Robby The Robot Makes Comeback In Forbidden Planet Remake

It seems like only two weeks ago, we were asking where why more movies weren’t remaking the classics, and apparently Warners was listening… kind of. Forbidden Planet, the sci-fi version of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, is getting the makeover treatment, courtesy of Babylon 5’s J. Michael Straczynski and producer Joel Silver.The Hollywood Reporter says that Straczynski…

Smell My Sun!

What does the sun smell like? This seemingly insoluble question faced Brisbane artists David Haines and Joyce Hinterding, as they developed their new art installation Earthstar, which promised you would “see, hear and smell the sun.” Seeing and hearing was no problem: They married time-lapse photography, using special filters, with a recording of radio signals…

Survivalist Blogger Prepares You for the Coming Apocalypse

Armageddon comes in many forms, from nuclear disaster to social and economic collapse, and a savvy survivalist must be ready for it all. Enter blogger Jim Rawles, who offers tips and tools to get you through any brand of disaster.Rawles, a former US Army Intelligence officer, believes that most first worlders’ intellectual detachment from their…

Kevin Sorbo Talks Breeding With Reptiles And Assasin Work In New Illuminati Film

The Mighty Hercules and Andromeda Captain, Kevin Sorbo, has a new mission: escape the evil secret society whose head hitman he used to be. In his new movie The Illuminati, Sorbo gets to kick a little ancient secret society butt, and dabble with all sorts of deadly weaponry. We got a chance to pick Sorbo’s…

The Greatest io9 Hoodie of Them All

Just in time for Halloween, we have our first-ever io9 hoodie swag. Every day this week, we’ve been bringing you cool scifi-inspired hoodies and t-shirts, created in collaboration with DiY hoodie-makers Neighborhoodies. Now, at last, designed by our own Stephanie Fox . . . we present to you the io9 hoodie! (Buy it here!) All…

Secrets Of Great Characters, According To 6 Science Fiction Authors

Click to viewAmazing stories need great characters. And when you’re writing a story set in a futuristic or fantastical world, it’s more important than ever for readers to be able to relate to your characters. It’s also harder than ever, because your characters’ lives and experiences will be totally different than your readers’. How do…

Why Stephanie Jacobsen Is Our Favorite Robot-Fighting Ninja

The only actor who’s fought killer bots in both the Battlestar Galactica and Terminator universes is Stephanie Jacobsen. She played the tough-as-nails Kendra Shaw in Battlestar Galactica: Razor, and now she’s playing Jesse, the freedom fighter from the future, in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. We talked to Jacobsen about what it’s like to play…

Ghostly Nebulae Haunt the Skies

NASA celebrates Halloween with this image of the Witch Head Nebula, cackling from space and ready to scare spacefaring trick or treaters. And it’s not the only nebula whose shape fills us with terror and dread. Take a gander at the other nebulae that are all dressed up for Halloween.Yesterday, the Hubble Telescope warned us…

New Hard Scifi From Ultraman Writer and Appleseed Director

If you like post-apocalyptic military science fiction and anime, then you’re in luck. Writer Ai Ōta, who has worked on mega-mobile-armor anime series Gundam, has announced that she’s teaming up with Shinji Aramaki, director of the cyborg warfare movie Appleseed (pictured), on a new series called Viper’s Creed. Anime News Network says, “The story revolves…

John Scalzi’s “Agent to the Stars” Delivers Much-Needed Humor

What happens when blobs from another planet pick up signals from Earth, travel for generations to come meet us, and get into orbit only to discover all our pop culture portrays them as monsters? If they’re the protagonists in John Scalzi’s re-issued first novel Agent to the Stars, they hire themselves a Hollywood representative. Scalzi’s…

The Deep-Water Disaster That May Kill Us All

Click to view The images you see above are of a deep lake in Camaroom called Nyos — before and after it killed almost 2,000 people with a burst of poison gas. No, this wasn’t caused by pollution or global warming. It’s a natural phenomenon called a “limnic eruption,” and scientists believe that a big…

The Office Predicts Your Halloween Night

Dwight and friends over at The Office have successfully recreated what I imagine is happening all over the globe right now. Since Dark Knight was the most popular movie of the year, I can only assume that the entire world is overrun with Joker costumes right about now, and the numbers will only grow. But…

Spider-Man 4 Will Be Character-Focused, Sex And The City-Esque

Pulitzer- and Tony-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire (Rabbit Hole) is in “final negotiations” to write Spider-Man 4, replacing or rewriting a draft by James Vanderbilt. Lindsay-Abaire’s plays, which have variously starred Sarah Jessica Parker and Cynthia Nixon, are about outsiders seeking clarity — which sort of describes Peter Parker. Says the Washington Post, “People in psychic…

Who Is Marvel’s Iron Patriot?

Marvel Comics released a teaser image for an unnamed project yesterday that seemed to mix two of their iconic characters together, asking “Who is the Iron Patriot?” We’ve got the full image, plus our guess on the answer (Spoiler: It’s probably not Tony Stark), under the jump. The silhouette – that appears to give Iron…

Alien Buddy-Cop Movie Remake Won’t Die

Remember the spotty headed alien cop and his racist partner, in the classic Alien Nation? Well, the rumors about a remake won’t die out online, and now Producer Gale Anne Hurd (Terminator) is apparently super serious about the idea to remake this buddy alien cop movie. The super producer isn’t all talk, either — apparently…

Drool Over Our Alien and Predator Centerfolds, and Win Free Books!

Regardless of your preference for the drooly one or the clicky one, the Predator and Aliens franchises have entered the pop culture hall of fame. They’ve get the creep-out factor, the scare, and SF thrills from glimpses of the Predator home world and insight into Alien queen psychology. Both universes continue to expand through comics…

The Best Halloween Anthologies to Read in the Dark

We know you’re going to need a good ghost story to get into the Halloween spirit. How about a tale of Cthulhu-worshipping trailer trash? Or a thriller where you might be a robot impostor sent to destroy the Earth? Or a genetics experiment gone awry? You’ll find these stories and more in these scifi horror…

The 50 Scariest Moments In Science Fiction

Click to viewSince it’s Halloween over at the io9 offices, we couldn’t help put plug our brains into our hive-mind computer and put together a list of the 50 scariest moments in science fiction movie history. These are the moments that stuck in our minds, disturbed our dreams and made us see ordinary objects as…

Ultrasound Can Give You Memories of Learning Things in College

Want to remember doing something, like attending 400 lectures on molecular cell biology, without ever actually having to do it? A special kind of ultrasound can trigger neurons in your gray matter, and the team of Arizona State neuroscientists who discovered this immediately played the Total Recall card. They’re already talking about implanting memories of…

Mutant bat monsters!!! So awesome.