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using it for personal gain, and when he realized how much trouble it could cause, he had Marty destroy it.

Then he showed up in a giant, neon, flying steam engine time machine, but hey, that doesn't make him a hypocrite, right? Anyway, the important thing is that nine of ten children of the 80s not only know him, but love him.

7) Big Brother

Big Brother is probably the scariest science fiction villain of all time, and didn't even need to be real in his own context to be terrifying. He is representative, in George Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty Four,' of the totalitarian use of the Panopticon (the mechanism that lets you know you're being watched but never when), and the general use of fear tactics, mindless adoration, and other emotional manipulations that keep a populace controlled.

Nothing's scarier than a loss of personal freedom to a power that's only looking out for number one. Orwell's successful demonstration of the terror of totalitarianism has kept Big Brother in the minds of the politically and literary savvy for decades.

8) HAL 9000

"What are you doing, Dave?" This question, especially if asked in a monotone voice, is assuredly familiar to most people. The answer - that Dave was disconnecting HAL (the Heuristically programmed Algorithmic Computer of '2001: A Space Odyssey'), in essence, killing him - may not be. Nor may be the knowledge of where the quote came from.

Regardless, HAL, and his Panopticon style similar to that of Big Brother, has infiltrated public consciousness with the above, single, popular line.

9) Marvin the Paranoid Android

Of all the characters from Douglas Adams' classic 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' trilogy of four, Marvin stands out the most. He's an iconic robot with a smorgasbord of complexes, infinitely bored because his brain is so powerful that its full capacity can't be used. Thus he is afflicted with chronic depression. With a mind many times better than that of a human, he can solve every problem in the universe but that of his own misery.

He's the HHGTTG character I chose for this list because of his infiltration of other mediums of pop culture, most notably the inspiration he provided for Radiohead's innovative 1997 hit, 'Paranoid Android.'

10) Serenity

Serenity almost didn't make it into the top ten because she's a space ship, rather than a person. Joss Whedon, the creator of the sci-fi western television show, Firefly, intended Serenity to be the tenth main character of the show all along. The human characters refer to

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