Dilemma: You're the only human left on the planet, and you have to figure out how to outrun a flock of zombies at dusk. The zombies in your neighborhood are just slightly faster than humans on foot—you need a quick and effective method of increasing speed.

Solution: Put a rubber band around your ankle. Then stretch one end of it toward your toes and hook it over the big toe, twisting it once to make a figure eight. Repeat on your other foot.

Why this works: The rubber bands help your feet expand and contract even further than they normally do in the forefoot. This provides greater power during the push-off phase of the gait cycle, enabling you to run a little faster.

Urawaza [Amazon]

For example, if you buy this book, you'll learn things like how to run faster and how to keep wounds from reopening (wait, is Wolverine reading this?). And you'll get secret tips on even stranger things, such as how to make a tiny piece of soap big again and how to revive a dying ballpoint pen. I think somebody on Heroes actually had that soap power.

Every chapter is arranged into a series of dilemmas, accompanied by the urawaza solution. Want to cure your runny nose? Lisa has the answer:

Simply cut the top fronts off two green onions, stick the remaining thick white root sections into your nostrils, and let your new nose plugs do their thing. Your sinuses will magically clear up — plus, you don't have to deal with drippy boogers.

Urawaza [Amazon]

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.