io9: InfoPorn

British UFOs Choose Their Times And Places With Great Care

Charlie Jane Anders — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 08:30:00 PDT

Britain's National Archives disclosed every reported UFO sighting from 1959 through 1992. This chart shows the prevalence, by year, and the locations of the sightings in 1990-1992. Can you spot the pattern in this chart from the Guardian newspaper?

Well, first off, it looks as though people in the early 1990s mostly saw UFOs in major metropolitan areas — although it looks like there were a lot in Hull. Also — and this might just be obsessive fandom speaking –- but doesn't it look like there's a correlation between the number of UFO sightings per year, and the popularity of homegrown science fiction classic Doctor Who? You'll notice the sightings drop off almost completely after Who gets canceled in the late 1980s.

Head over to the Guardian for the nifty interactive version of the map. [Guardian]

When Sequels Took Over Science Fiction Books

Charlie Jane Anders — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 11:30:00 PDT

If you feel like you've noticed more and more science fiction books labeled "Book Seventeen of the Outer Explosions saga," you're not imagining things. A plague of sequels has overtaken science fiction books, judging from a statistical study in StrangeHorizons.

Contributor Valentin D. Ivanov, who is our new hero, went through the "notable books" feature and book reviews in Locus Magazine since 1998, and created a statistical analysis of the trends. The trend in sequels is especially fascinating: It looks like there was a huge spike in sequels from 1998 to 2001, and since then the number of sequels has grown at the same rate as all other books.

Ivanov notes that "there are only two fourth or fifth volumes in 1998/9, eleven in 2001/2, and forty-one in 2007, corresponding to a nearly 20-fold increase." In other words, we're not just talking about trilogies, we're talking about a massive increase in series spanning four or more volumes. (And I believe he's separating out media tie-in books, so we're not talking about Star Wars novels here.)

A few other trends Ivanov notices: There's the rise in prominence of fantasy books that you've already noticed elsewhere, except now it has statistical validity. The number of fantasy books being reviewed in Locus went up by 26.7 books per year, as opposed to 11.5 for science fiction. Also, the number of multi-author anthologies went down slightly, despite a number of anthology series making waves in recent years. And there's an overall increase in the number of books being published generally. Finally, it's interesting to see which publishers get their books reviewed in Locus most often — Tor has had 210 books reviewed in the past decade or so, more than double the next biggest publisher, Harper Collins.

The whole article, with more charts, is well worth reading and wrangling over. [StrangeHorizons via BoingBoing via Making Light]

How Does Your Hero Measure Up On Our Wish-Fulfillment Checklist?

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 11:00:00 PDT

Sometimes you just want to escape into a heroic universe of wish fulfillment, with just the right kind of angst. And let's face it, some heroes do a better job of hitting your escapism sweet spots than others. We've put together a chart comparing the great action heroes, and seeing which ones hit most of the sweet spots of escapism.

The categories in the chart should be pretty self-explanatory. But here's some explanation anyway:

We love our heroes to be super rich, and to have an excuse for self-pity. If your fabulously wealthy parents got killed in front of you when you're a kid, so much the better. (Seriously, a tragic past seems to be a crucial ingredient for many escapist heroes, because it lets you project all your own real-life pain onto your hero, even as you're imagining rising about that pain and becoming a mega-adventurer. )

And it makes us happy when our heroes have two or more devoted acolytes/sidekicks, who follow almost without question, and awesome gadgets. Superhuman powers means what it says. "Gets laid" doesn't just mean your hero hooked up one time.

"Marked for greatness" requires slightly more explanation. If your hero is the subject of a prophecy (like Starbuck), or is "the One" like Neo, then he/she is marked for greatness. Captain Kirk wasn't marked for greatness on the original Star Trek TV show, but we have a strong suspicion that the new Trek movie, by revisiting his origins, will show that he was marked for great things from the beginning.

"Not tied down" doesn't just mean being single: it means that you get to roam around having adventures. And at the end of an adventure, you jump in your spaceship and zoom off to the next adventure somewhere else. Captain Kirk wasn't tied down, but Captain Sisko was.

"Becomes a god or king" means your character ends up with a lot of people looking up to him/her. The Hulk, for example, is destined either to become a ruler, the Maestro, or the last survivor of Earth. Captain Kirk becomes an admiral, but more importantly he becomes a legend in his own time. The Doctor becomes the last of the Time Lords, and gets called a god a lot. Neo turns into the blind buddha Jesus monster, or something.

Where Do Scifi Fads In Mainstream Lit Come From?

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 17:06:00 PDT

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.

What we found: As you might imagine, the real surge in literary novels with science fiction themes came in the past five or six years, after literary journal Conjunctions published its "New Wave Fabulist" issue and magical realism was on the wane. There were literary novels with SF themes, like David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, which didn't really fit into the general subject areas of "alternate history," "time warp," or "post-apocalyptic." We were most interested in seeing which years featured the most literary novels featuring those themes.

Of those three subcategories, alternate history was the most consistent, with literary authors using it to explore how wars could have gone differently, but also other topics. Not surprisingly, you saw more alternate history novels at the start of this period, when the U.S. was active in Somalia and still bombing Iraq, and then at the end, when we had invaded Iraq. Alternate history is traditionally a fairly conservative genre, with authors like Newt Gingrich dabbling in it and exploring how things could have turned out worse if we hadn't stiffened our spines. But a recent spate of alt-history novels is more liberal, exploring a world where the Aztecs never fell (Atomik Aztex) and a world where the Jews got a homeland in Alaska and we avoided the Middle East conflict (Yiddish Policemen's Union).

There was a boomlet in time-travel fiction, and stories about time acting strange, in 2003-2004, with Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife proving a huge mainstream hit. This was the peak of the Bush-era resurgence in conservativism, with a lot of mainstream nostalgia about World War II and the Greatest Generation.

And then was a boom in post-apocalyptic fiction in more recent years, with three huge classics of the genre hitting in 2006. In particular, Cormac McCarthy's The Road has become the poster-child for the literary-authors-going-speculative trend. These books coincided with the Indian Ocean Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and a worsening Iraq conflict. But there's been a lull in the post-apocalyptic genre since then as well.

Do Real-World Politics Affect Star Trek's Prime Directive?

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 11:12:00 PDT

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.

As you can see, Trek's crews have always treated the Prime Directive like a speed limit on the Interstate. But the high point of Prime Directive violations was the late 1990s, which surpassed even the late 1960s of Kirk's cowboy-ism.

At the same time, the United States was reducing its troop presence around the world. Why did Starfleet start interfering more, even as America was throwing less of its weight around? The late 1990s was an era of military spending cutbacks and base closures, when the U.S. seemed to be less influential without the threat of the Soviet Union to rally our own citizens, let alone our allies.

I know what you're going to say: It's all down to Star Trek: Voyager's Captain Janeway and her "anything goes" approach. But first of all, Janeway's not the only culprit. Ben Sisko on Deep Space Nine also played fast and loose with the Directive more in the late 1990s than in its earlier seasons. And the Federation also threw its non-interference principles out the window, in different ways, in both 1998's Star Trek: Insurrection and 2002's Star Trek: Nemesis.

But also, consider that Voyager is a metaphor for the U.S.' more confusing situation after the Cold War. Instead of being one superpower facing another (like the Klingons, Romulan or Borg) suddenly the Voyager is isolated in a quadrant full of independent players, each of whom has its own agenda. Just as the Soviets were replaced with Bosnians, Serbs and Kosovans and the U.S. had to form alliances to deal with messy situations, Voyager faces a bunch of warring races and Janeway has to strike deals with different races to escape in one piece.

All of which makes us wonder: If Star Trek were on the air as a television show now, and it took place during an era where the Directive applied, would we see fewer violations? After all, U.S. troop levels in other countries have rebounded, and we're once again involved in a massive confrontation overseas. Would a 24th century Trek step more lightly around the galaxy, to counterbalance the United States' greater use of force?

Illustration by Stephanie Fox. Additional reporting by Nivair H. Gabriel.

Bad Movie Physics: A Report Card

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 10:00:23 PDT

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.

To some extent, it's understandable that space adventures play fast and loose with physics. After all, who wants to watch Han Solo spend years on the journey to Alderaan, only to find that the planet has twice Earth gravity and he can barely stand up, much less swagger?

The categories of mistakes in our report card should be pretty self-explanatory, but just in case, I'll expand on them a little bit:

There's no sound in space
Not all planets have Earth gravity
Planets should have diverse climates, instead of one unified climate across a "desert planet" or "forest planet."
It shouldn't be too easy to communicate with alien creatures, without some kind of high-technology "translator" explanation.
And it definitely shouldn't be too easy for humans to interbreed with aliens.
Humans exposed to vacuum without a spacesuit shouldn't explode or shatter. And a "hull breach" where the ship's crew is exposed to vacuum should kill everyone instantly.
You can't have fires in space, unless there's oxygen leaking out somehow.
Asteroids or other objects shouldn't be able to float close together without falling into each other's gravity
People shouldn't be able to dodge lasers and other speed-of-light weapons
And there's no reason why someone would move in slow-motion in zero gravity.
Faster-than-light travel is probably not ever going to be possible.

By the way, we left out Star Trek because there's so much of it, even if you just include the movies, and if you look hard enough you can find places where it violates almost all of these rules. Illustration by Stephanie Fox. Research by Nivair Gabriel.

The Science vs. Scientology Timeline

Annalee Newitz — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:00:24 PST

Science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard's most notorious space opera is the religion of Scientology, which is packed with aliens and space battles and waves of invaders to our solar system. Hubbard even referred to the cosmological timeline behind Scientology as "the space opera," and for good reason. It reads like a pretty damn trippy science fiction novel. For your edification, we've created a handy timeline (below) that compares the scientific history of the universe with the Scientology history of the universe. Who knew all that alien stuff was going on during the middle ages? And before the Big Bang?

A few notes for the uninitiated. According to Scientology, "Thetans" are aliens whose spirits live within humans today. So Thetans are kind of like proto-humans. Also, within the Scientology time frame, the biggest incidents usually involve the Thetans being traumatized with "implants" or "brainwashing" from other aliens. So you'll see a lot of references to various brainwashing incidents here, including the invention of the Christianity Implant, which Hubbard believed was a very corrosive form of mind-control. Illustration by Stephanie Fox.

Sources on Scientology cosmology: Wikipedia, Operation Clambake.

Why All Female Superheroes Look the Same

Annalee Newitz — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 13:15:30 PST

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.

Healey writes:

The BMI range of Marvel women is much less varied than that of all other groups and tends to the low end of the "normal" BMI range. This result is surprising, considering that many of the women sampled are martial artists or extremely capable physically and should, if anything, have a BMI that indicates a higher body fat level than is actually present.
The BMI range of Marvel men is more varied and tends to just over the upper limit of the "normal" BMI range. However, it is still less varied than that of the "real world" male and female groups.

We stress that given the physical and biological vagaries of the Marvel Universe and the relatively small sample sizes involved, these results are not conclusive. Data comparing male and female athletes from both world might provide more accurate comparative results, and we suggest this as a point for further research.

However, advance data indicates that Marvel women are portrayed as having a disturbingly low BMI compared to the healthy BMI range of their male counterparts. Furthermore, the range of body types expressed by Marvel women is surprisingly small. The distribution of BMIs in Figure 1 is by far the sharpest, with little variation from the mean compared to Marvel men, and far less variation than we see in actual men and women. This is true to a lesser extent for males in the Marvel universe as well.

The Marvel male is predisposed to be on the heavy side of healthy, which can be explained by the increased muscle mass of intense physical acitvity. The average Marvel female is approaching underweight despite a presumably active lifestyle. This may corroborate sociological and literary observations that in the Marvel Universe, women must fulfil criteria for being attractive by Western standards before fulfilling the criteria of biological realism.

Of course, this is no different from what we see in depictions of women in the so-called real world, where magazines airbrush women's arms to half their size or Photoshop their faces to look slimmer. Here is my favorite part of Healey's paper, where she explains how they picked heroes of the appropriate age:

The "real" age of Marvel Universe persons is frequently altered by the powers or mutations of individuals, non-Euclidean time, cryogenics, magic, biochemical solutions, alternative dimensions, radiation, cloning and resurrection. The 20-29 year old age range was chosen as the most appropriate range comparison for the apparent physical age of most adult Marvel characters.

Comparative Sex-Specific Body Mass Index in the Marvel Universe and the Real World [paper]

When The Economy Booms, Dystopias Rule

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 10:30:17 PST

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.

The data is most striking for the period of 1995-1998, when the U.S. economy was at its bounciest. But there's also a nice spate of dystopian films in the mid- to late-1980s, when "morning in America was at its sunniest. There was also a spike in 2002-2006, during a fairly expansionary period.

So what's going on here? A few explanations suggest themselves. Movie execs may greenlight dystopian films during economic downturns, and their immediate aftermath, but it may take a few years for those films to work their way through the development process and hit your screens. But it's also possible that when things are at their brightest economically, people feel the most insecure because they know the good times won't last forever. So boom times are when people most need stories about people surviving the bad times. Or maybe it's just that film-makers are a contrary bunch, who want to rub your face in the dirt just when you're feeling your brightest.

Here's our list of dystopian films for each year. Feel free to let us know what we left out, or shouldn't have included:

2008
Cloverfield (D)

2007
I Am Legend (D)
28 Weeks Later (D)
Resident Evil: Extinction (D)

2006
V for Vendetta (D)
Idiocracy (D)
Children of Men (D)
Ultraviolet (D)

2005
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (D)
Batman Begins (D)

2004
The Day After Tomorrow (D)
Stepford Wives (D)
Resident Evil: Apocalypse (D)

2003
The Matrix Reloaded (D)
The matrix Revelations (D)
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (D)

2002
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (D)
Minority Report (D)
28 Days Later (D)
Equilibrium (D)
Resident Evil (D)

2001
Planet of the Apes (D)
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (D)

2000
Battlefield Earth (D)

1999
The Matrix (D)
Existenz (D)

1998
Pi (D)
The Truman Show (D)
The X-Files (D)

1997
Alien: Resurrection (D)
Fifth Element (D)
The Postman (D)
Starship Troopers (D)
Gattaca (D)

1996
Escape from L.A. (D)

1995
Waterworld (D)
Mortal Kombat (D)
Johnny Mnemonic (D)
Judge Dredd (D)
Strange Days (D)
Twelve Monkeys (D)
Tank Girl (D)

1994
none

1993
Jurassic Park (D)
Demolition Man (D)
Robocop III (D)

1992
Batman Returns (D)
Alien 3 (D)
Freejack (D)

1991
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (D)

1990
Total Recall (D)
Handmaid's Tale (D)

1989
Batman (D)

1988
The live (D)

1987
Robocop (D)
The Running Man (D)

1986
Aliens (D)
The Fly (D)

1985
Brazil (D)
Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (D)

1984
The Terminator (D)

1983
none

1982
Blade Runner (D)
Videodrome (D)
Liquid Sky (D)

1981
Time Bandits (D)
Heartbeeps (D)

1980
The Empire Strikes Back (D)

1979
Alien (D)

1978
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (D)

Image by Stephanie Fox.

The Rise And Fall Of Cyberpunk

charliejane — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 08:20:07 PST

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.

Methods: We compiled a complete list of cyberpunk novels and movies, by date, from a variety of sources including Wikipedia, the Cyberpunk Review, Amazon.com's cyberpunk lists and various other sites. Then we tallied the number of novels (red line) and movies (blue line) per year. We were hoping for a nice smooth curve, but it didn't happen. We're sorry the chart turned out so zig-zag, we were as surprised as anybody.

Results: Cyberpunk has gone in waves, judging from our data. Novels in the genre have had a few high points. The biggest peaks for novels were the late 80s (eight novels in 1988), and then the mid-90s (an average of 6 novels per year from 1993-1996). Cyberpunk films had a peak in the late 80s-early 90s, followed by a brief lull. There were ten cyberpunk movies each in 1993 and 1995, and then another lull. The genre had a resurgence at the movies from 2002-2004, and then quieted down again.

How do we define cyberpunk? We tried not to. We pulled our list from as many reliable-looking sources as possible, and only left out things that seemed like obvious outliers. (On the Cyberpunk Review site, some of the movies on the cyberpunk list were listed as having a "low" level of cyberpunk themes, and seemed to be obviously reaching. So we left those movies out.)

So what does this tell us? Maybe cyberpunk is less of a fad than it used to be. Or maybe because we're now living in a cyberpunk era with virtual worlds, nonstop cybersex and evil corporations, we no longer view those things as elements of science fiction. What do you think?

New Proof That Every Scifi Epic Is Based On Joseph Campbell

charliejane — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 10:00:23 PST

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.

Doctor Who: Revolutionary Or Tool Of The Man?

charliejane — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 10:00:16 PST

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.

In general, we noticed the Doctor is more likely to overthrow the government on alien planets, or in the distant future. When he visits present-day Earth or our history, he's an arch-conservative. (He ousts Harriet Jones as prime minister of England in "The Christmas Invasion," but that's not the same as destroying the whole government.) Also, the Doctor acted out way more during the Thatcher era than any other period. During the Blair/Gordon Brown eras, he's been quite well-behaved.

Methods: We counted the number of stories in each season where the Doctor overthrows the status quo. (For example, in "The Savages" and "The Happiness Patrol," he encounters a stable society and leads a revolution.) Then we divided that number by the total number of stories in that season, for a percentage. Then we included other events at the time that could explain the Doctor's changing politics.

Which of Your Toys Will Suck Most Next Year?

Annalee Newitz — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 07:00:59 PST

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.

The numbers you see are kilowatt hours used per year, and the money is amount spent. Red is for devices that stand by in passive mode, and blue is for ones standing by in active mode. Oops, I think I own all the ones that suck most. But I love my plasma screen electron-guzzler! Good magazine [via TreeHugger]

Death Pie for "I Am Legend"

Annalee Newitz — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 09:30:59 PST

At one point during I Am Legend, hitting theaters this Friday, Robert Neville (Will Smith) recounts how many people were decimated by the evil virus. Based on the numbers he gave, we've made you a helpful pie chart to sort it all out. Click to enlarge.