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giant monster chart
Do Giant Disasters Provide Inspiration for Giant Monster Movies?
It's practically a truism to claim that the giant monster movie craze of the 1950s was inspired by the atomic bombs the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the hundreds of atomic tests done afterwards. And some have argued that the Cloverfield monster's attack on New York was a not-so-subtle reference to the terrorist attacks on New York's World Trade Center in 2001. But is there a real historical basis to these claims? We've charted some of the biggest disasters of the last century, and lined them up next to a timeline of giant monster movies, to see what the temporal correlation is between giant disasters and giant monsters. The results revealed an interesting giant monster cycle in pop culture. More »
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Where Do Scifi Fads In Mainstream Lit Come From?
Dale Peck and Tim Kring's alternate-history novel is just the latest in a long history of mainstream authors lifting ideas from science fiction. But what sci-fi concepts have been most in vogue with literary publishers — and when did those fads peak? We decided to look at the biggest novels by literary authors that involved time travel, alternate history, or post-apocalyptic futures. And then we threw in larger political, cultural or literary events that could have influenced authors, publishers or readers. We discovered a shocking connection between real-life wars and the popularity of time-travel stories. More »
battlestar galactica
Documentary Fetishism in Battlestar Galactica
TV watchers tuning into the season premiere of Battlestar Galactica tonight have more accurate information about humans killed in the show's space battles than they do about civilian deaths in Iraq. This fetish for numerical exactness is part of what makes the show so realistic and appealing to non-scifi fans — but it's also what makes fans so freakishly devoted. Because you can track every single death. And we've done that for you here, in a chart revealing the strangely detailed information Battlestar offers about its fictional population of spacers fighting robots. More »
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Do Real-World Politics Affect Star Trek's Prime Directive?
The cardinal rule in the Star Trek universe is the Prime Directive, which forbids the super-advanced Federation from interfering with the development of less-advanced cultures. Of course every crew breaks it regularly, but some crews have broken it more than others. Since Star Trek often tries to make reference to current U.S. politics, we decided to see if there was a relationship between these imaginary violations and what the US was doing in the world. Click through for a comparison of U.S. overseas troop levels and Star Trek's meddling, which may surprise you. More »
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Meet the First Realistic Martian Woman
What would we have to do to our bodies if we wanted to live on Mars? io9 consulted scientists, our imaginations, and a designer, and came up with the most realistic-possible portrait of a Martian colonist who might truly exist on the Red Planet in 100 years. She's really tall, doesn't have to wear a bra, and has some pretty awesome photosynthesis and water-reclaiming implants in her exosuit. It's time to meet the first Martian woman. Click through for full frontal. More »
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Bad Movie Physics: A Report Card
Space epics almost always play fast and loose with science, treating the laws of physics like suggestions. Sound in space, unprotected bodies splatting in vacuum, and alien planets that all look just like Calabasas. But some movies dismember Newton and Einstein with way more gusto than others. We rated 18 movies based on how many laws of physics they mangled, and here's our report card. More »
infoporn
This chart compares the body mass index (BMI) of superheroes in Marvel comics with those of typical American women and men. Researchers Karen Healey and Terry Johnson used physical stats from Marvel's Web site to show that the vast majority of female superheroes are underweight, though the males are mostly normal. Just to remind you, in the BMI scale, below 18.5 is underweight, 18.5-24.9 is normal, and over 25 is overweight. Healey's analysis of what this means is hilarious and thought-provoking.
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Why All Female Superheroes Look the Same
This chart compares the body mass index (BMI) of superheroes in Marvel comics with those of typical American women and men. Researchers Karen Healey and Terry Johnson used physical stats from Marvel's Web site to show that the vast majority of female superheroes are underweight, though the males are mostly normal. Just to remind you, in the BMI scale, below 18.5 is underweight, 18.5-24.9 is normal, and over 25 is overweight. Healey's analysis of what this means is hilarious and thought-provoking.
More »
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Economists agree the U.S. is sliding into recession, and that can only mean one thing — fewer movies about oppressive systems that crush the souls of ordinary people. We charted the number of dystopian movies in the U.S. for each of the last 30 years, against economic downturns, and found that dystopian movies are counter-cyclical. That is, dystopian films do best when the economy is booming, and a fall in the number of dystopian movies may predict a recession. Click through more details, including a bigger version of the chart and a list of dystopian movies by year.
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When The Economy Booms, Dystopias Rule
Economists agree the U.S. is sliding into recession, and that can only mean one thing — fewer movies about oppressive systems that crush the souls of ordinary people. We charted the number of dystopian movies in the U.S. for each of the last 30 years, against economic downturns, and found that dystopian movies are counter-cyclical. That is, dystopian films do best when the economy is booming, and a fall in the number of dystopian movies may predict a recession. Click through more details, including a bigger version of the chart and a list of dystopian movies by year.
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The Rise And Fall Of Cyberpunk
Maybe cyberpunk isn't quite dead, but it definitely peaked a while back. There are way fewer books and movies with cyberpunk themes coming out now than there were in the golden age of the 80s and mid-90s. And we've got the statistics to prove it. We counted up the cyberpunk books and movies for every year since 1980, and charted their rise and fall. Click through to see what we found. More »
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New Proof That Every Scifi Epic Is Based On Joseph Campbell
Why do so many adventure movies seem to have the same story? A lot of the blame goes to the Hero's Journey, a cookie-cutter spiritual-ish adventure recipe concocted by Joseph Campbell in 1949. Star Wars and many fantasy sagas famously follow this treasure map step by step, but how do other science fiction stories measure up? We score scifi stories on our "Hero's Journey" checklist, after the jump. More »
infoporn
Doctor Who: Revolutionary Or Tool Of The Man?
Why didn't the Doctor do anything to fix the oppressive alien society he met in the Doctor Who Christmas special? Because most of the time, the Doctor only tries to preserve the status quo. But occasionally he visits a dystopia where he launches a revolution and smashes the system. Click through for our chart showing the Doctor's waxing and waning revolutionary tendencies over time. More »
environmental collapse
Which of Your Toys Will Suck Most Next Year?
Good magazine has whipped up an amazing chart that shows how much energy your electronic toys will suck up next year — even when they're turned off. Most electronics stay in standby mode when turned off, maintaining a clock in a microwave, say, or a timer in your DVR that tells it when to turn on. After the jump, see the full chart showing how much money people in the US will spend next year just to keep devices on standby. It ain't pretty. More »
apocalypse
A List of All the Ways We Imagine Los Angeles Being Destroyed
Sure it's cool to destroy New York, but it's even cooler to destroy Los Angeles. That's why Omega Man, the 1970s version of I Am Legend, took place in Los Angeles. Viral decimation is only one of the many ways LA has been crushed, according to a 1998 book by Mike Davis, Ecology of Fear, in which the irascible social critic gives us a helpful list of how LA is destroyed in 145 scifi/disaster novels. Of course nukes top the list, with a whopping 49 books wiping out LA in a big blast. But you'll be surprised by some of the lesser-known forms of LA-elimination. More »
environmental collapse
Are You in a Climate Change Hot Zone?
An international team of scientists has crunched the numbers and predicted which areas of the world will be hit hardest by the effects of climate change. They created this map of the "socioclimatic" future of the world. The reddest areas, which include China, India, and the United States, are in the most danger because they suffer from a deadly combination of social problems and lax policies on toxic emissions (it's no coincidence that all three countries are not signatories to the Kyoto Treaty). Check out the stats for yourself. [Eurekalert] Image by Pamela Burroff-Murr/Diffenbaugh et al./Dan Annarino/NOAA.
predictions
Using the deadly SARS flu outbreak as a template, researchers have created a model that can predict the spread emerging global epidemics. A team of researchers in the US and Europe incorporated travel and census data from 3100 urban areas and 220 countries to figure out where a virus would travel and how fast.
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Do You Live In A Flu Epidemic Zone?
Using the deadly SARS flu outbreak as a template, researchers have created a model that can predict the spread emerging global epidemics. A team of researchers in the US and Europe incorporated travel and census data from 3100 urban areas and 220 countries to figure out where a virus would travel and how fast.
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