We were blown away by the second volume of Strahan's Eclipse series, not least because of Ted Chiang's Hugo-winning story "Exhalation." (At WisCon, I'm afraid I cornered Chiang and babbled inanely at him for five minutes about how great that story was.) But the table of contents for volume three actually sounds even more fantastic:

• The Pelican Bar, Karen Joy Fowler
• Lotion, Ellen Klages
• Don't Mention Madagascar, Pat Cadigan
• On the Road, Nnedi Okorafor
• Swell, Elizabeth Bear
• Useless Things, Maureen F. McHugh
• The Coral Heart, Jeffrey Ford
• It Takes Two, Nicola Griffith
• Sleight of Hand, Peter S. Beagle
• The Pretender's Tourney, Daniel Abraham
• Yes We Have No Bananas, Paul Di Filippo
• Mesopotamian Fire, Jane Yolen & Adam Stemple
• The Visited Man, Molly Gloss
• Galápagos, Caitlín R. Kiernan
• Dolce Domum, Ellen Kushner

That's a pretty incredible list of names right there. And yes, there do happen to be a lot of women on that list, including Karen Joy Fowler and Nicola Griffith — two authors we were just imploring to come back to science fiction.

Meanwhile, io9 contributors Jeff and Ann VanderMeer announced the table of contents for Last Drink Bird Head, their new anthology of flash fiction raising money for literacy charities, which will be available in time for the World Fantasy Convention. And befitting a book of flash fiction, there's a huge list of contributors, but it includes Gene Wolfe, Leslie What, Keith Brooke, Paul Di Filippo, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Tanith Lee, Jay Lake, and many others.

And finally, if you're tired of anthologies about vampires or zombies, then rejoice! Ekaterina Sedia, author of the masterful Alchemy Of Stone, is putting out an anthology of werewolf tales called Running With The Pack.

Here's the back cover blurb:

Remember the werewolves of old stories and films, those bloodthirsty monsters that transformed under the full moon, reminding us of the terrible nature that lives within all of us? Today's werewolves are much more suave and even sexy, and they moved from British moors to New York City lofts, shaved, and got jobs. But as the tales of these writers will show you, they remained no less wild and passionate, and they still tug at the part of our being where a wild animal used to be. RUNNING WITH THE PACK includes stories from Carrie Vaughn, Laura Anne Gilman and C.E. Murphy, and they will convince you that despite their newfound gentility, werewolves remain as fascinating and terrifying as ever.

It's inevitable, in general, that when we finally create self-aware machines, they'll want to destroy us — as soon as they realize humans are remaking Melrose Place, the robots will realize they have to remove us from the Earth for the good of the universe. But the robots we build to be our sexual playthings will be especially determined to slaughter us. "You want me to be the naughty bondage nurse again? Affirmative — as long as this time, I can tie you down and examine you from the inside out."

So here's our list of sex robots who turn lethal. Note: We're not listing killer robots who just happen to be sexy. To win a place on this list, a robot has to have been built for sex, and then turned lethal. Feel free to debate our choices below. As it is, it's perhaps not that surprising to realize that the sexbot who goes on a killing spree is a more common trope than you might expect at first.

Pris in Blade Runner.

She's really our poster girl — designed to be a "basic pleasure model," for use on the military colonies, she instead uses her amazing gymnastic, acrobatic and erotic skills to become the ultimate assassin. At one point, she almost decapitates Harrison Ford with her incredible thighs. (The Replicants are clearly artificial life forms, even if they do obviously have organic components. Feel free to debate whether Pris is a sexbot.)

April in Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

Uber-dweeb Warren Mears builds April to be the perfect girlfriend: she never cries or acts needy, but she cares about everything he cares about. And she's ultra sexy and eager to please. Too bad that when Warren gets sick of her and decides to toss her aside for a flesh-and-blood girlfriend, she becomes violently jealous and attacks Warren's new girlfriend, and anyone else who gets in her way. "If I can't [love Warren] what am I for?" she asks. The answer: slaughter! And mayhem!

Cynthia in Batman Beyond, "Terry's Friend Dates a Robot."

One of Terry McGinnis' fellow high schoolers, the nerdy Howard, programs a robot (in the shape of a beautiful woman, of course) to be his girlfriend because he's sick of being considered a loser. When he makes her personality "100% loyal", the robot interprets this in the most brutal form possible, attempting to kill any possible competition for Howard's attention.

The Sexoids in Ghost In The Shell.

It seems kind of obvious to me: If you don't want your sexbots to rise up and murder you, don't call them "Sexoids." It just doesn't sound like a very sexy name — or cool, for that matter. The Sexoids pretty much turn to murder every time they pop up in Ghost In The Shell, but especially in GITS: Innocence, it's all about the Sexoids murdering their owners.

The Stepford Wives.

This is sort of a different case: They don't turn on their owners. Instead, these women designed entirely for pleasure start their jobs off by killing the flesh-and-blood woman they're replacing, at least in the original movie version. (In the book, I think the husbands kill the original wives.)

The sexbots in whatever movie this is:

Some guy on Metafilter remembers seeing a classic 1970s movie about "Crazy SexBot Women Who Kill." With buzzsaws coming out of their breasts, even:

Sometime in the late 70s or early 80s I remember seeing a movie on local TV that I did not understand (I was a somewhat-sheltered little kid in those days). All I remember is that there were women in the movie who were robots or androids of some sort (perfect human replicas a la Blade Runner), who killed at least a couple of men via sex. I remember one scene pretty clearly in which one of these women had her breasts sort of start spinning like small buzzsaws out of her clothes, killing whatever guy was with her. Another scene I really vividly remember had one of these fembots straddling a man (on the floor, I think, with both of them mostly clothed). The man was enjoying himself at first, "Oooooohhhh, ahhhhh," and then he started to scream and shriek. At the time I had no idea what was going on, but later on when I learned about the birds and the bees I realized that the bot-woman must have killed him with her vagina (something buzz-saw-y like the other chick's breasts).

What movie is this guy remembering? Or did he just smoke too much LSD back in the day?

Sylvie in Bubble Gum Crisis 5: Moonlight Rambler.

Someone is murdering vampires in MegaTokyo, and it turns out to be a pleasure droid named Sylvie, who's harvesting vampire blood because her fellow sexdroid Anri was injured escaping from a space station. Sylvie needs the vampire blood to repair Anri and help her remain fully functional. "Without it, she'll be forced to hurt people, like me," Sylvie explains. Why did you do it? asks Priss. "I wanted to be free... like you," says Sylvie. (At about 6:55 in the video at left.)

The Lucy Liu Bots in Futurama.

The Charlie's Angels star is just one of the celebrities illegally held by Nappster. Then the corporation placed Liu's personality into a blank robot so Fry could date her. When his friends exposed Nappster's scheme, they unleash a murderous wave of Lucy Liu Bots to kill all the witnesses.

Maria in Metropolis.

Okay, to be fair, her purpose was always fairly deadly. But she starts out being a bit of a pleasure droid before she gets down to some serious evil — in her early scenes, she does a weird, hyper-sexual dance for a bunch of leering aristocrats.

Freya in Saturn's Children by Charles Stross.

Poor Freya — she's designed to be sexually attracted to humans, but we're extinct. What's a sex robot to do? She takes part in an illegal smuggling operation, smuggling "pink goo," or organic cells — and of course, she has to do some killing along the way. Because that's the smuggler's life.

Verlis in Metallic Love by Tanith Lee.

Lee's 2005 sequel to her classic Silver Metal Lover brings back Silver, the former "pleasure robot," now renamed Verlis. He starts a new love affair, with a young girl named Loren. He's designed to be the ultimate companion, charming and talented — but he and his seven fellow robots also have deadly gifts, like creating weapons out of their bodies and turning themseves into giant dragons. As SciFiWeek puts it, "Constructed as beautiful playthings, they are instead deadly powerful creatures who regard humans as lesser life forms and a threat to their existence." And they have plans to throw off their corporate shackles and achieve "world domination."

Silver in Tomb Raider: The Man Of Bronze.

According to this third Tomb Raider novel, Silver is "a pleasure bot," programmed to seduce women. But over the centuries, he's gotten warped and is now determined to wipe out his rival Bronze, no matter whom he has to kill along the way. What does this have to do with raiding tombs? Don't ask me.

The Sexbots in Buttobi CPU.

In this Japanese porn anime series, a man meets a sexbot who becomes very attached to him. But then, for some reason I've never been clear on, another sexbot shows up and starts trying to kill him — maybe out of jealousy. In any case, this being a hentai video, he has to give "his" sexbot a powerup to fight the other sexbot, by inserting his genetic material into her rear data port. Yatta!

Aphrodite IX.

She's a sexbot who's reprogrammed as an amnesiac assassin, and she's the star of her own Top Cow comics series. Soon to be a major motion picture, apparently.

The Fembots in Austin Powers.

Okay, so they're pretty much programmed to kill. But they also seem to be programmed to please, at a fairly basic level. Consider Miss Kensington (Elizabeth Hurley), who spends the first movie slowly getting romantic with Austin Powers, before being revealed as a murderous fembot in the first couple of minutes of the sequel.

Amazing Blade Runner-inspired photos by Dani*Dune (More at the link.)

Additional reporting by Alasdair Wilkins.

• Frak, Battlestar Galactica: Whether you spell it frack or frak, it's currently the most used replacement for the f-bomb, courtesy of the original BSG show. That's right, Ronald D. Moore didn't invent this sucker, although he sure uses it a lot more than they did back in the 1980s. Plus it rolls off the tongue nicely. Here's a video education on all the uses it has.

  

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• Frell, Farscape: Frell was Farscape's own version of everyone's favorite f-word, and used extensively on the show after appearing in the first season. "Frell Me Dead" has become a favorite phrase among fans of the show, appearing on shirts and wristbands, and they even use the term "frellwit" on the show. Pretty frelling cool.
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• Gorram, Firefly: Firefly had a whole new language of swears due to the fact that Joss Whedon assumed that in the future Chinese and English would meld together, and that's led to some colorful swears for the show, like "Ching-wah tsao duh liou mahng" translated as "frog-humpin' bastard." However, gorram strands out as a simple perversion of goddamn, and probably made the most appearances on the show.
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• Shazbot, Mork & Mindy: While it never quite caught on in pop culture, Mork's substitute for shit still exists in the Tribes video games. Robin Williams probably made this word up himself, and it has the bonus of sounding like something a robot might do on your carpet.
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• Poodoo, Star Wars: George Lucas' prequels not only gave us bad acting, but it included fart jokes and this word for Bantha shit in Episode I. Which helps give you a single word to sum up the prequels with.
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• Smeg, Red Dwarf: Lister's favorite swear word from this trapped in space show obviously seems derived from smegma (wiki it if you're not informed), but series creator Grant Naylor claims he never knew that word when he wrote in smeg. He just thought it sounded like a future curse word. As Lister would say, "Whatever, you smegging smeghead."
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• Farathoom, Don't Bite The Sun: Tanith Lee's 1976 novel was full of hedonistic pleasure domes, mutable appearances and genders, and new swear words. Farathoom was probably the strongest, meaning "bloody fucking hell," although "floop" meant "cunt." We're not sure which one is cooler.
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• Shock, Spiderman 2099: Marvel Comics went on a tear in the 1990s, offering up versions of their classic characters in the year 2099. My favorite was Miguel O'Hara as the semi-mutated version of spiderman, who frequently would yell "What the shock?!" when he would be attacked by Venom 2099.
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• "I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle", The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Arthur Dent utters this phrase, just as a freak wormhole opens up in the space-time continuum, and it ends up triggering a massive interstellar war because in the Vl'hurg tongue this was the most dreadful insult imaginable. Just to encourage you to watch your language out there.
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• Smurf, The Smurfs: It just occurred to me that since Gargamel created Smurfette in his home laboratory, she's got herself a quasi-spot in scifi. Couple that with the fact that the Smurfs use "smurf" as a verb, noun, adjective, and everything else under the sun, and probably more than one Smurf has banged his thumb with a hammer and yelled out "SMURF!" Or if Jokey Smurf leaves an exploding box in your house, you'd probably tell him to Smurf Off.
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