We here at io9 absorbed a lot of pop culture this year. A lot. We thought long and hard about what was the best, and what was the worst, and painstakingly put together several posts so our fine readers could tell us how right (or wrong) we were. Here now, for your convenience, are all of them in one handy place.

Another year is over, and we’re all one step closer to the heat death of the universe. Whether that bums you out or you find it strangely comforting, you’re not going to find a more pleasant look back at 2017 than this collection of io9's most-read posts from the last year. Some of them even aren’t about Star Wars,…

Environmental non-fiction can be a tough slog, as the subject matter is often grim. It takes the most engaging, insightful authors to break through with something that gets at the heart of the matter and also keep the pages turning. Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction from 2015 is a perfect example of this.…

It doesn’t matter if a movie’s good, bad, or just mediocre—any film can have a moment that makes your jaw drop in awe or tears come to your eyes, or makes you shudder in irritation and disgust. Here are all the greatest and worst individual moments from the cinematic releases of 2017.

This year has been one of the most heartbreaking for lovers of the planet. Climate change has never felt more real or invincible. Massive wildfires tore through California, record-breaking hurricanes ravaged the Southeast and Caribbean, and our president didn’t seem to care about any of it.

You lose some, and you find some. That’s pretty much the name of the game when it comes to biodiversity, although these days the odds are stacked heavily towards the losses—even as millions of species are yet to be officially discovered and added to the scientific archives.

America’s environmental movement is having an Empire Strikes Back moment. From reneging on climate change leadership to rolling back regulations and opening up America’s public lands for business, the Trump administration has been almost shockingly effective at one thing this past year, and it’s hacking decades of…

Holy crap was there a lot of television this year. While we’ve already covered our best and worst shows of the year, there were many specific moments in these series, as well as memorable highlights from shows that didn’t make it into our Top 10 list, that we’d be remiss to not highlight—or remind you of how awful…

Astronomers spend their days looking at the sky. Maybe some crazy complex new telescope is helping, or some form of AI is teasing the complexities out of vast piles of data. It’s still just the sky. The sky isn’t immutable, though. Some of the most interesting science happens when brief blips pass into and out of…

I’m not saying we’d be blind to the beauty of our planet without NASA, but damn would we be missing out. Every year, the space agency’s satellites, planes, climate models, and astronauts produce some of the most jaw-dropping images of Earth. This year was no exception.

Did you agree with every single entry and ranking on our best films and TV series of the year lists? We doubt it. After all, even the io9 staff didn’t agree on everything in there, so why would you? To give these aggrieved souls a chance to speak their mind, here are some of the shows and movies io9 editors and…

Though we’ll miss the many actors, authors, and artists—as well as the favorite TV shows, comics, and characters—who left us this year, at least we’ll always have the joy, thrills, stinging one-liners, breathtaking action scenes, and iconic moments they left behind.

Mercifully, 2017 has begun fading in the distance. It can be easy to look back at the last 355 days or so and see only the bad stuff—super easy, actually—but 2017 wasn’t without its good days, too. We here at io9 have huddled together to assemble lists of the past year’s happy surprises and disappointments, so pull up…

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to mourn the loss of several iconic fictional characters. Whether they were cut down in the line of duty, chose to make a noble sacrifice for the greater good, or simply kicked the bucket, all of these characters will be missed... well, almost all of them.

This year’s genre fiction can be defined by many things, but weirdly enough, 2017 has been very big for Captains. Not majors, nor generals, not even sergeants or admirals or petty officers, or any other rank you can think of—just Captains, and here are how they all ranked this year.

It’s been a wild year for comics—full of swirling, grand relaunches and controversial events, but more importantly, some damn good books. As ever, it’s tough to whittle down the multitude of stories and characters we’ve read about this year into a list of the best, but here are 15 of our absolute favorite comics of…

This has been the year of “drill, baby, drill” and record renewable energy numbers, science denial and increasingly dire warnings, insane wildfires and unfathomable deluges. Competing narratives are nothing new, but it increasingly feels like an existential struggle centered on climate change is underway, with…

It was a big year for the building blocks of life. Here are the most significant breakthroughs in genetics research of 2017.

This year, we were glued to our TVs and/or whatever device was streaming our scifi and fantasy favorites. It was tough narrowing down a top 10—and you may be surprised by what’s missing. The bottom five took a little less time to assemble, but still, this wasn’t easy either. Here are the shows we loved and loathed…

2017 was full of cuddly critters and sexy beasts—from the littlest baby tree to the evil clown king of Tumblr. That’s why io9's Beth Elderkin and Jill Pantozzi have siphoned out the top 10 creatures who stole their hearts this year. Check out the video below.