Charlie Jane Anders

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10 TV Season Finales That Were Still Being Written At The Last Minute

We just watched a slew of season finales, ranging from the wonderful to the baffling. Every May, TV shows try to leave us wanting more. But sometimes, a season’s big ending is up in the air until you see it, with writers frantically crafting new scripts. Here are 10 finales that were being written right…

Isa Looks Way More Ambitious Than Your Average Syfy Movie

Syfy is best known for showing original films like Mansquito, Sharktopus and Sharknado… so it’s kind of an odd surprise to see the trailer for Isa, a dreamlike and tense movie airing on Syfy on June 11. In which a girl seems to have a mysterious brain implant and she can make things… happen. Isa…

Tor.Com Starts Its Own Book Imprint!

If you’ve been enjoying the stories and novellettes over at Tor.com, then you’ll be stoked to hear that Tor.com is starting its own book imprint, focusing on e-books and print-on-demand volumes. This means a lot more novellas and shorter novels in the same vein as those short stories. Top image: Stubby the Rocket in Space…

“Even Though That Made No Sense Whatsoever, I Still Totally Loved It”

Sometimes the plot holes in a story are so egregious, you can’t help but get caught up in nit-picking it. But sometimes, a story makes no sense at all… and you just don’t care. It’s all good. You don’t really want to obsess over all the things that made no sense. What story gets (and…

PETA Tries To Pretend Dairy Products Have Something To Do With Autism

This is the most cynical, horrifying thing I’ve heard in ages. PETA has restarted a campaign to try and pretend there’s some link between “autism and dairy products,” in an attempt to scare people into going Vegan. Update: We have a response from PETA. PETA put up a billboard similar to the image above in…

What’s In Store For Your Favorite Game Of Thrones Characters Next Year?

Game of Thrones is taking a week off — but that doesn’t mean we can’t geek out about it. Now that we’re getting towards the end of season four, we’re starting to get a sense of what the show is going to do with its major characters in season five… and how HBO will adapt…

That’s No Lightning. It’s A Love Letter!

But it’ll take all of us to decipher it, flying in formation. The array on the mothership alone isn’t powerful enough or sensitive enough to pick up all the permutations. We’ll be risking certain death — but it’s worth it to get a new message from the Cloud Bard! After all, it’s been decades since…

Killer Concept Art For X-Men: Days Of Future Past‘s Sentinels

Concept art house Framestore worked on designing the Sentinels in X-Men: Days of Future Past — both the 1970s and future versions. And now they’ve released a bunch of concept art that shows just how weird these mutant-killing robots could have looked. None of these designs quite looks like the comic-book versions, but some are…

Watch Donkey-Headed Catherine Deneuve Bake A Magic Cake in Donkey Skin

Proof that French people are just as weird as the rest of us. Check out this bizarre sequence from Donkey Skin, the 1970 movie based on a fairytale by Charles PerraultCatherine Deneuve is a donkey-headed lady who bakes a magic cake while duetting with her princess alter ego. The singing. OMG the singing. This is…

The BBC Seriously Considered Cancelling Doctor Who When Tennant Left

Hard to believe, but the BBC weren’t sure if Doctor Who could go on without David Tennant. They were seriously considering pulling the plug on the show when the Tenth Doctor moved on, according to head writer Steven Moffat. Talking to the Hay Literary Festival, Moffat says the BBC were “ready to axe” the show…

How Can a Movie Series Bounce Back From “Franchise Fatigue”?

X-Men: Days of Future Past didn’t just have one of the biggest Memorial Day openings ever. The seventh X-Men movie also had the best opening since X-Men 3 in 2006, nabbing $110 million over four days. Does this mean that “franchise fatigue” is over? Or just that the right movie can overcome it? Industry watchers…

The Chinese Comic Book Version of Star Wars Is Dazzling, Baffling

In 1980, not everybody had a chance to see Star Wars in China — but they could read the comic book adaptation. And now, thanks to historian Maggie Greene, so can you. Marvel at the stunningly beautiful art. But also some weird choices, like Darth Vader attacking the Kennedy Space Center. Writes Greene: In addition…

Killer Rack May Be The Wrongest Horror Film In The History Of Wrongness

Move over Herschell Gordon Lewis — a new horror movie, Killer Rack, may be the wrongest thing ever. Just wrong. So wrong. You know how in video games, the unrealistic breasts sometimes take on a life of their own? To the point where you get boobs that move like tentacles? The dreaded “breastopus”? This is…

The Star Trek: The Next Generation Finale, 20 Years Later

Did you realize that Ron Moore and Brannon Braga were writing the final TNG episode, “All Good Things…”, at the same time they were drafting the first TNG movie, Generations? That’s just one revelation in some fascinating interviews about “All Good Things,” 20 years later. It sounds as though the process of creating both TV…

This Is The First X-Men Movie To Be A Great Film In Its Own Right

Back in 2000, the first X-Men movie felt like a milestone: one of the first movies to capture comic-book storytelling on film. But now, 14 years later, X-Men: Days of Future Past actually feels like a good movie in terms of storytelling and stylistic innovation, not just a good comic-book movie. Minor spoilers ahead… I…

Your Favorite Fantastical Cover Artist, Even If You Never Realized It

I absolutely gurantee you’ve admired the artwork of John Harris at some point, even if you never knew his name. And now, a new book collects some of his most eye-popping art featuring spaceships and alien worlds. And we’ve got some exclusive images, with artist commentary! Top image: “Quiet Night.” Harris writes: “Inside the Roche…

Gareth Edwards Is Directing The First Stand-Alone Star Wars Film

Fresh off his triumph with the Godzilla reboot, Gareth Edwards is taking on another monumental challenge: transforming Star Wars into just a single series of films into a Shared Universe of films. Edwards will direct the first standalone Star Wars film, coming December 2016. Who’s this film about? The Lucasfilm press release doesn’t say. We’d…

The First Science Fiction Movie Made in Cuba. Omega 3, now in postproduction, is an “anti-utopian” film, set in a post-apocalyptic late 21st century, which director Eduardo del Llano says has an aesthetic similar to The Matrix and Blade Runner.

The Most Outrageous Fashions of Star Trek: TNG Seasons 4 Through 7

Star Trek: The Next Generation kept boldly going to some pretty amazing places, fashion-wise, after its first few wild seasons. We never again saw quite so many bonkers glued-on costumes, but there was still a lot of WTF. Here’s our tribute to TNG seasons four through seven. https://gizmodo.com/the-most-impressive-costumes-from-star-trek-tngs-firs-1507531721 Definitely click “Expand” to make these babies…