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There are eight million stories in the Future City; this is one of them. Copernicus Jones is your typical wise-cracking private eye: he's got a weakness for betting on sports games and he can't say no to a leggy dame with a fat pocketbook. But beneath the hat and trenchcoat, he's all robot. More »
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Since March, Punchdrunk theater company's immersive Shakespeare adaptation Sleep No More has converted an entire Manhattan loft building into a 100-room abandoned hotel from the 1940s. More »
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When Happy escapes from jail, he finds himself in a place much worse than prison. Now he's trapped in the waxy, dystopic world of a little girl's drawing ruled by a maniacal unicorn, and he's desperate to get back home. More »
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When you're in the city that never sleeps, you might want to keep one eye open at all times. Many of the best futuristic cities and urban fantasy stories take place in dark, dystopian cities. More »
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Bruce Willis means business, in the first image from Looper, the time-traveling noir adventure from Brick director Rian Johnson. You can see the full-size image over at Empire, along with a brief description of some footage they saw at Cannes. More »
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Anybody who cares about noir fiction should read Domenic Stansberry's scathing rebuke to the calcification of the genre. (And since noir is the fundamental inspiration for a ton of urban fantasy right now, as well as much of the cyberpunk genre, pretty much anybody who's interested in well-written science fiction and fantasy should care about noir.) More »
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If you've got the money, DC has a collection of sparkling comic book-centric jewels you can adorn yourself with. Our personal favorite are the bedazzled Cat Woman claws, and this Gotham City ring. More »
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One man takes on the ruler of post-apocalyptic New York City, in a quest for vengeance that may turn into a hope for salvation. Check out this new concept art for the post-apocalyptic pot-boiler The Last City. More »
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For years now, people have been telling me to read Richard K. Morgan's cyberpunksploitation novel Altered Carbon, and I've been meaning to get around to it. But holy fuck, it really is that great. Spoilers below. More »
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Duncan Jones has described Mute as inspired by Blade Runner, but how important is the futuristic setting to the film's plot. A script reviewer finds Mute was originally set in the modern day, and told a very similar story. More »
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Ignore your familiar superheroes this week; the Comics We Crave are all about unfamiliar faces (or unfamiliar takes on familiar faces), the stories we never saw on television and even an alternate history of the 21st Century. Who could resist? More »
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Fans of surreal mysteries like Lost and The Prisoner would do well to check out Sin Titulo, Cameron Stewart's creepy noir comic involving malevolent nursing home employees, teleportation, and people psychically connected through a vision of a dead tree. More »
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Richard Kadrey was at the vanguard of the noir-tinged cyberpunk back in the day, so it's only fitting he's helping to shape noir's next frontier, urban fantasy. His novel Sandman Slim brings Hellspawn and trash magic to L.A. Spoilers below... More »
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Classic monsters are being revamped into a dark detective flick where Dracula is a crime lord, Frankenstein's monster is a detective and we can only assume the hairless bride of Frankenstein you see here is his sexy undead secretary. More »
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"Blade Runner meets Casablanca written by Nelson Algren" would be the Hollywood pitch for Budayeen Nights, a collection of stories by the late George Alec Effinger. But there's much more to these hard-boiled, lemon-scented tales. More »
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Science fiction noir doesn't come much nastier than the KOP novels by Warren Hammond. The adventures of a bent cop on a rotten planet, they're like Dashiell Hammett mixed with Philip K. Dick. Spoilers ahead. More »
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Richard K. Morgan (author of Altered Carbon) did an interview with the StarShipSofa podcast, and it's pretty thought-provoking stuff. He explains why trying to write short stories before you write novels may be a waste of time, why noir SF has made a comeback, and why he doesn't mind being called a pornographer. More »
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With all the dark superhero movies flying through the theater of late, perhaps it's time to return to the pulpy advertising of the film noir genre. Artist Timothy Lim steps in with his noir-style reimaginings of recent superhero movie posters. His over-the-top and tongue-in-cheek descriptions of the films capture the dark side of their plots, while keeping in mind that these movies are fun at heart. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5077576&view=rss&microfeed=true Rejoice! Penguin Books has confirmed that a new Thomas Pynchon novel is coming out in August 2009. But Penguin wouldn't comment on rumors that it's a 400-page noir story, set in the world of 1960s psychedelia. [Los Angeles Times] More »
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Just as Americans are going to the polls in November, a mass media campaign will be ramping up that depicts cities as both dangerous and wracked with torment. "My City Screams!" It could be a slogan for The Dark Knight. Or any of a host of other movies, TV shows or books. But it's actually the tagline for The Spirit, the new comic-book movie by noir master Frank Miller. We love to imagine cities as hazardous, smelly alien worlds, even as real-life U.S. cities are becoming safer and safer. Why is genre entertainment's portrayal of cities trapped in an era of tenements? More »
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The first time I ever read the word "anti-hero," it was in an article about science fiction, and it's always seemed a very science fictional type of word — like anti-matter, or anti-gravity. Science fiction has its share of one-dimensional white hats, but the characters who capture our imagination are usually the morally blurred rascals, who have their own best interests at heart. You never quite know what an anti-hero will do next. Here's our guide to the roots of science fiction's greatest anti-heroes. More »
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