R&B singer Chris Brown has been something of a pariah since the Rihanna assault incident earlier this year. He’s back with a new album, and if you take a look at the cover, it will come as no surprise to our readers that it caught my attention:

Yup, that’s Chris Brown with what appears to be a Terminator-esque metal endo-skeletal hand, not to mention the liquid metal T-1000 spelling the name of the album in the lower right hand corner.

But this Chris Brown/Terminator connection is only the beginning. Some investigation revealed more strange connections in the world of romantically connected R&B singers and science fiction movies with robots. Behold, a Venn Diagram:

See how it all comes together, after the jump:

If a man’s got talent and guts to buck society, he’s obviously above average. You want to hold on to him. You straighten him out and turn him into a plus value. Why throw him away? Do that enough and all you’ve got left are the sheep.

- Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man

I’m a seamstress? That’s great. I come out of cryo-prison and I’m Betsy-fucking-Ross.

- Sylvester Stallone, Demolition Man

Who Are They?

The Demolished Man – or rather, the protagonist of Alfred Bester’s 1951 novel of that name – is Ben Reich, owner of interplanetary conglomerate Monarch Enterprises. Monarch has steadily lost business for the last decade to Reich’s rival, the D’Courtney Cartel. Already plagued by insanity, in the form of waking nightmares where a Man With No Face tries to murder him, Reich hatches a plot to murder Craye D’Courtney.

The only catch: the Espers Guild, a professional association of telepaths that occupy all levels of industrial society. No one has successfully committed a murder for over seventy years. But Reich, a man of singular genius and willpower, finds a way around their powers.

The Demolition Man is John Spartan, a cop from 1996 Los Angeles who doesn’t play by the rules but still gets results. When his takedown of longtime nemesis Simon Phoenix results in a massive number of civilian casualties, he and Phoenix are sent to the same cryo-prison. There they remain in suspended animation until 2032, when Spartan is revived to take Phoenix out.

So, let’s talk about Howard Hawks’ The Thing From Another World, or rather THE THING, From Another World. (Thank you, Netflix!)

In many ways, it’s a stupid movie. It’s based on Who Goes There, a smart and deeply horrifying (at least to my 15-year-old self) novella by John W. Campbell, which you can read online for free, and probably illegally, here.

The basic concept (yes, spoilers ahead) is…