Graphic designer Jaz Parkinson's Colour Signatures is an interesting way of visualizing books. She pulls out all of the references to color in a single novel or play, tallies them up, and graphs the color scheme for each book.

Science fiction is the genre of ideas — but it's also given us some unforgettable pictures along the way. Every era in science fiction's history has shown us a new vision of the strange and futuristic, and one image can spawn a million reflections in your mind's eye.

We're fascinated by the music video for Willow Smith's song "21th Century Girl," in which she is in a post-apocalpytic wasteland... until she and her friends find an entire buried city, which they lift out of the sand using chains.

Marvellous Hairy author Mark A. Rayner is holding a Photoshop contest to create vintage advertisements for futures that don't exist yet. Here's a small sampling of these retrofuturistic print pieces from both the current and past contests.

Photographer Jim Lo Scalzo has captured the scorched earth beauty of America's coal country. In the photo montage "Ghosts in the Hollow," Scalzo navigates through fog, Centralia fumes, and old coal sluices. No wonder The Road was filmed out there.

Someone builds a full-scale replica of Manhattan in Puget Sound. A mysterious organization plots to use humanity's brightest minds to shape the future. And in the distant future, humanity rebuilds after the apocalypse. Ryan Boudinot's next novel sounds trippily awesome.

This concept art of a stranger, grittier Wizard of Oz depicts the Cowardly Lion as goth, the Emerald City as the setting for Left 4 Dead, and Dorothy as a smack addict. Poppies are a helluva drug.

This was a year of extremes: huge CG-heavy spectacles and low-budget gems. Most of all, 2009 made us feel the boundaries of cinema were stretched... for good and ill. Here are the 10 best and 10 worst films of 2009.

One important cannibal scene in the post apocalyptic film The Road, based on Cormac McCarthy's book, was cut. Here's why, along with how director John Hillcoat feels about his movie being compared to, and marketed as, "disaster porn."