What Is the Greatest Fantasy Story That Is Also Cheesy as Hell?

It’s one of the pitfalls of great fantasy stories. Sometimes they just degenerate into cheesiness, no matter how epic and badass they are. What’s the best example of a great fantasy story that floated on a giant river of cheese? My pick would have to be Excalibur, because I’m old school and I still love…

Two New Episodes Of Bee And PuppyCat Are Here—And It’s Still Amazing

We fell in love at first alien encounter with Natasha Allegri’s animated short Bee and PuppyCat, and now it’s an ongoing animated webseries. Two new episodes have arrived, giving us another of the duo’s space temp jobs. If you haven’t watched the original Bee and PuppyCat short, go watch that first to find out how…

Concept Art Writing Prompt: The Fallen Angel

Things are looking a bit, well, surreal in this week’s Concept Art Writing Prompt. What sort of story can you spin about this group of strange creatures? The fallen angel and the three guardians is by artist Kumpan Alexandr. If this image compels you to write a story, please post it in the comments. I’m…

Honor Our Heroic Space Robots with These Beautiful Posters

The folks at Chop Shop are crowdfunding a series of posters dedicated to three of NASA’s most awe-inspiring interplanetary robotic space missions: Voyager, Cassini/Huygens, and Curiosity. The missions were selected by members of The Planetary Society website and transformed into the screen-printed posters you see here. All three of the prints are gorgeous, but Voyager…

Why Science Fiction Likes To Look 50 Years Into The Future

Our favorite stories can come in from any time period, from our own to the long, long ago to the not-so-distant future all the way to the very far future. So what makes 50 years or so such a popular benchmark for us to look towards? Author Karl Schroeder joined us today to answer questions…

The 11-Minute Title Sequence For Too Many Cooks Will Drive You Mad

This is an 11-minute title sequence for the fake TV show Too Many Cooks. I watched the entire sequence and at the end, God spoke to me and said, “Turn this into a real show or I’ll flood the planet again.” There are references to Roseanne, Full House, G.I. Joe, Dallas, and The Cosby Show—and…

American Horror Story Offers Something Even Scarier Than A Killer Clown

American Horror Story: Freak Show returns from its epic two-part Halloween story and brings us an episode that is absolutely all over the place. But it still managed to deliver dark horror. This episode had one of my very favorite plotline tangents thus far. Denis O’Hare’s character, Stanley, is under the tent at the freak…

Aereo’s Latest Death Rattle Comes as Boston Office Shutters

Well, that’s no good. Aereojust sent a letter to its employees announcing that it would be closing its Boston offices, laying off all 43 employees that work there, and shuttering operations. The company is not shutting down, yet. But unfortunately for hopeful cord-cutters, this is not a good sign, especially after the crushing Supreme Court…

Take a Peek at What Shaw Finds “Sexy” on Next Week’s Person of Interest

In this exclusive clip from next week’s episode of Person of Interest, we get a rare glimpse of Shaw’s new life as a thief … and a slightly terrifying look at her sex life. On the tail of a number who is one of the best thieves in the world, Shaw finds herself getting seduced.…

Every Game Of Thrones House Combined Into One Insane Family Tree

You thought the House Targaryen lineage was complicated? You haven’t seen anything until you check out this family tree, which combines every single House from A Song of Ice and Fire, from the Arryns to the Westerlings, in one immense graphic. All hail El-Daddy for making it! It includes all the family details from the…

The 100 Tries To Establish Civilization With An Old-Fashioned Whipping

Yeah, so the adults on The 100 are no better at that “establishing a stable society on Earth” business than their kids are. But while they’re trying to figure out the basics of crime and punishment, the kids are starting to piece together the details of a threat much larger than the Grounders. Crime and…

Bonkers GIFs Of Renaissance Art Remind Us Of Monty Python’s Animations

Artist James Kerr, better known as Scorpion Dagger, creates utterly bonkers animated collages out of Renaissance paintings. They remind us of Terry Gilliam’s Monty Python animations in the best way possible. Drinking problem Hold me like one of your French kangaroos Full moon When Jesus meets water Diving Rolling down Snacking God helps Poor Captain…

The next time you call someone (or something) your “spirit animal,” consider this. The phrase became common only recently, and it went from Indian myth to internet meme in just a few years. The history of its sudden explosion in popularity is fascinating … and Megan Garber tells you the whole story at The Atlantic.

Freakishly Compact Particle Accelerators Could Revolutionize Physics

Experiments at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in the U.S. have taken us a step forward in developing a technology that could significantly reduce the size of particle accelerators and allow scientists to accelerate particles more rapidly than conventional accelerators at a much smaller size. One of the most impressive aspects of particle accelerators used…

Behold The Simpsons/Futurama Crossover Couch Gag

Here it is, the very first look at The Simpsons/Futurama crossover episode. Watch how a visit from the Planet Express crew will change The Simpsons opening couch gag. Spoiler alert: Hedonismbot makes things sexy. And there’s yet ANOTHER clip over at Entertainment Weekly that is sadly not embeddable, but you can head over there to…

​Flying Rocket Cats Come Alive In Animated Medieval Book Gifs

Laura Aydelotte, a scholar of rare books, creates striking animations from sketches and artwork appearing in medieval manuscripts. And each one has a unique story to tell. The Dance of Death The Danse Macabre emerges from the art and allegory of the medieval period. Depictions of dancing skeletons and corpses such as the one shown…

After 25 Years, the Berlin Wall Still Haunts City Residents

It’s been a quarter of a century since the Berlin Wall was torn down, and the city is still marked by the architectural remains from a generation of Soviet occupation. A new study of the city’s residents suggests that east and west Berlin remain culturally divided too — though they are still happy with their…

The Original Ending Of Being John Malkovich Was Much, Much Weirder

No one would accuse director Spike Jonze and writer Charlie Kaufman’s Being John Malkovich of not being a weird film, but the ending of Kaufman’s original script was off-the-wall bizarre. Seriously, it involved a puppetry duel and the corpse of Harry S Truman. Over at Badass Digest, Devin Faraci has a synopsis of the latter…

Combine your love of Sleep and Cosplay with Marvel-themed Sleeping Bags

Well, these are vaguely terrifying. We all love sleep. We all love comics. So why not combine both, with wearable sleeping bags that make you look like Marvel Superheroes? Selk’bags are wearable sleeping bags for the kind of person who wants all the comfort of a sleeping bag, and none of the manoeuvrability issues –…

How Eddie Redmayne Captured the Charisma of Stephen Hawking

Eddie Redmayne pulls off a tremendous feat in The Theory of Everything, playing Stephen Hawking from the early 1960s to the late 1980s. Not surprisingly, he’s already getting a lot of Oscar buzz. We sat down with Redmayne for an exclusive interview and he told us what it was like to meet the real Hawking.…