Mark your calendar: Thirteen sci-fi dates that tell us to fear the future

'Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles' - April 21, 2011: Skynet becomes self-aware and begins “Judgement Day,” its nuclear attack on and enslavement of the human race, unless Sarah Connor and company can stop it. (Cathy Kanaly/Fox Broadcasting Co.)

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'The X-Files' - Dec. 22, 2012: Aliens colonize the earth, as discovered by Fox Mulder in the show’s final episodes. Mulder sneaks into an intelligence station at the Mount Weather military complex, finds a file marked “End Game" and the date Dec. 22, 2012, but has to fight off a super-soldier and doesn’t get the chance to read it. Later, the cigarette-smoking man fills in the blanks for the supernatural sleuths.

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'The Postman' - 2013: We're back to snail mail after civilization has nearly destroyed itself in war. A drifter finds a mailbag and a postal uniform and uses his new-found pony express to start an uprising, taking down the fascist Holnists and restoring the United States government. (Ben Glass/Warner Bros./Reuters)

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'Back to the Future, Part 2' - Oct. 21, 2015: We get hoverboards! Doctor Emmett Brown and Marty McFly arrive in the DeLorean time machine, straight from 1985, in an attempt to save Marty’s future kids from lives of crime. Marty immediately gets in a fist fight with bully Biff Tannen's cyber-grandson, Griff, but escapes after an awesome hoverboard chase. (Universal City Studios, Inc.)

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'Blade Runner' - Nov. 2019: Human clones are on the loose. Ex-LA cop Rick Deckard gets pulled out of retirement to hunt down a handful of escaped replicants - humanoids created by corporations to do unwanted off-world jobs - who hijacked a spaceship to return to earth and murder their makers at the Tyrrell Corporation. (The Blade Runner Partnership)

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'Soylent Green' - 2022: Eat your neighbors. NYPD Detective Robert Thorn investigates the murder of the president of Soylent, the company that produces processed rations in an overpopulated Earth, now void of natural foods. He finds himself marked for assassination by government when he gets too close to discovering Soylent’s secret ingredient. (Los Angeles Times file photo)

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'Children of Men' - Hide your kids. When humans have become infertile, activist-turned-bureaucrat Theo Faron is recruited by an anti-establishment group to protect the first woman to become pregnant in 18 years. (Jaap Buitendijk/Universal Studios)

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'Demolition Man' - Aug. 3, 2032: Evil crime lord Simon Phoenix escapes from cryo-prison during a parole hearing and lets loose on the nonviolent future city San Angeles. SAPD thaws Phoenix’s old nemesis John Spartan, a cop who was frozen for involuntary manslaughter in 1996, to catch him. Freezing, decapitation and explosions ensue. (Warner Bros.)

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'Star Trek: First Contact' - April 5, 2063: Humans make first contact with an alien race - the Vulcans - after Zefram Cochrane invents the warp drive, allowing for faster-than-light travel to the stars. (Elliott Marks/Paramount Pictures)

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'Avatar' - Aug. 18, 2154: Marine Jake Sully leads the united Na’vi clans in an epic battle against their would-be exterminators in U.S. military. They successfully fight bombs with arrows, making psychedelic Pandora safe for future generations of sexy, pony-tailed smurfs. (Twentieth Century Fox)

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'Firefly' - May 2511: Centuries after humans have fled earth and colonized other worlds, the border planets’ bid to secede from the big bad Alliance is squashed. Sergeant Malcolm Reynolds and Corporal Zoe Alleyne make a last stand for the Independents in the Battle of Serenity Valley. (Michael Lavine/Fox Broadcasting Co.)

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