Annalee Newitz

What Kinds of Stories Would You Like to See on io9?

You come to io9 for a lot of reasons. You want to escape with science fiction and fantasy, but you also want to learn about what’s possible in the real world using science and technology. You want to know what’s coming next, and what it will take to get there. What other stories do you…

The Dinosaur Waited Patiently on Its Wing Legs, Ready for Flight

Last week, researchers announced the discovery of the largest four-winged dinosaur ever found. Now the gifted paleo artist Emily Willoughby has created this lovely image of Changyuraptor yangi, where you can clearly see its “leg wings.” https://gizmodo.com/the-largest-dinosaur-capable-of-flight-had-four-wings-1605853474 Willoughby worked with the team that discovered the fossil to create this image. She writes on her tumblr:…

The Third Machine Age Could Destroy Us

There have been one and a half machine ages already. The first began in the nineteenth century, with machines taking over manual labor. Then in the twentieth century machines began taking over mental labor (they still are). When the third age comes, says one sociologist, we’re doomed. Photo by the American Psychological Association Sociologist Zeynep…

A charitable foundation has just donated $650 million to the Broad Institute, earmarked for psychiatric research. It is the largest such donation ever made, and is welcome in an era when we’re seeing a decline in funding for the study of mental illness.

The World Health Organization Wants to Legalize Sex Work and Drugs

Earlier this month, the World Health Organization (WHO) released guidelines for helping to prevent the spread of HIV in key populations. The group, which also monitors the globe for pandemic outbreaks, says we have to decriminalize sex work and drugs if we want to stop HIV. HIV can be controlled with medications and safer sex,…

Release the Spider Robots!

When you see the black widow model coming towards you, don’t be a freakin’ hero. Just run. Vitaly Bulgarov is a concept artist in California. You can see more of his incredible work on his website. Spotted on Nuthin’ But Mech

Which Dystopias Are Too Realistic to be Enjoyable?

Everybody likes to watch civilization crushed by flaming alien weapons from space, or eaten from the inside out by zombies. But sometimes a dystopia goes too far, getting so bleakly realistic that you can no longer enjoy the carnage. What dystopian stories were like that for you? Tell us your answers in comments below —…

Why Are Lego Washing Up on the Beaches of Cornwall?

The beaches at Cornwall in England are beautiful, majestic … and the repository for some seriously weird plastic garbage. For years, Lego pieces with nautical themes have been washing up on these shores. But why? Image of a beached Lego octopus via BBC Basically, the answer is that the deep currents in the Atlantic ocean…

The Writer of Sharknado 2 Answers Your Burning Science Questions

Thunder Levin is now a legend. The writer and director of dozens of movies, he finally achieved cult status when he wrote Sharknado. Now with Sharknado 2: The Second One coming to Syfy on July 30, we decided to ask him some hard scientific and philosophical questions about his series. Many of these questions were…

Fire Was Born Long Before the Sun

Those who believe the Sun gave birth to fire do not understand the true history of things. Fire filled the ether, streaming behind the wings of dragons and gods, long before a star could pull itself together and take the form of constant explosion. This incredible piece comes from a book of fantasy art by…

Scotland’s Mysterious Petroglyphs Are About to Become Visible Again

Created by people living 5,000 years ago in Scotland, the Cochno Stone is a beautiful example of ancient European “cup and ring” carving. These are created by making grooves and indentations in the rock, creating vast, swirling patterns that may have guided rivulets of liquid during ceremonies. The Cochno Stone was covered in dirt during…

​Mood Indigo Takes You Into a Twee Posthuman World

Michel Gondry sucked us into his surreal world with movies like Be Kind Rewind and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Now he’s back with Mood Indigo, an eye-popping fairy tale about a magic world where everything is mutable — except cancer. There’s a lot to love in this film, especially in the first half,…

The Future Does Not Have to Look Like the Present

This glowing sculpture captures a modest neighborhood at night, its windows glowing peacefully beneath rebar that sprouts like insane stick figures from the roofs. It’s also a work of profoundly melancholy science fiction. Called Qalandia 2087, it’s artist Wafa Hourani’s fantasy of a future version of the Palestinian refugee camp Qalandia. In the New York…

Why City-Dwellers Don’t Evacuate In Emergencies

After major urban disasters, there are always stories about the stubborn people who refused to evacuate. They’ve survived incredible danger, or worse, they haven’t survived at all. But this isn’t because they’re foolhardy. There are good reasons that people stay in their homes, to protect their property at all costs. Photo by Aaron Favila/AP Aurora…

This Man Wants to Genetically Engineer Trees to Save the World

Carbon fiber is one of the strongest and most resilient materials on the market, used in everything from car frames to body armor. It’s also incredibly expensive to make. But one plant biologist says that in fifty years, we’ll be growing it on trees. https://jalopnik.com/the-koenigsegg-one-1-is-swedens-280-mph-carbon-fiber-h-1532088783 This may sound like a weird assertion, but consider that…

Can we predict the future of evolution? One physicist believes that we can.Especially because many life forms have evolved in similar ways over the past couple of billion years.

Dorky, Snarky Artistic Interpretations of Famous Computer Viruses

In the fanciful “Computer Virus Catalogue,” you’ll find weird artistic interpretations of some of the most well-known computer viruses in history. They range from very literal to extremely surreal — and most capture the destructive, adolescent spirit that drives people to make viruses in the first place. (Mildly NSFW) Above, you can see Saïd Kinos‘…

Ukrainian Science Fiction Writers Predicted the Russian Invasion

Fedor Berezin is a former Soviet military officer and science fiction writer in Ukraine. Now, two of his novels — War 2010: The Ukrainian Frontand War 2011: Against NATO — have become reality. And he’s not the only Ukrainian SF author who imagined the Russian invasion before it happened. In a fascinating story by Cathy…

Mysterious 500 Million-Year-Old Predators Are the Ancestors of Spiders

Anomalocarids are one of the oldest families of animals on Earth, and they looked like nightmarish sea scorpions. But a new fossil discovery actually contains traces of their brain structure — and amazingly, their half-billion-year-old brains look a lot like an arthropod’s. Anomalocarid illustration by John Meszaros Though some anomalocarids may have been as big…

Can Network Theory Help Explain Epic Mythology?

It sounds like a crazy question. But two physicists took some time off from studying particles to study ancient epics, trying to answer classical humanities questions using network theory. In the chart above, enemies linked by red and allies by green. In a terrific story onThe Verge today, Veronique Greenwood talks to the physicists and…