Charlie Jane Anders

Evil Needs A Sperm Donor

I can’t believe I left Lady Pervertum out of my list of the greatest dominatrixes in science fiction history. She’s the villain of Star Troopers, aka The Baron Against The Demons, a Spanish post-apocalyptic epic which came out a couple of years ago. It’s the late 21st century, and only the Catholic church and its…

Pop Star Goes Cyberwoman

Not too long after Janet Jackson went for the Tron gear, Janet-wannabe Ciara just sported this Barbarella-inspired getup for her new music video, “Go Girl.” Complete with metal bra and weird cyber-girdle. I like the Drill Thrall look, but I’m not sure how many quatloos I would put on her. And the reaction over at…

Time Traveling And Falling In Love — For Jesus

Christian romance is one of the fastest growing book genres today, and Christian science fiction is an up-and-comer. So why not combine them? The cutting edge in Christian publishing may well be books about time-travelers who fall in love — and find Jesus along the way. We talked to Christian publisher Sheaf House’s Joan Shoup…

Scientists Pick The Greatest Books And Movies Of All Time

At last, the most important works of science fiction are being determined scientifically. New Scientist magazine is doing a special science fiction issue on Nov. 15, and the magazine is polling its science-boffin readers as to the greatest books and movies in the genre. The magazine’s own staff have already voted, and you might not…

What Are They Saying In This Photo From Next Week’s Knight Rider?

In this morning’s spoiler roundup, we posted this bizarre image from next week’s Knight Rider episode and asked for your caption ideas. What’s really going on here? You responded with a bunch of great suggestions, some of which are probably better than the actual script of the episode, “Don’t Stop The Knight.” Now it’s time…

From The Department Of Horrendous Ideas: The Worst Smallville Clone Imaginable

The CW is working on a show to replace Smallville if the young-Superman soap opera ends this year. The Graysons will focus on Dick Grayson before he became Robin and joined up with Bruce Wayne. In other words, it’ll be about a kid hanging out at the circus with his acrobat parents, who are doomed…

What If Everybody In Science Fiction Really Was Related?

It all started when Sarah Connor had a salty affair with the Master, the evil renegade time traveler from a lost civilization. They both knew it would never last: for one thing, the Master kept trying to hypnotize Sarah into having a threesome with one of the liquid-metal Terminators he’d “reprogrammed.” But worse, the Master…

Can You Meet The io9 Spoiler Photo Caption Challenge?

A bit of a light spoiler day today, but there are still some pretty awesome bits of news. The director of the movie adaptation of Jose Saramago’s classic novel Blindness talks a bit about the movie’s themes, and there are new pics from Quarantine. Plus some new hints about Lost, and a telltale set pic…

Inside Every Street Girl, There’s Really A Psychopathic Robot From The Future

It’s funny how easily robot-apocalypse trauma can look like runaway street girl trauma to a trained social worker. Last night’s Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was back to making the funny juxtapositions between the fucked up stuff in our everyday lives and the supreme fuckage of the robo-slaughter to come. Along the way, it yielded…

Your Chance To Leave Earth With NASA’s Greatest Astronauts

The amazing Discovery Channel series When We Left Earth comes out on DVD and Blu-Ray today, and it’s a mindblowing look at four decades of off-world exploration. Simultaneously grand and intimate, the series lets you glimpse just how harrowing and freaky an astronaut’s life could be back during the peak of the space race. We’ve…

Did A Brazilian Cult Novel Predict Hillary, Barack and Sarah?

A 1926 Brazilian science fiction novel about a U.S. presidential election in which a black man and a white woman play major roles has taken on new prominence during the 2008 campaign, thanks to Barack Obama. Monteiro Lobato’s O Presidente Negro takes place in the year 2228, in a dystopian future U.S. where eugenics has…

Science Fiction Was Made For Radio, BBC Says

BBC Radio is launching a huge science fiction “drama season” that will span three stations in the month of March: Radio 3, Radio 4, and BBC 7. Audio plays, including adaptations of Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous With Rama and Iain M. Banks’ State Of The Art (adapted by Paul Cornell), will air during Radio 3’s…

It’s Great To Be A Superhero Star

Kirsten Dunst told MTV she’s “in” for Spider-Man 4 and 5, but then she turned a bit more coy when the site asked if she’d actually signed anything. In other superhero actor news, George Clooney told the Sun newspaper that the bomb-tastic Batman And Robin was great for him: “With hindsight it’s easy to look…

Feeling Toasty Yet? You Will Soon

Here’s a dried-out lake in the Chaco region of Paraguay, 400 km north of Asuncion. The region has been experiencing an unprecedented drought that’s lasted months, and the government has declared a State of Emergency. (That’s a dead cow in the background.) Perhaps not coincidentally, yesterday the Australia-based Global Carbon project said our global carbon…

Weirdest Developments On Lost, “Earth Stood Still,” Heroes And BSG

This morning’s spoilers include some new hints for Day The Earth Stood Still, City Of Ember and Repo! The Genetic Opera. Also, you may be surprised at who’s coming back on Lost — and how they’re coming back. A new leak includes the weirdest idea about that Battlestar cliffhanger yet. Plus there are new hints…

12 Coolest Deaths In Science Fiction History

Click to viewIt’s never great to watch a beloved science fiction hero die – but sometimes a memorable heroic death can help turn a science fiction story into a real epic. And some science fiction characters are unforgettable and bad-ass precisely because they died in a memorable way. Here’s our list of the dozen greatest…

The Void Squid’s Middle Eye Of Death Never Blinks

I love this piece of weird Photoshop art by Lenny Montana. “Here’s Lookin’ Atcha!” is a “scifi inspired spiral of doom,” featuring a “middle eye of death” and “tentacles of futility!!” The really creepy part, though? The eye is a picture of Montana’s actual eyeball. The rest is entirely Photoshopped. [Lenny Montana on Flickr]

Stop Blade Runner 2 Before It Starts!

When I first saw the words “Blade Runner 2,” I imagined it was somebody’s zany comedy pitch, along the lines of Hamlet 2. I pictured Steve Coogan running around, exploding in a creative frenzy as he figures out the space-time warp that could bring back Roy Batty — maybe there could be a whole half-hour…

Put On Your Thinking Stetson And Write About Women Of The Space West

Got any thoughts on the portrayal of women in space Westerns? Post a blog post and then submit it to the 22nd Carnival Of Feminist Science Fiction, the latest in a series of collections of blog posts and essays on feminist SF topics. The latest version will be posted at the SpaceWesterns.com Sideshow, and editor…

Jason Stoddard was one of the originators of this whole “science fiction should be more happy” meme, and now he’s posted a manifesto about it. Twenty Epics co-editor David Moles summarizes it as “The problem with contemporary science fiction is that it doesn’t love capitalism enough.” (To quote Stoddard, “Why can’t we include characters who…