Biotech Is The New Nanotech

Not only could we use algae as a new fuel source soon, but we also might use it to create better nanotechnology. Diatoms, tiny phytoplanktons, come encased in a unique cell wall made out of silica, which has pores and channels that increase its surface area dramatically. Using the existing complexity of these natural structures…

Give Knight Rider A Test Drive With Our New Clip

Good morning and welcome to our obsessive roundup of everything spoilery in science fiction. There’s a new promo clip for Knight Rider that shows way more of the show’s action. And we ask an important question about Ricky Gervais’ new movie. Also, there are some new tidbits about Smallville, and a look at the guy…

Chicago’s Getting a New Wavy Tower in 2009

Sears Tower might be the tallest skyscraper in Chicago, but it will soon be outdone style-wise by the new Aqua Tower, pictured here. Aqua Tower is modeled after waves in the ocean, which look cool and fare well when it comes to good views, solar shading, and contouring outdoor terraces. Here are the deets on…

Russian Scifi Epic “Inhabited Island” Comes to Berlin

The long-awaited Russian scifi film Inhabited Island will screen in Berlin this week. This $40 million dollar epic is one of the most expensive films to come out of the Motherland. It’s based on the 1971 Soviet novel called Prisoners of Power, written by the Strugatsky brothers, and follows amateur astronaut Maxim Kammerer after he…

Seven Habits of Highly Effective Spaceship Captains

If you want to learn good organization skills, look no further than some of the best leaders in the universe: the captains of spaceships. They may be fictional, but they have skills that translate into the real world. After all, you’d follow Admiral Adama into battle, and trust Malcolm Reynolds to have your back. Now…

Batman Gets To Know Hawkman Much Better

Animated Hawkman: alien cop or Egyptian prince? We may soon find out the truth. Hawkman put in a cameo appearance, along with some other heroes, in the season four finale of The Batman animated series, but we didn’t learn much about him. Now Hawky and Batman are teaming up just as a duo, to fight…

It’s Science In A Can, At The Space Station

Doesn’t the Columbus space lab look cozy? Here it is in the clean room of the EADS Space Transportation complex in Bremen, Germany, getting ready to be blasted up to the International Space Station. And click through for a blazing shot of the Russian Soyuz-U rocket blasting off from the Baikonur cosmodrome yesterday, carrying supplies…

Take Your Monkey To Space And Spank Him

The monkeys in the U.S. space program might seem like an odd subject for an animated film, especially since scientists killed a ton of them in the process. In fact, the first six monkeys, uninspiringly named Albert I through Albert VI, all died either in flight, on impact, or right after landing. Not exactly your…

The Gray Caps Will Take Over the World with Their Mushroom Brain Implants

John Coulthart has just posted his cover design for the re-release of Jeff VanderMeer’s novel, Shriek: An Afterword. This is the cover image, by Ben Templesmith — it shows a mysterious “gray cap,” one of an oppressed underground people who have this bizarre mushroom tech that will allow them to take over a city. You…

Is That a Magnetron Tube In Your Pocket or Are You Just Happy to See Me?

One day in the mid-1940s, Raytheon employee Percy Spencer was working with an active radar set when he noticed that a candy bar in his pocket had melted. Spencer got some popcorn, put it in proximity of the magnetron tube that generated the microwaves for the radar, and was soon enjoying a tasty snack. Raytheon…

Can a Robotic Weapon Be Programmed to Have Ethics?

Combat robots and computerized missile launchers may one day be better soldiers than humans because they are programmed with ethical behavior and will never engage in friendly fire. You learn about all this and more from videos just posted from the awesome Technology in Wartime conference, held two weeks ago at Stanford’s Center for Internet…

Batman Spreads His Legs And Reproduces

A weird old guy gets Michael Keaton into a gown and tells him to put his feet in the stirrups, in the only science fictional sequence from 1996’s Multiplicity. Then the machines whir and a lumpy body starts to form, slowly solidifying into a perfect adult clone of Keaton, with all his memories. It’s a…

The Earth faces seven “tipping points” within the next 100 years. These are changes in the environment that can’t be undone, and which will lead to a disastrous downward spiral and amplify global warming and environmental damage on a historic scale. The first of these, the collapse of the Indian summer monsoon, will happen within…

Celebrate Black History Month with Aliens

The Carl Brandon Society, a group for people interested in great scifi by and about people of color, has released a list of cool books to read for Black History Month. They include classics and new books that deal with race and ethnicity — on other worlds as well as Earth. io9 pal Claire Light…

Regress Yourself With Borf’s Gun From Space Ace

If you played arcade games in the 1980s, then you probably remember the quarter-sucking craze of laserdisc games which were led by the juggernaut of Dragon’s Lair. Enough small fortunes were lost to that game to start a small media empire, which is just what creator Don Bluth tried to do. He followed that swords…

How Pollution Created the Creepiest Movie Mutants

Welcome back to Horrorhead, a column where we explore the intersection of horror and scifi. Back in the 1950s, it seemed like every monster was created by radiation: giant ants, a giant tarantula, and even a giant dinosauroid thing called Gojira. But ever since the 1970s, an even scarier byproduct of human invention has been…

Halo’s Master Chief Is A Major Literary Figure

The books tying in with the Halo game may be bringing younger readers who’ve never heard of Heinlein to military science fiction, says John Scalzi, author of Old Man’s War. We wrote to Scalzi to ask his thoughts about the “milSF” sub-genre’s prospects, and he was pretty upbeat, if not quite Souza-esque. His thoughts, below…

What’s Happening With Neil Gaiman’s Interworld?

Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves’ Interworld has been optioned by Dreamworks Animation a decade after they first pitched it to Hollywood. The story of a boy who can travel between alternate universes is now in the lovely world of development. Although whether that’s development hell or development utopia remains to be seen. Click through for…

The Rise And Fall — And Rise — Of Military SF

David Drake hit a career snag in the late 1990s. Drake, who had helped to create the military science fiction genre with his Hammer’s Slammers books, saw a shrinking market for novels about interstellar warfare. So Drake switched to fantasy, and then space-opera. Now, Drake is back writing more Hammer’s Slammers stories, and military SF…

Kick Back Like The Jetsons

Never mind your forgotten jetpack future. Two new developments in the world of consumer comfort prove the future is now, earthlings. One of them comes from hotel chain Travelodge, and the other, direct from the mind of George Lucas. Which just shows that the paths of science fiction and real science will eventually lead to…