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Whether you're a machinist on a tylium ship or a working-class superhero in Chicago, there are three things you deserve: a fair wage, a safe working environment and regular breaks (so you can read Blastr, of course). That's not always how it goes in the world of science fiction, where humans will happily enslave primates just so they don't have to vacuum and alien gods will in turn happily enslave humans.

If there's one thing we've learned about sci-fi, it's that no futurist or fantasist can imagine a world where humans don't blow stuff up for fun. Fireworks are the original eye candy, the special effects that existed before filmmakers knew they even needed regular effects.

This 234th Independence Day, we commemorate America's greatest excuse to set the sky ablaze with this list of the best fireworks displays in sci-fi, horror and fantasy films (with video when available).

We couldn't let Bruce Campbell's birthday pass by without giving a shout-out to the star of The Evil Dead and Bubba Ho-Tep—who also happens to have the greatest chin in show business!

The year was 1990. The first President George Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev were ending the Cold War, while South Africa was ending apartheid. It was the year of Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby" and MC Hammer's "U Can't Touch This," and in the theaters, Home Alone was the top-grossing film of the year.

But Total Recall, which opened June 1, ruled the summer.

What elements made The Empire Strikes Back a classic? After 30 years (30 years exactly, because Star Wars: Episode V opened May 21, 1980), we finally know—thanks to The Periodic Table of The Empire Strikes Back!

As each day passes, the attempts to stop the gushing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico seem more and more preposterous. They've set the oil on fire. They've lowered a giant cement box over the leak. Who knows? Next, they might suck the Mississippi River into a Super Soaker to flush all the goo away from the shore. It's almost as if someone's been turning to sci-fi for ideas. After all, the fateful drilling rig was named "Deepwater Horizon." What—did Sam Neill design it?

Usually, it's the other way around: For more than half a century, writers and filmmakers have drawn inspiration from oil, creating monsters that hunger for it and monsters that are made from it. Here are 15 sci-fi movies, TV shows and propaganda cartoons about the perils of petroleum.