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The Victorian Hugos: 1890

The Hugo Awards are given to the best science fiction or fantasy works of the previous year. Unfortunately, they’ve only been awarded since 1953. That’s where this column comes in — Jess Nevins will be awarding honorary Hugo Awards to the best novels of the Victorian era… and beyond. Top image: William Morris art via…

Books & Comics Jess Nevins

3 clips from Lockout prove that Guy Pearce is actually the baby of John McClane and Snake Plisken

Holy crap we can not wait for you guys to get a load of Lockout and its script made entirely of snarky clips. Do you miss the tongue-in-cheek heroes from the 80s and 90s? Then wait until you get a load of this movie, which is essentially Escape from New York in space, but instead…

Movies Meredith Woerner

An extremely creepy tour of an abandoned Soviet monument in Bulgaria

Remember those derelict Bulgarian war memorials that resemble space fortresses? Well, it turns out they’re just as otherworldly inside. Here’s one intrepid urban explorer’s journey into the shadowy corridors of the shuttered Bulgarian-Soviet Friendship memorial in Varna, Bulgaria. It’s also a case study on why you never tour old Soviet monuments alone. https://gizmodo.com/the-otherworldly-fortresses-that-are-bulgarias-socialis-5630648 In its…

io9 Cyriaque Lamar

Now you can replace your antibacterial soap with a plasma jet

There are some bacteria that are remarkably hard to clean off your body. A perfect example of this is the heat- and antibiotic-resistant Enterococcus faecalis — it’s notoriously hard to expunge, and kills many hospital patients. Now a group of Chinese and Australian scientists have found a way to beat this bacteria and others like…

io9 Tim Barribeau

What are lenticular images, and why do they look so awesome?

Lenticular images are the neato transforming pictures that often came on trading cards in the 1980s and 90s. They were handy for freaking out young children or filing your nails. Turn them one way and they show one picture. Turn them another and they show another. How? A trick of the light. And plastics. Lenticular…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

1981 climate change predictions were eerily accurate

A paper published in the journal Science in August 1981 made several projections regarding future climate change and anthropogenic global warming based on manmade CO2 emissions. As it turns out, the authors’ projections have proven to be rather accurate – and their future is now our present. Top image: The retreat of Pedersen Glacier in…

io9 Jason Major - Universe Today

Morgan Spurlock’s Comic-Con documentary is shiny but empty

When Morgan Spurlock filmed Comic-Con, we have to admit we were nervous that another nerdsplotation flick might be in the works. But we’re happy to report that Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope, is the farthest thing from it. In fact this movie is stuffed with love, heart and appreciation for geeky topics. But underlying…

Movies Meredith Woerner

The first trailer for Simon Pegg’s trippy new comedy A Fantastic Fear of Everything

Here’s the first look at A Fantastic Fear of Everything, directors Crispian Mills and Chris Hopewell’s dark comedy about a children’s author (Simon Pegg) slowly going bonkers. It also involves dream sequences, talking puppets, and mysterious hedgehog interludes. Check out the synopsis, in which Pegg evinces a deep fear of laundry: Jack is a children’s…

Trailers Cyriaque Lamar

How to create a lightning storm in your microwave

If you regularly carelessly nuke stuff, you’ll know that in some cases you’ll come back to warm food, in some cases you’ll come back to shriveled, dried food, and sometimes you’ll come back to a fire in your broken microwave. What difference caused these events? Microwaves, despite being around for a half a century, haven’t…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell

The Greatest Space Art Created by Children

Earlier this year, the 2012 Space Foundation Student Art Contest invited kids from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade to submit original artwork of the Universe. The only requirements were that the students adhere to the theme, “Space is Infinite – Explore!” The contest wound up attracting more than 1,500 entries from 17 U.S. states, Turkey and…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

April Books: Stephen King’s Dark Tower, Neal Stephenson’s Weird History, and More!

The book world has some treats in store for you this month — including a brand new novel in Stephen King’s Dark Tower universe, and the first book of Neal Stephenson and Greg Bear’s Mongoliad. John Shirley revises and updates his groundbreaking cyberpunk trilogy. There are more jazz-age vampires and Regency magicians, and alien-killers learning…

Books & Comics Charlie Jane Anders

Watch Jim Henson’s awesomely insane pitch to get The Muppet Show on the air

Prior to The Muppet Show, Jim Henson had the reputation as one heck of a pitchman. So when it came time to sell CBS on the variety program in the 1970s, Henson and his team assembled a grandiose reel promising executives a lucrative demographic of “intellectual eggheads” and “dirty, cynical hippies.” https://gizmodo.com/the-unmatched-trippiness-of-jim-hensons-puppetry-before-5861270 It’s also worth…

Television Cyriaque Lamar

Touch is a big dumb Rube Goldberg Machine

Yesterday’s episode of Touch featured quite possibly the most ludicrously complicated chain of mystically connected events yet — including misaligned satellite dishes, rotating door numbers, email typos, and overtaxed electric wires… plus social commentary on 9/11, the Iraq War, and religion, because why not? “Kite Strings” is just as ridiculous as the preceding three episodes…

Television Alasdair Wilkins

Need ideas for your next science fiction story? This site is full of them

Story ideas are dime a dozen, but sometimes it can be hard to find one that feels really original, or which you connect with. That’s why TheIdeaBird is a really neat idea — every day or two, this Tumblr features another story idea, and they’re usually science fiction or fantasy. In fact, these little idea…

Books & Comics Charlie Jane Anders

Water that floats on oil could speed spill cleanups

Most everyone knows that oil and water don’t mix. Oil molecules are non-polar, meaning their charge is distributed more or less evenly throughout their structure. Water, on the other hand, is polar — different parts of each water molecule carry a weak positive or negative charge. Generally speaking, polar molecules like water and non-polar molecules…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

Mighty Cute Avengers: The Most Adorable Avengers Fan Art Ever!

When MODOK rears his ugly head, there’s only one team of heroes you can count on to save the day: the Avengers. But Tony Stark and Steve Rogers don’t just lead the coolest team, but the most lovable team in the Marvel universe. (Sorry, X-Men.) And tons of artists have captured the surpassing cuteness of…

Movies Charlie Jane Anders

What Darth Vader Would Look Like If He Was a Good Dad

In an alternate Star Wars reality, maybe Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader but realized he still wanted to take care of his kids like any not evil dad would. Maybe he did all the mundane dad things too. Maybe it looked like this. Jeffrey Brown, an artist and author, is imagining that lovely and hilarious…

Books & Comics Casey Chan

Who says you can’t use maths in your daily life?

Pro-tip on pi-tips: this will come off as even more clever if you actually ordered pie. Or a pi pie. This little gem comes courtesy of redditer gamehead200. And for those of you complaining that the server got stiffed on the tip you’re right; as password_is_pi pointed out, gamehead200 still owes: $0.0015926535897932384626433832795 0288419716939937510582097494459230 7816406286208998628034825342117067 98214808651…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

This is what a hippo attack looks like

In addition to whipping up literal shitstorms with its tail to mark its territory, the hippopotamus is renowned for being approximately three tons of tetrapod nastiness. Watch what happens when a safari jeep gets on the bad side of one of these incredibly aggressive creatures. [Via Boing Boing]

io9 Cyriaque Lamar

What’s the science fiction universe where you prefer the fanfic to the official stories?

Fandom can be miraculous. Fans bring so much creativity and love to science fiction and fantasy universes, and along the way they work an amazing transformation. And sometimes it feels like the stories the fans create are actually cooler than the works they’re based on. So what science fiction or fantasy universe do you prefer…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders

The Victorian Hugos: 1890

3 clips from Lockout prove that Guy Pearce is actually the baby of John McClane and Snake Plisken

An extremely creepy tour of an abandoned Soviet monument in Bulgaria

Now you can replace your antibacterial soap with a plasma jet

What are lenticular images, and why do they look so awesome?

1981 climate change predictions were eerily accurate

Morgan Spurlock’s Comic-Con documentary is shiny but empty

The first trailer for Simon Pegg’s trippy new comedy A Fantastic Fear of Everything

How to create a lightning storm in your microwave

The Greatest Space Art Created by Children

April Books: Stephen King’s Dark Tower, Neal Stephenson’s Weird History, and More!

Watch Jim Henson’s awesomely insane pitch to get The Muppet Show on the air

Touch is a big dumb Rube Goldberg Machine

Need ideas for your next science fiction story? This site is full of them

Water that floats on oil could speed spill cleanups

Mighty Cute Avengers: The Most Adorable Avengers Fan Art Ever!

What Darth Vader Would Look Like If He Was a Good Dad

Who says you can’t use maths in your daily life?

This is what a hippo attack looks like

What’s the science fiction universe where you prefer the fanfic to the official stories?

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