Fiction

Familiar Horror Movie Scenes Ruined by the New iPhone

Nick Martens’s horror film screenplay was going so well until Apple paid for product placement. I. “We’ll never make it out of here. I can’t see a thing.” “Don’t give up yet! There’s still hope!” “It’s too dark. It’s going to hunt us down if we don’t fall and break our necks first.” “But…just try…

Tech News Nick Martens - The Bygone Bureau Jul 14

How will people regulate population growth in an eco-friendly future?

A lot of scifi transports us to a future world of high-tech plenitude. But in Carrie Vaughn’s short story “Amaryllis,” we get a more realistic future where human life is restricted to preserve the environment. The central conflict in this story is ancient – a young woman wants a child, but she and the potential…

io9 Annalee Newitz Jun 23

100+ amazing pieces of Star Wars concept art

You can’t celebrate the awesomeness of concept art without paying special tribute to Star Wars. Ralph McQuarrie’s paintings for the original trilogy inspired every concept artist today, and the prequels and video games’ art was eye-popping. Here are our favorites. The original trilogy Almost every concept artist we’ve interviewed this week for io9’s concept art…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders Jun 20

To Protect and Kill: Morality in Action Manga

Just as Watchmen criticized the morality of superhero comics, manga like Bokurano and Fullmetal Alchemist criticize the “smiles and happy endings” of shonen manga. “I…hate hurting things…and breaking things…I wish we could all get along…If I can avoid a battle…I think that’s best…” — To-Ru Zekuu and Yuna Takanagi, Shiki Tsukai “I’m not going to…

io9 Jason Thompson Mar 11

Enter the SCP Foundation’s Bottomless Catalog of the Weird

Do you like short works of fiction? Do you like things that are effin’ strange? This may be the website for you. Every now and then, you find a site that starts out as an entertaining diversion and quickly comes to vacuum up more and more of your free time. I’ve found the SCP Foundation…

io9 Alex Eichler Feb 21

William Gibson Explains The Secret Of SF Writing Success To Paolo Bacigalupi

“I’d stalked William Gibson at one point at a book signing and had asked him what his secret to success was. You know I was a very hungry, very needy sort of writer and was just looking for any kind of a clue about how the whole thing worked. I sort of hovered over his…

Books & Comics Charlie Jane Anders Dec 23

Why “Speculative Fiction” Is The Coolest Genre Of Them All

Writing in BSC review, Charles A. Tan explains why it’s great to have an umbrella term like “speculative fiction”: The term speculative fiction holds a special place in my heart because it is able to accommodate all the other genres under its umbrella. What I mean by that is that fiction written under it can…

Movies Charlie Jane Anders Sep 16

10 Scariest Eco-Catastrophes from Early Science Fiction

These days, SF thrillers in which natural disasters end human life as we know it are mainstream fare. But long before M. Night Shyamalan and J.G. Ballard flirted with disaster, the authors of SF’s Pre-Golden Age (1904-33) speculated wildly, and sometimes presciently, about the possible causes of dire biospheric transformations. During science fiction’s Golden Age…

Books & Comics Joshua Glenn May 26

Brain Harvest Will Knit You A Mustache, Let You Pick Their Brains

They sound like crazy zombies, but the new webzine Brain Harvest is trying to bring web-based flash fiction back from the dead. And you can help, while advancing your career (or your upper lip). Brain Harvest: An Almanac of Bad-Ass Speculative Fiction has published flash fiction (super short stories, suitable for viewing online or on…

Books & Comics Charlie Jane Anders May 7

The Mad Mentalists of Pre-Golden-Age SF

Paving the way for Vulcans, Slan, Espers, Professor X and Babylon 5’s Lyta Alexander, SF writers of the Pre-Golden Age (1904-33) dared to imagine how normal people might react if telepaths were discovered among us. In the late 19th century, scholars and scientists in Europe and America turned their collective attention not only to the…

Books & Comics Joshua Glenn Apr 15

A Chunk of the ISS to Be Named After Firefly

NASA is allowing the public to vote on the name for “Node 3” of the International Space Station. So what did we do? We named it after a cult science fiction show, of course! As of right now, “Serenity” is dominating an open vote for Node 3’s new name. This ship from Joss Whedon’s short-lived…

Space & Spaceflight Mark Wilson Feb 25

The Super-est Supermen of Pre-Golden Age SF

Long before Alan Moore asked “Who will watch the Watchmen?” science fiction writers of the Pre-Golden Age (1904-33) worried whether supermen would rescue us ordinary mortals – or try to dominate us. https://gizmodo.com/science-fictions-pre-golden-age-1904-33-an-introduct-5099771 Dreamed up by American and European SF writers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries – at a time when Lamarckian-Bergsonian…

Books & Comics Joshua Glenn Feb 16

Will E-Books Really Bring Back Dickensian Lit? I Sorta Hope So

Time Magazine’s Lev Grossman has done what a swarm of New York PR people could not — he’s made me sort of optimistic about the future of publishing. Sort of. Grossman points out all the usual reasons the publishing industry is somewhat doomed-looking, from the waves of layoffs to the unsustainable model based on high…

Books & Comics Charlie Jane Anders Jan 22

The Coolest Robots of Pre-Golden Age SF

During science fiction’s Pre-Golden Age (1904-33), writers dreamed up mechanical and quasi-organic humanoids so compelling that they continue to haunt today’s scifi, forcing us to ask what it means to be human. https://gizmodo.com/science-fictions-pre-golden-age-1904-33-an-introduct-5099771 Forget WALL-E and GORT. Forget sexy Summer Glau and Tricia Helfer in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Battlestar Galactica. OK, don’t…

Books & Comics Joshua Glenn Jan 12

There Really Is Such A Thing As Too Much Penis Enhancement

Check out the hilarious discussion of the “paranormal penis” in urban fantasy and science fiction, over at Alpha Heroes. Did you know that alien cat-men had “orgasmic cock syrup?” Now you do. Less pleasant-sounding is the whole “barb” add-on. [via Literary Escapism]

Books & Comics Charlie Jane Anders Jan 7

Mars Invades Earth With X-Rated Movies: Hear For Yourself!

Bizarre, pornographic silent movies turn up, allegedly made in 1911 — and then they start to feature uncannily real-looking Martians and other creatures straight out of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ stories. The bitchy, demented story “The Film-makers Of Mars” could only be the work of Geoff Ryman (Air). It was published at Tor.com a while back,…

Books & Comics Charlie Jane Anders Jan 3

The Most Amazing Book Covers from Pre-Golden Age SF

Click to viewSome of the most gorgeous, evocative, and strange science fiction art you’ve ever seen comes from the covers of novels written between 1904-33, in SF’s “pre-Golden Age.” Readers, here is the long-awaited second installment in my Pre-Golden Age SF series. I can’t afford first editions of PGA SF novels, but I’ve managed to…

Books & Comics Joshua Glenn Dec 15

Sexual Repression Is Science Fiction’s Secret Hyperdrive Fuel

Richard K. Morgan (author of Altered Carbon) did an interview with the StarShipSofa podcast, and it’s pretty thought-provoking stuff. He explains why trying to write short stories before you write novels may be a waste of time, why noir SF has made a comeback, and why he doesn’t mind being called a pornographer. Commenters on…

Books & Comics Charlie Jane Anders Dec 1

Discover The Future Of Medical Science

When it comes to future depictions of careers, things are always rather unfairly weighed towards the law enforcement angle – We’ve seen Robocop, Judge Dredd, Minority Report and even Future Cop. But who talks about the medical profession of the future? That was the thinking behind medical blog Medgadget’s Sci-Fi Writing Contest, the winners of…

io9 Graeme McMillan Nov 29

The 10 Best Apocalypse Novels of Pre-Golden Age SF (1904-33)

With Wall-E director Andrew Stanton working on a film based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’s 1917 novel A Princess of Mars, you need a crash course in books from this seminal era in science fiction. Hollywood adaptations of Brave New World and When Worlds Collide, based on books released at roughly the same time as Princess…

Books & Comics Joshua Glenn Nov 29

Familiar Horror Movie Scenes Ruined by the New iPhone

How will people regulate population growth in an eco-friendly future?

100+ amazing pieces of Star Wars concept art

To Protect and Kill: Morality in Action Manga

Enter the SCP Foundation’s Bottomless Catalog of the Weird

William Gibson Explains The Secret Of SF Writing Success To Paolo Bacigalupi

Why “Speculative Fiction” Is The Coolest Genre Of Them All

10 Scariest Eco-Catastrophes from Early Science Fiction

Brain Harvest Will Knit You A Mustache, Let You Pick Their Brains

The Mad Mentalists of Pre-Golden-Age SF

A Chunk of the ISS to Be Named After Firefly

The Super-est Supermen of Pre-Golden Age SF

Will E-Books Really Bring Back Dickensian Lit? I Sorta Hope So

The Coolest Robots of Pre-Golden Age SF

There Really Is Such A Thing As Too Much Penis Enhancement

Mars Invades Earth With X-Rated Movies: Hear For Yourself!

The Most Amazing Book Covers from Pre-Golden Age SF

Sexual Repression Is Science Fiction’s Secret Hyperdrive Fuel

Discover The Future Of Medical Science

The 10 Best Apocalypse Novels of Pre-Golden Age SF (1904-33)

Amazon Fire TV Soundbar With Dolby Audio Finds a Prime Day–Level Price Point Outside the Sale Window

Bitdefender Total Security Now Costs Less than Your Coffee Order — Covers Up to 5 Devices With One Subscription

10 Cursed Islands to Visit Ahead of ‘Widow’s Bay’

NASA Sets the Record Straight on That ‘Missing Chunk’ of Artemis 2’s Heat Shield

Beats Solo 4 Falls Back to All-Time Low, Now Emerging as a Cheaper Alternative to AirPods Max in Apple’s Headphone Lineup

‘The Meta Brand Is Not Something People Want to Put Anywhere Near Their Face,’ Says Snapchat CEO

DNA From 1,500-Year-Old Korean Mass Grave Exposes a Brutal Ancient Ritual

Intel May Have an Answer to AMD’s Most Powerful Gaming CPUs

Anker’s EufyMake E1 Finally Brings Printers Out of the Dark Ages

This Loud-Ass Party Speaker Almost Got Me High AF

Asus Zenbook A16 Review: Start Considering Snapdragon on PC, for Real

Aqara Thermostat Hub W200 Review: Almost Better than My Ecobee

HP Omen Max 45L Review: 4K60 Gaming Has Never Been So Easy

Ecovacs Winbot W3 Omni Review: Window Cleaning Robots Have a Long Way to Go

AirPods Max 2 vs. Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones (2nd Gen): Which ANC Headphones Win?

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