk on pre-existing sci-fi movies, splicing rap and dialogue they way scientists splice genes. Unlike Seth Brundle the  results aren't always supa Fly, but therein lies the charm...









As if a million voices cried out at once and were suddenly silenced by DJ Yoda to make room for a fat beat...






American rapper Kool Keith launched himself into the outer limits in '96 by creating the character of Dr. Octagon, an extraterrestrial time traveling gynecologist and surgeon from the planet Jupiter. Sadly, legal wranglings with his earth based record label got up in his flow, but in 2006 he reappeared, as if from the future, as Mr. Nogatco with the album Nogatco Rd., featuring tracks such as "Bionic Fuse, "No Head at All", "Hello Space Man", "Celestial", and this space oddity...






SCIENCE FACT, Y'ALL...

Carl Sagan (ft. Stephen Hawking on backup) gets pimped by Melodysheep whose Symphony of Science project "aims to spread scientific knowledge and philosophy through musical remixes," to the tune of 3 million Youtube views for "A Glorious Dawn" alone...

Buzz Aldrin, the second human to set foot on the moon, assumed the rap name "Doc Rendezvous" and took rap to new heights (okay, lows) with "Rocket Experience", jettisoning a portion of the proceeds to the ShareSpace Foundation, "to further benefit and support the work of the National Space Society, the Planetary Society and the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation." Grandfather Flash he ain't, but at least he wasn't spending the proceeds on Bentleys...




In 2008, 28 year old London rapper Jonathan Chase, who uses hip-hop to explain science, was commissioned by NASA to write the "Astrobiology Rap", which he was then invited to perform in front of Nobel Prize winners at the prestigious Royal Society. He stormed it but his bouncers were arrested after a turf war descended into a brawl(okay, I lied about that last bit)...






Does any rapper have a crib as impressive as the subterranean Hadron Collider lair below the French/Swiss border? Probably not...