However, what the film Enemy Mine did was to bring this trope to science fiction in a way that was both startlingly new and paradoxically timeless. Based on a 1979 novella of the same name by Barry B. Longyear, Enemy Mine remains, four decades later, a fantastically simple sci-fi film. Though just three years later, the movie version of Alien Nation would also feature an extraterrestrial in which the male of the species gets pregnant. (The novella version of “Enemy Mine” won best novella at the 1980 Hugo Awards.) For all the versions of this story that have existed, and will exist again in various science fiction worlds, Enemy Mine will also be the platonic ideal and a true classic.