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The latest trailer for The Hunger Games has hit the scene, and it provides a stark reminder that the Super Bowl would be 100% more interesting if the game involved Lenny Kravitz, Donald Sutherland, and archery. Most importantly, we catch a glimpse of Katniss evading death during the Games. Looking good, Stanley Tucci!

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Later this year, Dark Horse Comics will release The Massive, a new ongoing comic book from writer/illustrator Brian Wood (DMZ, Channel Zero, Northlanders). More »
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V For Vendetta writer Alan Moore and artist David Lloyd have admitted in interviews that they're tickled that the titular character's Guy Fawkes has become a protest standard. But Channel 4 went one step further and took the hirsute master to Occupy London to meet the masquerade. Alan Moore's chilled with John Constantine in real life, so I imagine he's used to this kind of thing. More »
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Should you ever find yourself in the environs of Vilnius, Lithuania, you can sign up for 1984: The Survival Drama, a three-hour faux Soviet military interrogation, complete with former KGB guards looking to recapture the magic of the old days. 25€ will get you a three-hour regimen of belt-whippings, verbal abuse, and a sham trial. What a bargain! Here's the sales pitch:

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Tom Hanks is building, starring, writing, and lending his voice to a new animated scifi series for Yahoo titled Electric City, which is the first ever scripted series for Yahoo. Here's a plot synopsis, via Yahoo Vice-President Erin McPherson: More »
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For the last several decades, boot-headed performance artist Vermin Supreme has been running for political office on the platforms of zombie awareness and mandatory dentifrice for all Americans. More »
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This is the 1980s toe-tapper "Cathy Don't Go" (lyrics and en Español), an earworm New Wave number that almost certainly ripped off Survivor's "Jackie Don't Go." Unlike Survivor's ditty, "Cathy Don't Go" was written by the evangelical doomsday cult The Family International about how the Antichrist is controlling us through barcodes. The music video will make your head explode. Here's a sample verse: More »
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While most of the globe seems pretty okay that Kim Jong-il is quite dead, things are considerably more doleful in North Korea. North Korean state news has released footage of the public mourning en masse in Pyongyang today. More »
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This may seem like a sinister social engineering experiment conducted by a dystopian sugar-shocked dictator, but it's just the Fühlometer, a performance art piece by Julius von Bismarck, Benjamin Maus, and Richard Wilhelmer. Explains Wilhelmer's website: More »
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Here's a scene I can see becoming increasingly more common as the decades wear on. After a street mural in Vancouver was defaced by an extremely uncreative would-be anarchist (top), somebody slapped a QR code over the half-assed tag (middle). More »
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In this series of paintings by James Chadderton, called "Manchester Apocalypse," we get a glimpse of what the U.K.'s retro futuristic industrial city will look like after the economy (and everything else) is in a state of collapse. More »
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It's the kind of thing you'd expect to happen in a really dystopian movie about a collapsed civilization. Yesterday, a Tennessee fire department drove out to a woman's home and watched it burn to the ground because she hadn't paid a $75 fire department fee. More »
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Walt Disney may not actually be frozen underneath Disneyland, but that hasn't stopped a group of Brazilian animators from creating this creepy short film just in time for Walt Disney's 110th birthday (which was yesterday). In D. On Ice, the animation mogul returns to the present day, only to find himself at the whims of a singing corporate stooge. Me, I'd just wish Disney would make more propaganda films about giant omelettes nowadays. More »
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For Utrecht's 48 Hour Film Project, filmmakers Jeroen Houben, Tim Arts, and Stefan van den Boogaard created Page 23, a bizarre little gem about the secret lives of those condemned to dwell in furniture catalogues. I don't want to over-explain this creepy four-minute short, so here's the synopsis: More »
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In a country whose ideal of success is often called "the American dream," there are plenty of nightmares too. The United States has its own particular brand of dystopia, full of religious thuggery, class warfare, and the spectre of slavery. Here are ten of the greatest dystopian stories ever created about America. More »
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Jake Paltrow — yes, the brother of Gwyneth Paltrow — has written and directed this dystopian flick set in a future where water is extremely scarce. Sure, we've seen a lot of parched world stories, but there's something about this bit of preview art that's fairly striking. Plus, is that Big Dog? More »
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For the Nuit Blanche: Bring to Light on October 1, artist Marcos Zota projected a giant eyeball onto the bottom of the Milton Street water tower in Brooklyn. Conceived as a commentary of gentrification in the neighborhood, the piece also makes for a serviceable stand-in for a Martian invader. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5850212&view=rss&microfeed=true Remember how the internet was going to create a whole new class of creators, who were going to be supercharging our economy by noodling on their laptops? Those people are hurting, thanks to a one-two punch of economic meltdown and the phasing out of old jobs like "video-store clerk" and "newspaper writer." Turns out the Information Age isn't so hot for middle-class culture industry types after all. Former io9 reporter Scott Timberg has a great rundown of the lost potential of the "Creative Class" over at Salon.com. More »
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This apocalypse-ready house is sunk deep beneath the Earth, located in a remote area of Saskatchewan, Canada, and it comes equipped with a stove made from an old barrel and an indoor rabbit hutch. And it could be yours if you want to trade some land or a nice vehicle for it. No, this isn't Thunderdome of the Great White North. It's a home of the future. More »
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In the upcoming faux documentary Ghosts With Shit Jobs, the West has been in a state of financial ruin for decades, and the indigenous North Americas (or "ghosts") are outsourced labor for China and India. What forms of employment are available? Among several careers, living spambot, robot baby technician, and silk collector. More »
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A federal judge's decision requiring the government to get a court warrant before obtaining mobile-phone location data is one of a string of conflicting opinions on the topic. It comes as lawmakers and the Supreme Court weigh in on the hot-button issue of locational privacy. More »
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There's something so thrilling and electrifying about dystopian cityscapes — and this concept art of cyberpunk Paris totally hits our sweet spot. More »
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So you're about to partake in a gruesome series of death games for the amusement of the rabble, or you're entering in a contest to see if you can beat out others to win a hugely expensive artificial organ, or you're about to be publicly executed for being in possession of a Guy Fawkes mask. There are plenty of ways to be done away with by the state in a macabre, carnivalesque celebration, given the many dystopian futures that fiction has warned us about. More »
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Remember The Suburbs, the totalitarian-urban-sprawl music video collaboration between Being John Malkovich's Spike Jonze and indie darlings Arcade Fire? Now you can watch a much longer companion piece, Scenes from the Suburbs. Growing up sucks in a police state. More »
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Grasping onto a torch I peer into a world of naked bodies. One grimaces at me and bangs his head against a wall. Others hardly stir: instead, they stare at the ground in despair. More »
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Comic artist Kevin Colden (DC's Strange Adventures, Act-I-Vate's Fishtown) recently posted an unused pitch for a graphic novel adaptation of Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange. Check out Alex and his droogs engaging in some ultraviolence, comic style. More »
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The Centro Financiero Confinanzas (a.k.a. "the David Tower," named after its investor David Brillembourg) stands half-complete in downtown Caracas and is Venezuela's third largest skyscraper. More »
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Just who are these weird people that you see when you put on the mysterious sunglasses in They Live? What do they want? More importantly, what do they mean? Novelist Jonathan Lethem investigates, in three excerpts from his new book analyzing They Live. More »
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In Bangkok, the Maeklong Line runs through a produce market, and the vendors must scatter whenever once they hear the train's horn. The poor fruits and vegetables are less lucky. This cramped tableau brings to mind the shoulder-to-shoulder existence within the Kowloon Walled City. More »
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Remember back in the year 2000 when you'd feed your brat kids their breakfast pellets, head to work under the city's weather controlled dome, your computer overlords only knew you by your nine digit identification number, and you'd end your day fantasizing about a life before computers? More »
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Animals seem to use migration to escape the spread of deadly pathogens...so it's bad news that many animals have stopped migrating. More »
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This week we posted America Under Communism, a propaganda comic about life in Soviet America. Here's If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?, probably the only evangelical Christian grindhouse horror movie ever made about life in Commie America. More »
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Scoring the director's chair in the live-action movie adaptation of Suzanne Collins' wildly popular Hunger Games series was no easy task. But Gary Ross knew exactly what to show the studio to beat out all the other Hollywood contenders. More »
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It's election day, and all indications are that the GOP will sweep Congress. What's the worst that can happen under the Republicans? Science fiction has the answer, with a wealth of stories about right-wing policies taken to horrendous extremes. More »
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In John Alan Simon's adaptation of Dick's posthumous novel Radio Free Albemuth, a record store clerk receives hallucinatory missives from the alien satellite VALIS. The filmmakers are committed to the source material, but the film is uneven. More »
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The indie flick Jim pinballs between two unlikely, intertwined storylines: a depressed man in the present contemplates suicide, and a clone child gains sentience in a far-off dystopian future. While this dual plot is promising, it ultimately doesn't coalesce. More »
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One of the things you never hear about in corporate dystopia stories is how office supplies are going to be weaponized. Luckily, some gun geeks have rectified this problem, by inventing a $500 automatic weapon that shoots rubber bands. More »
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Now that Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy has come to a close, could we get a graphic novel adaptation? Cartoonist Faith Erin Hicks gives us a taste of what a comic Hunger Games might look like. More »
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Some of the most beautiful buildings in the world are designed to be both sleek and eco-friendly. And then there's the Strata Tower, which improves urban density and has three wind turbines. And it's been named Britain's ugliest new building. More »
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Cillian "The Mark" Murphy is in final talks to play a "Timekeeper" in Gattaca director Andrew Niccol's upcoming Im.Mortal. Im.Mortal takes place in a future where the human aging gene has malfunctioned, and only the wealthy can buy off immortality. More »
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