Sci-Fi

In This Future Dystopia, Clones Have Developed A Troubling Addiction

The teleporter is one of the classic technologies of science fiction stories and it usually is portrayed as a positive, a marker of just how far a society has advanced from our own. This story, however, spins it into something much darker. In response to this piece tracing where teleporters have appeared in science fiction…

​The Tragic Demise of Science Fiction’s Greatest Idea

The matter transmitter is one of science fiction’s greatest inventions. It’s been in hundreds of SF stories, perhaps most famously in Star Trek as the transporter. And yet writers keep trying to turn this incredibly useful, flexible idea into nothing more than a fancy system of transit. Which is all wrong. The first attempts on…

​Fifty Shades of Gray Matter: The Most Malevolent Brain Monsters

Seriously, what’s with everyone hating on brains? They’re our most important organ (or, so they tell us), yet in just about every genre film, TV show, comic book or game, the sight of an oversized cranium or a levitating frontal lobe is a sure indicator of malicious intent. At the very least, let us take…

What Fictional Technology Will Become Real In Twenty Years?

Earlier today, I posted a video that hypothesized how Star Trek-like tractor beams and Doctor Who-ish sonic screwdrivers could actually be more realistic than you’d think. Although sound science, I grow weary of far flung promises of sci-fi tech becoming reality long after I’m dead. Let’s live in the now, shall we? What currently fictional…

How Close Are We to Real-Life Tractor Beams and Sonic Screwdrivers?

Last May, researchers from the University of Dundee in Scotland proved that creating a tractor beamwith sound was possible. This 10-minute video, recently posted by YouTube user whentheappledrops tries to simplify the science behind this discovery and suss out a definitive answer to the question: is this really possible? As is true with many of…

Ultra Short Spooky Stories From A Lost And Lonely Future

Unsettling quick-take tales of criminally-inclined clones, a corporation’s attempt to bring time travel to the masses, and the very first Martian settler (arriving on a planet that may be just a little less uninhabited than we think) all await you inside. You all brought more than 500 very short stories in response to our call…

Tell Us Some Six-Word Science Fiction Stories!

Can you spin just six-words into a whole story? We hope so, because we want to hear your best (and shortest!) science fiction epics. You may choose to focus on an underground alien civilization that’s decided it’s time to meet (Europa probe conclusive: something’s drilling up. — ManhackMan), or flip the script on a classic…

Are We Overthinking the Dangers of Artificial Intelligence?

Futurists and science fiction authors often give us overly grim visions of the future, especially when it comes to the Singularity and the risks of artificial superintelligence. Scifi novelist David Brin talked to us about why these dire predictions are often simplistic and unreasonable. Illustration: Jim Cooke Our civilization faces no shortage of risks in…

The spaceships and alien worlds of Thomas Pringle

Thomas Pringle is one of my favorite concept illustrators. Some of his stuff—like the landscape with a spaceship taking off above—border on abstract art. The unholy space-age son of Turner and analytical cubism Picasso, if you will. His work excites my eye because my brain has to fill the blanks. Thomas Pringle is a Danish…

Being a Sci-Fi and Fantasy fan is tough when you’re also an Arachnophobe

It’s become something of a ritual this past week for me. Go to Google. Filter results for ‘Last 24 Hours’. Type ‘Shadow of Mordor Spiders’. Hit search and hope I don’t find what I’ve dreaded for months. I’ve feared Spiders for as long as I can remember – which, as an avid fan of sci-fi…

How Laline Paull Brought Real Science into Her Novel The Bees

Science fiction has a celebrated role in inspiring real scientific advancements. But, the relationship also works in the opposite direction, with science inspiring stories to go to new places. Here, author Laline Paull explains just how scientific facts sent her novel The Bees into an unexpected direction. Paull joined us today to answer questions about…

The auction of Ray Bradbury’s sci-fi art collection ends tomorrow, September 25th. Included in the auction are Bradbury’s “The Burning Man” print, which became the cover for Fahrenheit 451; a Charles Addams painting that became the cover for From the Dust Returned, and Bradbury’s collection of animation cels. [Live Science]

Let’s Play a Sci-Fi Trope Drinking Game with EKU’s Football Intro Video

This is it. This is every now-ubiquitous sci-fi thriller trope, presented to us in the form of Eastern Kentucky’s football team intro video. It’s less than a minute and a half long, but it’s a great way to get drunk quickly. We’ve reached a point where all of these things are instantly recognizable, clearly pretty…

The biggest comparison of sci-fi spaceships ever is complete at last

At last, it’s done. The biggest spaceship size chart ever created is now complete and fully operational. 4,268 x 5,690 pixels of technological terror that includes everything from the smaller Star War ships to EVE. According to its author, Dirk Loechel, this is the last update. It’s epic. The last update For real this time:…

A Magical Patch of Grass Turns Evil in This Scary Short Film

Whenever people stumble on a mysterious natural phenomenon that grants them powers in movies, things don’t generally turn out so well. You’ll have to watch Burnt Grass to find out exactly what goes awry with the short film’s central couple when they discover a patch of their lawn with the ability to duplicate organic material.…

Why Is It So Hard To Predict The Technology Of The Future?

Attempting to predict the future is always a roll of the dice — even if we manage to correctly foretell where the winds will shift us, it is impossible to know what unexpected events will detour us on the way there. But what makes the technology of the future so particularly difficult to imagine? In…

This Short Sci-Fi Thriller Shows a Quantum Experiment Gone Awry

Would you follow your lover to a different dimension? Entangled, one of the highlights from the Toronto International Film Festival’s Short Cuts program, is an eerie, engrossing story that follows what happens when a scientist decides to conduct a quantum experiment on himself. Like Shane Carruth’s Primer, Entangled takes a sci-fi concept and grounds it…

The General Store that Caters to Your More … Unique Needs

A general store should have everything for one-stop shopping. And yet, so many are lacking in the things we truly need. Robots. Space helmets. Ray guns. But there’s always one place you can go. This piece by Blake Wheeler, called “The General Store,” is already sold. But you can buy different pieces of Wheeler’s geek-friendly…

What Logical Inconsistency in a Story Still Bugs You, Years Later?

Sometimes a science fiction or fantasy story makes a logical error so egregious that you can’t let it go. Even years later, it still pops into your head and annoys you. Why did they DO that? Tell us what stories make you feel that way. My pick is a pretty obvious one. How did Darth…

A Maryland teacher has been incarcerated for writing science fiction. Set 900 years from now, Patrick McLaw’s stories depict the aftermath of a school shooting — a subject that alerted the police. He was forced to take a psychological evaluation, is now barred from school property, and is suspended from his job.