An important Venn Diagram to keep in mind this weekend

What are you going to wear to the disco in the hollowed-out asteroid at the top of the space elevator? It’s going to be awesome because on Saturday nights they play weird old music from the 1970s. When you get to Club Counterweight, surely you’ll want be wearing this helpful chart on your t-shirt –…

Star Wars flowchart reveals what job you’d have on the Death Star

Wonder where your place would be in the Star Wars worlds? Would you be a Jedi or dancing slave girl? Now’s your chance to find out with this handy Star Wars job flowchart. Click to enlarge. Chart via Nerd Bastards.

A new model of the universe shows the first stars are still alive

Until recently, astronomers believed that the first stars were ultra-giants which blew themselves apart long ago. Now a new model of the universe suggests that some the first stars of the universe may still be burning today. Although space appears to be full of vast stretches of nothing, between thirteen and fourteen billion years ago…

The Superman reboot may feature a surprising female lead. Plus new insights into the Battlestar Galactica prequel!

Wake up with spoilers! Whoever the female main character is in the new Superman movie… it’s not who you think. The visual effects designer for The Dark Knight Rises promises the movie will use as many practical effects as possible — and that includes a real Anne Hathaway in a real Catwoman outfit. Brooklyn Decker…

Star Wars job flowchart reveals what job you’d have on the Death Star

One of the coolest space action sequences we’ve ever seen

Carrie-Ann Moss copes with a zero-gravity fire in this stunning sequence from Red Planet. How do you put out a fire when the fire extinguisher sends you flying in the opposite direction? Trinity’s on the case. Red Planet gets a bum rap, and it’s true that stretches of it are a bit slow, especially a…

Rumor: Hulu’s Jason Kilar on His Way Out as CEO

A day after posting his fuck traditional TV manifesto, Business Insider has heard reports that Hulu CEO Jason Kilar is about to be fired from his position. Apparently, News Corp execs have been going around saying that he’s “as good as gone” and that the post which caused all this controversy had been in the…

Would putting a spike in the middle of your steering wheel make you safer?

Risk compensation is irony encapsulated; the more measures that are taken to ensure people’s safety, the more dangerously people will act to make up for it. Perhaps people are just designed to seek a certain level of risk. And yet, safety measures are good things. Sure, they can be overdone, but everyone likes their staircases…

Is this the most archetypal 1970s science fiction book cover?

Amazing fashions, including catsuits and furry vests, adorn the hep cats in this spaceport. This image, by artist Jim Burns, appeared on the cover of several science fiction books in the 1970s, including Burns’ own Planet Story, with text by Harry Harrison. Frequently cropped in various ways, so that only some of the random ensemble…

Huge cricket-like insect hasn’t evolved in over 100 million years

The splay-footed cricket is one of the biggest, most scary-looking insects, and it’s been that way for a long, long time. A fossil recently uncovered in Brazil reveals these crickets have looked more or less exactly the same since the time of the dinosaurs. Clearly, these insects don’t adapt – they make the world adapt…

All the NSFW stuff we couldn’t show you from the Star Trek: TNG porn movie

Want to see all the NSFW naughtiness that we couldn’t show you from the new Star Trek: The Next Generation porn movie? There are tons of X-rated photos over at our sister site, Fleshbot, including what appears to be a hookup between Geordie and Dr. Leah Brahms… But warning: It’s very NSFW. [Fleshbot]

Stare into the sweet but deadly eyes of teenage assassin Hanna

Joe Wright won our hearts with his past films Pride and Prejudice and Atonement. But his next film unleashes his violent side, via neck-snapping bioengineered teen assassin Hanna, played by Saoirse Ronan. Watch as she goes on a slaughtering spree in this new international trailer. Synopsis: Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) is a teenage girl. Uniquely, she…

What Is The Singularity And Will You Live To See It?

If you read any science fiction or futurism, you’ve probably heard people using the term “singularity” to describe the world of tomorrow. But what exactly does it mean, and where does the idea come from? We answer in today’s io9 flashback. What is the singularity? The term singularity describes the moment when a civilization changes…

How life is imitating science fiction in Egypt

Walter Jon Williams’ Deep State, out next week, picks up the themes of viral marketing and social media from his previous novel This Is Not A Game. And a lot of the stuff that Williams wrote about is very similar to what’s been happening in Egypt and Tunisia. Is Williams a prophet of the internet…

What new female character did Joss Whedon add to The Avengers?

Nick Fury will be getting an awesome new female sidekick in The Avengers, according to Samuel L. Jackson. But who? And what cool female character from Avengers lore could director Joss Whedon be drawing on? The trades have started leaking the names of auditioning actresses, including Morena Baccarin! We pooled the clues from the rumored…

The tiny island of Sark is a window back to the Middle Ages – and that’s good for science

Sark is a tiny, car-free island in the English Channel that didn’t fully get rid of feudalism until 2008. Its nights are so reliably dark that it’s just been named the world’s first “dark sky island”, making the island one giant observatory for looking up at the night sky without any light pollution to get…

Forget pirates. Navigate like a viking.

Vikings did a lot of navigating in their line of work. Those who didn’t know how to use the sun to get exactly where they wanted to go would end up razing only sandcastles, pillaging only bird’s nests, and setting fire only to their own beards. So when cloudy, foggy, gray days caused these intrepid…

Orson Scott Card Writes Humans in Episode 29 of The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy

Orson Scott Card, author of Ender’s Game, joins us this week on io9’s Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast to talk about his new book The Lost Gate, comic books, and how working in theatre made him a better writer. The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy is hosted by John Joseph Adams and David Barr…

Gareth Edwards won’t be directing Monsters 2, but has a great vision for Godzilla

The Mexican monster movie and much buzzed about indie film Monsters is getting a sequel. But the original writer and director Gareth Edwards won’t be involved in Monsters 2, because he’s currently gearing up for a much bigger beast: Godzilla. And here’s what the outspoken director has to say about both creature features. In an…

Every New Science Fiction/Fantasy Television Series That Could be Coming This Fall

What’s in store for us on television this fall? If the pilot scripts the networks have ordered are anything to go by, there’ll be lots of zombies, fantasy police work, angels, and superheroes. Here’s our complete run-down of the pilot scripts that each of the major networks is looking at for Fall 2011 at the…