Here are five pieces of wisdom that we've gleaned from the last six months (and handful of days):

President Obama Is The Greatest Hero Of All
As his many comic book appearances have demonstrated, there's no end to our current president's ability to save the world from any genre of threat. Amazing Spider-Man has him fighting supervillains, Youngblood shows him carrying massive laserguns to shoot renegade soldiers taking over the White House, Drafted gives us an alien-invasion-battlin' Barack and Barack The Barbarian brings everything back down to sword and sorcery basics. He's like a modern-day Arnold Schwarzenegger - and enough to make us wonder just how the comic industry would've dealt with John McCain winning the election instead.

Threats To Humanity Are Getting Weaker
Last year, it was the Large Hadron Collider and the possibility that it would rip existence apart when someone flipped the switch, and this year, it was... Swine Flu. It can't just be me, can it? I mean, Swine Flu... Doesn't that seem like a step down from the technological "Our Quest For Knowledge May Destroy Us All" conceptual genius that threatened us last year? Even calling it "the H1N1 Influenza Virus" still sounds kind of shit. Okay, so there's no chance of "hardon" spoonerisms, but still: Pandemics? Haven't we done that already? I'm holding out hope that sewer monsters will brighten the remaining months of the year, however.

The BBC Should Stop Making Us Feel Old
Yes, we know that it's just one of those aimless homilies that you know that you're getting old when the policemen and doctors start looking younger, but selecting a twelve year old to be the new Doctor Who really doesn't make us feel very good about ourselves nonetheless. I know that we started with the oldest of the Doctors and have progressively gotten younger since then - well, roughly - but between David Tennant and Matt Smith, I'm convinced that we'll have our first pre-teen Timelord by 2015. And then, the next one will be a little baby, just like in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Joss Whedon Can Defy The Laws Of Nature
If nothing else, the renewal of Dollhouse proves that he can defy the laws of television. I wouldn't put money on him being unable to fly if he really wanted to.

Fuck Dystopia
Terminator Salvation and Watchmen - two downbeat movies offering popcorn versions of pessimistic views of humanity ("Ultimately, man's greed and laziness will lead us to become disconnected from our fellow man and controlled by the machines and mechanisms that we created to ease our daily existences - but doesn't this slow-motion action sequence look hot?") - both failed to meet expectation at the box office, while Star Trek's hopeful, colorful version of a future that may be too lens-flarey to be cuddly but is nonetheless positive surpassed expectations. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles also died a slow death on television. The obvious conclusion? No-one wants to their entertainment to end with the lesson "We're all screwed." The Dark Knight's glossy hopelessness was so last year, people. We hadn't experienced so much of the economic downturn and/or the hopetrain of Obama back then. We were all so much more innocent and desperate to be mistreated by our movies. (Along the same lines - Size Matters: Terminator, featuring human-sized robots, fails to become a hit. Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, featuring giant robots, breaks box office records. I think you can see what I'm saying here. See also: Robot On Robot Action Is More Acceptable Than Robot On Batman Action and Megan Fox Is Hotter Than Moon Bloodgood. Sorry, But There It Is.)

Bolstered with this new knowledge, we look forward to what the rest of the year can teach us - presuming, of course, that the sewer monsters don't decide to team up with Joss Whedon and end the world before then. Pray for us.

The three page short "Almost Darkest" - written by Whedon and illustrated by Jo Chen, the artist behind the amazing covers to the current Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season Eight comic - may just end up as a seemingly random dream indulging fans' and Whedon's fantasies (Buffy marrying Warren? Really?), but at least it features this sequence:

The strip is available on publisher Dark Horse's website, as part of their Dark Horse Presents online anthology series.

Always Darkest [Dark Horse]

Compared to the Civil War or World War II, the American Revolution has, for whatever reason, been largely neglected by alternate history writers. While books like Bring the Jubilee and The Man in the High Castle stand as iconic works that imagine Confederate and Nazi victories respectively, there is no such defining work detailing the particulars of the British maintaining control of their wayward colonies. Still, there are a number of more obscure short stories and essays (plus a couple of novels) that do consider just such a scenario, and they generally take one of the four following forms...

1. Different historical circumstances prevented the American Revolution completely.

Technically speaking, I could include in this category almost any alternate history where the divergence occurs long before July 4, 1776. For instance, a story about the Roman Empire surviving into the present day would undoubtedly mean European contact with and subsequent colonization of the Americas would have happened far, far differently. Instead, let's just focus on stories that explicitly explain how changing history would avert the Revolution.

J.C.D. Clark's essay "British America: What if there had been no American Revolution?" argues that increased representation for the colonists, much like the Scottish and Irish parliaments prior to the Act of Union in 1707, might well have given the Americans a satisfactory level of self-government and made rebellion unnecessary. The short story "Cops and Robbers" by S.M. Stirling is set in modern times, but it uses as its setup a world where Prime Minister William Pitt the Elder led Britain to a far more decisive victory in the French and Indian War (also known as the Seven Years War). This then allowed the British to maintain control over their colonies for a considerably longer period.

Writing just over a hundred years ago, Joseph Edgar Chamberlain imagined a plethora of alternate scenarios in his book The Ifs of History. He imagined a French colonization of Plymouth Bay that would have allowed the Dutch settlements of New Holland to survive, preventing the colonial unity that made the success of the Revolution possible. He wondered what might have happened if Columbus had not slightly altered course while crossing the Atlantic in 1492, which would have led to landfall on what is now Florida, likely shifting Spanish colonial interest towards North America.

He also looked at the possibility of Elizabeth I marrying and giving birth to an heir, which he believed would have prevented the rise of Puritanism and thus likely averted the Revolution. Not all of the changes he described would have appeared quite so momentous at the time, as he considered the tale of a colonial mother deciding in 1746 whether or not to enlist her son in the British navy. The mother was Mary Washington, the son was George Washington, and if the decision had been "yes" then the rest would have been a very different history than what we know.

2. Diplomacy prevailed.

This category focuses on situations where the colonies were on the brink of war, but ultimately were pacified thanks to brilliant diplomacy. Caleb Carr's essay "William Pitt the Elder and the Avoidance of the American Revolution" argues Pitt could have prevented the American Revolution if he had refused his ennoblement as the Earl of Chatham in 1766, which would have allowed him to stay in the House of Commons. Carr feels Pitt stood the best chance of preventing the various oppressive acts and exorbitant taxes that so angered the colonists, and in doing so might have prevented the rebellion.

In a similar vein, Roger Thompson imagined in his essay what might have happened "If I had been…the Earl of Shelburne in 1762-5." The crux of Thompson's argument holds that, if the Earl of Shelburne had been in charge of the peace negotiations following the Seven Years' War, he might have allowed France to regain control of Canada, which would have in turn removed the need for much of the taxation of the colonies.

One of the few full-fledged novels to tackle the subject, The Two Georges was cowritten by alternate history grandmaster Harry Turtledove and, for some awesome reason, Jaws actor Richard Dreyfuss. The titular Georges are, naturally enough, King George III and George Washington, who managed to negotiate a peaceful redress to American grievances that allowed the colonies to remain part of the British Empire. The theft two centuries later of a painting recording their legendary meeting sets the book's plot in motion, which takes the detective protagonist from New Liverpool (or, as we would call it, Los Angeles) on a winding tour throughout the North American Union all the way to their version of Washington D.C., the colonial capital Victoria.

3. The British won the war.

This really should be the easiest kind of alternate American Revolution story to write, considering just how unlikely the colonial victory arguably was. Beyond the superior military might of the British Empire, there was also the fact that not all Americans supported the cause of independence (although a majority of them did), and even then not all of the patriots were properly trained to fight. But beyond these general advantages the British had, there were several specific instances where the British could have triumphed and, in the process, likely ended the rebellion.

A major turning point recognized by multiple alternate history authors is the Battle of Saratoga in 1777. The month-long series of skirmishes, bookended by two bloody battles, saw the decisive defeat of British General John Burgoyne's army. Burgoyne had previously boasted that his troops would be able to split the colonies in half and effectively end the revolt. He was defeated largely due to the tactical brilliance and bold action of a brilliant young general by the name of Benedict Arnold. In H. Beam Piper's "He Walked Around the Horses", Burgoyne's victory at Saratoga is credited at the effective end of the American Revolution. A similar result is seen in Robert Sobel's For Want of a Nail…; If Burgoyne Had Won at Saratoga, which takes the form of an alternate history textbook detailing the duel histories of the Confederation of North America and the United States of Mexico.

Speaking of Benedict Arnold, Robert Cowley looked at how Arnold might have acted differently slightly later in his notorious career, as he detailed in his essay "Benedict Arnold Wins the Revolutionary War for Britain." Paul Park's "The Blood of Peter Francisco" takes place in the early 20th century in a world where the British routed the Continental Army at Yorktown in 1781, which in our history was the battle that signaled the inevitability of American victory.

Thomas Fleming is even more ambitious in his piece "Unlikely Victory: Thirteen Ways the Americans Could have Lost the Revolution", which examines the entire chain of events that made American success possible and then pulls out thirteen of the weakest links. This includes how the Patriots expertly turned the Boston Massacre into a rallying cry for anti-British sentiment, how a fortunate fog covered the American retreat from the Battle of Long Island and prevented their capture at the hands of the British, and how George Washington's charisma was all that stopped the disgruntled Continental Army from marching on Congress to demand their pay, all of which Fleming considers the results if these had played out differently.

Perhaps the most interesting sub-sub-sub-genre in this category concerns the ultimate fate of George Washington. In 1974, Robert Wallace Russell wrote and staged the play Washington Shall Hang: A Drama of Lost Revolution, which imagines the general being put on trial for treason. Roland J. Green's vignette "Exile's Greeting" looks at the HMS Bellerophon as it prepares to transport an important political prisoner to the infamous island of St. Helena, which in our history was the final home of the defeated Napoleon Bonaparte. I suppose my inclusion of that story in this particular paragraph pretty much gives away the big twist as to which mysterious general is being exiled to St. Helena.

4. Something utterly crazy happened.

Let's be honest here. (And, by "honest", I of course mean "borderline jingoistic in a tongue-in-cheek manner.") The American Revolution was a historical inevitability and no amount of expert political maneuvering by Pitt the Elder or brilliant strategizing by General Burgoyne could have prevented or defeated it. So how, exactly, could you plausibly write a story where the Revolution turned out differently? With magic and dragons, that's how!

Orson Scott Card preferred the former option in his Tales of Alvin Maker series, in which almost everybody has a "knack", or ability to do at least one thing absolutely perfectly, and a few people have particularly powerful knacks, including the title character. The existence of such powers has greatly altered the course of human history, and what would have been the United States is divided into a colonial New England controlled by the heirs of Oliver Cromwell's English Republic, a monarchy on the east coast ruled by the exiled House of Stuart, and a much smaller independent America where Native Americans play a far greater role.

Mike Resnick upped the ante considerably in terms of awesomeness when he titled his alternate history book Dragon America: Revolution. The book is set in a world where the ecology of the Americas is greatly different from that of the Old World, as it is dominated by, well, dragons. For some reason, the Revolution is close to failure in this universe, which forces George Washington to send Daniel Boone westward in search of the legendary dragons that could be their last hope for victory against the British.

I'll admit I'm probably cheating a little bit by including this book, as the American Revolution does ultimately succeed thanks to the dragons, but I have one very simple rule in life - I will never pass up an opportunity to talk about team-ups between George Washington and dragons to defeat the British. I can't think of anything that better encapsulates the American way.

For almost as long as there have been superheroes, there have been superheroes who were intended to be patriotic figures representing American values by offering up inspirational speeches, standing up for the little guy and socking Hitler in the jaw whenever possible. Considering the popularity of the medium during the Second World War, it's easy to see why Real American Heroes became so prevalent, even if they've failed to find so easy a purpose ever since (Although trying to do so has produced such great stories - and such sly commentary as Captain America's 1970s villains, the Committee to Regain America's Principles... or CRAP, for short). But this isn't a day to think about troubled times... so let's salute the brave, bold and... others... of America's Fictional Finest.

The Classics
Captain America
Still the best of all of America's superheroes - or, at least, the only one who's really weathered the years and stayed in print the longest. Sure, there was that whole period he disappeared after the War, but that's because he was frozen in a block of ice. Who would've wanted to have read that month after month?

Uncle Sam
Who could be more patriotic than Captain America? Well, how about Uncle Sam himself? Oh, alright; this character, created by The Spirit's Will Eisner, wasn't the Uncle Sam, but instead the resurrected spirit of a Revolutionary War-era soldier who mystically returns in America's various hours of need, but still. Look at that beard and wonder just who could argue?

The Shield
Created more than a year before Captain America, Archie Comics' super soldier patriot may not have the name recognition of Marvel's counterpart, but DC Comics is doubtlessly hoping that J. Michael Straczynski's upcoming revival of the superpowered military man will change all of that.

The Fighting Yank
A character so wonderfully named, he's been revived not once but twice in recent years, and by no less than Alan Moore (in a 2001 issue of his America's Best Comics series Tom Strong) and Alex Ross (in his ongoing Project Superpowers series). But who could resist the lure of a man haunted by the ghost of his War of Independence-era ancestor who fights for his country's honor?

Liberty Belle
What are the odds that a woman could have a spiritual connection with the Liberty Bell so strong that it gives her superpowers and the ability to fight Nazis? if you're a comic book character from the 1940s, apparently they'd be good enough for that character's daughter to take on the same costumed identity and fight crime with the Justice Society today.

The Forgotten Heroes
Mr. America/Americommando
Reason #1 to love this 1941 superhero: His secret identity is a Texan oilman out for revenge against the Nazis. Reason #2: His sidekick's name was "Fatman." Reason #3: His Nazi-fighting technique? Dying his hair black and whipping his enemies until they surrender. Why is this character not getting multiple movies and fan worship as we speak?

Miss America
Sadly unrelated to the above, Miss America gained her powers from a dream where the Statue of Liberty came to life and gave them to her, and thankfully kept up that level of weirdness all the way through her career, whether it was faking her own aging process in order to live a quiet life or making a new body for herself from space debris and renaming herself Miss Cosmos. There's something admirable about that kind of ingenuity, wouldn't you agree?

USAgent
A much more recent patriotic hero than most, John Walker hails from the 1980s and an unsuccessful stint as a replacement for Captain America that accidentally led to his parents' death. His success as a character is perhaps best defined by the fact that he - an American-themed hero with a very American name - was transplanted to Canada by Marvel in a desperate attempt to make him a success. It failed.

American Eagle
Marvel Comics' 1981 attempt at inclusiveness resulted in this Native American hero, Jason Strongbow, whose generic origin story (Gained powers in accident caused by supervillain, seeking revenge for a dead brother) and lazy stereotypical costume didn't hint at the potential that's slowly being unlocked by more recent creators in series like Thunderbolts and War Machine.

Star-Spangled Kid
DC Comics keep trying with this name, even if the characters keep getting popular enough to outgrow it; the first SSK became Infinity Inc.'s Skyman in the 1980s, and the second became the Justice Society of America's Stargirl. Luckily, we now apparently have a third in the Teen Titans franchise, even if she does happen to be martian. Does an alien really count as star-spangled?

The Crazy Ones
The Comedian
Sure, there may be nothing particularly American about his name - or even his outfit, most of the time - but there's no doubting that Alan Moore's Watchmen character served his country - or more accurately, his country's government - better than most superheroes. Not enough to stop himself getting thrown out a window, sure, but them's the breaks.

Nuke
Frank Miller's intentionally-failed attempt to repeat the Captain America experiment may have seemed slightly out of place in the classic "Born Again" Daredevil storyline, but there's no denying that his drug-fueled, crazed Vietnam-flashback rantings made him a memorable indictment of mindless patriotism in Reagan's America.

Superpatriot
An old-school superhero captured, made into a cyborg and going insane and murderous in the process? Erik Larsen's quasi-parody may have a history that's as ridiculous as it is eventful - and that's before you've gotten to the kids he didn't remember having and his half-martian grandchild - but we're choosing to look at him as a man who's just made a few mistakes, is all.

Major Victory
Leader of conservative supergroup the Force of July - Get it? - this DC Comics character was everything some would want in a true American hero: Charismatic, attractive, arrogant and racist as all get out. Never given to complex characterization, the character's descent into political parody continued when he joined a new corporate superteam called the Captains of Industry - Get it? - before, thankfully, dying.

Captain America
Yeah, I know; Steve Rogers isn't crazy, right? But his retconned 1950s replacement most definitely was. After all, how else would you describe a man whose take on American values was deemed acceptable by Nazi supervillain the Red Skull on more than one occasion? Yes, he may think he was a patriot - and, thanks to cosmetic surgery, he even looks exactly identical to the original Cap - but this guy is not the kind of hero you want in your corner.

WTF?
Yank & Doodle
Yes, it's a crime-fighting duo called Yank and Doodle. Even during their heyday of the 1940s, there's no way that kids didn't find these two America-loving teenagers more than a little dumb. Surprisingly, they've just been revived in Dynamite's Project Superpowers series... Here's hoping that new names are forthcoming.

Yankee Poodle
Well, what else would you call the world's most patriotic crime-fighting dog? Part of DC Comics' Zoo Crew, Poodle isn't even the most America-centric of the team... That'd be American Eagle. Who, you guessed it, is an actual Eagle. Stunningly, thanks to Final Crisis, these characters are officially part of DC's main continuity these days.

American Maid
Armed with a boomerang tiara and her quick wits, The Tick's occasional partner in crimefighting stands out as being probably the most capable of all the characters in the comic/show - Dressed like Lady Liberty and working for the US government more often than not, evil will never get away with it as long as she's around.

The First American and US Angel
Alan Moore's turn of the millennium take on the idea of patriotic comic characters was this unusual duo - An overweight, incompetent superhero (The latest in a long line of First Americans) and the former stripper who dreams of taking his place. Social satire, or serious commentary on the impotence of American masculinity in the face of an increasingly revelatory society obsessed with surface glamor above all? You be the judge. But it's not the latter.

US 1
If a trucker who can pick up CB transmissions thanks to the metal plate in his head, and then gets kidnapped by aliens before opening an intergalactic diner in space doesn't sound like the very personification of the American Dream to you, then there's only one explanation: You're not an American in the first place. But even that doesn't stop us from wishing you a happy Independence Day... even if it was independence from you that's being celebrated in the first place.

BleedingCool.com suggests that Lyn has already been approached for the project - confirmed as in development by the BBC and expected to be announced at this year's San Diego Comic-Con - and that the movie will be headed up by departing showrunner Russell T Davies and starring outgoing Doctor David Tennant, allowing the incoming team of Steven Moffatt and Matt Smith to concentrate on the television series. If true, then the movie will reunite Lyn with Tennant and Davies; as well as directing many episodes during their Who tenure, Lyn will helm Tennant's final episodes, including the scene regenerating the character into his new, younger, Matt Smith incarnation.

Adding fuel to the fire, Lyn, Tennant and Davies have all been confirmed to appear at Comic-Con later this month.

Will Euros Lyn Direct The Upcoming Doctor Who Movie? [Bleeding Cool]

Communist Amerika

Although the United States passionately feared a communist takeover, there is surprisingly little science fiction that imagines what the United States would be like under communism. During the Cold War, there were a lot of movies about communist spies and communist agents and communist invasions, but few stories tried to grapple with what the United States would look like in a long-term communist scenario. The propaganda movie Red Nightmare from 1962, with its grim portrait of small town commie USA, gestured at this idea a little bit. But it wasn't really until the 1980s with the miniseries Amerika that we saw a fully-fledged communist USA. The miniseries imagines what the United States would be like 10 years after the Soviets invade in the late 1980s. Hint: It's evil and must be stopped.

Two books from the 1990s offer slightly more plausible scenarios. In Maureen Mchugh's China Mountain Zhang, the United States suffers an economic collapse in the 21st century, followed by a revolution led by Chinese communists. China has become an economic superpower, while America founders through its own cultural revolution. And in the British short story collection Back In The USSA, Theodore Roosevelt is reelected as a progressive candidate in 1912, thus setting in motion a series of events that lead to a people's revolution in the United States in 1917. Russia, however, remains Czarist. It's a fun thought experiment for people who like to geek out about early 20th century American progressive politics.

Could it happen?
It's telling that Back In The USSA has to reach so far back in history to make its scenario plausible. And McHugh posits a future disaster. The point is that this scenario is an extreme deviation from the country's current trajectory. Sure, anything could happen – there are always black swans. But this possibility feels more like a thought experiment than a genuine possibility.

Fascist Fragments

Americans have feared a fascist takeover perhaps as much as they have feared communism in the past. In fact, the two are often lumped together in political polemics. But in science fiction, Philip K Dick's early 1960s novel The Man In The High Castle set the standard for fantasies of a fascist takeover. In Dick's vision, FDR is assassinated early in his presidency, which results in a weak government that fails to pull the country out of the Depression. So the United States doesn't have the economic or industrial capacity to aid the Allies, Germany conquers Europe, Japan conquers the Pacific, and the United States is broken up and divided among its conquerors. Parts of the nation remain free, parts go to Germany, and most of the West Coast goes to Japan.

Other fantasies about a fascist United States also imagine the country as having broken up. Even the recent television show Jericho depicts (at one point in the series) a post-nuclear apocalypse in the U.S. resulting in its fragmentation into small, authoritarian regions. Obviously there are some alternate histories that imagine a unified United States going fascist, but the idea of a fragmented country falling prey to authoritarians is a common one.

Could it happen?
The United States has sometimes flirted with authoritarianism. Presidents like FDR and Richard Nixon consolidated so much power that many historians would call them proto-fascist. The fact that the United States does not have a parliamentary democracy often makes it appear to resemble nations whose leadership is confined to a small cadre. However, the country also has a history of correcting itself when power is too closely tied to one group. Term limits were set for presidents after FDR died, and the Watergate scandal destroyed Nixon's regime. The question is, would this self-correcting mechanism remain healthy if the country fragmented into smaller pieces? The Man In The High Castle, even after all these years, still makes a persuasive case that a divided America could become fascist.

Corporate Feudalism

Many cyberpunk stories are predicated on the idea that in the near future the United States will be ruled by corporations who are more powerful than governments. This is the premise in William Gibson's classic Neuromancer, Marge Piercy's post-cyberpunk He, She, and It, and is even an important idea in the TV show Fringe. Although a shell of the U.S. Government might remain intact in these scenarios, true power is held by multinationals. Neal Stephenson does a terrific job showing what this would be like in his novel The Diamond Age. Corporations create enclaves with their own cultural norms that function as city-states. (One such enclave adopts Victorian social values and fashions, for example.)

This situation leads to a scenario like feudalism because the corporations become like kingdoms, with an executive class serving as aristocrats and workers as serfs. The world is fragmented economically and culturally, but in many versions of this story the governments remain the same. Still, these governments are more ceremonial than anything else. The world is run by capitalists, not politicians.

Could it really happen?
As we see in the TV show Fringe, corporate feudalism seems as if it has already happened. Although the show is not set in the future, the corporation Massive Dynamic clearly has as much power as the government, if not more. Wealthy companies like Google and Microsoft have more money than many nations. If Google merged with Northrop Grumman and bought Blackwater, could they take over the U.S. Government? Sounds a helluva lot more plausible than a communist revolution.

Since we still live in a democratic society, go ahead and exercise your right to vote. Take our poll and tell the world what you think is going to happen to the U.S. Government.

Sunnydale

Location: California near Santa Barbara

Where does it appear? Buffy the Vampire Slayer universe

Locals: A slowly declining population of families and commuters, with a thriving underground community of demons and vampires.

Dangers: It's situated directly over the Hellmouth, so there's that. Think of this city as a magnet for everything in the world that wants to do harm to humankind. Demons, vampires, plagues, ghosts, trolls, witches...the list goes on. If you live in this city and wanted a small family of two kids, I'd have three just to be safe.

Gotham City

Location: Depends, many maps put Gotham right where Manhattan or Vancouver would be situated. But generally you're looking for a Northern city near the coast.

Where does it appear? Batman

Locals: Home to Batman, the Wayne family, and stomping grounds of many other superheroes and villains. This town is full of hard-working city folk with a lot of attitude and gumption, which is imperative as the crime rate is so high they need to keep their spirits up to get through the day. The town is riddled with psychotics, superheroes and masked avengers all looking to either do some good or some harm.

Dangers: Highways, banks, the docking yards and hospitals all seem to be violent areas. Rule of thumb, stay away from these places or any government official or people with strollers, as they all seem to be large walking targets in this town.

Bon Temps

Location: Northern Louisiana, above Alexandria

Where does it appear? True Blood and the Sookie Stackhouse series

Locals: Blue collar Southern types. People who have lived in the same place for years, centuries even. Bon Temps, home to Sookie Stackhouse and her many supernatural friends has a pretty steady fatality rate. While it's nowhere near Sunnydale or Gotham City numbers, there are still a fair number of citizens getting snacked on by the lush supernatural life that populates the woods nearby.

Dangers: Unruly vampire nests, bull people with poison talons, werewolves, werepuppies - it's basically an all-the-time party for anything unnatural. Living here is a dangerous balancing act of being aware of the dangers in front of you, so you know how to respond, but not being so infatuated that you're putting yourself in harms way. Plus there's the fact that the law enforcement is pretty lax, so should you get murdered it may be weeks until they find your body.

The local Louisiana Tourist Board has set up a Welcome To Bon Temps site - "everyone wants a taste."


Smallville

Location: Kansas

Where does it appear? Smallville TV series, Superman

Locals: Good salt of the Earth farmer folk that attract doom like honey does flies.

Dangers: If you live in Smallville, you run the chance of having one of your relatives getting killed by a radioactive meteor - or the risk that you will become exposed or mutated by a radioactive meteor, or that you will be attacked on a weekly basis by someone who has been mutated by a radioactive meteor.

Eureka

Located: Somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, possibly Oregon or Washington state. It's a secret town built by Global Dynamics - if they want you to know the exact location, you'll know.

Where does it appear? EurekaTV series

Locals: Scientists, superbrains, and the best of the best of every field all in one town.

Dangers: Malfunctioning science experiments that could potentially harm you or your belongings (most likely the belongings). Things are always exploding or ripping the fabric of time. Also the world ends just about every week and at one time or another you could be called upon to roll up your sleeves and help solve the problem, which has lead to a few fatalities here and there. The town has been known to bust out into song time and again (similar to Sunnydale).

Hill Valley

Location: Pasadena area of California

Where does it appear? Back To The Future

Locals: A never ending loop of faces that pass on generation to generation.

Dangers: When your city houses a meddlesome scientist and his good-looking assistant who can't help but dabble in time travel, your life is going to be greatly influenced by these two and their shenanigans. Of course the entire world will be changed with time travel, but if you're a resident in Hill Valley and your great, great grandfather gets knocked off a cliff by a DeLorean, you can bet that will impact your future a whole lot more.

Coast City

Location: Midway between San Francisco and LA

Where does it appear? The Green Lantern universe

Locals: Regular people and a space cop or two.

Dangers: This poor city looks nuclear disaster square in the face. It was destroyed in a nuclear explosion in the mid-1990s and magically restored a few years back. But who can say how long that's going to last?

Bludhaven

Location: Gotham's suburb

Where does it appear? Batman universe

Locals: Family folk commuting into Gotham.

Dangers: Turned into a post-nuclear wasteland, then ground zero for the anti-life equation outbreak that led to humanity becoming mindless zombie drones. So it attracts serious outbreaks and attacks as opposed to the smaller but more frequent Gotham City crime waves.

Black Falls Community

Location: Classified

Where does it appear? Robert Rodriguez's movie Shorts

Locals: The families of Black Box Industries.

Dangers: Besides the usual bullies, the products from Black Box industries seem to make all the inhabitants a little bit more dangerous. Then there's that rainbow rock that the kids have where they can turn you into a dung beetle just by wishing it. So slightly dangerous if in the wrong hands.

A group of Spanish researchers reported today in Science that they may have stumbled upon a substance that could become the ultimate memory-enhancer. The group was studying a poorly-understood region of the visual cortex. They found that if they boosted production of a protein called RGS-14 (pictured) in that area of the visual cortex in mice, it dramatically affected the animals' ability to remember objects they had seen.

Mice with the RGS-14 boost could remember objects they had seen for up to two months. Ordinarily the same mice would only be able to remember these objects for about an hour.

The researchers concluded that this region of the visual cortex, known as layer six of region V2, is responsible for creating visual memories. When the region is removed, mice can no longer remember any object they see.

If this protein boosts visual memory in humans, the implications are staggering. In their paper, the researchers say that it could be used as a memory-enhancer – which seems like an understatement. What's particularly intriguing is the fact that this protein works on visual memory only. So as I mentioned earlier, it would be perfect for mapping. It would also be useful for engineers and architects who need to hold a lot of visual images in their minds at once. And it would also be a great drug for detectives and spies.

Could it also be a way to gain photographic memory? For example, if I look at a page of text will I remember the words perfectly? Or will I simply remember how the page looked?

I can't see much of a downside for this potential drug, unless the act of not forgetting what you see causes problems or trauma.

via Science

As if Nature was finally fed up with those meddlesome bald apes, a plague of plagues sweeps across the globe. Ebola, Marburg, Bird Flu, Swine Flu, Panda Flu, Siberian Tarantella, and Restless Spine Syndrome*; a simultaneous outbreak of every deadly disease wipes out nearly every human being in a matter of weeks. Five survivors, strangers to each other, have found shelter in a stately manor home just outside a Welsh city. They gather all the food they can and avail themselves to the Manor's extensive cellar of fine wines and ales. It's a wake for the whole world as they toast the past, try to make sense of their continued existence, and figure out what the hell to do next. All the while the five keep a certain distance from each other and avoid looking to the horizon where dark and uncanny shapes flap and circle in the beautiful blue new sky of an emptied world.

Six blurry months later the sound of a motorcycle tears through the silence. Astride it is a Mysterious Stranger who asks to be called Michael. With trepidation, the five welcome him to the manor and share with him a meal from their sumptuous if dwindling larder. That midnight Michael visits each of them individually, warning that things are just going to get worse. He urges that they trek down south to Cornwall and seek refuge with other survivors at a place called Bar None, the last pub on Earth. By dawn's break the enigmatic weirdo is gone and the five reluctantly agree to seek this possible sanctuary. After all, it's not like they have any better plans and besides, they are running out of booze.

Packing up all their supplies in two Range Rovers and Michael's abandoned bike they set off across a twisted landscape in search of...well, anything other than what they had. The Blighty they travel through is more unsettling than they ever imagined. Nature has been reclaiming its own as well, but not like they thought. Wolves, bears, and eagles seem to have returned to the Sceptered Isle. Trees are sprouting everywhere with an accelerated growth and in unrecognizable forms. There are other survivors, of a sort, as well. Here Lebbon plays with with certain tropes of the End of the World as We Know It. There's the Steely-Eyed Survivalists, Mohawked Cannibal Hordes, and of course those lovable Mutants – but all with a just enough of a twist. Of all post-apocalyptic fare, Bar None really reminded me of J.G. Ballard, especially works like The Drowned World or The Crystal World. The world is changing into something fierce and wonderful and it no longer has any room for folks like you or me.

All of this is told from the viewpoint of one of the five from the Manor, whose name we never know. His narrative is regularly interspersed with memories of his beloved wife Ashley, lost to the plagues. These scenes are entwined with reminisces of his other love, fine British ales like Greene King Abbot Ale, Marston's Old Empire, or Redruth Cornish Rebellion. Here, try a sip of this:

Theakston's Old Peculier, deep and dark and heavy, a smooth roasty beer with a hint of chocolate and an unmistakable vinous aftertaste, a complex beer, rich and powerful and as familiar to my tongue as the taste of Ashley's skin, the hint of her breath, the the tang of sweat on her neck as we made love.

A heady brew indeed. After one of these waxy rhapsodies our narrator rails against poncey wine aficionados and their overblown language. I guffawed at this Pot/Kettle hypocrisy but then had to stop in mid eye-roll. I am a whiskey lover. Although I consider myself egalitarian in my choice of rotgut , I must admit to snorting derisively when someone orders Jack Daniels. and have also known to utter nonsense like, "clear notes of maple and vanilla with a broad yet subtle fiery finish". Who am I to put down another's geekery, especially when lovingly crafted in prose. It is quite touching the way Lebbon weaves together all the senses into precious memorials of days and worlds gone forever.

Bar None is a very short novel, perfect for a lazy summer weekend with a "few" pints. As always, Lebbon's writing is lyrical, introspective and quite literary. The pacing is a bit languid, more Riddley Walker or The Quiet Earth than Mad Max. Don't fret, there is just enough action and some truly freaky horror to pique the interest of any genre lover, this ain't The Road by a long stretch. The premise is quirky and bizarre, but Lebbon never plays for cheap laughs. In the end this is a deeply sentimental and intimate look at memory, loss, and those perfect days barbecuing and tossing a few back with good friends. And flesh-eating monsters.

You can purchase Bar None now from Amazon,
or support your local independent bookseller.

*Okay, I made those last three diseases up.

Commenter Grey_Area is known to the last drunks on Earth as Chris Hsiang. He enjoys a nice rye, neat with a water back.

Fray, the comic book shown here, is a classic of the post-apocalyptic future vampire genre. Created by Joss Whedon, the short series chronicles the life of a future vampire slayer named Fray. She works in a city divided between the healthy rich and the mutant poor, aiding her mutant buddies by using her slayer powers to be a super-criminal. Complicating her life is the fact that her (evil) twin brother has inherited part of her slayer powers too, and later Buffy time-travels into her world and messes everything up. Also, her watcher is a giant demon with enormous horns; and her boss is an amphibian criminal mastermind. Do not miss this series.

While Fray is a story of future vamps, one of the classics of the space vampire genre is the movie Lifeforce, based on a book by Colin Wilson called (yes) The Space Vampires. A naked lady from space arrives on a human space vessel, immediately seducing a member of the crew with her naked spaciness. Then she sucks the life from him, leaving a dried-up husk! Panic ensues, while more people are sucked and nudity runs rampant and glowy special effects shoot out of people's groins.

Written in roughly the same era as The Space Vampires, Tanith Lee's Martian vampire novel Sabella should probably have been made into a movie with glowing groins too. Sabella lives alone on Mars, trying to discover the mysteries of her past and figure out why men are constantly throwing themselves at her in a haze of lust. This cult classic is definitely off the beaten track for vampire fans, but manages to make Mars into a plausibly gothic landscape.


And then there's the aptly-named Queen of Blood (1966), featuring a lady who is a cross between a vampire and a green sexpot from Star Trek. You know it must be good because it stars Dennis Hopper.


Teenage Space Vampires (1999) is a rare cult classic about what happens when space vampires invade the tiny town of Knowlwood. And a few nerds have to fight them. Includes some great one-liners, as well as a running gag related to a dimensional portal, lawn gnomes, and the vampires' hidden weakness. Really it's just about the lawn gnomes. And throwing them.


Mario Bava's 1965 flick Planet of the Vampires is also one for the ages. I love how in this English trailer for the (badly) dubbed version, the narrator intones, "In a 40 G gravity atmosphere, strange things happen." Indeed: Things like people in really high, black collars and vampire-esque aliens who take over the human crew's body so (of course) their "race can survive." I'm not sure these creatures are strictly undead, but they do occupy the bodies of dead people and look really sinister. Plus, they inhabit a world where people wear a lot of shiny black outfits for no reason. So let's go with the vampire thing. Apparently some critics have claimed that this film influenced Alien.


In 12,090 AD, Vampire Hunter D roams a post-apocalyptic landscape seething with Lovecraftian monsters and vampires. This stunning and truly awesome manga / anime series is stylish, dark and addictive. D is a half-human, half-vamp creature who hunts vamps with the help of a mutant creature who lives in his hand and a cyber-horse for a steed.


In America, we have our own D, known to comics and movie fans as Blade. He's a half-human, half-vamp hunter of vampires, aided by a mutant-looking Kris Kristofferson (in the movie) and a bunch of cyber-cycles. Though the first Blade flick wasn't very futuristic, director Guillermo Del Toro fancied-up Blade II and turned it into a near-future scifi flick about vampires doing genetic engineering on themselves to create a race of super-vamps. Check out a video of the vampire mad science lab here - definitely worth a look.

Then there's the sultry Sivil, from Macross 7. She's a vampiric creature who makes an appearance in what is otherwise pure space opera.

Several novels try to create biologically plausible vampires in space. Most notably, Peter Watts' Blindsight takes place 80 years in Earth's future, when a gang of outcasts (including one vampire) are sent to deal with a spaceship filled with alien creatures that they're totally unprepared to deal with. Tobias Buckell's Sly Mongoose deals with a virus that turns people into zombie-vampires who live to infect others and generate a vast, collective consciousness that can potentially take over a huge volume of space. And in the Vampire Earth series by EE Knight, vampires from space have invaded the planet and altered its climate so they can live here comfortably while they EAT YOUR SOUL. Yes, you can now blame climate change on vamps.

Many scifi TV series had vampire episodes, but none were so literally-named as the Buck Rogers episode "Space Vampires." (above) If you live in the States (or learn how to use proxies), you can watch this piece of televisual brilliance on Hulu. What's the plot? Ummm, scary space vamps with epic eyebrows on a space station. Buck in tight white pants. Colonel Dearing in tight, orange, silky jumper. Some poor victim in what appears to be a macrame outfit. Biting, fighting, feathered hair. The end.


There may be many vampires in Doctor Who, but for us there is only one: the plasmavore from "Smith and Jones." First of all, the name plasmavore is awesome. I wish the vamps in True Blood would insist that we all use that term as the preferred PC name for blood-suckers.


And for Trek fans, there are always the salt vampires, from the aptly-named "The Man Trap." Ex-girlfriends can get ugly.


Why do vampires always want to lure you in with sex? Sexy Doctor Who spinoff Torchwood knows the answer in "Day One." Also, this episode teaches a valuable lesson. Sex in bathrooms always results in dust orgasms. You know what I mean.


And if you want to game, you can play Lunar Knights, a Nintendo DS game with a few vampy moments. Or check out the post-apocalyptic vamp MMO game Blood Wars. Best of all, of course, is cyber-vamp RPG BloodNet.

But if none of this does anything for you, surely Horror of the Blood Monsters will get your heart pumping. Yes, these scary creatures live on another planet. As this awesome trailer promises, "You'll see human beings hideously transformed . . . gruesome mutations!" Also, it's in "weird color." Which is truly a mark of quality in a space vamp flick.

Additional reporting by Stephen Goldmeier.

As always, you can download the whole thing as a printable PDF - with hyperlinks to books and conventions - by clicking here. And welcome back Stephanie Fox on calendar design duties!

Research by Alexis Brown. Design by Stephanie Fox.

There's something iconic about the title "Batman and Robin" (as well as the idea of Batman as this well-adjusted, not-entirely-fucked-up character) - With getting a new #1 and new series to continue the story you've been telling since 2006, is this your attempt to open up the character to another audience who either have never been interested in the character, or who may have strayed away as Bruce Wayne became more and more grim?

I hadn't thought of it in those terms. The 'grim 'n' gritty', noir approach to Batman has been fairly successful over the last 25 years, so I don't know if I ever imagined it keeping readers away. It's an interesting thought. If the style of Batman and Robin opens the door for new or returning readers, I'd be very happy.

You've talked before about this title being a mix of the '60s Adam West TV show and David Lynch, with Chris Cunningham's peculiar brand of wrongness thrown in as well... This seems to continue to an extent both the pop-art imagery of early in your Batman run with Andy Kubert, and the weird psychological darkness of Batman RIP - Audiences are used to seeing a screwed-up Batman thanks to things like The Dark Knight, but the comedy/brightness that you bring to the character has kind of been shied away from since, perhaps, Bob Haney and Adam West. Is it important to you that the character has that balance?

Certainly. The Bruce Wayne voice I hear in my head when I'm writing is sardonic, upper-class, absolutely self-assured and hyper-intelligent. He's seen it all, he's been desensitized to a lot of stuff the rest of us might find shocking and I've always imagined him as a man with a very refined, jet-black sense of humour.

There have been other attempts to do a 'brighter' Batman, of course. Immediately after Frank Miller reinvented the wheel with The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One, Mike W. Barr and Alan Davis launched a brilliant run of stories which owed more to Adam West than to Frank Miller. Bruce Timm and Paul Dini's Batman from the Animated Series was portrayed as a tough but psychologically-healthy individual and Miller and Lee's All Star Batman and Robin has plenty of room for comedy, so these aspects of the character have never truly gone away and form an intrinsic part of the appeal of Batman for many people. The Batman TV series was immensely popular after all and retains a certain undeniable charm even today.

I think any good, long-running thoroughly-developed fictional character will naturally come to have many faces and aspects. Batman's had 70 years to build up quite a complex and layered 'personality'.

Of course, one of my all-time favourite Batman panels was written by Haney and drawn by Jim Aparo and shows Batman strolling down the sunlit streets of Gotham, checking out the mini-skirted girls and accompanied by the line to end all lines: 'Yes, Batman digs this day!'

I'm not saying that's the Batman we want to see on every page, but I love that he might have this aspect to his character. I love the notion of a Batman who enjoys a peaceful stroll down the summer sidewalks of the city he keeps safe. There's something very human about that and it makes him much more relatable and rounded. I can certainly see the Dick Grayson Batman digging this day on a more regular basis!

To my mind, you've firmly put the sci-fi back into Batman, after years of his comics becoming more and more... mundane isn't the right word, but more of a hardcore crime book. Then you come along and suddenly there are crazy psychosomatic drug hallucinations of aliens and then Bruce Wayne gets zapped back in time by an evil god. Is this just trying to bring back all the pre-Silver Age ideas from the character's history that've been lost, or do you feel as if Batman works better as a concept when the weirdness of his rogues gallery gets amped up?

Putting Batman up against ordinary street criminals or organized gang bosses is fine but it's a bit one-sided in Batman's favour, given his training. I tend to assume that Batman goes out every single night as Gotham's Guardian and stops dozens of robberies, muggings, suicides or whatever all the time. Those 'ordinary', 'mundane' crimes are his bread and butter but they don't really challenge him and they don't necessarily make for compelling stories, so I prefer to focus on the wilder, weirder nights of his career and I like to see him facing devilishly brilliant, flamboyant psychos who can actually put him under pressure and take him to his limits. Watching a billionaire Batman disarm poorly-trained, poverty-stricken muggers effortlessly or beating up skinny junkies might be fun for a scene or two but does tend to raise thorny issues of class and privilege that the basic adventure hero concept is not necessarily equipped to deal with adequately.

As for the sci-fi elements, there's actually very little genuine sci-fi in the Batman title or in Batman and Robin. Batman RIP was certainly an attempt to recuperate those elements of Batman's long and contradictory history which no longer fit the profile of the Grim Avenger (although it's nice to see a lot of that material resurfacing in the Brave and The Bold cartoon, which features one of the most enjoyable takes on the character I've seen for a long time).

I don't have many comics in my tattered, bath-damaged 'collection' that date before 1972 when I became a 'fan' and a collector. My era of comics is the 'dark age' of the 70s and 80s, not the so-called 'silver age', so contrary to popular belief, I don't have any particular emotional attachment to 60s comics, other than John Broome's Flash stories which enchanted me as a small child.

I grew up with Neal Adams and Denny O'Neil, Len Wein, Engelhart, Starlin, Gerber, McGregor so my comic-writing style can be traced back to some combination of O'Neil' 'relevance' and Starlin 'cosmic'. Silver age, not so much.

Something that struck me about Batman RIP was the meta-deconstruction of the Batman mythos - When Jezebel Jet told Bruce Wayne that it wasn't healthy to be Batman, she may have been evil and trying to undermine his mission, but was she really completely wrong? With a new (and probably temporary) Batman who's going to not have those demons, are you trying to show how a healthier Bruce Wayne would do things?

I never really subscribed to the idea that Bruce was insane or unhealthy. As I've said before, Bruce Wayne's physical and psychological training regimes (including advanced meditation techniques) would tend to encourage a fairly balanced and healthy personality. Bruce Wayne would have gone mad if he HADN'T dressed as a bat and found a startling way to channel the grief, guilt and helplessness he felt after the death of his parents. Without Batman, Bruce would be truly screwed-up but with Batman he becomes mythic, more than human and genuinely useful to his community. I believe he began to slay his demons the moment he became a demon.

I also wanted to show a healthier Gotham City too. That whole Son-of-Sam, Rorschach-narration - 'This city is an open sewer where the rats feed on the broken dreams and filth of umm...other rats...where sneering, gnawing urban predators...blah blah...' - has become clichéd, tired and unconvincing. If Gotham was so bloody awful, no-one normal would live there and there'd be no-one to protect from criminals. If Gotham really was an open sewer of crime and corruption, every story set there would serve to demonstrate the complete and utter failure of Batman's mission, which isn't really the message we want to send, is it? You've got Batman and all his allies as well as Commissioner Gordon and the city still exudes a vile miasma of darkness and death? I can't buy that. It's simply not realistic and flies in the face of in-story logic (and you know I like my comics realistic!) so my artists and I have taken a different tack and we want to show the cool, vibrant side of Gotham, the energy and excitement that would draw people to live and visit there.

Gotham needs as many faces as Batman - it should be the loudest, sexiest, jazziest city on Earth. It has the best restaurants, the best theaters, the best art, the best criminals, the best crimefighters etc etc. People put up with the weird crime for the sheer buzz.

Why does Damian want to be Robin, if he can't show off to his dad?

Ultimately, Damian wants to be Batman. Being Robin is a step along the way.

Are you going to reference Dick Grayson's previous attempt to be Batman in the early '90s at any point in Batman and Robin?

Probably. I've tried to keep Dick Grayson's entire character history in mind, much as I did with Bruce Wayne in the earlier volumes of the story. Issue 2 has a reference to Grayson's time as a beat cop in the Bludhaven PD and the Bat-Bunker has a few trophies of his Nightwing adventures.

You've talked before about how the first year of the series works out, with artist Frank Quitely drawing the first and last three issues. What happens after the first year of the book? Are you planning on sticking around with Batman as a character, or will you be finished with Gotham for awhile once #13 rolls around?

That was the original plan but I can't seem to stop coming up with ideas for Batman, so we'll see how it goes.

Okay, last one. How would you sell Batman and Robin to people who haven't picked up a Batman comic in years?

Batman is dead. Robin is now Batman and Batman's evil son is now Robin. Everything is new again. If you ever liked Batman and don't want to see how that dynamic plays out, then may the Lord have mercy on your dry and shriveled worthless husk of a 'soul'! G'wan, g'wan, g'wan and buy Batman and Robin before the whole world starts laughing at you for missing out! Missing this is like missing your own birthday!

Batman and Robin #2 is in comic stores now.

The first project for DC's Vertigo imprint by Lemire, known for his indie series Tales From Essex County, The Nobody brings a quieter, less cynical sensibility to the line. This is the comic equivalent to a Bright Eyes record, with all the beauty and annoyance that that comparison suggests; there's a wonderful willingness to recognize stillness and melancholy at play in this book, but that's almost rendered toothless at times by what seems, at times, like a willful refusal to do the same to the darker side of human nature in anything beyond cartoony strokes that lack convinction... For all the danger hinted at throughout, moments that should come across as terrifying and alien instead seem weightless and dishonest.

(The plot of the book, although this isn't necessarily the most plot-driven book, is that Griffen, a man covered head to toe in bandages, arrives in the small town of Large Mouth and keeps himself to himself, much to the consternation of the townsfolk. When a series of crimes occur after his arrival, he becomes the main suspect, which leads to a confrontation with the failed experiments in his past as well as the local authorities.)

There's a lot to recommend in The Nobody; Lemire manages to perfectly conjure a feeling of bleak disconnection that perfectly matches his lead character's sensibility, transcending the intentionally-pulp nature of the plot (reinforced by the chapter breaks, which use pulp magazine and comic cover cliches to illustrate the story about to unfold). The ambiguous nature of the ending adds to this, allowing for both a straight-forward and an allegorical reading depending on the reader's taste, and bringing a greater weight to something that otherwise would be in danger of disappearing through its own introverted nature (Again, something that fits with the lead).

Lemire's art, scratchy and awkward in the best ways, may be the star of the book. It's simple enough to keep the reader's attention but detailed in all the right ways, especially the flashback/inkwash sequences and the evocative way he portrays the characters' environment (It's all about the negative space, especially the way Lemire shows the town of Large Mouth in the winter). There's something in particular about his characters - skew-wiff, imperfect and familiar - that keeps you engaged even when the writing threatens to lose itself in its own preciousness.

This is science fiction almost by accident; it's really a story about people after the science fiction, about what happens once the credits have rolled and everyone's left the theater. Whether it's a success in doing so, I'm still not sure. The Nobody is definitely an interesting book, and one worth reading, but days later, I'm still conflicted about whether or not it was actually a good one.

The Nobody is released July 8th in comic stores.

In an interview with the press about the new season of Eureka, local law man Colin Ferguson spilled the beans about a very exciting up and coming Syfy Movie — eat it Vipers, the crocs are back.

When asked what he was doing filming in Bulgaria, Ferguson explained. And mentioned that he's actually directing a separate Syfy Channel movie as well:

I'm acting in Lake Placid 3. I didn't actually care for Lake Placid 2, I saw it. But the script for 3 actually has some fun stuff. I mean I know what it is, I know what I'm making. The one I'm directing, I believe the working title is Awful.

What killer alligator questions are still left open from Lake Placid 1 and 2?

Well let me tell you. What I actually thought was interesting was they've got the massive croc and then they have these little raptor crocs, that sort of run in doorways and everything. So they've got the massive one and the little guys working in unison.

Is it good fun?

Yes it is. The production team has been fantastic, it will be fun.

When is it going to air?

Who knows? I don't know what their turn-around is, it could be anywhere from 2 months going on 6.

As for his directorial debut, "I believe it's a flying Tyrannosaurus Rex attacking Oregon." SOLD.

It's good to have the Lake Placid legacy restored to greatness.

Past Life, airing spring 2010 on Fox, seems to be trying to piggyback on the success of Medium, a show I haven't actually seen. You have a kind of procedural crime-solving aspect to each episode, but there's also a spooky supernatural aspect. And it's all sprinkled with a dash of personal growth. It's very loosely based on an M.J. Rose novel called The Reincarnationist, but I don't think much beyond the idea of reincarnation got carried over.

Fox kindly sent us a DVD of this pilot, and it's got the same rough edges as a lot of other pilots. It's also saddled with the task of selling you on one of the oddest premises I've seen in quite some time. In a nutshell, Dr. Kate McGinn is a psychologist who works at New York City's Talmadge Center For Behavior Health, which is dedicated to studying "the human soul." McGinn specializes in "regression therapy," helping people to confront the stuff that happened in their previous lives which may be affecting them today. McGinn is almost paranormally sunny and cheery, except when she's comforting someone who's grappling with having been murdered.

And because (I guess) these cases often involve ferreting out the details of exactly what happened the last time around, the Talmadge Center hires a detective, Price Whatley, to help McGinn out. Whatley is the Scully to her Mulder — he doesn't believe in all this past life nonsense, but he needs the money since he lost his job at the NYPD. But Whatley harbors a secret pain having to do with his dead wife — and you won't be too shocked to hear that he's secretly hoping all this reincarnation nonsense will lead to some sort of reunion. (I'm picturing Whatley eventually having a very serious relationship processing conversation with a one-year-old, which is how old his reincarnated wife would be now.)

The Talmadge Center, incidentally, is quite swanky, and seems to be able to afford to keep Kate McGinn in classy therapist outfits. The clients we meet in the pilot, whose 14-year-old son is having weird murder-esque flashbacks, seem extremely well heeled. So I'm guessing we're mostly going to be concerning ourselves with the previous lives of the wealthy and troubled here. Besides Kate and Whatley, the Talmadge Center is also home to Dr. Malachi Talmadge, who stands around looking worried and occasionally butts heads with Whatley. And then there's Rishi Karna, the hard-working research assistant who barely pops up in the pilot.

I'm just going to pause here and wonder whose idea it was to call our tough-guy detective character "Price Whatley."

So I'm guessing that not every episode of this show will involve murder, per se. You could have a character who got mugged during the 1920s, and never got over it, and now is still pissed about it thirty years into a new incarnation. Presumably, there has to be some kind of crime every week, though, or Price Whatley won't have much to do.

Judging from the pilot, there'll be two tracks to every episode: the therapeutic track, in which the reincarnated person works through all of their issues under the sympathetic, tight-lipped smile of Kate McGinn. And then the mystery track, where Price Whatley searches through old case files and says things like, "I know it sounds crazy, but I really think we're on to something here." (That's not a quote from the pilot. That's just the sort of thing I can imagine Price Whatley saying.) Price Whatley, of course, is on the outs with his former superiors, but there are still some cops who owe favors to him and will let him research old unsolved crimes on the sly.

And then, at the end of every episode, the two tracks will converge somehow, as the tormented reincarnatee finally discovers the truth of what happened and gets some closure. And Whatley gets his man, or woman, or whatever. A crime is solved, a soul is healed, and the cycle of suffering turns a bit slower. Or something.

If you're thinking "This doesn't sound like my cup of tea," then it's probably not. I went into the pilot feeling somewhat apprehensive, and nothing about it was quite able to change my mind — although there was nothing wrong with any of it. The main thing that jumped out at me, honestly, was that Price Whatley should be a laughing stock. He's a former cop who now runs around chasing leads that come out of vague past-life visions from people who seem a bit mental. Nobody should be taking Whatley seriously at all, and yet somehow he manages to fulfill the same role as every detective on every procedural show ever. And the show invests a lot of energy in showing how professional and serious Kate McGinn and the rest of the Talmadge team are, with their jargon about regression therapy and their great resources.

So why do I feel as though this is some kind of watershed for genre television? Maybe because it feels like an uneasy fusion of a few different genres, into something that I'm not sure is ever going to be as thought-provoking as other Fox shows like Fringe or Dollhouse (or the late lamented Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.) Rather than boldly venturing into speculative territory, this show reflects the gathering consensus that any speculative themes must be subtle, vague, and swaddled in formula.

So you have the "team of experts" model of detective show, not unlike Bones or CSI. (Except that instead of having a laboratory, these people have a therapist's office.) You have the therapeutic, personal-growth type show, where every week someone is going to get past his/her trauma. And then you have the one strand of actual speculative fiction, the past life regression, which doesn't look like it's ever going to evolve into a mythos or ask deeper questions. It's just going to be the McGuffin — and it's going to allow us to have spooky J-horror-esque blurry flashbacks to something vague and terrifying happening in the 1960s or 1970s, which get slightly more detailed every time we see them throughout the episode.

It's a perfectly solid show, and a nice enough cast, but the genre element feels like weak tea. And I'm really not sure how the reincarnation-of-the-week format will pan out week in, week out. It seems like it could suffer from the same problems as Tru Calling, only worse. Still, I have a feeling this show could be a humongous mega-hit, and further drive genre television in the direction of being somewhat apologetic, and vaguely detective-oriented.

DC Comics launches two new series this week; Justice League: Cry For Justice is a six-part spin-off from the main Justice League of America series, written by soon-to-be-new-JLA-writer James Robinson. It focuses on Green Lantern, Green Arrow and their pals deciding to kick ass to work out their grief issues over the deaths of Batman and the Martian Manhunter in Final Crisis.

There's also the much-less-heralded — but much more exciting — Greek Street, which sees cult writer Peter Milligan begin a Kings-esque retelling of classic Greek myths recast in the London Underworld; it's smart, sexy and disturbing in all the right ways, and the art from Davide Gianfelice will make believers of everyone. Well worth picking up.

Marvel mixes things up by launching two much-talked about series: Marvel Divas - better known as "that comic with the terrible cover that upset a lot of people" - and Captain America: Reborn. Even though I'm convinced I know how Reborn is going to turn out, there's no chance I won't be picking this up for Ed Brubaker and Bryan Hitch alone... and, despite the unpromising interviews and pre-release controversy, preview pages for Divas suggest that it might not be the exploitative T'n'A-fest we were all expecting.

If you're looking for something completely out of left-field, I'd steer you away from horror-movie-on-paper Bad Kids Go To Hell (It does what it says in the title, folks). Instead, I'd push you towards the sealegs of Far Arden, Kevin Cannon's tale of a crusty old sea dog searching for a mythical island that may or may not exist. You won't be disappointed.

That said, release of the week is probably Star Wars: Invasion, a new series from Dark Horse taking place 25 years after Return Of The Jedi, and bringing the characters we know and love from the original movies face to face with new scum and villainy in the form of the Yuuzhan Vong. Classic Expanded Universe action the way you want it, as they used to say in the comics, only without using those exact words.

Galaxies far, far away and time-tossed superheroes can all be found in your local comic store, and if none of the above comics take your fancy, there's always the complete Diamond Distributors shipping list for the week to peruse to come up with something better. But is there anything better than Star Wars done right...?

Titan Books, which published the book version of Terminator Salvation, kindly sent out a half dozen copies to some of io9's writers as well as some of our most prolific commenters and occasional posters. So how did the story of Marcus Wright's cyborg angst and John Connor's struggle with tourettes translate into book form? Here's what they thought.

The participants:

Annalee Newitz, io9 editor

Chris Hsiang aka Grey Area, frequent commenter and regular book reviewer.

Hank Hu aka CrashedPC, regular commenter.

Josh Wimmer aka Moff, regular commenter and "Jive Tarkin" columnist

Alexis Brown aka EvlSushi, regular commenter, current intern and regular poster.

Charlie Jane Anders, io9 news editor and occasional leaver of the house.

So in order to maximize the value to you, the readers, we'll try and divide this review up into a few sections.

Does the novel make sense?

It definitely makes more sense than the movie, is the consensus. Maybe because Foster was working from a script that included a lot of scenes that were cut, or trimmed, for the final movie, there's a lot more explanation of what the heck is going on.

As in the movie, it's 2018, and the self-aware computer system Skynet has all but wiped out the human race. John Connor leads the last remnants of humanity in the fight against the machines, while struggling to save his own father, Kyle Reese. And meanwhile, a man named Marcus Wright wakes up years after being executed, and begins to suspect that he may no longer be human.

Says Hank, "The novel, even while reading like a grade-school primer for action movies, had a modicrum of sense. Being able to read someone's internal thought process is extremely satisfying. Connor is not a shouty loud madman like what I've heard about the movie, but he's just too damn emo at times."

The novel includes a lot more conversations between John Connor and his wife, Kate, about how the timeline may have changed. Connor has actual smart discussions about the supposed "off switch" and whether it's likely that Skynet would really have left such an easy backdoor in its systems. And the Connors talk a lot more about Kate's pregnancy and John's doubts about his ability to save people in this new altered timeline.

As Chris points out, Foster spends a lot of time explaining how Skynet's stronghold in San Francisco is so poorly guarded. "Foster tried to fill in as many plot holes as he could. His explanations for why there was very little security in San Francisco and why the HKs didn't bother Connor's base almost work."

And after the Connors encounter Marcus, there's a much more in-depth discussion of exactly who he might be, and what he represents. At one point, Kate explains exactly how that cyborg infrastructure works, and how it's all wired. This is a huge improvement over the movie, where they just sort of look at Marcus and grunt.

And yet, there are still some plot holes.

Grey Area observes:

The batshit insane sequence where Connor hacks a moto-terminator and rides it to San Francisco across the ruined Golden Gate Bridge was kinda cool but totally batshit insane. That wasn't actually in the movie was it?

Hank wonders:

I still don't understand why Marcus is like, the most advanced 'bot of them all. From what I can tell, he donated his body to science after being punished, capitally. If his brain is still the original organic one, why is he the most advanced one? Shouldn't he be like the beta stage prototype garbage bot that can barely formulate sentences. Instead he's the Incredible Hulk that can formulate complex sentences, albeit broody ones.

Adds Alexis:

And why is John Connor so flippin' special anyway? We have yet to see him do much of anything to justify how important he is to the timeline. The machines seeme to have ultimate control of everything, right? And humans are scattered and living like rats. So, how is this a war and not a complete massacre?

Josh zeroes in on the ultimate plot hole:

And why is saving Kyle Reese so important? So that John Connor can send him back in time so that he gets born? Is he going to disappear Back to the Future–style if Kyle dies? Because I wasn't feeling the impending doom.

At the end of the book, there's no heart transplant. Instead, the characters just escape intact. (You can read the adaptation of the movie's actual ending on the Titan books website.) And then Foster throws in a weird hint that Star, the cute little orphan with the funny hat — may actually be a Terminator. Her eye glints redly... or is it just a trick of the light? We may never know.

How about the characters? Are they more fleshed out?

Definitely. Marcus Wright, in particular, benefits from the novel's ability to flesh out his inner life and give him a stronger story arc. As Alexis points out, the early scene where Marcus meets Serena Kogan and agrees to donate his body to her experiments is much stronger. The kiss between the two of them is described lovingly, although it's made clear it's not a loving kiss — it's a last act of violence from a violent man. And we get an running monologue summarizing Marcus' thoughts and his final struggles as the lethal injection wipes him out. His last thought is about the kiss with Serena, and how he could have done it better. As Alexis says, it's nice stuff.

Grey Area liked the way the novel reveals

the humanity of Marcus, and the whole deterministic fate thingy. A vicious thug becomes more human and sympathetic after becoming cyborged. It's as if Skynet, that notorious softie with its keen insight into human emotion, re-programs Marcus with a better soul. Neat idea, but as I stated before I cannot buy that the cold emotionless Skynet is occasionally Dr. Phil.

Adds Hank,

Honestly, I thought Marcus Wright was pretty cool. Never mind the fact that he knew himself that he was executed and now he's walking around, shrugging off attacks and saving children. He was much more of a sympathetic character than most of the Resistance. Or even surviving nomads. Perhaps he was meant to be the real star of the show?

Even more, Grey Area approves of the way the novel gives us

Connor's realization that he is as programmed as the machines he fights.He's been told since birth that he will become this great leader. He really has no choice and doesn't even seem to have any actual leadership qualities. Hell, his people follow him just because they've been told to.

Hank notes:

One part I did like in particular: Marcus escaping the silo. The Resistance fighters just acted so dense, so naively, that I felt no sympathy for them. It does them no favors when Marcus was described so heroically and positively prior, and then now Barnes is taking potshots at him when he's strung up. I know they hate the machines and all, but jeez, it's like they didn't even bother trying to figure out how such a perfect melding of human and machine came about. "IT'S A TRAP" is essentially all they kept shrieking.

On the minus side, everybody hates Star the cute orphan, in the book as much as in the movie. And one character who gets fleshed out to ill effect is Virginia, the white-haired lady who takes Star under her wing in the movie. In the book, we learn way more about Virginia than we ever wanted, as she tells Star bedtime stories and sings lullabies to her.

How tongue-in-cheek is it?

The novel features some of the purplest, silliest prose Alan Dean Foster has ever committed to paper. You can't help but wonder if Foster, who's a great writer when he wants to be, wasn't mocking the whole story, or at least trying to lighten up the intentionally humorless film.

Grey Area picks out the following choice lines:

pg. 16 "Wright rose from the cot. Standing, he looked a lot taller, a lot bigger."

pg 35 " 'Jericho, come in!', Olsen's fingers tightened on his communicator.
Jericho didn't come in. The communicator's locked frequency was as silent as the grave. A bad simile, the general thought, especially considering his present subterranean location."

pg. 139 "She did not really know him yet, and she did not want him to see the unbridled gratitude that she knew must be suffusing her face."

And, from the very ending:

"How long?"
She tried to shrug but was unable to lift her shoulder.
"Any moment. His heart can't take it." Her eyes met the sergeant's, and she continued. "The Terminators have beat him up and history has worn him down."
Barnes tried to think of something to say. Of the right thing to say.
"It's going to be okay."

Hank's favorite line:

This resulted in even more bits and pieces flying off of the machine. This resulted in a termination of the pursuit.

Annalee picks out a few choice lines as well:

* * * When Dr. Serena Kogan (later to be the Face Of Skynet) first meets Marcus before he's killed, and turns into Bill Cosby:

"How are you?" she finally murmured.

In the troglodytic confines of the cell the query was at least as funny as the paramount punchline of a highly paid stand-up comedian.

* * * When Williams fights off would-be rapists, right before Marcus steps in to help:

That was just enough time for Williams to dart forward and slam the knucles of her closed fist into his throat . . . He dropped like the sack of shit he was.

* * * After Marcus escapes from the resistance camp, John Connor shows off his powers of perception:

He had barely made back into the woods when shapes rose sharply from bush to confront him and he found himself staring down the barrels of three rifles.

"Halt and identify yourself!" the noncom in charge barked.

"John Connor." What a pity, he mused halfheartedly, that he could not be someone else.

But he knew he was John Connor.

* * Marcus hooks up with Skynet in the machine complex - and we do mean "hooks up."

Revealed to his probing gaze was an intricate maze of glowing wiring, silent chips, and busy processing units. He stared at the lambent display, memorizing all that he could.

Finally he gave up and shoved his hands deeply into the electronic wonderland.

The initial contact caused him to spasm . . .

After reading through all these quotes, I can't help but feel that Foster was trying to lighten the tone a bit. And maybe sending up the story, just a tad.

The bottom line:

The consensus seems to be: The novel is held back by having to be an adaptation of such a nonsensical movie, but it's clear Alan Dean Foster was having fun writing it. And as a result, it's a pretty fun read. And if you've been sitting around wrestling with all the dozens of things that didn't make sense in the movie — and wondering exactly what was going through these people's heads as they were running around from action sequence to mopey slow-mo — then this novel may be of great value to you.

Terminator Salvation: The Official Movie Novelization [Amazon.com]

I had been meaning to write this "keep Khan out of Star Trek 2 (or 12, rather)" blog post for a while now — but honestly I thought Orci and Kurtzman were just kidding about including him. The script for the next Trek, at this point, consists of a few Gorn cartoons on a cocktail napkin, and they're barely batting ideas around. So it's easy for them to hint at all sorts of fan-favorite stuff: Sure, maybe the sequel will include the Doomsday Machine and V'Ger blasting each other. Why not? Anything's possible at this point, and it doesn't do any harm to answer "maybe" to every question. And of course, if the fans get particularly thrilled about one of these trial balloons, then that tells them something.

But now, it sounds as though the Fringe co-creators may actually be considering resurrecting Khan, who's still sleeping in his little suspended-animation capsule in their revamped timeline. So just in case they're really serious about this, here's a list of reasons why a new Khan would be a terrible, epically bad idea:

You can't improve on the original.

They don't make villains like they used to — and that's not just a cranky observation. It's really true. If you think about it. Khan is almost emblematic of what we no longer see in movie and TV villains, for several reasons. He's suave, in a way that nobody is suave any more. (Can you even think of a Hollywood actor who's suave now? Maybe George Clooney.) He's ruthless, and willing to do whatever it takes to win, and to prove his superiority. His arrogant swagger isn't just bravado, it's ideological: he believes, deep down, that he's the pinnacle of human evolution.

And you can't discount the Ricardo Montalban factor. His "Corinthian leather" showmanship is easily mocked, but he was one of a hundred bullies, bureaucrats and demagogues who went head-to-head with Kirk. And there's a reason he's one of the few we remember. (Remember Anan 7 from "A Taste Of Armageddon"? I didn't think so.) Montalban brings all of his gravitas, charm and menace to the role. I can't think of an actor working today who could do the young Khan justice, and it would be hard to imagine a modern-day summer movie that could make Khan as compelling as he was.

And remember, this wouldn't be the batshit-crazy, revenge-driven Khan from the movie. It would be the smooth-as-silk younger Khan from the episode "Space Seed."

Say goodbye to the freshness.

Abrams' Star Trek reboot threw armfuls of candy at the fans, to distract them from the fact that this was a whole new Star Trek. You had the Kobayashi Maru, the classic lines like "I am, and always will be your friend" and "I'm giving her all she's got," the Orion woman, Pike in a wheelchair, and so on. The constant hand-holding got a little annoying, because I'd rather see a movie that's concerned with telling a story than with placating a minority of OCD fans. But it was okay, because behind all of this clutter, there was a fresh story.

Even though Nero was a weak villain, he was at least something new, and he had a few really great moments. But it's hard to imagine a storyline starring Khan that wouldn't feel a bit warmed-over. It would be the opposite of the first movie: a few fresh ideas, wrapped around a core of fan-pleasing deja vu. Pass.

He'd probably be just one of two or three villains.

It'll be hard enough to avoid the traditional "sequel = villain multi-ball" syndrome in this film, in any case. It's hard to think of a recent sequel that hasn't had two or three villains. The pattern goes like this: the original film has the hero's origin story, plus one villain. The second movie lacks an origin story, so the writers throw in a second (or third) villain to compensate. Boom, you're in the movie business.

But for some reason, the addition of Khan makes me even more certain the new movie would end up having more than one villain. (Despite all those tantalizing hints that there might not be any villain at all.) After all, Khan has already starred in one movie as a solo villain. So how do you distinguish between this film and Wrath Of Khan? I know – why not have Khan plus a couple other villains. Like, say, Khan and the Squire of Gothos both giving the Enterprise hell. Or Khan teaming up with the Klingons! That would be awesome! Er, no.

Khan would need to have some kind of trauma.

It's another iron-clad rule of modern-day villainy. The villain can't just be a shithead who wants to rule the universe — a modern-day reinvention of Khan would need to be emotionally scarred. And he'd probably have daddy issues, or some other childhood trauma motivating him to go around trying to take over starships.

You certainly couldn't have a villain who's motivated by ideology — not in this day and age, and not in a Hollywood blockbuster. In "Space Seed," Khan wasn't just a random maniac: he was the product of a genetic engineering project to create the ultimate Nietzschean superman, designed to rule the world. Just like Doctor Who's Daleks, Khan is intended to conjure echoes of the Nazi "master race" ethos. He's a warning about the dangers of meddling with the human genome too much, but he's also the product of a social movement that believed in his rulership. Strip all of that away, and he's just another snarling maniac.

The new Kirk doesn't have the gravitas.

One huge reason why Khan is such a swaggering, charming, magnetic figure in "Space Seed" is because he has to stand up to William Shatner's Kirk, who'd long since perfected his own brand of both swagger and smarm.

Not only that, but the episode comments explicitly on the differences between the two men: one from the barbaric 1990s, the other from the civilized, egalitarian 23rd century. Khan's forcefulness and brutish charm ("I take what I want") are contrasted with Kirk's more domesticated manliness. Yes, Kirk is a sexist tool as well — but compared to Khan, he's a sensitive new-age guy. The episode hammers home the comparisons: Kirk keeps his masculinity under layers of manners and irony, whereas Khan's is right out there in the open. And that's why Khan is so fascinating to Lt. Marla McGivers: she sees him as a throwback to a rawer, more unrefined version of masculinity.

I'm sure Chris Pine's "young hooligan" version of Kirk will grow on me, but I don't think he'll ever have the same "gentleman scholar" vibe that Shatner managed to convey. If you put Pine up against a young Ricardo Montalban, I'm not sure he could really hold his own. And most of all, I don't think you could create the same contrast between the more civilized Kirk and the barbaric Khan.

But the main reason I'd rather not see Khan come back is:

No more excuses for dyslexic bloggers to misspell his name as "Kahn."

Seriously, it makes me think that Madeline Kahn is going to jump out and start showtuning the Enterprise crew to death. Anything we can do to prevent that, we should do.

Top image is from ShitmyJorts.com. All other images from IDW's "Wrath Of Khan" comic book. [Movie-Moron interview via TrekMovie.com]

Monday:
Spectacular Spider-Man -
It's a Christmas-centric Spidey with Vulture, Sandman and Rhino are all bringing gifts of destruction and mayhem. What do they want in return? The beaten, broken body of high-school Spider-Man. See if they've been good villains this year, on Disney XD at 7:30 PM.

Spidey Promo:

Movies:

In Outbreak, Dustin Hoffman and Rene Russo attempt to stop the spread of a killer virus in NorCal, on AMC at 5 pm.

Tuesday:

Nova -
Have absolutely no musical talent whatsoever? (Hey, some of us aren't blessed.) Tonight on NOVA, scientists watch music's effects on four very different people, including one woman with amusia (the inability to process music). Listen in on PBS at 8 PM.

Better Off Ted -

Rejoice, nerd lovers — Phil and Lem are back, and as lovable as ever. This week, Linda has to move into Ted's office, and Lem asks Lucy out on a date. Let the romantic hilarity begin. All new episode on ABC at 9:30 PM.

Better Off Ted Promo:

Movies:

Adding fuel to the rumor mill fire, there are back-to-back Ghostbusters films tonight on AMC. The original and its sequel begin at 8 PM. Until then, enjoy this radical mash-up of NIN's "The Hand That Feeds" and the theme of the Extreme Ghostbusters cartoon.

Wednesday:

Monsters Inside Me -
There are things living inside of you, no lie they sneak into your bed and shoot eggs into your ears and crawl in and out of your mouths. In order to make sure NO ONE EVER SLEEPS AGAIN, Monsters Inside Me breaks down bugs living in people minds and in their eyes — and even helpful parasites. Enjoy this delightful show on Animal Planet, at 9 PM.

Movies:

Star Wars returns! Amid rumors that a new Star Wars tv series may be in the works, Spike is airing Episode II and Episode III beginning at 3 PM and 5:30 PM respectively. Here's the best trailer for the third ep.

Otherwise, Hugh Jackman gets hairy, showing why he got his own spin-off (which arguably began with this film). X-Men: The Last Stand airs on FX at 5:30 PM.

Thursday:

On the channel we're calling the Sci Fi Channel for just a few days more (till July 7, to be precise), there wil be a Twilight Zone marathon from 8 AM until late the 3 PM the next day.

Movies:

If you're looking for a really bad supernatural film, comparable to Catwoman, Sandra Bullock has a premonition of her husband's death in ... (wait for it) Premonition on TMC at 6 PM.

In other news (better news?), you can return to your roots with Star Wars Episode IV on Spike at 6 PM.

Friday:

It's just movie mania tonight.

Movies:

Van Helsing tracks down the Werewolves, Frankenstein and Dracula with a busty Kate Beckinsale by his side in Transylvania on FX at 6 PM. And right after, watch Kate become a vampire in Underworld: Evolution.

If continuing sagas are more your thing, Star Wars Episode V is on Spike at 6 PM.

But if you miss seeing the real Schwarzenegger Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgement Day airs on MTV at 10 PM.

Saturday:

Primeval -
This week on Primeval, insects from the the future threaten the lives of everyone in the U.K., yet again. I'm wondering why no one has ever said: "Why don't we plug up this anomaly thing, since it leads to so many problems?" Dinosaurs are fun, I guess. Primeval is on the BBC America at 8 PM.

Primeval Promo:

Kings -
In the second to last episode of the cut-too-short series, David heads out to uncover new info about his daddy's death. Back on the mainland, the royalty reacts to their son's engagement. Blame NBC for the demise of the show, at 9 PM.

Movies:

Finishing the story, Star Wars Episode VI should wrap up the week nicely on Spike at 7 PM.

Picking up where the SciFi Channel dropped the ball on the Bond theme-song debate, USA begins a Bond marathon with Dr. No at 9 AM. Throughout the day you can then watch, in order: Thunderball, The World is Not Enough, Tomorrow Never Dies, and Casino Royale. 12+ hours of Bond? What more could you ask for?

Sunday:

UPDATE: You guys are right TB is on vacation! But this is what will be coming out the following week. Many apologies!
True Blood -
The vampires are taking us all on a trip, to Dallas. Sadly old Daddy Bill has to come too and make sure nobody is having any fun, whatsoever. The next episode of True Blood heads to Texas in search of vampire murderers on HBO at 9 PM.

Movies:

There's an epic comic book movie marathon beginning with the totally-coulda-shoulda-been-better Superman Returns, followed by Fantastic Four, Spider-man 2.1, and X-Men: The Last Stand. After, if you're in the mood for some light fare, Ice Age and Ice Age 2 round out the full day of films. The world needs heroes, on FX, starting at 8 AM.

However, if you crave some pure science fiction films, the soon-to-be-Syfy Channel serves up a day of films beginning with 2007's Alien Agent, I Am Omega (an adaptation of Richard Matheson's "I Am Legend"), Blade Runner and Total Recall starting at 12 PM.

Alien Agent Trailer:

Additional reporting by Caitlin Petrakovitz.

One of the things that keeps popping up when writer Captain America writer Ed Brubaker and editor Tom Brevoort talk about Reborn is that bringing Steve Rogers back has always been part of the plan. As Brubaker told MTV,

There was never any thought on my side that we wouldn't bring him back, so it's not like there was ever a fight about it...I only killed him with the intention of bringing him back.

Brevoort has echoed this, and said something that caught our attention:

We've been planning the story of Cap's return virtually from the moment that he died... you'll be able to look back into [Captain America #25] and the issues that followed and see the assorted seeds we planted once we reveal what's been going on in Reborn.

Assorted seeds? Sounded like a reason to re-read the issues to us. But when we did, we realized that not only was that statement true, but that we were all idiots for not realizing what was going on first time around.

Let's start at the end, shall we? Steve Rogers' end, that is. We've known since the issue after he was shot that all was not as it seemed when it came to Cap's "death." After all, what kind of gunshot wound results not only in death, but in this?
In the same issue, main series villain the Red Skull meets with one of his minions, onetime Nazi scientist turned robot Arnim Zola, to discuss a recent acquisition from fellow evil mastermind Doctor Victor Von Doom:
See where we're going already? Don't worry. It'll become more obvious.

As the storyline's main thrust - which sees the Skull attempt to bring about America's downfall through capitalism and democracy while former sidekick and former brainwashed-assassin Bucky Barnes take over the role of Captain America to stop him - continues, the villains fall out, as tends to happen in these cases. One of the reasons for their rift? The treatment of their prisoner, and Steve Rogers' ex-girlfriend, Sharon Carter... who has a mysterious purpose that we only get hints about more than a year after Rogers' death:
What's that about a "platform"...? Well, here's where we take a slight leap of faith, but not an incredibly unlikely one. We know, after all, that Zola has been working on technology involving time travel from Doctor Doom, so we're guessing that he's talking about Doctor Doom's Time Platform, a Marvel Comics mainstay since 1963's Fantastic Four #5. But what's does this have to do with Sharon (or Steve Rogers, for that matter)? Later in the same issue - #41, for those of you out there who really want to know - the other side of the villainous rift, evil psychiatrist Dr. Faustus, talks to Sharon and spills the beans:
"The Constant"? To a generation of Lost fans, that phrase means only one thing: Desmond and Penny. So, if Sharon is Penny, then surely that means that Steve Rogers is, somehow, lost in time. Let's take another sideways trip off Memory Lane and look at Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five for a second, which has been cited as an influence on Lost's episode "The Constant". Mr. Vonnegut, would you please explain to the class what Billy Pilgrim learned about death in the classic novel?

The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die... All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist... It is an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.

What if the reason Steve Rogers' body shriveled up wasn't because he was dead, but because his soul had been ripped out of it, and sent bouncing around time without any control? After all, the recent Captain America #600 revealed that he hadn't been shot by a regular gun...

But without a body to come back to - and that body is gone, let's face it - what could Steve Rogers come back to? Well, let's look and see what happened when the Red Skull and Zola tried to use the still-unexplained device:
Oh, Sharon, if only you hadn't destroyed the machine at the point where the whole thing was going to be explained to us...

To add some fuel to our fire, you have Captain America: Reborn editor Tom Brevoort revealing more than he probably meant to in a Marvel.com interview:

All during these months, while the world thought him dead, Steve's been on a metaphysical journey of his own, and the experiences he's lived through during that time are going to have a profound effect on his state of mind.

A metaphysical journey like being trapped in time and forced to relive his life, perhaps? Such a journey would give Steve Rogers - when he returns - a new view on life as Captain America, new readers a chance to get acquainted with the character's possibly daunting backstory, and the preview pages we've seen from the first issue to be less straight-up flashback and more involved in the actual story than initially thought.

If our guess about exactly what's been going on is correct, of course. For all we really know, Steve Rogers has just had amnesia after waking up on the mortuary slab and swapping his body with a handy melting clone all those months ago...

Captain America: Reborn #1 is released on July 1st. Feel free to come back and tell me when I'm shown to be horribly wrong.

In its first three days in the US, Michael Bay's sequel has made $125.9 million, leading some industry watchers to predict a 5-day total of over $190 million - up $30 million from what it was initially expected to take. If the movie's momentum - which has bypassed the cool reception it received from critics - keeps up, it's possible that it may make much more than $190 million... and break last year's Dark Knight record of $203.8 million. Box office estimates for Saturday aren't in yet, but even at $190 million, it'll be the second most-successful 5 day opening in US box office history (Even if it magically made no money on Saturday or Sunday, it'd still be in the top 15).

(Memo to Chris Nolan: Make Batman Vs. The Transformers as your Dark Knight sequel. The world will be yours.)

'Transformers' pulls in $36.7 on Friday [Variety]

Optimus Prime Pepsi Thirst Convoy
Hey, remember that time that Optimus Prime got really drunk and signed that sponsorship deal with Pepsi...? Yeah, neither did he. Until the lawyers came to make him follow through on his end of the deal. The success of Transformers when they were first launched led to various "variant" versions of familiar toys - You could mail in cookie coupons to get a Jazz toy, for example, who was made much more acceptable to parent-conscious corporations by removing the Martini logos from his doors (This Prime, however, is much more recent; he's a Japanese toy from 2005, released in America in 2007). Us, we're still waiting on a Sony-branded Soundwave.

Lucky Draw Convoy
This ultra-rare - Reportedly, only 10 ever produced - Optimus Prime was the result of a contest to find a new color scheme for the Autobots' leader. Surprisingly, this actually won. Can you imagine what the others must've been like? The Lucky Draw Transformers - almost all of which were prizes in contests, hence the name - were mostly repainted versions of widely-available toys, released for the most part in Japan, and widely sought after by American collectors. It may help if you're color blind, of course.

Trainbot Raiden
Primus bless whoever thought that there was some dynamic potential in making a train turn into a giant robot, considering how dull modern trains look - well, unless they're Astrotrain - but the wonderfully-named Trainbot Raiden was six trains that combined together to make one giant robot, Voltron-style. Released in Japan in 1987, who wouldn't want one of these?

The Blue Bluestreak
No, it's not a particularly redundant-sounding Marvel superhero from the 1960s, but instead a version of the Bluestreak toy who is... well, blue. The generally-released toy was actually painted silver - and later releases of the toy had the character renamed Silverstreak - but because the original catalog featured a blue version (and the painting of the robot on the toy packaging, for that matter) was colored blue, an urban myth was born. Are there real Blue Bluestreaks? Potentially - but there are those who'll refuse to believe it.

The Red Slag
Much like Bluestreak, this is a differently-colored version from the toy that a generation knew and loved, but there's one significant difference: There's photographic proof that this one existed. Just like the Blue Bluestreak, this toy matches his box art coloring, but anyone in the US looking for one would have to look north - This was a Canadian-only release, for some unknown reason.

Fortress Maximus/Grand Maximus
Fortress Maximus - or Fort Max to his friends - was only the largest Transformer ever, but at the time, the most expensive. But did that matter to its intended audience? Of course not! Released towards the end of the line's popularity in the US, and with a detachable head (thanks to the still-confusing Headmasters gimmick), the toy has become hard to find in America, but not as hard as Grand Maximus, a repainted version of the toy sold in Japan as Fortress' more colorful brother, kind of like Ultra Magnus in reverse.

Action Masters Elite
Let's get this out the way right now: The Action Masters subset of the Transformers line? A completely bad idea. For those of you who don't remember the Action Masters, this is their gimmick: They were Transformers that didn't transform. You'd think that someone, somewhere at Hasbro might have realized that that wasn't the greatest gimmick for a toyline called "Transformers," and that might have been the reason behind the Action Master Elite line... who were Action Masters who did transform... or, to put it another way, Transformers. Sadly, the Action Masters were enough of a bad idea that they temporarily killed the franchise in the US, leading to the Elite toys never being released over here. So, if you find one of these cheap, treasure it... while also hating everything it stood for.

G1 Jetfire
To anyone who followed the Transformers comic book in the '80s, Jetfire had a special place in our hearts because he was created by Buster after Optimus left the creation matrix in his head. But even for non-comic nerds, Jetfire was special - For one thing, he wasn't really a Transformer, but a licensed Macross toy added to the line to meet demand for new characters by a panicked Hasbro, and for another, he had three forms, not just two... but the licensing deal didn't last, and so neither did the toy despite how cool it seemed. The one to look for is the initial Transformers release, complete with Macross markings as well as Autobot insignia.

The Dinobot Tapes
Yes, there were Autobot cassette Transformers. Even stranger, these Japan-only toys were also Dinobots and Combiners. Why did no-one ever tell me about these when I was a kid? I would've killed for these - and also for Blaster, the Autobot tape player that quickly became my Must Have toy when I learned of its existence as a kid (Note to Hasbro: if you have one just lying around, I can be bribed. Just saying).

Generation 1 Unicron
Called "the holy grail" for Transformers obsessives - as well as one of the ugliest toys never made by fans - this prototype for an unreleased toy of the villain from the 1986 animated movie tries its hardest to make a ball with limbs and a head look threatening, but still fails. Maybe if he'd actually have been able to sound like Orson Welles, it would've been better, but even then, I'm sure that would've just led to more fat jokes.

Research and additional reporting by Sarah Hope Williams.

The genre: Military science fiction
The book: Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein.
Actually, Wikipedia and Fandomania credit the earliest beginnings of military SF to George T. Chesney's 1871 Germany-invades-England tale "The Battle Of Dorking" and George T. Griffith's serialized "The Angel Of Revolution," plus the works of H.G. Wells. But the book that everybody refers to as the touchstone of military SF, the book which really launched the themes of futuristic interplanetary warfare and examining the military as a social entity, was Heinlein's Starship Troopers. As Fandomania's survey puts it, this 1959 book "put Military Science Fiction on the radar."

The genre: Cyberpunk
The book: Neuromancer by William Gibson.
There's some debate about who really "invented" Cyberpunk as a genre. As this cranky essay (PDF) notes, Asimov was the first writer to consider the ramifications of artificial intelligence seriously. Bruce Sterling helped shape the genre with his 1986 anthology Mirrorshades. Bruce Bethke invented the term "cyberpunk" with his 1980 short story called "Cyberpunk." But even Bethke admits:

I never claimed to have invented cyberpunk fiction! That honor belongs primarily to William Gibson, whose 1984 novel, Neuromancer, was the real defining work of "The Movement." (At the time, Mike Swanwick argued that the movement writers should properly be termed neuromantics, since so much of what they were doing was clearly Imitation Neuromancer.)

Gibson's Neuromancer gives us the fusion of noir with brain-computer interfaces and dystopian paranoia, which spawned so many imitators.

The genre: Gothic science fiction
The book: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Commonly acclaimed as the first science fiction novel in general, Frankenstein was the first novel to meld the burgeoning gothic lit genre with the themes of abuse of science. Brian Aldiss, in his seminal work of SF criticism The Billion-Year Spree, claims that SF was "born out of the gothic mode" with Frankenstein. As CUNY professor Lilia Melani puts it:

In 1818, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus introduced the theme of the dangers of science and created the obsessed scientist, who was to develop into the mad scientist, and the archetypal Monster. Frankenstein has been called the first science fiction novel; she of course thought she was writing a novel of terror.

Gothic science fiction has come to mean any science-fictional story with terrifying elements, a horrendous monster or some kind of science-fictional explanation for a horror trope, like vampires created by a bio-engineered plague.

The genre: First contact with an alien race
The book: Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke. This was a tough one - even if you only define "first contact" as being a scenario where human society, as a whole, comes into contact with an alien species (and not just one solitary human explorer) you still have tons of early stories about aliens showing up. Some would say the earliest notable "first contact" novel is H.G. Wells' The War Of The Worlds. But let's say that a crucial component of the "first contact" story is that the aliens are friendly - or at least reasonably well-intentioned. Otherwise, you just have an invasion or war story. In that case, Childhood's End, with its super-advanced Overlords showing up and guiding humanity to a higher plane of existence and merger with the Overmind, although somewhat disturbing, is still a more benign story than Wells'. And thus a more proper precursor to books like Carl Sagan's Contact and Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis saga.

The genre: Utopian science fiction
The book: Stories of utopian futures are enjoying a bit of a resurgence, with the upcoming Shine Anthology pushing for a more optimistic futurism. But the first future utopian novel (as distinguished from, say, More's Utopia, which is the account of a fictional realm) is The Mummy!: Or a Tale of the Twenty-Second Century by Jane C. Loudon. In this happy future, everyone wears neon hats:

The ladies were all arrayed in loose trowsers, over which hung drapery in graceful folds; and most of them caried on their heads, streams of lighted gas forced by capillary tubes, into plumes, fleurs-de-lis, or in short any form the wearer pleased; which jets de feu had an uncommonly chaste and elegant effect.

Other wonders include "the steam-powered automaton surgeons and lawyers (who speak briefs fed into tubes in their bodies) and the delivery of letters by cannon-balls, which are shot into large nets erected in each village." She even predicts a sort of Internet. Everyone travels around in giant blimps, and it's a happy, egalitarian society. There's also Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, in which a young man goes to sleep in 1887 and wakes up in the Socialist utopia of the year 2000 - Bellamy's book may have been more influential, along with H.G. Wells' A Modern Utopia. (Thanks to Liz Henry for the suggestions.)

The genre: Apocalyptic fiction
The book: The earliest apocalyptic novel is probably Shelley's 1826 novel The Last Man. But the first really popular novel of global devastation, and the one which helped to spawn a ton of imitators, is Nevil Schute's 1957 novel On The Beach. As you'd expect from that date, it's all about nuclear holocaust, which devastates the Northern Hemisphere and leaves the last survivors in Australia and New Zealand, drinking way too much wine while awaiting the end of everything. It became a film and also helped shape our atomic anxiety into a rich seam of fiction that endures today in novels like The Road.

The genre: Steampunk
The book: Infernal Devices: A Mad Victorian Fantasy by K.W. Jeter. Jeter not only invented the term steampunk, in an interview around the time this 1987 novel came out. A weird comic twist on the Victorian adventure novel, Infernal Devices stars George, a young watchmaker who discovers that his father was the greatest inventor of all time - even creating a clockwork automaton version of George. The clockwork duplicate of George plays the violin better than Paganini and has greater sexual prowess than George himself, leading to all sorts of wacky adventures as people mistake George for his automaton twin. Other books that could claim to be steampunk pioneers include Anubis Gates by Tim Powers (1983) and Homunculus (1986) by James Blaylock. But to be fair, the book that really popularized the steampunk genre was 1990's The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.

The genre: Time travel
The book: The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. This is sort of a gimme, I guess. The best-known early time-travel saga, and still one of the best, Wells' story launched a whole flotilla of time vessels into the distant future as well as the past. Like War Of The Worlds, it has been adapted into movies and various other formats, and the Eloi/Morlock dichotomy has become a sort of shorthand for a type of future dystopia rife with exaggerated social division.

The genre: Alternate history
The book: Histoire de la Monarchie universelle: Napoléon et la conquête du monde (History of the Universal Monarchy: Napoleon And The Conquest Of The World.) Screw those "Hitler wins World War II" books. How about this popular "Napoleon won the Napoleonic wars" book, published back when Napoleon was still a living memory? Louis Geoffroy imagines Napoleon's First French Empire defeating Russia and then going on to invade England in 1814. Result: Game over. Napoleon rules the world.

The genre: Posthuman space opera
The book: Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks. I have no idea what book launched the "space opera" genre originally - that might be a question for another day. And there's some debate over which book inspired the resurgence of space-opera books loosely called "the new space opera." But to me, it's probably more accurate to call this genre "posthuman space-opera," since it so frequently deals with artificial intelligences, augmented humans, beings who live for millions of years, and generally a set of characters who far exceed the capabilities of a regular human. And for my money, the first really influential star-spanning novel about a civilization of A.I.s (the Minds) and superhumans whose concerns are much farther reaching than our pathetic horizons was 1987's Consider Phlebas. I freely admit this may be a bit of personal bias showing through, since Phlebas was the first novel I read which really knocked my head off and made me see the awesome potential for this type of story.

So what are you waiting for? Go out there and create some more new genres!

Top image from Consider Phelbas cover.

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown.

Most of these images are either altogether new, or haven't yet appeared on any websites viewable outside the United Kingdom. (The group scene with the three of them sitting and looking dejected has definitely been around, and so has one of the Gwen closeups.) Thanks to BBC America for sending us these images - the channel shows "Children Of Earth" on July 20, to celebrate the launch of its HD service. And don't forget, Doctor Who's "The Next Doctor" is having its U.S. debut on BBC America this weekend!

The Enchantment Emporium, Tanya Huff (DAW)

In this urban fantasy, Allie Gale's grandma disappears, leaving behind a strange shop that sells magical supplies to the local witch population. When Allie takes it over, she's suddenly involved in a mysterious struggle within the Canadian magic community. If you ever wanted to speculate about the witch population of modern Toronto, this is your book.

Naamah's Kiss, Jacqueline Carey (Grand Central Publishing)

From the io9 review:

This is a novel of pure adventure, with a kick ass heroine who gets to fight, do magic, and get laid just like the swashbuckling heroes of old. It's a perfect beach read. And the best part is the Jacqueline Carey is extremely clever – don't let her fool you with all that romantic frippery. She manages to slip a lot of interesting, subversive messages into this swords-and-sorcery tale.

The Women of Nell Gwynne's, Kage Baker (Subterranean)

The women of a Victorian brothel are hired to cater to the needs of a party of businessmen holding an auction for a mysterious piece. They find themselves quickly involved in intrigue and espionage, in a story with flecks of steampunk and classic mystery. We reviewed it (along with a couple of other Baker books) here.

Wild Thyme, Green Magic, Jack Vance (Subterranean)

This career-spanning collection of stories from Jack Vance includes a wide variety of genres, including a few science fiction stories about other worlds. Vance's ability to build worlds has been praised by Frank Herbert, Poul Anderson and Robert Silverberg.

Fragment, Warren Fahy (Delacorte)

A reality show crew on a ship stumble on an island ecosystem inhabited by parallel-evolved monsters. From the io9 review:

If you like monsters and mad science - and who doesn't? - this is the perfect book to take on your vacation or on that long plane ride to a remote island. However, if you're looking for characters who move outside of two dimensions, you might want to give this one a pass.

The Year's Best Science Fiction 26, edited by Gardner Dozois (Griffin)

I'm a sucker for well-complied science fiction anthologies, and this one appears to be no exception. Including 30 stories from masters and new writers alike, this collection also has an extended list of honorable mentions. It looks like a pretty hefty resource for the short story geek.

Green, Jay Lake (Tor)

A fantasy / steampunky tale of international espionage and mythology. From the io9 review:

At times unsettling but always compelling, Green abounds with intrigue and adventure. A feminist fable lovingly written with a father's hope and concern for his daughter's future, Green is the story of a strong-willed young woman trying to find her place in a world that would rather ignore her. Green will not be ignored.

A Monster's Notes, Laurie Sheck (Knopf)

This novel turns inside out one of the oldest science fiction stories. The story imagines Frankenstein's monster not as Mary Shelley's creation, but as her companion, consoling her in a time of sorrow. He discusses with her all of the facets of humanity, trying to understand human connection in a world where he doesn't belong. It's a tale of speculative alternate history, couched in a story of compassion and companionship.

Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America, Robert Charles WIlson (Tor)

A speculative future of post-oil America. From the io9 review:

Peak oil has left the world a churchy, early-industrial shambles in Robert Charles Wilson's new novel Julian Comstock. An engaging cross between post-apocalyptic series Jericho and Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, it may be the best science fiction novel of the year so far.

Haze, L.E. Modesitt Jr. (Tor)

An agent of the now-Chinese-run Earth investigates a planet surrounded by a haze of nano-satellites. He finds an eerily familiar world of superior technology.

House of Suns, Alastair Reynolds (Ace)

This book came out a little while back in the rest of the world, but this month marks its publication in the United States. It's a space opera of post-humanity and colonization, with the added twist of relativistic travel. As a result, this novel chronicles a mystery distorted by time. It's certainly nice to see a space epic that explores some of the complexity of actual interstellar travel. We reviewed it here.

The Strain, Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan (William Morrow)

Master of Horror Guillermo del Toro brings vampires back from their whiney post-Buffy image. From the io9 review:

The Strain is a breakneck thrill ride chronicling only the first four days of the vampire plague that may destroy civilization. The cinematic quality really comes though, making the book feel more like a action blockbuster than a thought-provoking horror novel.

I didn't get to read Lonely Werewolf Girl properly, but I looked through it when it came out last year, and it seemed like it would be a fun, twisty fantasy adventure, complete with warring werewolf clans, preening pop stars and narcissistic magical divas. It looks like a slightly more substantial read than Lux, which is a super quick read, full of rough caricatures running around in an endless maze of silliness. (Obviously, Millar has had another two decades to hone his craft since writing Lux.)

Lux is actually the third in a seemingly endless supply of cheeky novels with science-fiction elements from Britain that I've read lately (the other two being Toby Litt's Journey Into Space and Mark Wernham's Martin Martin's On The Other Side). They're all vaguely literary with a huge dose of camp, and they use their speculative tropes as a kind of backdrop for their silly rambles. Where conventional SF novels try to impress you with the greatness of their conceits, these novels flaunt their naffness. And yet, they're thought experiments, as challenging as any po-faced science fiction classic could hope to be.

Lux The Poet is especially silly and naff, and yet it does put a lot of ideas in your head.

In fact, Lux The Poet is a lot like its main character: campy, insular, lovely, clever, ribald, and ultimately a bit hard to like. Lux is an astonishingly beautiful and self-centered young man who stumbles through great events without ever understanding what's going on around him. When he's ruining his roommates' sex life by using their KY jelly to style his hair, seducing random strangers, or snorting massive quantities of cocaine to keep it out of the hands of the police, Lux approaches comic-hero greatness. He's almost up there with Tom Jones. But his idiocy and self-centeredness may actually start getting on your nerves after a bit. Oh, and it looks like he starred in a quasi-sequel, the graphic novel Lux And Alby Sign On And Save The Universe.

In Lux The Poet, the working-class London suburb of Brixton is being torn apart by riots. And meanwhile, an evil corporation called Happy Science PLC is developing a sinister new genetic programme (it's a British novel) in which famous scientists are going to be merged with beautiful young people, in some kind of eugenics scheme. There's a secret genetic formula, which is kept a bit vague but is one of the novel's main MacGuffins because Pearl, the woman Lux is in love with, steals it.

And then there are a dozen other subplots, of varying fun levels. There's an angel who's been banished from a vaguely Buddhist-sounding Heaven until she can perform a million good deeds, and it turns out she's met Lux in many of his past lives. (And an evil assassin angel trying to keep her from going back to Heaven.) The main accountant at Happy Science, Sebastian, is running an improbable scam where he tries to convince head-hunters that he's greatly in demand, in order to turn that illusion into a reality and jump-start his floundering career. There's a punk-rock band called the Jane Austen Mercenaries, whose demo tapes Lux has stolen because he doesn't like their music. And so on and so on.

At its absolute best, Lux The Poet is deranged social satire that skewers corporate evil and liberal hypocrisy alike. For example, there's a great sequence where a computer geek, Mike, gets mugged by black people during the riots, and this causes him to have unpleasant thoughts, which in turn makes him feel intensely guilty. And that, in turn, makes him behave ridiculously nicely towards his black partner, Marcus, who's trying to create a computer game:

Mike is still trying to be extra pleasant to Marcus.

"Have some brandy. A cup of tea? That's a good game you're making, I could never make one that good, yep, you certainly are a genius when it comes to making computer games, I wish I had your skill, are you sure you wouldn't like some brandy?"

Marcus stands up.

"Mike. I am sick of you being nice to me. At a rough guess I would say you had some bad experiences at the hands of some blacks."

"Yes," screams Mike. "But it doesn't make me think any the worse of you! How did you know?"

"Because any time something like this happens you spend hours feeling guilty in case you are thinking some politically bad thoughts and try and make up for it by being extra nice to me. What happened."

Mike hangs his head.

"I was singled out from a crowd and mugged."

"Wow," says Marcus. "What a surprise. And now, having a sneaking, tiny, minute feeling at the back of your head that just maybe the racists are right because you have been mugged, you are unable to cope."

The mixture of extra-simple writing and razor-sharp satire works alarming well in that passage, and several others like it. At its best, it reminds me of some of Terry Bisson's weird fables about the curious kid Billy.

The thing that makes you glad you read Lux The Poet in the end — and it's a very quick read, thanks to short, snippy segments — is that all of the stuff about reincarnation and past lives and social injustice and weird corporate intrigues does seem to come together in the end. You start to realize that all of these characters are acting out patterns from their past lives, but that Lux has been right all along, and poetry and art can actually make a genuine difference instead of the illusory difference that most of our actions lead to. And that's not a bad message at all.

I'd still probably buy Lonely Werewolf Girl, if I was only buying one Millar book. But this one is a fun, zippy read as well.

The setup for the show is immediately intriguing. The Phaeton is a spaceship on a ten-year voyage to the nearest star system with a habitable planet, in search of alien life. Its crew of 12 are funding the voyage by filming their adventures for reality TV, and their only escape from each other is into hyper-realistic virtual reality programs. So even as they try to capture the gritty reality of ship-board life for "Edge of Never: Life on the Phaeton," their sanity depends on an ability to escape the ship via immersive VR fantasies.

It's the kind of meta-meditation on technology that Ron Moore loves, and which he explored via the cylons' synthetic-but-real identities in Battlestar. Virtuality is dark like Battlestar too, but in a much more intimate way. The ship's counselor Roger Fallon is also the producer of the reality show, so he has a vested interest in keeping his patients neurotically off-center. After all, perfectly mentallly healthy people do not create good drama. While his wife sneaks off to have sex with the ship's captain in virtual reality, Fallon is left to lecture the reality TV audience back home about how everybody "plays a role" in a crisis situtation and therefore all the roles they play on ship are "as real as it could possibly be."

The ship's crisis, at least in the pilot episode, is whether or not there will even be a ten-year mission at all. Captain Pike must decide when they reach Jupiter whether they'll slingshot out of the solar system using the gas giant's gravity (along with several nukes), or return to Earth. Given that new research has revealed Earth will be going waterworld in less than a century, finding a possible new home for humanity is more important than ever. As millions tune in to find out whether it's "go or no go" for the Phaeton, Pike has to consider whether his tiny crew is ready to endure ten years together in deep space - especially given that the doctor has just discovered he has Parkinson's disease, and their virtual reality program is starting to act really weird.

Although the "go or no go" dilemma is solved in this episode, we get a potential season-long arc in the VR bug plot. A strange man starts appearing in the crew's VR fantasies, beating them and killing them before they have a chance to take off their interface goggles. It's not as if the VR fantasies can harm people physically - this isn't a Matrix deal where dying inside means you die outside - but there is still something psychologically scarring about being murdered no matter how it happens.

Much of the pilot episode, directed by Peter Berg (who is also directing an upcoming film version of Dune), simply introduces all our characters. There's the girly hacker who also serves as host for the reality TV show; the gay couple of astrobiologists who cook for the rest of the crew and complain that they come across as "bitchy queens" on TV; the sick doctor; the lonely ship's designer; the creepy counselor and his biologist wife; the tough-but-fair captain; his irascible second-in-command who manages to turn a wheelchair into his macho accessory; and the ex-military pilot who is a smart-mouthed, tomboy maverick. It's a cool group, and you'll definitely wind up wanting to know more about some of them.

It's unclear whether FOX will turn Virtuality into a series, but this two-hour premiere is certainly not a self-contained story. As I said earlier, the "go no go" plot is resolved, but so many lose ends remain at the end that it feels unsatisfying as a stand-alone TV movie.

Virtuality spins a lot of balls into the air with this pilot, and it's not clear that Ron Moore can keep them from crashing down. Is the show really going to be able to balance the reality-TV storyline with our crew's virtual reality adventures (and their real-life dramas)? The reality TV angle brings a much-needed cynical subtlety to the show, which rescues it from pure space psychodrama. But Moore isn't exactly known for his cynical storytelling, and I worry that this prickly aspect of the series will get smoothed over by Fantasy Island morality tales set in VR land.

Still, I would like the chance to find out where Virtuality might take us. Moore was willing to deliver quite a shock at the end of the pilot, which set the stage for a show unafraid to take risks. And I have to admit I'm intrigued to see what will befall the crew next, in a watching-a-trainwreck-on-Livejournal way. Creepy mind games mixed with media weirdness in space? Yeah, sign me up. Let's hope the show goes on.

It's no secret that Jackson always loved fantasy, and he turned to one of the masters of scifi/horror, John Landis, to direct his music video masterpiece Thriller. When the video hit MTV in the mid 1980s, audiences were shocked by how far Jackson went in this horror-parody. The special effects were genuinely scary, and Jackson wasn't afraid to make himself look like a real monster. Though the zombie werewolf boogie seemed like a weird idea at the time, it has become a staple of pop culture and a perennial favorite with the YouTube flash mob generation. Here you can see one of the YouTube memes the song spawned - a group of prisoners reenacted the dance sequence and made internet history.

Later, Jackson made a science fiction movie called Captain EO which aired exclusively at Disneyland. This allowed him to bring together his obsession with Disney-related fantasies and outer space. In fact, it was a perfect match. Disneyland has always been about science fiction, which is why there is an entire area of the park called Tomorrowland filled with rockets and outer space themed roller coasters.

Among the many things about Jackson that caught the public's imagination in the 1990s was the way he turned his body into a kind of science fiction story. He became an enhanced human, using plastic surgery and pharmaceuticals to change his face and seemingly his race as well. He became whiter than most white people, and his pale bandaged skin became his trademark.

Jackson was a post-human celebrity, and nowhere was this more obvious than in his video "Black or White" (also directed by Landis). Once again, Jackson turned to one of the greatest minds in science fiction to help with the video. He used the morphing software used by James Cameron for The Abyss and Terminator 2 to create a memorable and oft-copied scene where dozens of people's faces morph into each other, streaming through different racial identities, ages, and genders with an uncanny ease.

In the years since that time, Jackson went from being a science fictional figure to a scandal-plagued mystery. It seemed that his body was still morphing, and every time he made a public appearance people tried to figure out what new enhancements he'd gotten. He made the scifi-themed video "Scream" with his sister Janet, filled with weird anime characters and hints that Janet was as alien as Michael was.

Recently, he immigrated to Dubai, possibly the most science fictional city in the world right now. There he was apparently helping to design a theme park, which seems fitting for someone whose identity has always been so closely linked with fantasy.

No matter what you think about Michael Jackson the man, Michael Jackson the legend has transformed the way we think about identity. He injected pop culture with the future, and showed us what happens (good and bad) when you have the means to make fantasies real.

Oh, and there are spoilers in this post, but only fairly old ones. Like, who's in the coffin. And who's the final Cylon.

There are many reasons to love spoilers, all of them totally valid, in my book. (Inflicting spoilers on people who don't want to be spoiled? That's a different matter, and it's something we agonize over a lot at io9. We do inadvertently put spoilers where spoilerphobes can see them, on occasion, but it's always by accident or misjudgment, and we agonize over it a lot more than you might think. Generally, though, we try to include spoiler warnings before going over to the spoiler side.)

But at the same time, there's a pervasive misconception about spoiler-lovers floating around out there that I'd like to clear up: that we're power mad. That the only pleasure in reading spoilers, or sharing spoilers, is to feel powerful. To know something that other people don't know. The spoiler-phile, in the view of some media people, feels powerful because she or he is robbing stories of their power: the power of suspense, their ability to surprise.

J.J. Abrams writes in a recent issue of Wired Magazine:

It's telling that the very term itself-spoiler-has become synonymous with "cool info you can get before the other guy." What no one remembers is that it literally means "to damage irreparably; to ruin." Spoilers make no bones about destroying the intended experience-and somehow that has become, for many, the preferred choice.

But to be honest, knowing spoilers doesn't make me feel powerful or one-up on any one else. And i don't feel like they ruin the experience of consuming stories afterwards. It just makes me more excited about the narratives I already love. And, often, more curious about the narratives I don't know anything about — or have already lost interest in. The more I know, the more fascinated I become. Because I'm a geek, duh.

So here are some reasons why we love spoilers.

The lure of the forbidden:

Okay, sure. We just got done saying that we don't love spoilers because of some crazy power trip. But at the same time, the fact that spoilers are regarded as "naughty" or even sleazy certainly has its appeal. It would be hypocritical to pretend otherwise. Here at io9, we don't publish gossip: Edward James Olmos could do nude gymnastics in public every single day, and we'd never mention it on our blog. But we decided early on that spoilers are to us what gossip is to Perez Hilton. It's our naughty indulgence, and the stigma attached to it only makes it more exciting.

The more you tell us it's wrong, and we'll go to Hell or grow hair in places our Brazilian waxer won't go near, the more we crave it. It's just human nature.

The grand conversation:

Paradoxically, the Internet has fueled my love of old media. I would have given up reading comic books years ago, if it weren't for the fact that writers like Gail Simone and Kurt Busiek are so accessible online. Commenting on their work, answering fans' questions, responding to your harshest criticisms. I'm much more excited to pick up issue #5001 of Super-Blasting Mega-Dorks when I know that my $2.99 is, in part, buying me a chance to participate in a huge ongoing conversation online.

And it's not just creator participation — it's reviews, previews, and yes... spoilers. Part of the thrill of taking part in fan communities is piecing together the clues about what's coming next. Movie studios, TV companies and comics companies know this, and they try to use it to their advantage, with viral marketing, clever hints and promos that tease you with upcoming plots. When fans get together and geek out about upcoming TV shows and movies, a big part of that is always going to be speculating/guessing/clue-hunting about what the next thing is.

Like I said, the big media companies know that this is going on, and they would like to control it. In fact, they know that eventually, this conversation will become the entertainment you consume. Television will be moving online slowly but surely, and "webisodes," awful as they usually are, are just the thin end of that wedge. Entertainment is going to become more and more interactive, and harder and harder for big media to control.

But that's a meta-topic for another day. Suffice to say, for now, that obsessing over spoilers, rumors, leaks and sometimes outright lies is a huge part of the way we're all building community around the shows and movies we love. Just like fanfic, it's not authorized, or under the big conglomerates' control, but it fuels our shared love. And often the speculation about what's coming is more entertaining than the reality turns out to be. (See: Almost every movie this summer.)

The unconventional seduction:

I gave up on Star Trek after Deep Space Nine went away. I tried to watch Voyager, but it made me feel like my brain was being squished into a jello mold very, very slowly. And Enterprise just left me totally apathetic.

But then a funny thing happened: long after I stopped watching Trek, I kept reading spoilers for it. I also read reviews of episodes I'd missed, on Cynic's Corner or Jammer's Reviews or Television Without Pity. But reading spoilers for upcoming Trek episodes was more fun, partly because they sounded more crazy and over-the-top when you heard about them in advance. ("Kes gets a barbarian warrior's personality stuck in her brain? Tucker gets pregnant?")

The weird thing is, reading spoilers for Trek — and for other shows I barely watched, like Smallville — made me feel like I was still following them, to some extent. And the spoilers and rumors actually helped recharge my interest in those shows. I actually came back to Voyager in its last season, and also started watching Enterprise again after a couple years away, because I was reading spoilers and they seemed excitingly weird and/or potentially awesome.

Ditto for several comic books, and more than a few movies. Hollywood's official marketing machine gives away plenty of details about the storylines of upcoming stuff, but at the same time, the blandness of a lot of trailers and blurbs tends to turn me off. But sometimes, coming across a really outrageous set photo or gonzo rumor can spark my curiosity in the way a hundred peanut-butter-smooth promos never can.

The dreadful admonition:

And then there's the other side of it: Sometimes we need to be warned. "Trip gets pregnant" actually isn't necessarily a good thing. Neither is "Satan annuls Spider-Man's marriage." Or "we'll be meeting Hiro Nakamura as a young boy." There's almost no way "Kid Hiro" could have turned out to be a good thing.

Sometimes, a television show or movie or comic has so much pain in store for us, we need a giant warning buoy flashing crazily and sounding a banshee siren, letting us know in advance. Of course, you can't really judge a piece of media based on advance plot info — especially stuff you read on the Internet. But at the same time, when a particular franchise has an established track record, you have to be vigiilant for the warning signs. Suppose Voyager was still on the air, and you started seeing reports that an upcoming episode would feature Janeway and Michelangelo going white-water rafting on the Holodeck. You would panic! And you'd be right to do so.

And then there's the case of Terminator Salvation, which originally ended with John Connor's face being transplanted onto Marcus Wright's cyborg body — after which a red-eyed Wright killed Kate Connor, Kyle Reese, and the rest of the supporting cast. The filmmakers were serious enough about this ending that they apparently filmed it. But after Ain't It Cool News leaked the ending, McG and company scrambled to replace it with the slightly-less-ridiculous heart transplant thing. So there's a case where spoilers not only warned us of a horrendous storyline, but actually averted it.

Getting back to what Abrams wrote in Wired, I don't actually think knowing who's in the coffin on Lost actually ruins your enjoyment of the storyline. The fun of a show like Lost, for most viewers, is seeing the characters grow and their relationships shifting. And finding out how Locke got into that coffin. (Which, for me at least, was a bit of a let-down.) A good plot twist is one that, even if you know it's coming, you still enjoy the ride getting there.

As I said before, I think entertainment is going to become much more interactive and much more audience-driven in the next decade or two, and the battle over spoilers is just one small piece of that. Traditionally, being a storyteller has meant having control over the narrative and deciding what the audience gets to know, and when. Maybe eventually, we'll have a new balance of power, one in which there's more of a give and take. We don't yet know what this'll look like, but here's hoping it leads to richer stories, in which strong characters — not closely guarded plot twists — are the real source of creators' power.

A study published today in Science details a series of careful experiments Swedish researchers conducted on mating seed beetles (pictured). They want to find out what the benefits were to females who mated with multiple males, given that multiple matings could be dangerous to their health for a variety of reasons. The accepted wisdom is that females mate with many men because they can choose which sperm fertilize their eggs after mating. Basically, more men equals a bigger and better smorgasbord to choose from in the genetics department.

If this hypothesis were true, females would always choose sperm from the fittest males to fertilize their eggs. But they didn't. If you measure male fitness as the ability to produce a great number of offspring who themselves produce a great number of offspring, then the fittest males always lost. Inevitably, the females chose sperm from unfit males.

Why would these insects have sex with so many different men, only to choose the crappiest sperm? The researchers admit that they are baffled. Their experiment was only intended to determine whether females favored sperm from fit males – not to plumb the depths of the psychology behind female insect promiscuity.

However, what these Swedish researchers have done is eliminate one possible reason why female insects mate with multiple males. They're not doing it because of genetic benefits that come from the males. They are not picking sperm that have direct or indirect benefits on their offspring, as far as the researchers could tell. Though they do float the possibility that these females may be choosing sperm that are beneficial exclusively to female offspring. In other words, genes that make fathers fit may not make daughters who are fit.

According to researcher Göran Arnqvist:

The results support the suggestion that genes that are good for males may often be bad for their mates. Therefore, in beetles at least, multiple mating does not award females with genetic benefits.

So if multiple mating does not award females with genetic benefits, what exactly does it award them with? Is it possible that they're sleeping around just for fun?

via Science and Uppsala University

BEST:

Spot, Data's Orange Tabby Cat from Star Trek: The Next Generation
Who: Data's number 1 friend that didn't wear a Devo-esque visor on his face.
Why he's awesome: He's probably one of the only cats in the universe that has an infinitely advanced AI at his beck and call.
Bonus points: Anything that pisses Riker off is a big plus in my book.

Willis the Bouncer from Robert Heinlein's Red Planet
Who: A sound mimicking furry ball that every kid should have as a friend.
Why he's awesome: In a 1960's era future, when a dog just won't cut it, the only way to really impress the kids at school is with an alien that doubles as a soccer ball. And here's a clip from the Fox miniseries adaptation.

R2D2, Star Wars
Who: The yin to C3PO's (annoying) yang that brings logic and light to any situation through a series of flickering lights and bleeps.
Why he's awesome: He's a moving trashcan that manages to be more likeable than most of the Star Wars palz extended cast.

Porthos, Captain Archer's Beagle from Enterprise
Who: Easily one of the more tolerable characters on Enterprise. Mostly because he didn't talk.
Why he's awesome: He's a beagle! How can beagles not be cute? Also, I feel like after the unfortunate Scotty related transporter incident, he deserves a nice memorial.

Ampersand, Y the Last man
Who: The world's ending, every man is dead, you're an aspiring escape artist pining away for your lost girlfriend and you're all alone. What do you do? Have crazy monkey antics with your favorite jungle friend with a punctuation mark as a name.
Why he's awesome: Not to spoil too much, but he may or may not be humanity's key to getting the XY's back in action.

Lockjaw
Who: Marvel's own alien bulldog and member of the non-human branch of the Avengers.
Why he's awesome: He's super strong, can eat anything and once latched onto the Thing.

Dog the Robot from Half Life 2
Who: Alyx Vance's No.1 go to robotic buddy who helps when your path is blocked by other dimensional beings or just wants to play fetch with your grav gun.
Why he's awesome: He's a giant robot with the personality of a dog. Do you need more?

Pen Pen, from Neon Genesis Evangelion
Who: A genetically altered super smart penguin that lives with Misato Katsuragi during the Angel apocalypse.
Why he's awesome: While the series has moments of intense despair and darkness, you can always count on jerky, anime humor involving naked people and penguins to brighten your day.

K-9 from Doctor Who
Who: Dr Who's multi-generational robotic canine companion.
Why he's awesome: He's gotten a series of spinoff stories and was even parodied on South Park.

Nibbler from Futurama
Who: Nibbler is part of an ancient race of Nibblonians who protect the universe from giant glowing brains that make everyone stupid. Er, Stupid-er.
Why he's awesome: He can eat about 1,000 times his body mass to, uh, produce dark matter.

Gaspode, from Terry Prachett's Discworld series
Who: A talking dog with human intelligence that attempts to bring "Hollywood" to Discworld.
Why he's awesome: He's an endless source of snarky remarks and regularly uses his speech to manipulate humans when he needs food.

CJ-7
Who: A puff ball with a body that guaranteed to produce family friendly fun times.
Why he's awesome: CJ-7 can help you repair torn relationships with certain parental figures and bring people back from the dead.

Einstein, Doc Brown's dog from Back to the Future
Who: You might be under the impression that a certain Family Ties alum might be the Doc's best time traveling friend in this series, but you'd be wrong. This adorable little terrier follows Doc whenever her goes.
Why he's awesome: As long as you ignore the craptacular animated television series, Einstein is always cute, helpful and never obnoxious.

Ein, Cowboy Bebop
Who: A super brained corgie that gets stranded on the Bebop.
Why he's awesome: Although they never really get into it in the series, Ein is a "data dog" that possesses super intelligence that allows him to answer phones and steer cars.

Bubastis, Ozymandias' lynx from Watchmen
Who: When you're a super genius David Bowie impersonator with the world at your fingertips what do you do next? You create a genetically engineered psychedelic colored lynx as a companion.
Why he's awesome: He takes one for the team for the sake of furthering an evil plan for his master.

Gizmo, Gremlins
Who: The main furry faced protagonist of the Gremlins series.
Why he's awesome: While I'm pretty much a fan of all the gremlins, I can't deny the greatness that is Gizmo channeling his inner Rambo.

Seymour from Futurama
Who: Seymour is a part of one of the most tear jerking episodes of Futurama involving Fry recounting the story of the most loyal dog that ever lived.
Why he's awesome: Did you see the last scene? He's the most loyal dog that ever lived! Also, we can rest easy knowing that alternate timeline Fry gave Seymour a great life.

Bronx from Gargoyles
Who: Bronx is the dog version of the Manhattan gargoyle clan. During the whole series you only see one other gargoyle beast, but unlike Budeka, Bronx gets a whole episode devoted to him befriending an Amish kid.
Why he's awesome: Gargoyles are already pretty high on the cool supercreatures scale, but add a dog personality to the mix, and you've got gold.

Roach from WALL-E
Who: They weren't lying when they said that after the world ended there would be nothing left but cockroaches. Fortunately, the end of the world also gave them charming personalities!
Why he's awesome: Making me want a roach as a pet is an epic win in my book.

Kevin and Dug from Up
Who: Kevin is a rare, brilliantly colored giant bird that Carl and Russell accidentally find in Paradise Falls. Dug is sweet golden retriever with a collar that allows him to talk.
Why they're awesome: It takes a lot to make slapstick giant birds funny, but Pixar does a magnificent job. And Dug? He's exactly what I imagine an actual talking dog to sound like. SQUIRREL!

WORST:

Tribbles from Star Trek
Who: Fuzzy, purring little meat pets that take over the original Enterprise.
Why they suck: Pets rocks were bad enough, why would they think that a massively multiplying furry pet rock would be better?

ALF
Who: Alien puppet that takes over a really lame sitcom in the 80's. If ever you want to torture someone without the use of waterboarding, show them and episode of ALF… or Small Wonder.
Why he sucks: Look me straight in the eye and tell me you didn't scream in horror when you saw that clip.

Snarf, Thundercats
Who: A fat alien cat that ends every sentence with an annoying "snarf!" sound.
Why he sucks: Is he a lizard or a cat? I'm going to go with meth induced demonic lovechild.

Teddy from A.I.
Who: An animatronic intelligent Teddy Rucksbin from the future that accompanies David in a search for the Blue Fairy.
Why he sucks: Ok, now I understand that some people might take issue with Teddy's position on the worst list but he's a toy that's alive. That's pretty much the worst nightmare of most 8-year-old kids. And me.

Slimer from Ghostbusters
Who: A green ghost that terrorizes the Ghostbusters team by covering everything in slime.
Why he sucks: For those of us born in the mid 80's and watched the Ghostbusters cartoon first, we expected to see cool ghost antics when we finally saw the movie. Instead, we were greeted with a grotesque blob that was pretty evil.

Div-x from Penny Arcade
Who: You might remember the Sony Dix-X player, an ahead of its time technical marvel.
Why he sucks: According to Penny Arcade Comics, he's a foul-mouthed drunk that's teetering on the edge of killing us all.

Pets from Children of Men
Who: When the world's gone infertile, people turn to animals to provide comfort in the end of humanity.
Why they suck: I have nothing against the animals in Children of Men, personally, but seeing all the dogs, cats and birds cluttering people's homes can be an ominous image.

Selacious Crumb from Star Wars
Who: He's a little fox-lizard thing that hangs out with Jabba the Hut and laughs at all his lame jokes.
Why he sucks: Everybody hates the skinny jerk in the corner with the stupid laugh.

Gleek from Superfriends
Who: The alien monkey pet of the Wondertwins.
Why he sucks: Usually if he was featured in Superfriends, you could count on him popping out to end the episode on a lame joke.

Independence Day Dog from Independence Day
Who: If you're like me then you probably laughed at the idea of a ball of flame chasing a golden retriever down a tunnel.
Why he sucks: Was it really necessary to have a slow motion explosion behind a dog? And wouldn't all that heat ultimately cook them all in that storage locker?
Then Again:...he's immune to explosions. And that's pretty cool. Dodging fire like that, he's like a canine Neo. Maybe he should have been best?

Space Buddies
Why they suck: I'll just point you in the direction of this.

Queequeg, X-files
Who: A Pomeranian adopted by Dana Scully and eaten shortly after by the legendary Big Blue.
Why he sucks: He was found snacking on his previous owner.

Krypto
Who: Superman's dog. Enough said.
Why he sucks: I hate pet versions of superheroes. Also, why does he need a cape?

Muffit from the original Battlestar Gallactica
Who: Caprica used to have a variety of tracker dogs but sadly, none of them survived the Cylon attack. Instead a group robotic dogs are created to replace them.
Why he sucks: Is he an ewok? A fuzzy, metallic gremlin on meth? You decide.

MAD Cat from Inspector Gadget
Who: Dr. Claw's chortling fat feline.
Why he sucks: He's the quintessential evil cat meant to taunt the hero. Plus Dr. Claw regularly beat the crap out of him and he seemed to be ok with that.

Frank the Dog from Men in Black
Who: An alien stool pigeon using the guise of a small pug.
Why he sucks: He made me remember "Who Let the Dogs Out" existed.

Gir, Invader Zim
Who: Invader Zim's mentally disturbed robot helper that was given to him as either a joke or sabotage. Probably both.
Why he sucks: Yeah, yeah Gir is really cute, but he's amoral, evil and would gladly watch you die a fiery death while bursting into a fit of giggles.

Astro, The Jetsons
Who: The Scooby Doo knockoff of the 21st century.
Why he sucks: It might have worked with the Scooby Gang, but there's only room for one charismatic dog with a speech impediment ‘round these parts.

Lamar, Half Life 2
Who: The neutered headcrab that resides in Dr. Isaac Kleiner's laboratory.
Why he sucks: Crabs are rarely a good thing. Head crabs are a double whammy of bad.

Joshua from Dark Angel
Who: A transgenic dog-man with an affinity for painting and crappy comedic timing.
Why he sucks: There was only one good thing that came out of season two of Dark Angel and that rhymes with Smensen Shackles.

Honorable Mention: Blarp from the Lost in Space remake.

This is the season when movies are more likely to bash you over the head with giant robotic fists then they are to make you ponder the universe. Nothing against robotic fists, mind you. But what sets Moon apart from other space operas this summer is that it blows you away with original ideas and surprising characters. It's still action packed, violent, and intense, but on an individual scale. Instead of spaceship battles, you have one man in his lunar rover, tiny against the immense moonscape.

Sam (Sam Rockwell) has begun to realize something is wrong at the lunar mining station. He can't get a live feed from Earth, and the video mails from his wife seem strangely edited. Plus, his robot Gertie (voiced by Kevin Spacey) seems to be trying to tell him something in a very subtle way: When he delivers news from the company, he flashes emoticons on his screen which signal confusion and distress. At first Gertie seems incredibly menacing, a version of HAL, but slowly we begin to realize that the robot is more complicated than that.

And Sam's life is a lot more complicated too. He knows he's a working stiff, required only to start up stalled mining vehicles. He's so unimportant that the company doesn't even bother to fix his live feed. But when he has an accident, he learns that he's more lowly than he ever imagined.

I would like to give you a reverse-spoiler alert here. Many people seem to believe that the big reveal of this movie is that Sam is a clone. Nothing could be farther from the truth. He discovers this early on, when Gertie awakens another clone after believing that Sam perished in the accident.

Sam's coming to terms with the fact that he is a clone, and his relationship with the newly-awakened second Sam clone, form the meat of this film. Together they must unravel the mystery of their existence and find out what the company has in store for them. Gertie also has a mysterious purpose, and his battered body, covered in post-it notes, always lurks at the edge of the frame. Eventually the company dispatches a "rescue mission" to the base, and the two Sams must race to figure out what they can do to save themselves in a world where clones are clearly less than people.

Directed and conceived by Duncan Jones, Moon is quiet and disturbing, yet manages to be hopeful in the face of overwhelmingly grim conditions. Director Jones happens to be the son of alien rocker David Bowie, but the tone and pacing of this film couldn't be farther from Ziggy Stardust. It's understated and minimalist – awash in shades of gray, with a rippling score from Clint "Pi" Mansell, the story is anti-glam. Which only allows Rockwell's incredible acting to pop even more.

What's pleasing about this movie is quite simply its originality. From the breathtaking images of a strip-mined moon, to the tight shots on Sam's face when he realizes he is just a copy of a man, this is a movie that will wash those YARMS right out of your brain. And without giving anything away, I'll just say the ending is not what you were expecting.

The other thing that I think is interesting about this movie is that it is actually based on current legal theories of clones. As law professor Kerry Macintosh has pointed out in her book Illegal Beings, human clones are illegal and therefore possess no human rights. If a human clone grew up now, it would have the legal status of a slave or worse. So it is not so farfetched to imagine that clones might become the untouchables of the next century.

So if you're wondering what to see this weekend, and you're lucky enough to live in one of the few cities where this movie has opened, check out Moon. You can see robots fighting any old time. But seeing something truly new? That's as rare as a rebellious clone on the moon.

According to Focus Features:

About 8:

Armed with a giant kitchen cleaver and half a scissor blade, the none-too-bright muscle and enforcer of the group, 8, is created to help the others physically survive the dangerous, post-apocalyptic world.

Insider Trivia:

8 is voiced by Fred Tatasciore, who studied animation at UCLA with director Shane Acker, where he became known for his voiceover talents on other students' films. Fred was enlisted to voice 8, the "brawn to 1''s brain if you will," says Acker.

Here's the high res. version of the poster:

9 will be released in theaters on 9/9/09.

In Virtuality, Siena Guillory plays Rika Goddard, the ship's exobiologist who's trapped in a passionless marraige with Roger, the ship's psychologist and producer of the fake reality TV program the ship's crew stars in. And Clea DuVall (Carnivale) plays Sue Parsons, the ship's brash pilot who's already drawing comparisons to Starbuck. Both actors went on a conference call with reporters today and talked about how they approached their characters in this TV movie (which could spawn an ongoing series). Virtuality airs this Friday night at 8 PM on Fox.

I hadn't realized, until listening to both actors, just how much of Virtuality was improvised. Apparently Peter Berg (Hancock), who directed the pilot, is a huge believer in letting actors run with their scenes and create their own interpretations of their characters.

One of the coolest parts of the pilot is Sue Parsons' relationship with some of the other female characters, especially the computer scientist and reality-TV show host Billie Kashmiri. Sue is constantly sniping at the naive, privileged Billie, but then after Billie suffers an extreme trauma inside the virtual-reality world (which feels real even though it's just VR) Sue and Billie suddenly share a moment of closeness, and they have a really intense scene together, which feels like it could be the foundation of a really interesting friendship. You don't see such complex relationships between two women in science fiction all that often.

So I asked DuVall what she thought was going on between the two women, and whether it was in the script, or improvised:

It was in the script, and also improvised. It was a combination of the two... I thought a lot about my character, because she's kind of a hardass and kind of a jerk, and a handful to deal with..and I really tried hard to understand her and why she was so guarded and so protective of herself. And [I tried to think] what it was about this girl that really ticked me off... I sort of went inside myself and tried to find the parts of myself that I don't think are there, the jealousy and the competitiveness, and I used that, I used my own personal shortcomings, to fuel this character. But then understand, but then being able to see her as human and seeing the parts of Billie that were like me.

So was Sue angry at Billie because she saw Billie as a younger version of herself? DuVall explained:

[Billie was] somebody that was given the position they were given, because they had certain advantages that I wasn't given, and that jealousy of being born into good stock. Versus having to fight tooth and nail to get there, because my character was put through the ringer so much to be there even though she was one of the most qualified.

Meanwhile, Siena Guillory says Rika Goddard "hates having her privacy invaded" (in the reality TV show) but "she's also desperate for adventure." Rika is an "introvert but oversexed," she adds. "The fact that we're geeks doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to be handling our emotions, so we're all prone to exploding emotionally."

Both actors raved about the creative freedom they were given during the shooting of this pilot. "Of course I said everything that was in the script, but being able to build on it and find things that were in there [was terrific]," says DuVall. "Them trusting us so much also gave us the confidence to trust ourselves."

"They were so brave and didn't assume that the audience was stupid," adds Guillory. "They lent us that bravery and allowed us to inhabit the roles."

And even though Virtuality is about being trapped inside a cramped spaceship, and trapped in the not-quite-real performance of reality TV, and even trapped inside virtual-reality modules that turn into a horror show, Guillory says the show, in the end, is about limitless possibilities:

It's all about the fact that the possibilities are endless, and that's what the whole show is about. There are no limitations, and everything we grew up with here on Earth, in terms of "This is your life, and this is who you are, and you will die [isn't necessarily true]. And you can be anywhere and be anyone, and anything is possible and it's incredibly dangerous and exciting.

As I mentioned, Virtuality airs this Friday at 8 PM on Fox.

The Hollywood Reporter revealed that the 24 minutes shown were a mixture of scenes from the opening of the movie, alongside "glimpses from unfinished portions of later battle scenes, involving warring sides clashing over control of the fantasy world Pandora," adding that

[Avatar studio 20th Century] Fox made media covering the event agree not to report details of the "Avatar" images or to interview audience members for reactions.

Of course, that didn't stop sites like Marketsaw having detailed spoilers available soon afterwards. Spoilers ahead.

The first of the scenes shown introduced Sam Worthington's crippled former marine Jake Sully being briefed on the deadliness of the N'avi by commanding officer Stephen Lang. The second scene showed Worthington, Joel Moore and Sigourney Weaver's Dr. Grace Augustine discussing how the Avatar technology works while standing over either inactive avatars or subdued Na'vi (Reports differ), before the next scene shows Worthington and Moore's characters inhabit their half-human, half-Na'vi avatars for the first time, something Marketsaw raved about:

They look NOTHING like the drawing you've seen. They're living creatures with blue skin, bigger yellow eyes than humans with tails. The avatars even look like their human connectors. You will NOT believe the detail.

The fourth scene shows the avatars exploring the jungle of the planet Pandora, running into alien beasts and flora Marketsaw described as "all liv[ing], breath[ing] and work[ing]." The final two completed scenes introduced Zoe Saldana's Neytiri, as she saves Sully's avatar from being attacked by dog-like creatures before entering a N'avi village together in a scene that explains the backstory of her people.

The final scene shown was incomplete - and likened by many to a video game - from the end of the movie, showing a battle between humans and N'avi.

Even spoiler-free discussion of the scenes are enough to get excited about, though; Coming Soon's correspondent was stunned by what they saw:

[I]t took my breath away. I thought—just like you guys—that I've seen it all with Gollum, or The Hulk, but Cameron has done it again. These creatures seem so real, that within minutes you forget you're watching an enormous and very blue CGI character. Even the eyes are totally convincing. The characters have real personalities and a soul... The effects are in a league of their own. After some disappointing or even pointless 3-D movies, "Avatar" may be the first movie where 3-D is properly utilized.

IESB's anonymous commenter offered a similarly eager outlook:

It makes me want to create a time machine like Cartman from South Park, so that I don't have to wait till the 18th of December to watch the finished movie. If it's anything like the scenes I saw, it's going to be one of the best movies of the decade.

Twitter chatter from the lucky few who saw the footage was, if anything, more excitable:

this technology will change moviehistory. And trust me, i'm not shitting ya. It's insane.

And from the Norwegian Unique Cinema Systems Nord Twitter:

Footage from "Avatar" at #cinexpo was stunning, literally jawdropping. Amazing visuals unlike any before seen, with incredible detail.

With this level of anticipation, is it any wonder that even the Times of London is indulging in outrageous hyperbole by asking "Will Avatar be the biggest movie ever?"

Avatar is due to open December 18th.

Oh, and I would warn you that there'll be spoilers in this review — except that, really, since I still have no idea what actually happened in this movie, I'm not sure how much I can spoil it.

Since the days of Un Chien Andalou and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, filmmakers have reached beyond meaning. But with this summer's biggest, loudest movie, Michael Bay takes us all the way inside Caligari's cabinet. And once you enter, you can never emerge again. I saw this movie two days ago, and I'm still living inside it. Things are exploding wherever I look, household appliances are trying to kill me, and bizarre racial stereotypes are shouting at me.

Transformers: ROTF has mostly gotten pretty hideous reviews, but that's because people don't understand that this isn't a movie, in the conventional sense. It's an assault on the senses, a barrage of crazy imagery. Imagine that you went back in time to the late 1960s and found Terry Gilliam, fresh from doing his weird low-fi collage/animations for Monty Python. You proceeded to inject Gilliam with so many steroids his penis shrank to the size of a hair follicle, and you smushed a dozen tabs of LSD under his tongue. And then you gave him the GDP of a few sub-Saharan countries. Gilliam might have made a movie not unlike this one.

And the true genius of Transformers: ROTF is that Bay has put all of this excess of imagery and random ideas at the service of the most pandering movie genre there is: the summer movie. ROTF is like twenty summer movies, with unrelated storylines, smushed together into one crazy whole. You try in vain to understand how the pieces fit, you stare into the cracks between the narrative strands, until the cracks become chasms and the chasms become an abyss into which you stare until it looks deep into your own soul, and then you go insane. You. Do. Not. Leave. The Cabinet.

Michael Bay understands that summer movies are about two things: male anxiety, and pure id. That's why he casts Shia LaBoeuf, that supreme avatar of pure male inadequacy, in the lead role. LaBoeuf projects a pathetic, wall-eyed dorkhood, when he's not babbling like a tumor removed from Woody Allen's prostate that somehow achieved sentience. I imagine the DVD of ROTF will include a whole disk of outtakes where they had to stop filming because LaBoeuf was drooling on camera. As it is, the film includes several extreme closeups of LaBoeuf's dazed stare.

Where was I? Oh yes. So LaBoeuf, who's actually a fine actor, is the stand-in for the male viewers' greatest fears about themselves. No matter how great a loser they might be, they can't be as losery a loser as Sam Witwicky. And yet, Sam has awesome giant robots stomping around telling him he's the most important awesome person ever. And he has the hottest girlfriend in the universe, Megan Fox, for whom banality is a huge aphrodisiac. The more pathetic Sam gets, the more Fox's lips pout and her nipples point, like little Irish setters.

To make matters more awesome for the insecure males in the audience, Sam actually tosses aside his giant robot fanclub and his walking-pinup girlfriend, so he can have a normal life. Of course, this only leads to other robots and hawt chicks (who turn out to be robots too) throwing themselves at him and telling him how important he is. In the end, everybody learns to appreciate Sam just a bit more than they already did, and a booming voice tells him he's earned the "matrix of leadership" through his courage and stuff.

And then there's the "id" part, which is the part where stuff blows up real good, and huge machines smash each other up. And every single performance is so ridiculous that it looks down on "over the top" as if from a great height. It's the part of your brain that thinks it would be awesome to see robots with giant dangling testicles, or hot chicks turning into robot tentacle monsters, or "ghetto" robots that talk in inept hip-hop slang and smash each other playfully, or funny Jewish men who talk about their "schmear" and randomly strip to their G-strings. Is that going too far? Then let's go 100 times farther than that and see what happens!

Transformers: ROTF is so long, you'll need to wear adult diapers to it. But the movie's pure celebration of the primal urge, and unfiltered living, will make you rejoice in your adult diapers. You'll relieve yourself in your seat with a savage joy, your barbaric yawp blending in with the crowd's screams of excitement.

And yet — and here's the part where I really think ROTF approaches "art movie" status — the movie's id overload reaches such crazy levels that the fabric of reality itself starts to break down. Michael Bay has boasted about how every single shot in the movie has so much stuff going on in it, it would take your PC since the dawn of time to render one frame. After a few hours of this assault, you feel the chair melt and the floor of the movie theater becomes an angry mirror into your soul. Nothing is solid, nothing is real, everything Transforms.

The closest thing I can think of to this movie is the Wachowskis' Speed Racer, which had a similar kind of CG image overload, although it was only five hours long as opposed to ROTF's nine.

And around hour six of ROTF, something curious happens: the two components — male enhancement and pure id — start to clash, badly. Usually, in a summer movie, the two aspects go together like tits and ass: Jason Statham plays someone who faces the same insecurities as regular dudes, but he overcomes them, and in the process he blows up everything in the world. But creating that kind of fusion requires enslaving the id to the male enhancement, and that in turn means only going way over the top instead of crazy, stratospheric over the top. Michael Bay is not willing to settle for going way over the top, like other directors.

So you have a movie that tries to reassure men that they can actually be masters of their reality — but then turns around and says that actually, reality is not real. There's no such thing as the "real world," and the only thing that's left for men to dominate is a nebulous domain of blurred shapes, which occasionally blurt nonsensical swear-words and slang from ethnic groups that have never existed. If you're drowning in an Olympic swimming pool full of hot chewing gum fondue, do you still care if Megan Fox likes you?

So yes, ROTF approaches the sublime, and then just keeps rocketing. Next stop: total anarchy. In a sense, it's the first war movie ever to convey a real sense of the fog of war, the confusion that comes with battle. Somewhere around hour nine, you will understand why friendly fire happens in wartime.

So I've gotten almost all the way through this review, and I still haven't summarized the movie's plot. Here goes. It's a couple years after the first movie, and Sam is going off to college, leaving his transforming car and his hot girlfriend, whom he still hasn't told he loves her. And meanwhile, the soldiers from the first movie are running around with a bunch of late-model GM cars and trucks, which turn into robots and fight other robots sometimes. Sam sees weird symbols which make no sense (and they still make no sense at the end of the movie) and they turn out to be the key to the location of a thing that can control another thing, that will enable the bad guys to destroy the sun. Sam has to embrace the heroic destiny he's rejected, so he can save us all from solarcide.

But that bare plot summary doesn't include the twenty or thirty other storylines that could also claim to be the movie's plot. There's the whole thing where someone from Washington D.C. wonders why the U.S. military is running around the globe with a bunch of late-model GM cars from outer space, and tries to put the kibosh on the military-Autobot complex. There's the teenager who's got a conspiracy website, that competes with another conpsiracy website which turns out to be the work of a secret agent who's decided that the best way to keep things secret is to put them on a website. (It works. I post secret stuff on io9 all the time.) Various robots die and then come back to life, and there's a whole strand about whether Decepticons (the bad ones) can become Autobots (the good ones). And there's the Fallen, who's sort of the movie's villain even though he barely shows up. And people from 17,000 BC who had weird teeth and fought robots. And the ancient Egyptians did stuff. And Sam's parents go to France except that they meet a robot and then they're in Egypt.

Really, I could go on and on. This movie starts out with a coherent storyline, for the first half hour or so, and then it just starts to spin faster and faster until the centrifuge of random events slams you into the walls. It doesn't help that there are 500 robots in the movie and they all look kind of the same.

Oh, but that's the other thing about ROTF. It's actually quite funny, a lot of the time. Some of the jokes fall flat, like the "twin" robots with the ghetto speak, and a lot of the stuff with John Turturro. But the movie's relentless silliness is mostly pretty hilarious, in a Saturday morning cartoon kind of way, and almost nothing in the movie seems intended to be taken seriously.

So, to sum up: Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen is one of the greatest achievements in the history of cinema, if not the greatest. You could easily argue that cinema, as an artform, has all been leading up to this. It will destabilize your limbic system, probably forever, and make you doubt the solidity of your surroundings. Generations of auteurs have struggled, in vain, to create a cinematic experience as overwhelming, and as liberating, as ROTF.

Women as well as men, everyone watching this film will feel the dissolution of all their certainties, all their illusory grasp on the world... but after you fall into a brazen despair that the walls of reality have become toxic ice cream of a million flavors, you will gasp with a greater realization: that once the world is reduced, forever, to a kaleidoscope of whirling shapes, you are totally free. Nothing matters, effect precedes cause, fish spawn in mid-air, and you can do whatever you want. Let yourself go in your adult diaper, Michael Bay invites you. Feel the music of total excess stir inside your deepest core. It is your Allspark, your cube. And you are a Transformer.

We already told you about NASA's space-age project to create a bra that can detect breast cancer, but these new devices are even more random and less potentially useful.

Tiny Pillow For Your Dirty Pillows:

This is the Kush. It's pretty self explanatory, both in its worthless use and its obvious sexual innuendo.

Vacuum Your Breasts Bigger

The Brava is a sports bra that encloses the breasts in a vacuum, which then applies tension to the area, like a vacuum. According to their site:

BRAVA works by placing a gentle amount of tension (three-dimensional pull) on the breasts, and when sustained, the result is new breast tissue. This technique, known as tissue expansion, is not new; just the application is.

It doesn't say how much the Brava costs, but I'm going to guess about 400 moon bucks, because it's absolutely insane.

Massage Your Self To Health

Pangao promises to make your breasts "more healthy" and larger by stimulating them with remote massage that promises to:

"dredge breast glands, eliminate blood stasis and effectively prevent women from breast diseases and flaccid, also can move fat and make a well-shaped figure. If use it often, you can have a sound sleep, immunity from disease and better internal secretion."

Oh Pangao, you say the sweetest things. What ridiculous drek.

[Via Fashionably Geek andGeekologie]

Testicles on the page:

When we got the chance to talk with Kurtzman and Orci about Transformers, we had to ask about the movies' signature moments of freakiness, like robots peeing on people or — in the new movie — a set of giant testicles hanging down from Devastator, the massive robot made out of five construction vehicles. (He's a bunch of construction vehicles, and there are two wrecking balls hanging between his legs.) Do Orci and Kurtzman write these things into the script, or does director Michael Bay "ad lib" them?

Generally, the duo said, these things are in the scripts. Although they couldn't remember the origins of Devastator's testicles. Orci thought that Bay had demanded "a big pair of testicles." But Kurtzman reminded him that it was actually co-writer Ehren Krueger's idea, when the three of them were holed up for a few months writing the script after the writers' strike. "The testicles are in the script," Kurtzman said. "Well, it's a construction machine, so you of course have wrecking balls. And Michael, immediately, of course, loved it."

As for how that strike impacted the writing process, Kurtzman explained:

We broke the story together, two weeks before the strike, handed in twenty pages of a treatment. Michael and Ian Bryce and everyone went off and started to prepare the movie off of that. The strike ended, and we had three months between the strike ending and the first day of shooting. So in those three months, we actually wrote the script, the three of us. Giving Bay pages every day or two, until we had a movie. So it was crazy.

Humor in Trek and Transformers:

There's a lot of humor in both Transformers and Star Trek, which the duo also co-wrote, but it seems like it works somewhat differently in either franchise. So we asked Orci and Kurtzman where the difference comes from.

Kurtzman explains:

Well, our director has a very different sensibility as far as where he's getting his humor from. The The Transformers are generating humor from the way they talk. And the humor in Star Trek is very much about the circumstances our characters find themselves in. It's literally the difference between cracking jokes and being in a funny situation. They're different franchises.

So how much of their sense of humor comes from their early experiences writing for Sam Raimi-produced shows like Hercules? Some of it, they said, although it has deeper roots than that.

"It comes from the voice that we learned," says Orci. "Certainly, Hercules was one of htose interesting shows where it lived in a world where everyone perceived it as camp, but we had to never approach it that way in the writers' room. It had a real sense of humor, and I think actually, the seeds of that sense of humor in [Producers] Rob (Tapert) and Sam (Raimi) come from the screwball comedies, like the Preston Sturgess screwball comedies and Billy Wilder. And in a weird way that stuff did fuse itself into Hercules. We paid homage to those shows very frequently in our writing."

"And they gave us the freedom to do it," Kurtzman said. "They weren't afraid of that stuff." And you can see that kind of humor in Evil Dead 2, he added.

Why does Sam want to leave his awesome girlfriend and robot?

One question that io9 readers have been asking lately is, Is Sam Witwicky nuts? He has an amazingly cool car that transforms into a robot, and he has an awesome girlfriend who changes into a killer white dress to bring him flowers. Why would he want to leave them to go off to college and hang out with dorky roommates?

"Most of us go off to school, don't we, and leave home," said Orci. "Didn't that happen to you? Why'd you do that?" And the college where Sam is studying doesn't allow freshmen to have cars. "Thematically, it turns out to be what gets him trouble," Orci adds. "The lesson of the movie is, don't leave your girl or your Transformer."

"The grass is always greener, right?" Kurtzman added. "You get used to what you have."

In a sense, Transformers 2 has a similar theme to Spider-Man 2, where Peter Parker tries to give up being Spider-Man.

Orci explained:

Sam never expected to find himself at the center of an alien war. He just wanted to have a normal kid and have a normal kid's experiences, and so he's at the natural point in his life where college would be the next step for him, and he wants that... the sequels we grew up loving, like Superman 2, Terminator 2 and Aliens are often about the hero's refusal of the call, and the consequences that follow.

Transformers 3?

It's been widely reported that Orci and Kurtzman are definitely not writing the script for Transformers 3, but actually they sounded pretty open to doing it.

"We never say never, but since the movie's not even out, it's impossible for us to go, 'Yes, we're in,'" Kurtzman said.

What's the difference between having a mythos and being mythic?

Transformers is a franchise with a lot of mythos, meaning that there is tons of backstory about Cybertron and the Allspark and the Fallen and so on. What is the difference between having a rich mythos and having a mythic storyline?

Kurtzman took a stab at this question for us:

I think mythos, in the way you're talking about, is set up to deal with more what is the past. Mythic is about what's happening to you now, it's epic, going into the future. Star Trek doesn't rely too much on the history of the world, it's mythic, and you're taking someone from childhood and taking them all the way from the womb back to space. It's a long journey, as oppposed to discovering something about your past.

Cowboys And Aliens:

We had to ask the duo what's going on with their movie adaptation of the graphic novel Cowboys And Aliens, which is about alien invaders falling afoul of cowboys and Apache warriors in 1800s Arizona. Orci said they're three or four weeks away from finishing their script draft, and hopefully they'll find a director and take it from there. "There's been a lot of invention, and a lot of reinvention, and we took the spirit of the graphic novel and figured out how to [bring it to the screen.]"

"But certainly, there are cowboys and aliens," said Kurtzman.

Wonder what the Transformers origin has to do with G.I. Joe and the tallest, most hated man in comics? Whether or not Transformers are actually alive, and just why they have gender characteristics? Or maybe you just have trouble knowing your Beast Machines from your Robots In Disguise... We cover it all in this short Backgrounder, to make sure that you'll know everything you need to - and more - when watching Michael Bay's latest example of cybernetic bayhem:

Transformer Origins
They didn't really come from Cybertron, you know. Learn about the cross-continent (and cross-corporation) origins of the robots in disguise.

Know Your Transformer Generations
Being around for 25 years requires plenty of reinvention. Here's your guide to knowing which Transformer incarnation was the one you grew up with.

Those Transformer Questions You Were Afraid To Ask
How did Cybertron get built, anyway? Why did the Transformers come to Earth? And why does Spike Whitwicky have such a foul mouth? We give you the basics.

Last Tuesday io9 was a guest of Paramount, along with a few other reporters, on the set M. Night Shyamalan's latest film, The Last Airbender. We headed over to Night's favorite cinematic city Philadelphia, to see what the the director of The Sixth Sense would do with an expansive fantasy world. Night is, in a sense, building an entire world with only the cartoon and a specific, but loyal, following of fans to keep him in check (some of the biggest fans being his own daughters, who were the inspiration behind his tackling the project).

For those of you not familiar with the Avatar world, the fantastical realm is divided up into four nations: Earth, Air, Water and Fire. They lived together in peace, until the Fire Nation took out the other three, plummeting the land into war. Many years later, a bald little boy Aang (played by the adorable and new Noah Ringer) awakens to find he is the last of his kind, the Airbenders and the balance of the nation's future rests on his shoulders. Together with his newly acquired friends, a rowdy brother and sister pair Sokka (Jackson Rathbone) and the waterbending Katara (Nicola Peltz), the three set out to put the nation back on the track towards peace.

Unfortunately for them, the Fire Nation isn't too keen on the idea of Aang, and sends out a giant army after him (which you can see in the teaser) along with Prince Zuko (Slumdog Millionaire's Dev Patel) who's full of spite and anger. We're actually quite excited to see this total departure from Patel's previous role.

While I'm still not sure how this film is going to be marketed to those over 20 and unaware of the Airbender franchise, Night's new world certainly has a gorgeous backdrop going for it. Each set we walked on was more expansive and detailed than the last. The ice cave that holds the Moon Spirit was completely transformed into a strange and ethereal space, with a towering cherry tree looming over a reflecting pond. Every single blossom on the twisted branches was hand painted individually, with three different shades of pink. It truly felt like a mysterious oasis where brilliant green mold grows over ice.

But that wasn't even the kicker. Night has constructed a life size representation of the Fire Nation battleships, that can unleash furious fire power and where Dev Patel told us he'd spar with his crew. Dusty crumbling temples were erected, with gold statues of past Avatars, and even those can't compare to Airbender's pièce de résistance world-building moment, which just so happens to be the largest set ever built on the East Coast... which we're saving to tell you more about later.

So how much did they diverge from the cartoon, to make a story about warring nations and it's citizens who can bend the elements believable? Producer Frank Marshall explained that they have high hopes to stick to a PG rating. "I'm not even sure we want to get in the PG-13 realm," he explained.

But the director did have to whittle some things away. While taking a break from filming in the dusty floors of the North Air Temple Night told us what had to be cut: "I took away a little bit of the slapsticky stuff that was there for the little little kids, the fart jokes and things like that. We weeded that stuff away and the other stuff came out. We grounded Katara's brother, who's the comic relief in the show. We grounded him, and that really did wonderful things for the whole theme of the movie."

For a man building an entire world, he seems supremely calm and focused on set, but I was relieved to see that even he was at times overwhelmed by the sheer size of this project, "There are two and a half weeks left of not being as scared to death, but there were plenty of days where I was scared to death of what I'm doing." This film is really the first time Night has worked with elaborate CG backgrounds, or worked on constructing his own franchise, for that matter.

But I know you all want to know, what of Appa the giant white Sky Bison who flies? You've been asking ever since the film was announced. How will is it even possible to bring such a mythical creature to life? While we got to glimpse the enormous white furry top half of the magical six-legged creature (who will be part mechanical and part CG, the top half being mecha for the actors). Production Designer, Philip Messina, answered our Appa questions, reassuring us all that "I think once you see him on screen, you will see the Appa from the cartoon realm brought to life, but [that] still has the essence of his character. He has a character and a personality, he's an actor in the film to some extent."

Good luck getting those six-legs in order, guys. Even though the crew has recently wrapped filming, they still have a long road ahead of them.

The official movie site is now up and running and has HQ trailers available for download.