• 1874: Captain Nemo of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is revealed to be South Asian in the book Mysterious Island!

• 1913: Novelist Sax Rohmer hops on the Yellow Peril bandwagon with the introduction of his master criminal, Dr. Fu Manchu. Legions of imitations follow, with their inscrutable ways, mind control, and awesome dim sum. Side note: Fu Manchu’s only predecessor in the literary supervillain category is Professor Moriarity, whom Fu outdid in deviousness. Typical Asian.

• 1934: Flash Gordon debuts with the hero facing off against Ming the Merciless, a despot from from the planet Mongo, which lost its final “lia” in a tragic dumpling-related accident.

• 1954: Godzilla! Asians get a reputation for screaming and panicking at the first sign of a giant radioactive lizard. Takes Asia years to live it down.

• 1966: Star Trek’s navigator Mr. Sulu shows an Asian can be part of the crew. He won’t do much, really, but he’s there, disproving the notion that Asians can’t drive and occasionally asking the Great Bird of the Galaxy to, uh, bless someone’s planet. It won’t be until Voyager that we see another Asian crewman get lots of screentime (Keiko O’Brien don’t count, trekkers).

• 1977: Star Wars: The original trilogy was blasted for having only one Asian in it, an A-Wing pilot who screams, just before getting blown up, “There’s too many of them!” Irony or commentary? Meanwhile, everyone runs around swinging lightsabers in samurai style and spouting neo-Taoist fortune cookie babble.

• 1978: Battlestar Galactica premieres. No memorable Asians. Canceled after one season. Coincidence?

• 1982: Blade Runner. Posits an Asiafied L.A. where Harrison Ford slurps ramen on the street, electronic geisha billboards span skyscrapers, and little Asian men design cyborg eyeballs. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, you have to admit: It’s pretty cool.

• The 1980s and 1990s: Terminator, Alien, and Predator run amok in a largely Asian-free universe.

• 1985: Robotech. Totally mangled adaptation of a Japanese anime series, features hussy singer Lynn Minmei as extraneous distraction to the survival of humanity. Like an animated Battlestar Galactica with a better story (and cooler robots).

• 1987–1993: Robocop suggests Asians really want a piece of the action in Detroit (!), and will even go so far as to build a roboninja to take you down.

• 1987: Professor Toru Tanaka arrives to kick Arnold Schwarzenegger around in The Running Man. Dies a typically horrible death for a professor, but hey, they had a great buffet, we hear.

• 1993–1995: Rob Schneider actually gets work, appearing in both Demolition Man and Judge Dredd. Critics defied to tell the difference between the two.

• 1995: Johnny Mnemonic arrives. Gives Keanu Reeves a non-excellent taste of sci-fi, and provides some stock yakuza impersonators a gig to pay the rent. World saved by cyborg dolphin. Hints of The Matrix yet to come.

• 1997: Starship Troopers. Oh, come on. We all know the bugs are just a CGI stand-in for the Yellow Horde. Racists.

• 1995–1996: Space Above and Beyond features Joel de la Fuente in a great role as Ensign Paul Wang that depicts Asian Americans as fun, multidimensional, standup human beings who kick ass when faced with an alien threat. Trumps any character in the Star Trek canon. Nobody watches.

• 1999–2005: Star Wars: The second trilogy goes overboard with Chinese-style aliens speaking Engrish and dominating intergalactic trade, but makes up for it by revealing that badass bounty hunter Boba Fett and his father are Asian (well, Maori). Wait, but that means that clone troopers are also Asian, and implies we all look alike and prop up the Empire (boo! hiss!), happily taking our marching orders from asthmatics and people with British accents. Fuck you, Uncle George.

• 1999–2003: Futurama introduces Amy Wong, an intern studying engineering, who in the farflung future still has parents demanding to know why she hasn’t married and given them grandkids. Dates an alien, kicks butt in general.

• 1999–2003: In The Matrix’s Asian-influenced world, you can learn kung fu by downloading it to your brain. Whoah.

• 2000: Titan A.E. features a strong Japanese American female pilot who isn’t stereotypical in the least and reasonably multidimensional for an animated character. Nobody watches.

• 2000–2005: Andromeda presents Lexa Doig as a sexy hologram and robot who comes as part of the ship’s AI package. Cheap exploitation of Asian beauty denied. Doig gets a far better role in Jason X, a Friday the 13th movie set in space.

• 2001–2005: Hoshi Sato struggles to prove she’s not a poor man’s Sulu on Enterprise.

• 2002–2005: Firefly/Serenity imagines an incredible world of space travel and intrigue with Buffy-style humor that’s dominated by Asian culture, but not Asian people—except for bar girls and coolies.

• 2000–2006: X-Men keeps shoving Jubilee off-camera. Third film features many Asian mutants, all of whom get killed off by an ex-model having a bad day.

• 2003: Robot Stories: An award-winning, funny, sexy, intelligent film written and directed by an Asian American featuring Asian American actors and actresses premieres. Almost nobody watches.

• 2004: Bai Ling dresses up in fetish gear for a non-speaking role as a robot in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow then takes it all off for Playboy. George Lucas cuts her scenes from the new Star Wars series. Unfazed, Bai Ling makes nuisance of herself anyway.

• 2003–present: Battlestar Galactica (the new version) appears. Naturally, the Asian girl is a No. 8 model Cylon struggling to feel emotions. Sure, they all look alike and betray you at the drop of a hat, but that’s only because they’re robots.

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