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Today film blogger Todd Stadtman gives us a crash course on the many fantastic superheroes to grace the Indian film industry. Meet the legion of bootleg Supermen, the invisible Mr. India, and the archer Toofan, who's 900% more badass than Green Arrow and Hawkeye put together. More »
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The UN's latest Climate Change Conference recently concluded after two weeks of intense negotiations in Durban, South Africa. There's going to be a new agreement to address climate change, but does that really mean anything? Let's break down what happened. More »
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After failing to secure a plot of land for his reptilian pets, a snake charmer named Hakkul released a bunch of his wriggling companions — including several venomous cobras — inside a tax office in India's Uttar Pradesh state. According to the serpent tamer, he had been promised a plot to keep the reptiles, but the officials' ongoing demands for bribes forced him to play his hand. More »
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Well, that's not entirely true. Calling the new 3D Hindi superhero flick Ra.One the Bollywood Tron or Iron Man would be a bit of a misnomer. The most apt parallel for Ra.One would be Automan, that swiftly cancelled 1983 cop show about a crime-fighting hologram. And like Automan, Ra.One is shitstorm preposterous in all the right ways. More »
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At India's Sri Angalaparameswariamman Temple, villagers hung up a sign soliciting for donations for remodeling. Incidentally, they accompanied this sign with a 15-foot-tall statute of the goddess Angalaamman tearing out a woman's organs and bandying around a miniature naked manikin. More »
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Well, McGruff the Crime Dog never warned you about this. Two bizarre case studies involving men with herpetological substance abuse problems come to us from an outpatient facility in Ranchi, India. The first is about a one Mr. PKD, who recruited snake charmers to get his unusual fix: More »
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We've been ridiculously excited for the Tamil science fiction blockbuster Enthiran once we heard that it was totally bonkers. And indeed, these clips prove that the movie delivers scads o' madness. Robotic orb of machine gun death = total delight. More »
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Ever since the robot epic Enthiran became one of India's most successful movies ever, the stakes have been rising for Ra.One (Random Access One), the rival science fiction movie from Shah Rukh Khan. Here's our first look. More »
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India's Border Roads Organisation plans to build a road through a region in Bhutan rumored to be inhabited by the Abominable Snowmen. Picking up hirsute hitchhikers on this new highway is not recommended. More »
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There are only about 3000 tigers left, mostly spread across a hundred thousand square kilometers of Indian forest. To save them, we first need to know how many are left and where they are...and that's why we need tiger poop. More »
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Twice a century, India is attacked by huge rat armies that devour crops in massive destructive waves and leave people without any food. Scientists long dismissed it as an urban myth...until they discovered that it really happens, and why. More »
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There's been a rash of sightings of a creature known as the Bhootbilli, or "ghost cat" in a neighborhood near Pune, India. This large feline cryptid has consumed 45 pigeons (and one goat) belonging to one unlucky resident. More »
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A man is scared to get married because his parents' marriage is such a disaster — so he decides to travel back to the 1970s in a time machine to give both parents a makeover. It could only be Bollywood. More »
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This ant, preserved in amber 50 million years ago, is evidence that we may have dramatically misunderstood the environmental history of India. More »
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In the Malayalam-language film Asithayan, a 10-year-old kid becomes a Hulk-like behemoth and smashes those who would abuse the public trust. It is the best and/or most ridiculous thing you'll see all day. More »
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These Indian James Bond comics are devoid of context and proper translation, but they're better that way. After all, it's a spy's job to act mysterious, and I honestly have no idea what the hell's going on here. Semi-NSFW.

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China and India are two of the most rapidly urbanizing areas of the world. In a fantastically interesting article over at Foreign Policy, Richard Hobbs breaks down the numbers on how big cities will be in both countries by 2030. More »
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The real future apocalypse won't be zombies or nukes — it'll be water wars, according to Shekhar Kapur, director of Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age. His new movie Paani takes place during a future battle over access to water. More »
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What will the global population look like in 15 years? The US Census Bureau released a study yesterday that suggests China's vast population will peak in 6 years, and India's population will surpass its size within 15 years. More »
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Even as futuristic tech, post-apocalyptic scenarios and alternate histories are gaining more mainstream cred in U.S. publishing, Indian science fiction authors still struggle in obscurity. Science fiction accounts for only about 2 percent of publishing in India, according to a new article, and authors complain of being marginalized. (One big problem? They all write in English to try and gain international acceptance, which limits their local readership.) Still, their novels take SF themes and make them uniquely Indian. More »
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India has officially landed on the moon. Today, the Indian Space Research Organisation advanced its first deep space mission, Chandrayaan-1, by releasing its Moon Impact Probe, which successfully crash landed near the moon’s south pole and opened an exciting new chapter in Asia’s space exploration. More »
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We're finally getting a new space race — between China and India, which just launched its new Moon probe, Chandrayaan-1, today. China already launched its Chang'e orbiter last year, and "today we are trying to catch them, catch that gap, bridge the gap," the director of India's space agency told Reuters. But that doesn't mean NASA is out of the picture altogether — India's rocket is carrying a couple of devices for the U.S. agency, including one to look for ice deposits in the moon's polar region. And NASA plans to launch its own orbiter next year. Click through for another couple of images of the gorgeous Chandrayaan-1. More »
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The Busan International Film Festival in South Korea wrapped yesterday, and everyone was buzzing about two major superhero flicks hitting Asian countries this winter. The sequel to 2003's Cicak Man from Malaysia will hit theaters in early December. And audiences eagerly anticipate Jeon Woo Chi, a Harry Potter superhero flick budgeted at $12 million. Want to get prepped for these movies early? We've got a crash course in Eastern superheroes for you, from Super Inframan to the Spider-man-inspired Mercury Man (left), and beyond. More »
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We all get nostalgic for the superheroes we grew up watching on TV or reading in comic books. That's why I have a soft spot in my heart for Wonder Woman and Bionic Woman. io9's Jeff VanderMeer has just posted on his blog about his own superhero nostalgia trip with 1970s comic books, featuring traditional heroes from Hindu tales. Growing up in the Fiji Islands, the little VanderMeer was lucky enough to have access to books like these (more titles pictured below), as well as Western fare like Spider-Man. More »
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At least two things happened last week in the worlds of science fiction and science. One was cool and the other was crap. More »
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Ever since Virgin Comics launched in 2006, the company has waged a not-so-stealthy campaign to create an Indian comic book tradition. Unlike Japan and the U.S., which have established manga and comic book audiences, the Asian subcontinent's comic book readers are embracing a relatively young medium. With a cash infusion from Virgin's Richard Branson, and talent drawn from India's Gotham Entertainment Group, the company has come out with some cool titles like Ramayan 3392 (pictured), a post-apocalyptic, scifi retelling of the traditional Indian story of Rama. Now Current TV has a great segment on Virgin, as well as the growing Indian comic book and animation industry, which you can check out below. More »
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It's as if we're witnessing the rise of the walled cities in Neal Stephenson's novel The Diamond Age, where neo-Victorians live in isolated, nanotech splendor while other people live in cardboard boxes. This image shows the stark contrast between the slums and the mini-city called Hamilton Court in Gurgaon, India. More »
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Is the United States the least futuristic post-industrial country? Every week we hear about cool robots playing soccer and musical instruments in Japan, or the Tron-looking Pad building in Dubai (see photo.) Meanwhile, the U.S. is retiring its space shuttles and has the slowest broadband in the universe. What's going on? Five futuristic inventions from a world that has left the U.S. behind, after the jump. More »
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The first ever 3-D TV show, Mayavi (Steel Hand Phantom), is spreading throughout India and winning awards in Korea. After superspy Vikram loses his hand in a covert op gone wrong, he gains a new bionic hand. Each finger has a different superpower. Learn all his finger powers, and see another pic, after the jump. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=337482&view=rss&microfeed=true Robert Sigl, co-creator of the bizarre Canadian scifi show LEXX (seen above), announced today that he's directing a new movie that will resurrect Jesus' evil twin brother in the present day. What, you didn't know that Jesus had an evil twin brother? It's probably left out of most New Testament translations. More »
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What will it take to launch another space age to replace the one that ended with the Cold War? Maybe another space race. China is ramping up its efforts to put people back on the Moon, launch more lunar orbiters, and build its own space station. Already, China is challenging the U.S.' domination of space launches. More »
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Two-year-old Lakshmi Tatma, the impoverished Indian girl who had a "parastic twin" removed from her body last week, is being used as PR by her surgical team. It seems Lakshmi, who was reportedly hailed as a reincarnated goddess in her village and, more menacingly, sought for purchase by a circus, can't escape the limelight. More »
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