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Widely recognized as one of the best superhero movies of the past decade, Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight is also much more than an action movie. It's a brooding allegory about power, personal responsibility, and the politics of urban life. More »
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Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat has created some of the series' most frightening monsters, including the Weeping Angel aliens in "Blink" who creep up when you glance away. This season, the Edvard Munch-inspired aliens called The Silence have a strange but potent superpower: the instant they leave the frame of your vision, you forget they exist. No wonder they've lurked hidden on Earth for so many thousands of years. More »
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From earthquakes to slime molds, from zombies to the romance of decay, here are the manga you'll want to read to prepare for the End of Days. More »
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I've never read the Rapturey Left Behind series, but from what I understand, a whole bunch of nice, pious people are abducted by God and the rest of us grubbers have to slum it on Earth with Kirk Cameron. More »
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You're not a geek just because you like science fiction, I know that much, and you're not a geek just because you saw The Lord of the Rings (each movie three times, in the theaters, including the midnight rerelease?)...maybe that makes you a geek. More »
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The early success of AMC series Walking Dead confirms it: Though zombies have been hot for a while, they are now officially the new vampires. Why do Americans love zombies, and what does it say about us? More »
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King Kong's monstrous motivations aren't the same as Dracula's — one wants a castle made of bananas, the other a swimming pool full of hemoglobin — but, on a psychological level, their motivations differ too. Here's Chris Braak's monster taxonomy. More »
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A lot of movies advertise themselves as scary. So why are the most frightening movies often the ones that aren't marketed as horror? More »
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I've been interested in superheroes for a long time, and not only because I think telekinesis would be useful. No, what really intrigues me is that your average superhero story is a fantasy dressed up as science fiction. More »
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There's nothing like a movie about a giant killer ape to relax you after a really stressful day. Here are five reasons why a monster movie can be the most soothing thing in the world. More »
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I don't believe in the Singularity for the same reason I don't believe in Heaven. More »
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The presence of a black US president in a summer blockbuster used to mean that the film occurred in The Future. But in 2010, we need a new signifier. I think I know the one: the openly gay general. More »
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Find out why Mark Millar's comic book Wanted really should have had singing mice and a pumpkin coach. More »
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The allure of the cyborg is so widely-accepted that it's become a cliche in science fiction, but people rarely ask why. Doesn't it seem a little strange that humans are so powerfully attracted to synthetic versions of themselves? More »
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Science fiction creators need to stop making self-aware machines into a metaphor for our society. More »
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Military action has provided fodder for science fiction since the birth of the genre. But just what is military science fiction? More »
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Literary scifi authors from Vonda McIntyre to Jeff VanderMeer and Thomas Disch have written "works for hire" - tie-ins to movie, TV, or game franchises. Now authors tell io9 why they did it - and no, it wasn't for money. More »
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Who's Canada's ultimate superhero? Guardian? Puck? Captain Canuck? This essay from The Walrus argues that Scott Pilgrim (and Michael Cera) embody the "Canadian sane man comic book superhero." They represent Canada's national status as an understated outsider. [Spotted on Metafilter] More »
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For would-be scientists pursuing postgraduate degrees, the lack of jobs within academia is disheartening. This reality stands in stark contrast to the narrative that America's perpetually falling behind in the science game. This excellent essay at Miller-McCune dissects this misconception. More »
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Do we need a new Star Trek TV series? Yes — with the present vacuum of big-ticket scifi and adventure shows, a new, Federation-centric Trek series could rule the ratings. More »
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Some of us think of Starship Troopers as a brilliant satire, others consider it a bastardization of Robert Heinlein's novel. Scott Tobias of The Onion AV Club considers the 1997 film an apt metaphor for 21st-century nationalism and militarism. More »
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Now that the U.S. Attorney General's announced that the oil spill has made almost a third of the Gulf of Mexico off-limits, people are taking their anger to the internet. Here's a collection of pissed-off, BP-inspired cartoons, videos and illustrations More »
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Since the late 1970s, a key idea in Western science fiction has been that Japan represents the future. Japan's "weird" culture is a figure for an incomprehensible tomorrow. But commentator Lisa Katayama says this idea reveals common misconceptions about Japan. More »
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A recent article in Slate calls Battlestar Galactica a safe haven for "chauvinist pigs." But all you have to do is look at representations of men in this show to see its feminist side. (NSFW) More »
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Genre movies are like folk tales: hundreds of people tell the same basic story again and again, with little variations and tweaks. Thus part of the pleasure of watching horror or scifi movies, at least for me, is figuring out which things have been tweaked — and which stories are getting retold. I like to make little genre/subgenre charts in my head. If you have the same strange urge, you'll love the article about giant bug movies over at PopPolitics, charting the strange ways the "giant bug" movies of the 1950s mutated into the 1990s/2000s Mimic series about giant transgenic cockroaches in New York. More »
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Why can't movie science fiction be as creative as the books? Brendan at Balancing Frogs just read a collection of 1950s science fiction novellas about ancient telepathic civilizations, crystalline alien explorers and super-advanced humans who despise their primitive Earth cousins. Each story has at least one loopy plot twist. Why can't the movies have that manic zeal? Says Brendan: More »
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]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=309567&view=rss&microfeed=true This week's show opens at a funeral; apparently Will didn't survive the shooting. Which immediately leads me to wonder: if the Berkut Group (a private, clandestine group dedicated to stopping rogue organizations from ending civilization as we know it) has all this Bionic technology, why didn't they apply it to Will? Of course, with Will out of the way, Jamie's free to wander through his apartment, smelling his clothes and discovering the dossier he's been keeping on her for two years. More »
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While all the attention given to human cloning has focused almost solely on questions of morality and bioethics - or on religion and the nature of government power - little energy has gone into questioning the literary impact a human clone might someday have. More »
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