NP: Tunguska SciFi

[David Payne]

>From Wired.com (http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/16-06/st_tunguska):

Sci-Fi Solves 100-Year-Old Siberia Mystery With Apocalyptic Plotlines

Tunguska Basin, Siberia — Around 7 am on June 30, 1908, something fell out of the sky and exploded, flattening at least 60 million trees. By some estimates, the blast was a thousand times more powerful than the Hiroshima A-bomb. Leading scientific hypotheses attribute the damage to a relatively small asteroid or comet. Boooooring. Luckily, writers, comic book artists, and gamemakers have come up with more satisfying explanations. Over the past century, dozens of apocalyptic plotlines have risen from the enigmatic ashes of the charred Tunguska pines. These four win for creativity.

X-Files
Fox Mulder traces the contents of a mysterious diplomatic pouch from Russia (containing an ancient rock) and finds the truth is (way) out there — in Siberia. Gulag prisoners are mining an alien asteroid for a substance it contains, an oil that naturally coagulates into infectious parasites.

Callahan's Key
Spider Robinson's novel adopts the theory that Nikola Tesla accidentally blew up Tunguska while experimenting with a "Death Ray." Eighty-one years later, his research notes have fallen into government hands, and an (immortal) Tesla is attempting to rescue the universe from obliteration.

Ultimate Galactus Trilogy
In Marvel Comics' telling, a benevolent alien android named The Vision is coming to warn earthlings of the dreaded Eater of Worlds when his ship plummets into Siberia. The Soviets amputate The Vision's body parts, using them to create a race of super-soldiers kept hidden for years in a bunker near Tunguska.

Destroy All Humans! 2
After crash-landing in Siberia, Blisk aliens possessed human bodies and headed west. By the 1960s, they've infiltrated society and are secretly toiling to turn Earth into a radioactive wasteland. Xbox and PlayStation 2 gamers must travel to Tunguska and the moon to defeat Blisk leaders and save the day!

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