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A couple of days ago, the esteemed Charlie Jane Anders looked at the dearth of new, sustaining pop culture heroes and villains. That, with the exception of Harry Potter, we haven't seen a new character with the perceived permanence of a James Bond or a Captain Kirk or Spider-Man — and she blamed it on a lack of a pulp media. Ah, but she was looking in the wrong place. More »
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Writer Joanne McNeil went on vacation earlier this year, but didn't want to lose touch with people she knows online. So she set up a chatbot to carry on her friendships without her. And the results were intriguingly weird. More »
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Right now, you are reading a piece of social media. That means it's designed to be passed around on social networks - though it appears on io9.com, can easily be transplanted to Facebook, Twitter, Stumble Upon, and dozens of others. Or it can be converted to email or a text message you can pass along to people who've never heard of io9. That's the difference between traditional print media and social media - the former requires you to seek out a publication to get information, whereas the latter requires you to be part of a social network. Many argue that this is a form of media that has never existed before, and that it's about to change not just the gadgets we buy, but the very fabric of our culture - how we communicate who we are, and how we remember our history. More »
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These days, two major scifi moneymakers are zombies and aliens. In books, TV shows, and movies, zombies are clawing at people's faces and aliens are perpetually jumping out of the shadows. Both types of movies have found popularity before, and now they're big again. But why? More »
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Taiwan's NMA News creates computer-animated depictions of current events that drive a flaming dune buggy into the uncanny valley. NMA's 3D take on the Leno-Conan tiff was amusing, but their version of the Al Gore sex scandal allegations is transcendental... More »
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This is so worthwhile — go to Newsweek.com and enter the Konami code: Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Enter. And then see what happens. Update: try it at Marvel.com too! [MikeWas on Twitter, thanks Kelly!] More »
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Prepare for a new player to enter the television and movie arena, as Vivendi and General Electric have finally reached a deal that will see the French company selling its share in NBC-Unversal, paving the way for a Comcast buyout. More »
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The future of entertainment may not be in Hollywood, but in Massachusetts. The MIT Media Lab announced this week that it is launching the Center for Future Storytelling, a research program that will develop new storytelling technologies. The team envisions a future that includes robotic actors and improved motion capture, but also increased democratization and participation, so that stories are told not just by individuals, but by entire communities. More »
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Between the giant banners advertising the D-9 alternate reality game (ARG) with anti-alien slogans, beyond the Dharma Initiative recruitment booth, there was a little stack of postcards at Comic-Con that read "You are being deceived — www.youarebeingdeceived.com." It was the calling card for an ARG that nobody saw. How do I know? Because io9 built the You Are Being Deceived ARG, complete with a phone number you can call and two mysterious linked URLs, as an experiment in marketing and mass deception. What happens when you try to deceive people but your lies are drowned out by better-funded lies? Allow me to recount our strange tale. More »
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I love when clueless humans tell me to my face that women don't like science fiction. Usually they tell me this at a science fiction convention, after we have talked about scifi for an hour and I have said that I edit a science fiction blog. These humans have an amazing ability to not believe their eyes, which is the only way I can explain what's happening when somebody says to my face that women like me don't exist. And unfortunately, the SciFi Channel seems to have the same problem: There's an article in the New York Times today about how the channel boosted its ratings among women by de-emphasizing spaceships in Battlestar Galactica ads and airing supernatural horror movies. I cannot believe the stupidity here. 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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