Bruce Sterling And Jeff VanderMeer Offer 2 Lessons On How To Build A Science-Fictional City

Science-fiction fans and writers, alike, tend to think of cities in too simplistic a fashion. Quotes from The Caryatids author Bruce Sterling and City Of Saints And Madmen author Jeff VanderMeer explain how you should really view urban infrastructure. Bruce Sterling, interviewed by Slashdot’s readers in 1999, says that what we think of as community…

Sony Purchases Woody Harrelson’s Duct-Tape Superhero Epic Defendor

Good news for home-made heroes: Woody Harrelson‘s demented DIY superhero flick Defendor, in which he does a mean Christian-Bale-Batman voice, has been picked up in a seven-figure deal by Sony. Which means it might be screening near you soon. [Variety] https://gizmodo.com/fighting-crime-with-lime-juice-and-marbles-5351326

Plan On Getting The BSG TV Movie On DVD — Or Wait A Few Months Longer

The Battlestar Galactica TV movie, “The Plan,” won’t appear this fall as originally planned. Instead, it’ll air sometime in 2010. But it’ll still come out on DVD Oct. 27, with a much longer cut than the televised version. [Chicago Tribune]

Gene Therapy Has Color-Blind Monkeys Seeing Red (and Green)

Genetic color-blindness may soon be a thing of the past. A team of scientists has used gene therapy to enable adult squirrel monkeys to see color for the first time, and they believe their technique could someday work on humans. Researchers at the University of Washington have been working with adult squirrel monkeys born without…

Motorized Stargate Pyramid Case Mod Makes My Sci-Fi Senses Giddy

This amazing case was built from scratch, and would surely make MacGyver—I mean Colonel Jack O’Neill—proud. Modeled after Stargate’s Goa’uld Ha’tak starship, the HTPC has a 5-inch PSOne screen, and its lights and motorized door are remote-controlled. It’s one of the best case jobs I’ve seen in a long time. The system is built on…

Visit the Planet Coruscant, Home to the Ultimate City

This is Star Wars concept designer Ralph McQuarrie’s vision of city planet Coruscant’s entertainment district – where some of the new live-action Star Wars TV series will take place. Check out Coruscant’s gorgeous and seamy sides in our gallery. We’ve gathered together the best of screen grabs and fan art to bring you the many…

Bai Ling’s Best Role Yet: A Zombie Mermaid Who Lives In A Pool

Pet Semetary director Mary Lambert is working on a ocean horror movie starring Bai Ling as a blood-thirsty fish zombie who can materialize over any body of water. The beachy horror is called Hydrophobia. The film seems to still be in deep development stages but Nathan Philips is now being rumored to have joined up…

A Major Breakthrough In Cloud Engineering

Climate change is caused in part by airborne particles that make clouds more or less reflective – thus raising or lowering temperatures on Earth. Now scientists say there are chemicals from trees that could turn cloud reflectiveness up to maximum. In a paper published in Nature this week, a group of scientists explain that boreal…

Ridley Scott Could Make Big Budget Vampire Films Interesting Again

Ridley Scott hopes to pair up with his Gladiator screenwriter another time, to teach this world how to make vampire movies awesome again. Together, they’ll adapt Jonathan Ainsley‘s novel The Passage. There’s just one problem: it hasn’t been released yet. John Logan will be writing an adaptation of Jonathan Ainsley’s vampire novel, The Passage, which…

School Children Turn Sea Monsters Into Space Candy

Earlier this summer, we warned you about the Echizen jellyfish — creatures that can weigh hundreds of pounds. But a group of high schoolers have found a use for sea monsters: turn them into candy and feed them to astronauts. https://gizmodo.com/giant-jellyfish-swarms-off-the-coast-of-japan-5283380 A few years ago, students at the Obama Fisheries High School in Fukui Prefecture…

Major Casting News For Iron Man 2 And Green Lantern! Plus Sensual Dr. Parnassus Pics!

Today’s spoilers include a huge Green Lantern casting call and one character who won’t be in Iron Man 2. There are more lush Doctor Parnassus images. Find out whom Summer Glau’s playing with on Dollhouse. Plus Fringe, FlashForward and Supernatural! Green Lantern: Some new casting calls for this live-action superhero film don’t really contain any…

New FlashForward Promos

Obnoxious Friends of the Future, Always Posting Pics to Twitter [NSFW]

In this completely decontextualized scene from bizarrely bad mutant insect incest movie Red Cockroaches, you discover the horrifying future of real-time photo streams. This guy’s friend busts in on him hooking up, photographs it with his glasses, and uploads! Do you really want to know the backstory on this scene? OK, here goes. This loser…

“Cloudy With Meatballs” Shows Off Its Crazy Voice Talent

One of the cool things about upcoming animated flick Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs is that it’s stuffed with genre maestros. Bruce Campbell, Mr. T, James Caan, and Andy Samberg all lend their vocals to this wickedly smart comedy. Forget Hader and Farris – it’s the side characters I’m most excited about. Bruce Campbell…

Mutant Bugs Attack Moscow’s Subway System

If you’re nervous about riding the subway, you may want to steer clear of Alex Andreev’s Moscow Underground art series, which fills the Russian subway with giant mutant cockroaches, malevolent metro conductors, and other bits of urban horror. Andreev combines (illegally taken) photos of the Moscow Underground with other images to create portraits of gloomy…

Future Space Explorers Could Commute On Interplanetary Gravity Highways

You’ve heard of space explorers exploiting gravity to save fuel, but using a new method, spacecrafts could, with a little push, roll through the solar system mostly unaided. It’s like rolling downhill all the way to work to save gas. The central concept is that of Lagrangian Points, or L-points. An L-point is a place…

The Real Horror Of Jennifer’s Body: Toxic Friends

We talked bloodthirsty boy-eating demons with Jennifer’s Body director Karyn Kusama and learned that the real terror in the story is the co-dependent toxic relationship between two girls. io9: What’s new about this horror film, why did it stand out to you? Karyn Kusama: The humor comes from Diablo’s vision of the world and I…

What Will Today’s Cities Look Like in the Future?

What will the New Yorks, Londons, and Tokyos of tomorrow look like? Will they be technological Edens, grim dystopias, or entirely obliterated? We look at science fiction’s take on the future of today’s cities to gauge our urban future. New York Los Angeles Chicago Washington, DC San Francisco Tokyo London Paris Additional Reporting by Caitlin…

Future Washington

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Future Paris

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