We've looked at some abandoned Bulgarian Socialist architecture before, but never like this. This winter, photographer Timothy Allen braved snowstorms and horrific cold to shoot the UFO-like Buzludzha monument in the Bulgarian Balkans. The resulting pictures look like the lost Communist equivalent of Echo Base.

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These stark socialist sculptures in Bulgaria have an almost Zardoz-like aesthetic about them. You half expect a coterie of post-apocalyptic stormtroopers to come piling out, armed with laser-axes designed to crush the edifice of bourgeois oppression.

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For possibly the first time ever, North Korean art is being displayed in Europe, and the utopian optimism is heart-breaking. Yes, monster movies may not be the scariest culture North Korea ever produced.

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If there's one thing that this past week has taught us here at io9, it's not that a historic election can get everyone excited about the future. It's not that people are hopeful in a way that's changed the very atmosphere of a country overnight (albeit a night that many of us spent watching more CNN than is potentially … Read…

Ronald Reagan, Winston Churchill, and Eugene Debs all had one thing in common: they were fans of science fiction. More than that, they all used scifi at one point or another to shape their political actions and views. From presidents and prime ministers to ordinary citizens looking for change, many people have turned… Read…

When I was a kid in mega-conservative Orange County, calling somebody a commie was like calling them evil: It was a term nobody understood, and therefore it meant everything amorphously bad. People didn't use words like "socialist" or "unionist" — it was just commie, or maybe (in my town) commie faggot. That's why these… Read…