Netflix Is Losing Lots of Big Movies Next Month, and Hulu Picked Them Right Up

Over the weekend, Netflix announced the service would be losing tons of big ticket blockbusters next month. Within hours, Hulu announced it would be scooping up those very movies. The streaming wars continue. Netflix announced the sad news on its company blog yesterday. Though the company leads by taking potshots at the studio system, the…

Farewell, Wes Craven, and Thank You For All the Nightmares

Legendary director Wes Craven died yesterday at the age of 76. His name became synonymous with horror, thanks to films like A Nightmare on Elm Street, Last House on the Left, and the Scream series—a most unexpected career for a man who didn’t even see his first movie until he was in college. In an…

No One Gets Away With Their Lies Forever in Masters of Sex

Everybody lies sometimes. Some people are bad at it. Some people think they’re better at it than they really are. And some people tell their biggest lies to themselves. In this week’s episode of Masters of Sex, we get to see that whole range of possibilities. Virginia Johnson is frighteningly good at lying. As the…

You Can Actually Poison Yourself If You Eat Undercooked Beans

When you get a package of dry beans examine the cooking instructions on the side. Most likely they’ll stress that after you’ve soaked your beans in water for an hour or two, you should discard the water before cooking the beans very, very well. That’s not just a culinary tip. Undercooking your beans can cause…

Daredevil Teases A New Romance For Matt Murdock—But Not The One You’d Expect

Could we really get a sequel to The Iron Giant? Lucy Lawless discusses her Ash vs Evil Dead character. An unlikely character will take the lead in STAR Labs on The Flash. Plus, set footage from The Force Awakens, and more teases for Maisie William’s Doctor Who character. To me, my spoilers! Captain America: Civil…

Hannibal Bids a Gorgeously Gory Farewell That Offers Few Surprises, But Plenty of Satisfaction

The dreaded moment has arrived: Hannibal as we know it is no more. At its heart, the show’s always been about the complex (to put it mildly) relationship between Will and Hannibal; necessarily, the finale digs deep into TV’s most fraught twosome … along with serving up buckets of stomach-roiling gore. Spoilers! “The Wrath of…

We Can’t Wait to See How They’ll Manage to Film The City & The City

The characters in China Miéville’s The City & The City live their lives inside a visual challenge. We can’t see what will happen when the BBC and Mammoth Screen try to include us in that challenge. The City & The City made our list of the top nine science fiction books to give to people…

io9 Book Club Reminder: Meet Sept. 1 To Discuss Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora!

Just a quick reminder—the io9 book club is meeting on Tuesday to talk about Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel Aurora. In the meantime, here’s a video of Robinson talking about the ideas behind the book. Contact the author at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter @CharlieJane.

RIP Wes Craven, Iconic Director of Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream

Iconic horror director Wes Craven died today aged 76, of brain cancer. In addition to creating the character of Freddy Krueger in Nightmare on Elm Street and the most famous meta-horror franchise with Scream, he also directed People Under the Stairs, Swamp Thing, and The Hills Have Eyes. The Hollywood Reporter is reporting Craven’s death…

Blank Bodies Is A Technological Retelling of Genesis 

There’s been a few films out there about robots being taught to function, such as Chappie and Ex Machina. In Blank Bodies, a short film written and directed by Ryan Weatrowski, a pair of robots are printed up as blank slates by an art group, things go south as pair fall in love. https://gizmodo.com/ex-machina-proves-science-fiction-movies-can-be-smart-a-1696937118 Here’s…

So You Want To Join The Empire: Arm Up!

The last couple of weeks with this column, we’ve looked at getting stormtrooper armor up and running: measuring, accuracy, the differences between films and last week, finally getting to assembly. This week, let’s look at putting together another component: the upper arms. There’s two of these: one for each arm. This piece sits under the…

The Incredible Hulk Was Inspired By A Woman Saving Her Baby 

Here’s a bit of trivia for you: when he was coming up with an idea for a new comic, art Jack Kirby witnessed a woman lift a car to get her child out from under it. The moment helped inspire one of his most famous creations: the Incredible Hulk. The interview, between Kirby and Gary…

You might not realize it, but the invention of the ballpoint pen was a major technological innovation in the industrialized world. Over on the Atlantic, Josh Giesbrecht talks about how the pen changed how we put words down to paper.

MIT Just Put Out One of The Year’s Best Collections of Science Fiction

MIT’s Technology Review has a bit of a secret: just about every year, they put together a science fiction edition titled Twelve Tomorrows. It’s one of the best collections of short science fiction out there, and you can now preorder the upcoming issue. This upcoming issue features a pretty incredible group of authors: Paola Antonelli,…

 Dark Matter Ends With a Twist No One Saw Coming — Which Is a Bad Thing

Two hours of episodes brought an end to season one of Dark Matter. One was a pretty standard by now background story, the other team story ending on a season finale cliffhanger. And the cliffhanger is stupid. Spoilers… So, episode 12: We meet Two’s creator, who is Wil Wheaton. I don’t care what his character’s…

Buried New Mexico Atari Games Bring In $100,000 In Auction

Remember that story of how Atari buried a bunch of their games in a landfill, and how they were rediscovered last year? Now, some of the recovered cartridges have sold for over $100,000. As the video game market crashed in the mid-1980s, Atari disposed of much of their surplus games, including their infamous adaptation of…

It’s the Final Sunday Puzzle, People. Let’s Talk Tubers.

The Martian is a book by Andy Weir about how potatoes will become the first food crop on Mars. Alright, it’s about more than that, but anyone who has read Weir’s novel knows potatoes get plenty of mentions. Anyway, the point is: This week, in honor of Mark Watney’s space spuds, we’re featuring a puzzle…

The NYPD Wants Disney To Do Something About Times Square Costumers

Costumers plying tourists for money isn’t anything new in Times Square: stop by and you’ll likely see a variety of characters to take a picture with, for a small fee. Now, the NYPD is asking Disney to help crack down. On August 20th, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio announced a task force to…

Tech Noir Is Your Fantastic ’80s Mashup Music Video Of The Day

Retro Indie band Gunship has just released a new music video for their song Tech Noir, and it’s chock full of references from all the great films of the 1980s. Cue up the nostalgia! This claymation video has references to a ton of great films from the ‘80s: RoboCop, Friday the 13th, Aliens, Hellraiser, Rocky,…

Guardians of Infinity Features All Of The Galaxy’s Guardians

Marvel Comics is launching a new series featuring the members of Guardians of the Galaxy: all of them. The galactic team-up will feature characters from the original lineup last seen in Guardians 3000, all the way up to the modern makeup. Guardians of Infinity #1 is set to hit stores in December of this year,…