Get The Nostalgia While The Nostalgia Getting's Good
The failure of Jennifer's Body at the box office punctured the myth of Megan Fox, but in doing so left Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen's epic success even more inexplicable. You mean that everyone who went to see that genuinely wanted to see giant robots fighting for the right to appear in a story that made sense instead of Megan Fox's ass? Really? (To be fair, maybe it was John Tuturro's ass they couldn't resist.) Of course not; they wanted to relive memories of their childhood/the first Transformers movie/the Go-Bots by proxy. Same reason that Star Trek was such a hit, and the dismal Terminator Salvation made money at all. The problem with this for movie studios is that there's only a limited number of things to be nostalgic about, and they're burning through them quickly (Next year's Tron Legacy and The A-Team show that we're already up to the mid-'80s); when there're already plans to reboot Battlestar Galactica as a movie franchise months after its conclusion as a (rebooted) television show and restarting the Fantastic Four movies from scratch just a few years after the failure of Rise Of The Silver Surfer, you can tell that there's nervousness. With good reason; the lawsuit over the rights to Superman show that nostalgia could get more expensive for filmmakers in years to come. Maybe one day, Disney's $4 Billion buyout of Marvel Entertainment's IP will look like a bargain.

Find A Voice With Something To Say, Then Let It Speak
2009 was a year of extremes when it came to the creation of movies and television that didn't (entirely) rely on IP graverobbing. On the one hand, it was the year when the phrase "production hiatus" became widely known as code for "The Powers That Be don't like what's being done and are about to 'fix' it" as the trains seemed to come off the usually-smoother-running TV production track more often, and more publicly, than usual (See: Dollhouse, FlashForward and V, which has had two such hiatuses, and "coincidentally" switched showrunners twice, as well). On the other, it was the year when smaller movies like District 9 and Moon garnered critical acclaim - and, in the case of D9, a pretty amazing box office haul - for being individual, unusual and something other than generic production line blockbusters. Avatar, too, is being hailed for being the singular vision of James Cameron and, maybe most importantly, that being a good thing. Maybe this was the year that started a renaissance in an appreciation for the auteur theory after all?

On Television, Burying The Lede Will Kill You
We've said this more than once recently, but the fact that Dollhouse's second season was promoted to critics with its lackluster first episode may have damaged the show's chances irreparably. You can't blame the promotions people, because it makes sense to sell something based on the product itself; the "blame" lies with those making the show, who thought that they had the time and space to ramp up the season slowly, reiterating the central concept of the series with episodes that (sadly) repeated the rhythm of the first season. As the creative teams behind V (Put on hiatus after its first four episodes, and before we'd even seen a complete lizard reveal and/or any rodent eating) and the upcoming Day One (Restructured from a full season to a four episode mini-series to test the waters for a regular show) can attest to, there's no time for a slow build on network television anymore. Both Fringe and FlashForward sped up their timetables to try and meet demand for near-instant gratification, and both are still dogged with rumors of cancellation. Remember, television people: Put your best foot forward immediately.

Goodbyes Should Always Be Brief
Yes, yes: We loved Russell T Davies' run on Doctor Who as much as anyone, but the year of special episodes seemed weighed down by a sense of its own self-importance that reached epic proportions during this weekend's "The End of Time, Part One" (On the plus side, Now we know that Barack Obama will save the world with his economic announcement or something. Not that that'll seem horribly dated, oh, anytime after February 2009). Battlestar Galactica, too, approached epic levels of pomp and pretension during its final days. It's not that we would rather have rushed either show offstage unfinished, but there's something to be said for brevity and not getting too wrapped up in your own ego. Lost, consider yourself on notice.

Just Because You Can Doesn't Mean You Should
One word: Watchmen. Yes, we get it; we have the technology to make Doctor Manhattan look like he exists in a particularly shiny version of reality. But, months after all the hype, hoopla and multiple versions on DVD, it's still worth asking: Did Watchmen gain anything from the transition from comic to movie? Besides Zack Snyder's bank account, did anything? Sometimes it's okay to leave the original alone.

In a season full of swollen special effects blockbusters and annoying Christmas stories, badboy Brit director Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes is a welcome respite. It's a simple whodunnit with Victorian flourishes and a lot of incredibly hammy acting from star Robert Downey, Jr., playing Holmes as a badass Hunter Thompson type. When he's not solving crimes or using his powers of observation to kick bad guys in the nuts, Downey's Holmes mopes in his rooms, taking drugs and testing new kinds of explosives. Jude Law plays Watson with tweedy aplomb. Downey and Law have such incredible chemistry together that every scene featuring the two of them crackles with homoerotic zing and makes you fall completely in love with these two masters of logic who can also fight like Irish wrestlers (did I mention the great Irish wrestling scene? oh yeah).

The movie isn't based on any particular novel in Arthur Conan Doyle's celebrated series about the detective whose superpower was minute observation and deductive logic. It bears some resemblance to Hound of the Baskervilles, in that there's a rash of seemingly supernatural events that Holmes works to reveal as perfectly-explainable elements of a conspiracy. In the case of this film, the "supernatural" occurrence is that a hanged murderer has turned up alive and is attempting a hostile takeover of an ancient Illuminati-style group of aristocrats who believe in black magic.

Holmes gets involved in the case when he's hired by old flame Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams, looking spicy in her tweed ladysuits). Adler, an extremely minor character in the novels, emerges in this film as a wily and formidable third member of the Holmes-Watson team. The only thief who ever outwitted Holmes, she's working for a mysterious man who wants Holmes to investigate the murder of a chemist whose life turns out to be intertwined with the mysteriously resurrected murderer.

It's a perfectly serviceable plot, which reaches a very steampunk scifi conclusion. But this film will not win you over with storytelling - it will seduce you entirely with individual scenes and scenery. As I said earlier, every moment with Holmes and Watson crackles with manic energy, whether Watson is trying to convince a very stoned Holmes to stop experimenting on flies in his rooms, or Watson watches in horror as Holmes alienates the doctor's fiancee by observing that the pale stripe on her ring finger suggests she discarded her previous beau for "someone better."

Sherlock Holmes is, more than anything else, a feast for the eyes. The sets are sumptuous, the costumes will feed your erotic tweed fantasies, and the CGI backgrounds recreate a rich, believable Victorian London of hulking industrial projects and factories. Director Ritchie deliberately stages this world to feel like steampunk: This isn't the quaint, twee land of Victoriana; it's a modernizing urban world of science and steamships and laboratories. Even when Holmes is fighting, we watch through the lens of rationality. In a couple of truly great fight scenes, we hear Holmes planning the trajectory of his punches in voiceover before he executes them perfectly. Though it's a little hard to swallow this asskicking version of Holmes, it's still amusing to imagine that his great mind allows him to plot out the perfect way to knock out a thug.

Unfortunately, if you aren't a sucker for hard Victorian concept design, Sherlock Holmes is going to feel like a lot of style and not much substance. There are long, meandering chase sequences that lose their steam after a while, and the central premise of the conspiracy plot makes almost no sense. There are moments when the action becomes downright boring just as it should be picking up, like when Holmes and Watson are fleeing the bad guys on a half-built steamship - or when the resurrected murderer is executing his nefarious plan.

These flaws are particularly grating when you add in Downey's over-the-top acting and an accent that caroms all over the place. There's an obvious setup for a sequel here, and one hopes that somebody can tamp down Downey's prancing a bit before Sherlock Holmes 2: Steamy Boogaloo gets underway.

But if what you want is some goofy diversion and epic steampunkery, then Sherlock Holmes is going to satisfy you like nothing else. When it works, this flick is like a brilliant and well-oiled machine - and those moments are almost enough to make you forgive its failings.

Earlier this week, we told you about the vampiric ways of blue stragglers. Now Nature has published two papers on blue stragglers, which together prove that these bizarre stars are the result of interstellar violence and colonization.

According to Nature:

Blue straggler stars - hotter and more massive than would be expected for their apparent age - are found in stellar clusters, where all the stars are thought to have formed at the same time. Massive stars exhaust their nuclear fuel more quickly than their low-mass counterparts; it is therefore remarkable that the stragglers have not yet evolved into red giants, or the cooling stellar remnants known as white dwarfs. A likely explanation is that blue stragglers originate from normal stars that have undergone a recent increase in mass - either through stellar collision and merger, or by mass transfer between binary companions.

Now it seems that both mechanisms are at work. Francesco Ferraro and colleagues report the existence of two distinct populations of blue stragglers in the globular cluster M30, one redder than the other. They present evidence that the redder stars formed from mass transfer within binaries, whereas the bluer stars formed from stellar collisions. Meanwhile, Robert Mathieu and Aaron Geller studied blue stragglers in another cluster in our Galaxy, the open cluster NGC 188. They report that 76% of the blue stragglers in the cluster are in binary systems - a frequency three times that found among the normal stars. From this observation, and some unusual features of the binary orbits, the authors conclude that most or all of the blue stragglers in NGC 188 formed from multiple-star systems, and that both mass transfer and stellar collisions were involved.

via Nature (first article and second article)

According to Nature, this is the "first true three-dimensional representations of the Mandelbrot set." It was created by computer programmer Daniel White from Bedford, UK. See more of his work, and get a full explanation of the Mandelbulb, on his site.

via Nature

In case you missed it, we've got the whole novel for you, in order, just as MCM wrote it. Plus, you can see all the input that readers gave in the process of pushing the plot forward. MCM is the creator of the awesome animated series Rollbots, as well as the author of other novels like Vector and The Pig and the Box. In just two days of frantic writing, he produced The New Real, a novel of interstellar drug enforcement. And it's a kickass good time, sort of a combination of Farscape, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and The Shield.

Part I
Learn about how livewriting works, and meet Darvey, a failed drunk of a cop who gets called on one last mission . . . a suicide mission among interstellar drug traders. Great moment:

He got to his feet and stumbled through the door, found himself staring straight into an iron bulkhead. Pipes ran everywhere, like the guts of a submarine. Darvey made his way down to the lesser-lit side of the hall, peeked through a door into what appeared to be a cafeteria.
At one of the tables was a very large insect playing chess.
Darvey just stood and stared for a moment, then rubbed his eyes.
"Less booze before bed," he muttered to himself. "Or more."
The insect looked up, scratched the top of its head with a long, thin arm.
"Greetings, biped," it said to him with a woman's voice, but he wasn't sure how he had heard the words. "You look like shit."

Part II
Darvey seems to be taking well to his new life as a member of the alien drug enforcement agency. Great moment:

"I'm not going to hurt you," smiled Darvey. "But I have to warn you… if you don't start telling me the truth soon, I'm going to have to take off my left sock."
The alien looked left and right urgently, as if someone might come to save him.
"What do you mean?" he hissed.
"What? You don't know?"
He pulled up his pant leg, showed his red sock. He dropped it again, grinned.
"Might be a cultural thing. Where I come from, red socks and tickling… they just don't go well together. Lethal combination."
"Tickling?" the alien cried.
"Must be the translator," Darvey shrugged. "Let me put it this way: we're going to need a big bucket and a mop to clean up the blood."

Part III
Will Darvey extricate himself from the alien drug politics, the insect who wants to have sex with him, and still fulfill his suicide wish? Great moment:

The pusher led them through the crowds of aliens to a back room, down a flight of concave stairs, to a palatial room littered with ornate tables, all orbiting around a central chair, upon which sat a pile of slime.
"This is them?" boomed the slime, its voice far too big for such a small bit of goo.
"That's ‘em," nodded the pusher. "Ask ‘em. Really, ask ‘em."
The slime's "front" turned towards Darvey and Kaps, bubbled slightly.
"You are after some Tobor, I understand."
"That's right," said Darvey. "Mr…"
"Ogro," said the slime. "You will call me Ogro."
"Ogro, then. We're after some Tobor who stole my merch. We heard you might be able to facilitate a meeting."
The slime bubbled again.
"I can do many things. I know many people. Do you know many people?"
"I know a few," said Darvey. "Are you looking?"
"I am looking for freedom," said Ogro.
"Freedom from what, exactly?" asked Darvey with a smile no one could see. "I deal in all kinds."
"Freedom from sycophants," said Ogro. "Always sucking at my ass, offering oils and jellybelts. Never bringing me value. I do not need more assistants, I need partners!"

Part IV
No spoilers for the action-packed conclusion. But here's a great moment:

Darvey's eyes opened wide when he tasted it. He looked to Lucas.
"Rum?" he asked. "How did you…"
"Pure ethanol is not good for you," Lucas said. "For long-term alcoholism, I would recommend this instead."

As we've been reflecting on the last ten years, we've been asking ourselves whether any true "masters" of science fiction and urban fantasy have emerged, especially in film and television. It's certainly been a decade of highs and lows, of old masters who've begun to fade and bright new stars just cresting the horizon.

To that end, I've attempted to chart the relative "master levels" of various directors and television producers over the several years. This is an utterly unscientific chart; I looked at the projects these folks have had since 2000 and assigned each one a "master level." The number reflects my understanding of the projects acclaim, its ability to attract an audience (i.e. box office/Nielsen numbers), its awards, whether it succeeded in something unusual (such as a relatively popular foreign language film in the case of Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth or Dr. Horrible's status as a breakthrough web film), and the nebulous sense that it add or subtracted from the individual's "geek cred." The numbers themselves are largely subjective and, of course, you should feel free to nitpick.

The greater purpose was to offer a watercolory sense of whether any "masters" have emerged from this crowd. Certainly, the last year has brought low some of the genres' promising potentials. Joss Whedon entered into the decade riding high on a Buffy/Angel cocktail. Though his name wasn't enough to overcome Fox's confusing treatment of Firefly, but the show's eventual cult popularity led to the Serenity feature film, and the Whedon brand helped make Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog an important moment for web-based content. Perhaps this all made Dollhouse — which has been, by turns, frustrating and brilliant — all the more disappointing, its impeding demise fairly readily accepted, even by Whedon's fanbase. Similarly, Ron Moore's Battlestar Galactica, despite being regarded by some readers as the most overrated scifi of the decade, was regarded by many as a turning point for smart, politically savvy space opera. But a rocky final season punctuated by finale filled with dei ex machinae left a lot of folks sour on the entire series. And the Wachowskis, while doing a solid (though Alan Moore-enraging) bit of cinema with V for Vendetta, never quite lived up to the promises of The Matrix.

But there have been plenty of masterful bright spots as well. Bryan Fuller gave us some beautiful urban fantasy with shows with Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, and Pushing Daisies, even if many of his efforts (including the truly amazing The Amazing Screw-On Head) were prematurely axed, or shafted before ever getting off the ground. Guillermo del Toro brought us to great heights with Pan's Labyrinth, even if his other eye candy films didn't hit the same heights.

So have we seen any masters? Peter Jackson has certainly come close. Granted, The Lord of the Rings movies are high fantasy, but they showcased Jackson's ability to handle a difficult epic in a way that not only pleased JRR Tolkien's fans, but also won him mainstream accolades. And his remake of King Kong, which should have been automatically anathema, proved both profitable and well-reviewed. The Lovely Bones has been his blip, earning him his worst reviews in 20 years. But it's more likely that 2009 will be remembered as the year Jackson introduced the world to filmmaker Neill Blomkamp, demonstrating that he has a good eye for new talent and the Hollywood cache to bring that talent to light. It's not for nothing that he made this year's power list.

Another power list member, JJ Abrams, has also given us a good spate of fun and thoughtful science fiction. While he didn't give us the decade's best monster movie, he did manage to reboot the Star Trek franchise in a way that was respectful to what came before and drew in folks who never turned into the TV shows. Of course, we still have yet to see as Lost will end and whether Fringe will survive.

Chris Nolan is on the list of promising possibilities for eventual masterhood. Although Memento wasn't science fiction, it took a "what if" concept (here, what if a man searching for his wife's killer had no short term memory) and portrayed it in a thoughtful, suspenseful, and ultimately heartbreaking way. And he not only shot fresh blood into the corpse of the Batman franchise, he made it Oscar-worthy. And now he's continuing the science fiction thread with Inception.

And, of course, there's the question of whether James Cameron will prove the kind of science fiction as much as he claimed to be the king of the world. His foray into science fiction television, Dark Angel, never fared particularly well in the ratings; it was eventually canceled in favor of Firefly, and it never achieved the posthumous popularity of the later show. But perhaps Avatar is the reinforcement of his previous scifi successes, proof that he can still be relevant where other long-time directors have started to fade away. Hopefully, we won't have to wait another 12 years to see his next installment.

Personally, though, after seeing the delightful Monsters Inc. followed by the superb The Incredibles and WALL-E, I have my fingers crossed for Andrew Stanton and Pixar Studios. Here's hoping that John Carter of Mars is something phenomenal.

Still, singling out directors and producers as possible masters might be missing the point entirely, even when we're talking about movies and TV. Alan Moore might well be your science fiction master, not just because he has written so many fantastic books, but also because those books have captured the imagination of so many directors in the last several years — albeit with varying results. And in the coming years we'll see how comic book writer Brian K. Vaughan — who has been working on Lost as well as the Buffy Season Eight comics — translates to the big screen when Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina, and Runaways hit theaters.

So who, if anyone, do you see as your science fiction master? Someone from the list above? Perhaps Russell T. Davis for reviving and expanding Doctor Who? Or maybe writers like Jane Espenson, who have worked on so many of the shows we love? And, with filmmakers like Neill Blomkamp and Duncan Jones arriving on the scene, who might prove themselves master of the genre in the next ten years?

Graph by Steph Fox.

Here's a bonus chart, with more data:

If you need to transport yourself to a world of spice, heat, and massive mining equipment, you'll want to visit Project Sand, and check out all the designers there. I've chosen a sampling of worm-oriented images because obviously worms are the coolest things ever.

By Jordan Lamarre

By AJ Trahan

By Jordan Lamarre

By AJ Trahan

By Wo"Dzgn

People have been dreaming about loving giant women (or becoming giant women, for that matter) forever. But the Internet has fostered a really vibrant, creative community of people who've created artwork and lore. This fetish has a fancy name: macrophilia, according to this 1999 Salon article. There are actually two different types of macrophilia porn: There are women who've been hit with growth rays (or growth viruses) turning them into giants. And then there are men who've been hit with shrink rays or whatnot. The science-fiction origins of this fetish rest with movies like Attack OF The 50 Foot Woman and The Incredible Shrinking Man.

If you want to get the total awesomeness of giantess fetish, you have to go with artwork, which allows creators' imaginations to run wild. There are tons and tons of message boards and groups where people post their favorite art showing massive women and the doll-like men who love them. A lot.

And some of our favorite giantess art comes from Dream Tales, which kindly allowed us to feature a few images from their comics:

But adherents to this fetish also post tons and tons of homemade Photoshop collages, showing scantily dressed or naked women stomping across cities and trampling little men, including the one above, and these masterpieces:

There's even a giantess and shrunken men Flickr pool, where people post their own creations.

On the other hand, if you want actual professionally shot giantess porn, that exists as well. There are tons of pay porn sites that feature staged photos of women in their underwear, smashing model cities and stepping on toy soldiers. There's even HebrewGiantess.com, for those of you who just desperately needed "point of view" shots of a man looking up at a skyscraper-sized Jewish woman. Here are some of our favorite pay-site images:

But like many other niche fetishes, the love of giant women is (wait for it) big in Japan. Just check out this scene from a live-action video, featuring a man who's been shrunk to the size of a doll. The movie also includes scenes where the woman stimulates the helpless little man's tiny penis with a giant Q-tip. And the man climbs inside her vagina. But here's a nice scene where she licks his face and then he climbs onto her breast:

And then there's some amazing manga and hentai art from Japan, showing — among other things, a giant woman having sex with a giant robot.

Fans have also collected these amazing Kookai ads, featuring giant women and tiny men (via the defunct GTSFeet site):

So obviously, giantess porn, to some extent, is a fantasy about female power — women who grow to the size of a mountain are stand-ins for powerful women everywhere. But at the same time, you have to love the playfulness and sheer weirdness of the huge females crushing cities with the sheer force of their voluptuousness.

Wigram had Watkiss, who has provided artwork for Deadman, Sandman, and Conan, to bring his action comics style to Sherlock Holmes. Wigram wanted to create a visual pamphlet so that studio execs understood the sort of story he wanted to tell. Although some outlets have erroneously reported that Wigram and Watkiss collaborated on a comic, Wigram did have Watkiss illustrate the story, sans text. This series of illustrations then served as a key component of Watkiss' pitch.

The illustrations are currently on display and available fore sale at Nucleus Studios in Alhambra, California.

The Art of the Motion Picture: Sherlock Holmes [Nucleus Gallery via The Hollywood Reporter]

Mr. Incredible's trip down memory lane.

Verdict: Worth it. The art on the Incredible magazine covers is absolutely frame worthy.

2012 had crazy Woody and his pull-down chart of conspiracy. Planning to write about climate change? Whoops, you're now dead — see, he put a line through each scientist's name.

Verdict: Worthless, the wall of clippings and the crazy person blog was overkill. But then again this is 2012, so at least it's staying in its wheelhouse.

Mulder's office is papered with clippings and UFO sightings in the last X-Files film, thus hitting us over the head one last time with the fact that he's a BELIEVER.

Verdict: Worthless. Anyone going to this movie already knew all about Mulder's beliefs. They didn't need the "crazy obsession" wall, but they can keep the wrinkled poster from the original X-Files show.

In The Children of Men you get a quickie recap, not only of the Jasper character and his comatose wife but of the present day situation as well.

Verdict: Worthless. If Jasper's wife was indeed tortured by the oppressive new government regime, would they really keep the giant reminder posted on their wall of that horrible experience? Go on down the line, lovely pictures of friends, interesting and telling news clips of something they probably worked on, awards explaining their characters — and then a giant full-page story detailing the brutal torture your wife, thus making her completely unresponsive. Ah, memories.

Here's another newspaper moment in Children of Men that wasn't really used to portray obsession or honor, but it was nice that the production crew made sure all the headlines were relevant to the story.

Verdict: Worth it, even if it was just an aesthetic.

Halloween! Michael will never die, and neither will his victim's memory of him.

Verdict: Worth it. It's a horror movie, it's expected.

The Hills Have Eyes remake had a quickie wall of foreshadowing, and filled us in that the Hills were definitely full of mutant kid eyes.

Verdict: Worth it, it was great build up to the horrible nuclear family reveal. That little girl haunted me for days, and I needed a little build-up to the character, cliché though it may be.

Whip Lash's lair in Iron Man 2 is all about obsession.

Verdict: Worthless, for now. Until we see more. We didn't need the clippings to prove that Whiplash wants to kill Tony, because all he literally does, from the looks of things, is try to kill Tony. But maybe it will flesh out some backstory , although it's highly unlikely as all those clippings are pretty modern.

Mr. Glass' wall of destruction in Unbreakable.

Verdict: Worthless and Worth It. Samuel L. Jackson was scary enough in this as is, but it did help catch you up if you hadn't already called him as the bad guy hours earlier. Also, I believe there may be some flaws in these clips.

Original Nite Owl's den was a museum to Watchmen.

Verdict: Worth It. This is the kind of thing director Zack Snyder excels at. And when it's good it's very, very good. Everything on this wall has a back story. Even with its other shortcomings, Watchmen did have a very well thought-out set. Even if it was ripped from the novel, it looked good.

Willy Wonka's pops reveals to the audience that he didn't hate his son at all, because he framed all his newspaper articles. This was actually more creepy than exciting, but then again it is the remake of Willy Wonka, where Depp gives pale death face smiles for half the film, so it least it fits the tone.

Verdict: Worth it, since it fits in with the crazy theme of the film.

This is a selection of art created by concept designer Koshime, who works with Opus Artz and has posted a lot of amazing work on Gorilla Artfare.

In the last ten years, researchers have discovered thousands of species, both living and extinct. We got dino-eating crocodiles and killer kangaroos; a fish with a transparent head and a demon duck of doom; a bright pink millipede and giant spiders. And previously named species, such as the tongue-eating isopod and the alien-limbed Magnapinna, made headlines.

A few of these species were observed before 2000, but were only named or recognized as species in the last ten years. And each has some wonderfully monstrous quality, be it their incredible size, arsenal of offensive or defensive weapons, or knack for survival.

A Big Cat With Bite: The Bornean Clouded Leopard, which was found to be a new species in 2007 (though it had been observed long before), may not look like much at first. It may weigh in at a mere 55 pounds, putting it on the small side for a big cat, but it has the largest teeth of any known cat alive. It has even been described as the modern answer to the Sabertooth Tiger.
The Largest Snake to Slither the Earth: If South America's giant Anacondas make you quiver, be grateful that Titanoboa cerrejonensis has been dead for two million years. This prehistoric constrictor grew up to 50 feet in length and weighed in at a whopping 2500, the largest snake ever found. And its favorite food? Crocodiles. I can only imagine the digestive system on that thing.

Incidentally, this decade also saw the discovery of the smallest known snake, the Barbados Threadsnake.

Fanged Frogs: 2009 was a big year for frogs with teeth. Fanged frogs turned up in the Mount Bosavi crater in Papua New Guinea, where strange and wondrous new species are being discovered all the time. But even more monstrous are the Limnonectes megastomias, recently discovered in Thailand. This amphibian has been known to use its fangs in deadly combat, dismembering its froggy opponents. On top of that, when a bird swoops near, L. megastomias will snap and turn it into a tasty feast.

Sea Monsters of the Ancient Deep: Paleontologists digging in the Arctic Svalbard islands uncovered what they believe to be a new species of pliosaur, one with a skull twice as large as a Tyrannosaurus rex's. Its teeth were 12 inches long (with a bite four times as strong as T. Rex's), and is 15-meter-long body weighed an estimated 45 tons. That would make this Jurassic beast considerably larger than any pliosaur previously discovered.

Beware the Box: Giant jellyfish are a sight to behold, but it's the diminutive Malo kingi that you'll really want to avoid. The jelly gets its name, tragically, from its first known victim, Robert King, an American tourist swimming off the Queensland coast in 2002. Some researchers believe kingi venom is among the most toxic in the world.

A Rat as Big as a Cow: They just don't make rodents like they used to. Josephoartigasia monesi weighed around a ton — dwarfing the modern capybara — and had enormous incisors that rival a beaver's wood shredding teeth. Those incisors came in hand when fending off predatory birds and Sabertooth Tigers, though this largest of the rodents snacked on fruits and vegetables.

Mammal-Eating Plants: Pitcher plants are nothing new, but these large, rat-eating veggies added a few species in the last ten years. Naturalist David Attenborough was immortalized in Nepenthes attenboroughii, a new species found in the Philippines. Rodents are attracted to the liquid in the pitchers, then drown when they tumble inside.

A Bug Bigger Than You: In 2007, diggers found giant spiked claw belonging to Jaekelopterus rhenaniae in Prum, Germany. This sea scorpion, which lived 390 million years ago, was an estimated 8.2 meters long and ate anything it could get its claws on — including other scorpions.

Extreme Living, in Your Hairspray: Extremophiles can exist in environments that would kill lesser species — in extreme heat or cold, inside nuclear reactors, or in the void of space. Microbacterium hatanonis, discovered in 2008, chooses an odd environment as its home: in hairspray. It's not clear how the bacterium affects humans, but the discovery adds more information on where and how they can survive.

Bomber Worms: This year, a researcher at Scripps Institute of Oceanography discovered seven new species of sea worms that secrete small globs of fluid that act as biological flash bombs. These bombs glow, distracting predators while the worm slips away. It's only a shame that their defensive bombs can't be weaponized for bonus monster action.

This is not a list of io9's "favorites," or a compendium of people we think should have power. With this list, we've tried to reflect as accurately as possible who the movers and shakers are in the worlds of science fiction - the people who can command a big budget, or get a creative project produced just by signing their name to it. These are people whose tastes are setting pop culture fashion, and inspiring imitators across the globe. They're wheeling and dealing, controlling the kinds of stories you'll be reading, watching, and playing for years to come.

In addition, the list is not in order of power. All of these people are powerful in different ways, often in different industries.

JJ Abrams
Lost. Star Trek. Fringe. At this point, media polymath JJ Abrams can do no wrong on television or at the movies. He's rebooted Star Trek with a flourish, and even though FOX show Fringe may be flagging in the ratings this year, it's still garnering critical praise. Next up for Abrams: Two linked sequels to Star Trek and an untitled scifi/spy comedy series.

James Cameron
Whether you love or hate Avatar, there's no denying Cameron knows how to make science fiction into a rich, technically sophisticated storytelling genre. And he can command a budget of nearly $400 million, which is what many estimate Avatar cost. Next up for Cameron: More Avatar, and more technical innovations.

Lady Gaga
Like Cameron, Lady Gaga is another polarizer: You hate her or you love her, but either way she's unavoidable. With videos supporting her two latest releases, The Fame and The Fame Monster, she crafted an image of herself as a pop creation whose alienness rivals that of 1970s-era David Bowie. Dressed in outfits that belong on another planet, playing piano from inside whirling silver rings, Lady Gaga made sci fashion into just plain fashion. Next up for Gaga: Touring, mostly without pants on.

David Howe
Though he got a lot of razzing for the Syfy rebranding campaign, Howe has brought the once-marginal SciFi Channel into the mainstream with Syfy's blend of paranormal reality shows like Ghost Hunters, top-rated miniseries (Tin Man), and attention-grabbing series like Stargate Universe and Warehouse 13. Under Howe's watch, Syfy's ratings have gone through the roof, and the channel is now among the top ten most-watched channels among men ages 18–54, and women ages 25–54. Next for Howe: Several new series, including the much-anticipated Battlestar Galactica prequel Caprica in spring.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Senior Editor and the Manager of Science Fiction at Tor Books, Nielsen Hayden is a kingmaker among American science fiction novelists. Under his watch, Tor has helped turn writers like Cory Doctorow, John Scalzi, and Jo Walton into award-winning superstars of the genre world. Plus it doesn't hurt that Tor is re-releasing the mega-selling Wheel Of Time series. Next for Nielsen Hayden: More award-winning books.

Diane Nelson
A longtime executive at Warner Bros, Nelson was recently named DC Entertainment President, where she's going to take on the task of shuttling promising comic book properties into Time Warner's other media divisions - mostly movies. With properties like Batman, Justice League, and Wonder Woman under her watchful eye, Nelson is poised to set the tone for next decade's most anticipated (and, for some, dreaded) comic book movies. Our favorite Nelson quote: "I prefer to be known as an executive rather than a girl." Next for Nelson: Superman and Wonder Woman movies.

Warren Ellis
Ellis has long been a favorite among discerning comic book fans who have made his books Transmetropolitan and Planetary into cult hits. And his work on countless Marvel titles, as well as his novel Crooked Little Vein, have made him a critical darling as well. But Ellis' power extends far beyond the comic book world, and into the realms of subterranean fashion, philosophy, and trendsetting. He runs a very popular blog that routinely breaks news on the pop trends and weird news that feed the creative imaginations of writers, artists, filmmakers and fans. Ellis is one of the science fiction world's most influential tastemakers and opinion shapers. Next for Ellis: The movie version of his comic book Red starts filming in January, starring Bruce Willis and Morgan Freeman.

Charlaine Harris
With her Sookie Stackhouse novels constantly on bestseller lists, and HBO's Sookie series True Blood a critical and audience hit, Harris is the queen of vampire fiction for adults. She's also a pioneer of the supernatural romance genre, which has propelled science fiction and urban fantasy stories into the hands of women - and helped turn fantastical genre fiction into a mainstream obsession. Next for Harris: Dead in the Family, a new Sookie Stackhouse novel, in May 2010.


Felicia Day
Day, creator of the cult hit web show The Guild, was the star of scifi's biggest web sensation to date: Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog. Now she's crossing over into the mainstream, with roles on House, Dollhouse, and Lie To Me. Day proves that web celebrities can be just as powerful as TV celebrities. Next for Day: Appearing in some of the final episodes of Dollhouse next year; The Guild season 4.

Audrey Niffenegger
With her mega-selling novel The Time Traveler's Wife now a Hollywood movie, it's no wonder that Audrey Niffenegger got almost $5 million for her latest novel, Her Fearful Symmetry, which came out earlier this year. Next for Niffenegger: An art exhibit at Printworks Gallery in September, 2010, and a third novel, The Chinchilla Girl in Exile.

Alastair Reynolds
Joining the millionaire science fiction author club along with Niffenegger is Reynolds, a British author whose space operas have netted him prestigious awards and fans the world over. Last year, he signed an unprecedented 10-book deal with leading UK SF publisher Gollancz, for £1 million. Next for Reynolds: A three-book cycle that the UK Guardian described as "an African-inflected trilogy charting how humanity might go on to conquer the solar system and the galaxy."


Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh
Jackson and Walsh have been writing and production partners on some of the biggest science fiction and fantasy epics of the last decade, including the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Now Jackson is putting some of his muscle behind young directors like District 9's Niell Blomkamp, and it's paying off nicely; Jackson and Walsh have also been working with Guillermo Del Toro on developing two forthcoming movies based on The Hobbit. Next for Jackson and Walsh: Producing The Hobbit movies; a possible miniseries based on Naomi Novik's dragon warfare series called Temeraire.

Michael Bay
Bay exploded his way into some of the biggest box office cash in history with the incomprehensible yet lucrative Transformers 2. Call him a mindless detonation-whore if you want, but Bay's a money-making golden boy in Hollywood right now. Next for Bay: Transformers 3, set for 2011 release.

Ridley Scott
After blowing everybody's minds with his original visions in 1970s and 80s science fiction classics Alien and Bladerunner, Scott turned his attention to other genres, making incredible flicks like Thelma and Louise and American Gangster. But last year, to our delight, he set his sights on science fiction again. Next for Scott: He's got a prequel to Alien in the works, as well as plans to adapt Joe Haldeman's The Forever War and early SF classic Brave New World to the big screen.

Kevin Feige
As President of Production at Marvel Studios, Feige will control the vertical, horizontal, and asskickital on your movie screens for quite some time. Having worked as a producer on hits like Iron Man and Fantastic Four, Feige will continue his reign at Marvel with more films based on Marvel's characters. Now that Disney is putting its considerable weight behind Marvel Studios, we can only hope that the asskicking will get awesomer, not cutesier. Next for Feige: Producing movie versions of Thor, The Avengers, Captain America, Ant-Man, Deathlok, and more.

Image Metrics
When it comes to making science fiction look awesome, it's important to credit the power of a great tool and the people who make it. Image Metrics is an FX software package used for creating facial animation (often with motion-capture technology) and effects mavens love it. It was used to create effects for Benjamin Button last year, and this year was used for Avatar and the videogame Assassin's Creed II. Next for Image Metrix: You'll be seeing effects created with the software in the film Splice.

Neville Page
The creature designer whose monsters are sometimes more memorable than the actors who fight them, Page created the Cloverfield creature, as well as working on character and creature design in Star Trek (yes, that was his weird red monster on the ice planet), Watchmen and Avatar. Not only are his monsters cool; they actually help advance the stories we see them in. Next for Page: He designed the suits in the forthcoming sequel to Tron.

Patrice Desilets and Jade Raymond
As Ubisoft videogame Assassin's Creed veers into science fictional territory, game designer Desilets finds himself heading up the creative team behind one of the most interesting, complex, and fun SF/F games of the past few years. As producer on Assassin's Creed and Assassin's Creed 2, Raymond helped popularize the games and made them accessible to a broader audience. Next for Desilets and Raymond: Desilets is at work on the next installment of Assassin's Creed; Raymond is heading up a brand-new Toronto Ubisoft office, where she says she'll work on AAA games.

Sam Worthington
Aussie actor Worthington came out of nowhere to helm two of the year's most anticipated science fiction epics: Terminator 4 (where many argued he was the only interesting character), and Avatar (where he proved he can act even when he's turned into a motion-captured animation). He's poised to be Hollywood's next big SF action star. Next for Worthington: Clash of the Titans; producing and starring in comic book flick Last Days of American Crime; possible Avatar sequel.

Zoe Saldana
After stealing the show in JJ Abrams' Star Trek and kicking major ass in Avatar, Saldana is on track to be the next Sigorney Weaver: Able to play smart believably, and able to throw down in highly physical, action-adventure roles. She leaves everyone wanting to see more of her brains and brawn. Next for Saldana: comic book flick The Losers; Star Trek sequels.

Thanks to: Michael Goldfarb, Stephen Totilo, Charlie Jane Anders, Meredith Woerner, Graeme McMillan, and Lauren Davis, who all helped compile this list.

Michael John Grist, who travels Japan and the rest of the world documenting modern ruins — places abandoned or destroyed — found this former strip club in Ibaraki. In addition to these photos, Grist also took video of his tour through the burnt ruins of the club.

Akeno Gekijo Strip Club Haikyo, Ibaraki [Michael John Grist via Atlas Obscura]

Messier 30 is an unusual cluster. It's an ancient cluster, and yet it is filled with blue stars, stars that tend to age and die more quickly than other types of stars. Astronomers have termed these unusually old blue stars "blue stragglers," and they believe that there are two reasons these stars still exist.

Some of the blue stragglers in Messier 30 are vampires; when they get near a more massive star, they are able to siphon off hydrogen from that star, effectively lengthening its life. But more recent studies have found that some of the stars are the results of high-powered collisions. When two older stars collide head-on, it restokes their nuclear fusion, resulting in larger, seemingly younger blue stars than before.

Vampires and collisions rejuvenate stars [Hubble Information Centre via Bad Astronomy]

The project is just getting underway, and the designers enthuse that it combines luxury with the ideas of eco-friendliness. I just want to know where I can go to activate the lasers and store my robot army.

via Inhabitat

These photos are from Becka's Transmutations series, which was exhibited at Dubai's Empty Quarter Gallery this past fall. You can see more images from this series on Becka's website, and he has collected the photos and their waxed paper negatives in book form.

Transmutations [Martin Becka via CNN via William Gibson]

Nobody is really sure what created Gould's Belt, but many researchers speculate that there was some kind of giant supernova or possibly rogue dark matter that sent out such massive bursts of energy that it created "ripples" spreading outward from the event. The Belt would be the result of those ripples. Here's a map showing some of the Belt's major features.

The image above is the first clear view of one of these features. According to ESA:

Some 700 newly-forming stars are estimated to be crowded into these colourful filaments of dust. The complex is part of a mysterious ring of stars called Gould's Belt.

This image shows a dark cloud 1000 light-years away in the constellation Aquila, the Eagle. It covers an area 65 light-years across and is so shrouded in dust that no previous infrared satellite has been able to see into it. Now, thanks to Herschel's superior sensitivity at the longest wavelengths of infrared, astronomers have their first picture of the interior of this cloud . . .

This cloud is part of Gould's Belt, a giant ring of stars that circles the night sky – the Solar System just happens to lie near the centre of the belt. For more than a hundred years, astronomers have puzzled over the origin of this ring, which is tilted to the Milky Way by 20º. The first to notice this unexpected alignment, in the mid-19th century, was England's John Herschel, the son of William, after whom ESA's Herschel telescope is named. But it was Boston-born Benjamin Gould who brought the ring to wider attention in 1874.

Gould's Belt supplies bright stars to many constellations such as Orion, Scorpius and Crux, and conveniently provides nearby star-forming locations for astronomers to study.

Below, you can see an image of what Gould's Belt would look like from above the Milky Way galactic plane. Our solar system sits right in the middle of that white ring, which represents the Belt.

via ESA Portal and Orbiting Frog

Warner Bros. put out 29 official publicity stills from The Book Of Eli, which comes out January 15. It's the long-awaited next film from the Hughes Bros., who gave us Menace II Society and From Hell. And here's the official synopsis:

In the not-too-distant future, some 30 years after the final war, a solitary man walks across the wasteland that was once America. Empty cities, broken highways, seared earth—all around him, the marks of catastrophic destruction. There is no civilization here, no law. The roads belong to gangs that would murder a man for his shoes, an ounce of water...or for nothing at all.

But they're no match for this traveler.

A warrior not by choice but necessity, Eli (Denzel Washington) seeks only peace but, if challenged, will cut his attackers down before they realize their fatal mistake. It's not his life he guards so fiercely but his hope for the future; a hope he has carried and protected for 30 years and is determined to realize. Driven by this commitment and guided by his belief in something greater than himself, Eli does what he must to survive—and continue.

Only one other man in this ruined world understands the power Eli holds, and is determined to make it his own: Carnegie (Gary Oldman), the self-appointed despot of a makeshift town of thieves and gunmen. Meanwhile, Carnegie's adopted daughter Solara (Mila Kunis) is fascinated by Eli for another reason: the glimpse he offers of what may exist beyond her stepfather's domain.

But neither will find it easy to deter him. Nothing—and no one—can stand in his way. Eli must keep moving to fulfill his destiny and bring help to a ravaged humanity.