The 23 Greatest Sci-Fi Songs of All Time

16. They Might Be Giants – “The Ballad of Davy Crockett (in Outer Space)”
Album: Here Comes Science
Starring: Davy Crockett
Synopsis: The American hero is reborn in outerspace where he hunts criminals before they’ve actually committed their crimes thanks to an expertise in regards to the fabric of time. A robot stowaway tries to sabotage his spacecraft, but our protagonist reprograms him into a pet dog.

15. Modest Mouse – “Space Travel is Boring”
Album: This Is A Long Drive For Someone With Nothing To Think About
Starring: Unnamed rocketeer
Synopsis: A woman wins a coach ticket to a distant moon on an otherwise empty spacecraft and quickly goes insane.

14. Radiohead – “Subterranean Homesick Alien”
Album: OK Computer
Starring: Unnamed narrator
Synopsis: As bemused aliens hover over earth looking down on its uptight inhabitants and videotaping them for the folks back home, our narrator wishes he could join them, though he realizes that his apprehensive friends would doubt the veracity of stories of space travel.

13. Honeydogs – “10,000 Years”
Album: 10,000 Years
Starring: Vadikyn
Synopsis: During an apocalyptic war, a testtube baby is stolen by a clairvoyant woman and raised in horrific circumstances. After a life of petty crime, he becomes a war hero and then a martyr and savior, donating his engineered body to science.

12. Rush – “2112”
Album: __
Starring: The priests of the Temples of Syrinx
Synopsis: A religious ruling class commands absolute authority over all arts and communication in the early 22nd century.

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11. Sufjan Stevens – “Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland”
Album: Illinois
Starring: A visitor
Synopsis: An apparent alien space crash results with an alien incarnated in the form of three stars. It heads to the small Illinois town near the Missouri border and St. Louis, where it causes quite a stir.

10. Elvis Costello – “My Science Fiction Twin”
Album: Brutal Youth
Starring: His science fiction twin
Synopsis: The narrator is upstaged by his geeky identical twin brother, who surprises everyone marrying a beautiful blonde wife, to whom he’s unfaithful (both with his secretary and possibly an unspecified number of 50-foot-tall women). He also has the power of invisibility, which he uses to humiliate the narrator, who at this point is becoming somewhat unreliable. Eventually the twin becomes trapped in a parallel dimension, provoking some level of sympathy in the narrator who’s still fascinated by those 50-foot-tall women.

9. The Misfits – “Astro Zombies”
Starring: Astro Zombies
Synopsis: Because of some unspecified personal vendetta against you, the evil narrator has unleashed a race of undead aliens to kill every man, woman and child on the planet. He would like to make it clear that this is now his sole purpose for living, and that it also may be your fault. And his hand is on fire.