Thierry Cohen imagines the gorgeous side of a Revolution-style blackout with his pictures of cities that have gone completely dark. When the lights go out, brilliant stars are visible over New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, and Rio de Janeiro.

What happens when the lights go out in the city that never sleeps? In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, Jared Levy ventured into lower Manhattan to capture neighborhoods lit only by the glow of passing cars. NYC Dark shows a side of New York City we rarely see, one where the buildings sit in shadow and few human beings…

At long last, it's the third book of Mira Grant's Newsflesh trilogy. You've followed the zombie apocalypse and the blogger drama in Feed and Deadline, and now it's time to find out how it ends. We're proud to present the first chapter of Blackout, the final chapter in the trilogy, below.

We've been talking about Connie Willis's books Blackout and All Clear over at the io9 Book Club, and now Willis is going to drop in to answer your questions. Post them in comments below!

Welcome to the monthly meeting of the io9 Book Club. This month we read Connie Willis' linked novels, Blackout and All Clear. Jump into comments to get started talking about them!

We took a hiatus for the holidays, so we're doing a mega-read for late January: We'll be tackling Connie Willis' Blackout and All Clear (her two-book time travel novel). What is this io9 book club, you ask?

Famed SF author Connie Willis' first novel in five years, Blackout, returns to a scenario she's explored before: Time-traveling scholars find themselves changing historical events they're only supposed to observe. This sprawling novel veers between historical travelogue and futuristic thriller.

Connie Willis talks to Publishers Weekly about her forthcoming time-travel duology, Blackout/All-Clear. And she explains that when she started writing SF, 30 years ago, she was warned she'd come too late to a dying genre.

On Tuesday night, most of the vast country of Brazil was plunged into darkness for several hours when the power grid went down. There is no consensus on what caused it. Was this a model for infrastructure breakdowns to come?