1) Lightning/Electricity

What they think it does: Grant superpowers (Powder, What Women Want, X-Files episode "D.P.O"); reanimate the dead (Frankenstein, The Chilling); grant sentience to a robot (Short Circuit).

What it actually does: Flash fry/electrocute the living shit out of you; power your ridiculous entertainment center.

What it might do in the future: The same thing. We pretty much got this one figured out.

The original sci-fi catch-all causative factor was electricity, usually in the form of lightning. Back before electricity was as mundane and ubiquitous as the air we breathe, it was considered a powerful, semi-magical force, which led to it being called on by lazy sci-fi writers to explain, well, everything. Is there anything lightning can't do? Even in the modern era, where there aren't many people unacquainted with the workings of electricity, lightning and other forms of electricity crop up as explanations for any number of bizarre phenomena with plausibility-straining frequency.

Verdict: It's long past due that lightning and/or electricity be abandoned as any sort of causative factor for anything but third degree burns and severe shocks.

2) Radiation

What they think it does: Cause enormous growth (Them!); awaken ancient monsters (Godzilla); grant superpowers (The Hulk, any number of other superheroes); reanimating the dead (Creature with the Atom Brain)

What it actually does: Makes you really, really sick (loss of hair/teeth/skin/etc.); kill you; generate energy and/or ginormous fucking explosions.

What it might do in the future: The same thing. No surprises here either. Maybe more power plants.

Just as people were getting used to this new-fangled electricity thing, along came the atomic age and its wonderful radiation to take its place. Pretty soon, our friend the atom was filling every gaping plot hole Hollywood sci-fi writers could dig even more efficiently than lightning had done a few short years ago. Now it seems, at best, self consciously kitschy and retro. At worst, it just seems lazy and stupid.

Verdict: The all-time great accomplishment of radiation in the world of entertainment has to be awakening/enraging Godzilla, because the idea of a giant, prehistoric monster that is also an anti-nuclear activist is just too fucking awesome. There's no way to top that. Radiation's real effects are terrifying enough - stick to those, movie people.

3) Toxic Waste

What they think it does: Raise the dead (Dance of the Dead, Hell's Ground); mutate people into hideous and/or superpowered monsters (Toxic Avenger); make people all melty (Robocop); grants superpowers (Modern Problems).

What it actually does: Gives you and your kids cancer; causes birth defects; makes your water smell and taste like death.

What it might do in the future: Continue to seep into the water supply.

Toxic waste comes in chemical, biological or nuclear flavors (or some combination of the three). Regardless of the variety, it is nasty stuff, without a doubt. Ingest or be exposed to it and your life expectancy will definitely take a hit. But even if you're living off of and bathing in the stuff, you're not going to get the kind of impressive effects filmmakers attribute to it. You will die horribly - but you won't develop strange powers (sorry, Toxic Avenger!).

Verdict: Toxic waste is often dealt with more-or-less realistically in weepy movies like Erin Brockovich, so there's even less reason it should be accepted as any sort of explanation for fantastical effects. There is probably an untapped genre of true horror based on the real effects of toxic waste, though...

4) Computers/The Internet

What the movies think it does: Control any machine ever built, frequently even if there's no interface between them (Hackers); spontaneously achieve sentience/free will and turn against their makers (Demon Seed, War Games, 2001); provide the answer for any question you ask it and/or magically extract information that isn't present in the original source (Midnight Madness, every CSI episode ever).

What they actually do: Store, process and display information fed into it; download porn and mp3s; aggravate old people.

What they might do in the future: Spontaneously generate intelligence; be built into everything, so maybe someday we can control anything with a few keystrokes (and the right password).

From the '50s to the '80s, when computers were all new-fangled and mysterious, it was marginally believable to have them doing all sorts of ridiculous things, even if most of those ideas were flimsy at best. Now, it's just retarded. Every man, woman and child in the U.S. is exposed to and probably uses computers on a daily basis, but writers still treat them as sci-fi magic boxes capable of doing anything from enhancing video to show things out of the camera's range to shutting down the entire electrical grid with a couple of keystrokes.

Verdict: Some of computers' more fantastic powers (intelligence, 100 percent interconnectivity) may actually come true -- someday. Movies and shows using these plot elements continue to be plausible, but stop making them happen using MacBooks and beat-up Pentium clones: we know what the computers we use every day are capable of. It's impressive but it isn't magic.

5) Genetic engineering

What the movies think it does: Cheaply, quickly and easily develop monstrous man/animal hybrids (Humanoids from the Deep, Ssssss, Hammerhead Shark Frenzy, Island of Dr. Moreau); resurrect the dinosaurs (Jurassic Park); grant superpowers (Spider-Man the movie).

What it actually does: Create shinier tomatoes that can be patented; replace your childhood pet with an exact (or possibly slightly defective) duplicate for the cost of a small yacht; the occasional glow-in-the-dark tropical fish; grow an ear on a mouse's back; piss off European consumers.

What it might do in the future: Resurrect extinct animals; clone your pets ever more cheaply; let parents pick their kids' sex, IQ and eye color; eliminate diseases.

In real life, genetic engineering is used primarily to create drought and disease resistant crops, which is unspeakably dull. Sure, it does get the occasional chance to grow a human ear on a mouse's back, but mostly it's just another way for very large corporations to make more money. In the movies it's more of a catch all for turning any living thing into any other living thing, real or imagined, or hybrid of any two living things - basically creating monsters and/or warning us not to mess with mother nature.

Verdict: It seems unlikely that genetic engineering is going to be used to create monsters, as awesome as that would be. It's probably time to shift this meme away from monster-movie matinees and SciFi channel movies of the week and toward snooty think-pieces like Gattaca as genetic engineering's unlimited promise continues to be fulfilled in the most uninteresting ways possible.

6) Nanotechnology

What they think it does: Allow cars using it to change shape and self-repair (the new Knight Rider); become self-aware and take over the ship (Star Trek: TNG Nanite episode).

What it really does: No one is really sure yet. Not much at the moment besides get a certain subset of scientists and nerdy futurists excited.

What it might do in the future: Deliver medicines; make superstrong materials; create self-repairing objects; grant us immortality; become sentient and take over the ship/world.

The newest sci-fi flavor of the week is nanotechnology - tiny little machines that can go anywhere, and purportedly, do anything. Already it's been used to death in written fiction (Greg Bear, Michael Crichton, etc.) and more and more it is creeping into TV and the movies. Since no one has any idea what it actually might be used for, it's everyone's best friend - for now.

Verdict: You're okay for now, keep at it. Don't over do it and kill the goose that is laying the golden eggs, though. And when real nanotech starts rolling out, pay attention so you don't look quite so ridiculous as in some of these other cases.