Ed Grabianowski will be a contributor covering science and and games. He's a freelance writer (and occasional drummer, guitarist and singer) from Buffalo, NY. He's been a contributing writer for www.howstuffworks.com for the last five years. Ed is a fan of Blade Runner, Jack McDevitt, Nikola Tesla, and all things post-apocalyptic. In fact, he is one of the few people who will publicly admit to liking Kevin Costner's The Postman. Photograph of Ed by Michael Calanan.

Michael Reilly will be joining us as a contributor too, covering science. He's also a contributing writer at New Scientist, and has written for Wired. Michael used to study volcanoes as a geochemistry researcher, but obviously he's moved on to more exciting things than giant explosions erupting from the depths of the Earth. He's responsible for inventing the well-known slogan, "Death rays don't kill people . . . people kill people."


Ann & Jeff VanderMeer will be writing a column for io9 about SF/fantastic art. Ann is an editor at the venerable Weird Tales magazine, and with Jeff she also co-edited the anthologies The New Weird and the forthcoming Steampunk. Jeff is the author of several books, including City of Saints and Madmen, The Situation, and Shriek: An Afterword. Photo of Jeff and Ann by Bogdan Hrib.

Terry Johnson will also be writing a column for io9, which is basically about everything you've always wanted to ask a biology researcher but were afraid was too weird. Therefore it should not be surprising that Terry is a biology researcher who is willing to answer strange questions. He teaches at UC Berkeley, and is the co-author of a forthcoming book about the future of bioengineering from Bantam-Dell.

Top image of space via AP Photo/NASA/JPL/CALTECH

Senior Associate Editor: Charlie Jane Anders
My science fiction stories have appeared in Paraspheres: New Wave Fabulist Fiction, StrangeHorizons, Flurb, Helix and Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet. My other writing has appeared in Mother Jones, Salon.com, ZYZZYVA, Publishers Weekly, the Wall Street Journal, the SF Chronicle, the New York Press, and a whole bunch of anthologies. I have stuff coming out soon in MonkeyBicycle's dirty humor anthology and Sex From America, Stephen Elliott's anthology with Harper Collins. I wrote a novel called Choir Boy and co-edited an anthology called She's Such A Geek. I co-founded other, an independent national magazine. And I host a San Francisco reading series called Writers With Drinks.

Associate Editor: Kevin Kelly
My fondest science fiction memories are from playing with the Death Star trash compactor toy sometime in the late 1970s. Why can't toys be that cool anymore? Dammit. Anyhow, I migrated west from Texas after finally finishing college after an extended stint working at Disneyworld in Florida. I spent five years working as a story editor at The Jim Henson Company, and after Disney bought the Muppets I found myself looking for gainful employment. That ended up being writing about movies, television, and video games for the past year and a half, which has also burdened my shelves with more movies, games, and toys than I ever dreamed I'd own when I was a kid, and most of 'em are robots and rayguns.

Contributor: Lisa Katayama
I was made in Japan but I'm not a robot or a cell phone. Or am I? I don't like to stay in one city for more than three years, and I'm addicted to the way my dog smells. When I'm not pondering the future or smelling my dog, I write about Japanese culture, technology, and human rights for Wired and other glossies. I record many of my brain farts on my personal blog, Tokyomango. I have a book about quirky Japanese life hacks coming out this spring. Also, this may surprise you, but I have never seen Star Wars, Star Trek, or any other movie with "star" in the title. Maybe I am a robot, after all, who was programmed not to watch these movies so I can ponder an alternate future devoid of common scifi references.

Contributor: Geoff Manaugh
My interest in sci-fi started early, reading H.P. Lovecraft and Dune and watching John Carpenter films after dark on school nights, and it's continued unabated, going all over the place, including J.G. Ballard, China Miéville, zombie horror, New Scientist, Pruned, human cloning, William Blake, hydroponic urban agriculture, Logan's Run, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, The City of Lost Children, Baroque cathedrals, Angkor Wat, paleo-North American plate tectonics, Tesla's electricity, and the outer limits of geodynamism, not to mention bits and pieces of Robert Morgan, Ian MacLeod, Gormenghast, Max Barry, Harlan Ellison, Philip K. Dick, and even Halo, Clive Barker, Alex Garland, and Steven Spielberg. In real life, I'm the author of BLDGBLOG, a Yahoo! Top 25 Pick of the Year (2006), and a Time Magazine Style & Design 100 blog (2007). BLDGBLOG has led to a book deal with Chronicle Books, for publication in Spring 2009. I'm also now Senior Editor at Dwell Magazine.

Contributor: Graeme McMillan
Borag Thung, Earthlets. I'm Graeme McMillan, the plucky young red shirt of this particular away team. Having survived the comic blogosphere for the past five years on sites like Fanboy Rampage!!!, Newsarama and The Savage Critics, I'm finally finding a use for a childhood of cold Scottish winters spent playing with Six Million Dollar Man toys and watching Blakes 7 and Doctor Who before he was cool. Sure, I may be killed before the second ad break by an alien on a sound stage planet with styrofoam rocks, but at least I'll have my memories.

Contributor: Lynn Peril
I'm a writer living in Oakland, California. My column, "The Museum of Femoribilia," appears in BUST magazine. My latest book is College Girls: Bluestockings, Sex Kittens and Coeds, Then and Now (W.W. Norton). In the words of Criswell, "We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives." But first you can spend some time at my website.

Star Wars should have moved forwards. New stories, new characters and a new lease of life.

His dream Aliens sequel would move the saga forward by bringing the aliens to Earth. And he has lots of ideas for video-game movies, including Peter Jackson's Halo and Doom done right. Image by Getty Images.

Top 10 Science Fiction Movies That Deserve To Be Made [Kitsimons]