The first – and for many, the best – remains Darren Lynn Bousman’s labor of love Repo: The Genetic Opera.

If the proposed storyline rings a bell, that’s because we have had at least two competing versions of this future shock idea in the last three years. Armed with surgical tools and some amount of meatball skill, they take back what is no longer rightfully yours, ending your existence while maintaining the social order – that is, until the repossessor inadvertently becomes the repossessed. Failure to make your monthly payment, however, brings the Repo Men to your door. If you pay in full, the new part is yours. Massive corporate conglomerates itching to make a buck off the bad luck of its suffering consumers will set up full service clinics, including mandatory installment plan financing – a mortgage for your medical needs, so to speak – in order to prolong your miserable life. Organs, limbs…even memories can be uploaded, refashioned, and in many cases, reinterpreted for the client’s needs. Like the old joke goes – stop me if you’ve heard this one before: in the not too distant future, science will perfect the artificial biological replacement.

Repo the genetic opera repo men