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Look Into The Parasitic Beady Eyes Of Your Alien Foe

Concept artist Goddam has released some crazy cool new artwork for an “undisclosed independent horror film.” The only clues we have about this flick are one, it’s about aliens and two, these aliens are parasites. I know they’re supposed to be terrifying but I got to admit when you take a close look they’re pretty…

Brick Director Rian Johnson Explains His New Time Travel Movie

Brick, Rian Johnson’s high-school noir movie, was one of my favorite films of the past few years. He was in town promoting his new con-man romance, The Brothers Bloom, and we got the chance to ask him about his planned third movie, a time-travel thriller called Looper. And he explained why you are probably trapped…

If the pseudo-scientific voice overs from Suresh on Heroes frustrate you, then there’s a new book that may help. Science writer Yvonne Carts-Powell has just published The Science of Heroes, which explores what scientists actually have done to make ordinary people superpowered. She interviews scientists, digs up weird historical facts, and generally puts on a…

Microsoft Settles on “Windows 7” For Official Name of Next OS

Here we were, thinking Windows 7 was simply a codename (and a fairly boring one at that—where’s Longhorn? Whistler?). Now, on the official Windows Vista Blog, MS has came out and declared “Windows 7” the official name of Vista’s successor, dev-only pre-betas of which will be released at the upcoming WinHEC and PDC developer conferences…

Abrams Explains What Star Trek Isn’t And What Fringe Is

Taking part in a webchat with readers of British newspaper the Guardian, JJ Abrams spilled the beans about everything: The future of Fringe, why he’s rebooting Star Trek and what has changed about the end of Lost. He even touched on the possibility of a sequel to this year’s Cloverfield. We have the highlights of…

Question of the Day: Do You Prefer Self-Checkout Lines?

For an impatient geek there is nothing…NOTHING more annoying than standing behind someone in a grocery store that has the audacity to write a check in the 21st century. That is why I head for the self-checkout lines. Generally, only those brave enough to tackle the machine and handle the pressure of nerds staring them…

Fincher Pulls the Plug on Rendezvous With Rama

Director David Fincher’s post-Benjamin Button project has been somewhat of a mystery—a 3D/CG Heavy Metal? Brian Michael Bendis’ Torso? Matz’s The Killer? Oh god, not the Fight Club musical?!? But now it looks like we can cross at least one limbo-ing project off his to-do list: Rendezvous With Rama, based on the cerebral, 1972 novel…

Sony Ericcson W760a Picked Up by AT&T

It has been a couple of months since we first heard the rumor that the 3G-enabled Sony Ericcson W760a and its updated Walkman interface would arrive on AT&T, but it appears that the day has finally arrived. Features include a 3.2 megapixel camera, GPS and full-HTML web browsing for $129.99 after a two-year agreement and…

George Orwell Is Composing More Science Fiction Without Even Trying

George Orwell’s diaries are slowly being turned into a series of blog posts by scholar Peter Davison. You can leave mean comments on each and every 70-year-old blog post. Regular readers of the blog will experience a disjointed narrative of the fantastic, one that is drastically different from our everyday. Illustrated with Google Maps, Orwell’s…

Are Our Cushy, Tech-Filled Lifestyles Halting Evolution?

Back in the good old days, the weak, slow and stupid would be eaten by lions, leaving the quick and the smart to live on and breed quick and smart babies. But these days, any moron can wheel themselves around a Wal-mart on a motorized scooter, buying Hot Pockets with food stamps while talking on…

Robots Dancing With Lamas And Superhero Crossovers In Bollywood’s Future

Two Indian science fiction films are roaring forward. First of all, the legendary director Shankar has started filming his movie Enthiram, formerly known as Robot, with some big song-and-dance numbers in America. Here’s the first look at star Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, done up like a Vegas showgirl and dancing with a ton of feathered people…

Tate Modern Exhibit Imagines London’s Apocalyptic End

Step into Turbine Hall in London’s Tate Modern and you are immediately greeted by the sound of pounding rain and a giant spider looming over rows of cage-like dormitory beds. It’s all part of “TH.2058” Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s new interactive installation, an apocalyptic vision set 50 years in the future. In this world, all that’s left…

A Brief History of MacBook Redesigns and Upgrades

Tomorrow we’ll see the first fresh MacBooks in almost a year, and likely the first all-new case designs since the arrival of the MacBooks—or before that if you’re a stickler, since the MacBook Pro is basically the same as the PowerBook G4, and the MacBook ain’t so different from the iBook G4. Check out our…

J.J. To Show Us All What His Trek Is Made Of In November

Rumor has it J.J. Abrams is going to show us actual footage of his Star Trek movie this November, seeing as the teaser trailer no longer quenches the Trekkies thirst new footage. A source tells TrekMovie that, ”Edits are still being made, but it is expected to show the Enterprise exterior and the Enterprise bridge…

New Technology Helps Ground Telescopes Outdo Hubble

A new technology called nulling interferometry will give some of the world’s biggest telescopes the power to detect Earth-like planets outside our solar system—something even the Hubble has not accomplished. Basically, nulling interferometry chains together the light captured by several large telescopes to create a single “super telescope” that has enough power to detect a…

Has The iPod Killed Transformers’ Coolest Bad Guy?

It’s like a special nerdy version of Transformers Good News/Bad News: Soundwave will be in Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen? Good! He’ll be transforming into a pick-up truck in the movie? Not just bad, but a whole special brand of WTF bad. Seriously, a pick-up truck? Have the movie makers lost their minds, or is…

Two major newspapers turned their eye to science fiction books over the weekend: The Washington Post featured lit-blogger Edward Champion’s roundup of recent books, including Gene Wolfe’s An Evil Guest, Nancy Kress’ Dogs and Benjamin Rosenbaum’s The Ant King And Other Stories. And the London Times reviewed some books, including Neal Stephenson’s Anathem and Greg…

10 Gadgets With Mind-Boggling Moving Parts

At their best, gadgets transcend the world of technology and become “living” works of art. The following ten gadgets are awe-inspiring in their complexity, mind boggling in their motion and beautiful enough to stand alongside the work of any old master. Naturally, there is a clock or two, but there are also calculators, a Rube…

President Bush Signs Bill To Create Cabinet-Level Intellectual Property Czar

President Bush signed into law today a bill that will create a centralized position in the executive branch, appointed by the president, to head up the fight against piracy and intellectual property violations. The Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act (PRO-IP) is backed strongly by the usuals—MPAA, RIAA, etc.—and yet faced some pushback…

Doctor Who Gets All Seven Doctors — Plus A Prince?

The next time we see the TARDIS, the impossibly capacious time machine in the BBC’s Doctor Who, it’ll once again be crammed to the rafters. But this time, the crowd scene will be all actors who have played the Doctor, the show’s enigmatic alien time traveler. The Telegraph and various other news sources are reporting…