Yoyodyne is the name of a number of companies, both fictional and real.
Literary
Yoyodyne was introduced as a fictional defense contractor in
Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. ( , ; born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, genres and themes, including history, music, scie ...
's '' V.'' (1963) and featured prominently in his novel '' The Crying of Lot 49'' (1966). Described in the latter book as "a giant of the aerospace industry," Yoyodyne was founded by
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
veteran Clayton "Bloody" Chiclitz. The company has a large manufacturing plant in the fictional town of San Narciso,
California
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
. The name is reminiscent of several real high-tech companies, including the Gyrodyne Company of America, Teledyne and Teradyne, all of which were founded a few years before Pynchon wrote ''The Crying of Lot 49'', and
Rocketdyne
Rocketdyne was an American rocket engine design and production company headquartered in Canoga Park, in the western San Fernando Valley of suburban Los Angeles, in southern California.
The Rocketdyne Division was founded by North American Avia ...
, an aerospace company that manufactured, among other things,
propulsion systems
Propulsion is the generation of force by any combination of pushing or pulling to modify the translational motion of an object, which is typically a rigid body (or an articulated rigid body) but may also concern a fluid. The term is derived from ...
force
In physics, a force is an influence that can change the motion of an object. A force can cause an object with mass to change its velocity (e.g. moving from a state of rest), i.e., to accelerate. Force can also be described intuitively as a ...
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
word ''dynamis'', meaning "power" or "force".
Other fictional uses
* The 1984 film '' The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension'' used the name Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems for a defense contractor whose corporate offices feature the sign, "The future begins tomorrow". Yoyodyne is a front for a group of red Lectroid aliens, all with the first name
John
John is a common English name and surname:
* John (given name)
* John (surname)
John may also refer to:
New Testament
Works
* Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John
* First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John
* Secon ...
, that landed in New Jersey in 1938, using the panic created by
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter, known for his innovative work in film, radio and theatre. He is considered to be among the greatest and most influential f ...
' '' War of the Worlds'' radio play as cover.
* Numerous references in the ''
Star Trek
''Star Trek'' is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the eponymous 1960s television series and quickly became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. The franchise has expanded into vari ...
'' series, such as control panels and dedication plaques, indicate that parts of Federation starships were manufactured by Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems or YPS. Often, these notices are too small to be visible on a television screen, or can only be observed by freeze-framing.
* Yoyodyne is a client of the law firm Wolfram & Hart on the television series ''
Angel
In various theistic religious traditions an angel is a supernatural spiritual being who serves God.
Abrahamic religions often depict angels as benevolent celestial intermediaries between God (or Heaven) and humanity. Other roles ...
'' at the beginning in the 9th episode of the 5th season titled "Harm's Way".
* The central bus station on the television series '' The John Larroquette Show'' was constructed by Yoyodyne, one of the many Pynchon references on the series.
*
Tim Powers
Timothy Thomas Powers (born February 29, 1952) is an American science fiction and fantasy author. Powers has won the World Fantasy Award twice for his critically acclaimed novels '' Last Call'' and ''Declare''. His 1987 novel ''On Stranger Tide ...
' fantasy novel ''
Last Call
In a Bar (establishment), bar, a last call (last orders) is an Wiktionary:announcement, announcement made shortly before the bar closes for the night, informing patrons of their last chance to buy alcoholic beverages. There are various means to ...
'' mentions Yoyodyne as a company in the
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world ...
area that "manufactures ... stuff".
* In the German miniature wargame ''Spacelords'', House Yoyodyne is a faction with a culture almost identical to that of
feudal
Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was the combination of the legal, economic, military, cultural and political customs that flourished in medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structur ...
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...
.
* In
Clifford Stoll
Clifford Paul "Cliff" Stoll (born June 4, 1950) is an American astronomer, author and teacher.
He is best known for his investigation in 1986, while working as a systems administrator at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, that led to th ...
's '' The Cuckoo's Egg'', a fictional tape drive manufactured by Yoyodyne Systems is mentioned in passing as an example ("a Foobar model 37 computer, and we're trying to hook up a Yoyodyne tape to it").
* A company named Yoyodyne is briefly mentioned in the HBO series ''
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo Cou ...
'' as a nod to the GNU General Public License. It appears to be a technology enterprise of some sort located in San Francisco.
* In the novel ''
Hardwired
Hardwire or hardwired may refer to:
* Electrical wiring
*Hardwired control unit, a part of a computer's central processing unit
*In computer programming, a kludge to temporarily or quickly fix a problem
* Wired communication
In arts and entertai ...
'' by Walter Jon Williams, Yoyodyne is the parent company of the manufacturer of a fictional type of computer core made of liquid crystal.
* The 1990 film '' The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter'' used the name Yoyodyne Corp. on a spray-paint can label, wished for by the main character.
Technical uses
In June 1991 version 2 of the open-source license
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general ...
used the fictional company name "Yoyodyne, Inc." as an example grantor of the license.
Many technical works, such as Cricket Liu's '' DNS and
BIND
BIND () is a suite of software for interacting with the Domain Name System (DNS). Its most prominent component, named (pronounced ''name-dee'': , short for ''name daemon''), performs both of the main DNS server roles, acting as an authoritative ...
'' ( O'Reilly), Per Cederqvist's ''Version Management with CVS'', Jesse Vincent's ''RT Essentials'' (O'Reilly), and the
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general ...
version 2 use Yoyodyne as a company name in their examples. The Internet domain name www.yoyodyne.com was allocated by Internet software designer TGV Inc. as a "fake" domain name for use in DNS configuration examples.
Yoyodyne was an
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...
Yahoo!
Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Mana ...