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It's Monday. For most of us, that means it's back to the grind — whether that grind be work, school, or some other scheduled obligation. Unfortunately for weekend warriors everywhere, these obligations typically require us to get up earlier than we'd choose if it were up to us. More »
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Should you ever find yourself in the environs of Vilnius, Lithuania, you can sign up for 1984: The Survival Drama, a three-hour faux Soviet military interrogation, complete with former KGB guards looking to recapture the magic of the old days. 25€ will get you a three-hour regimen of belt-whippings, verbal abuse, and a sham trial. What a bargain! Here's the sales pitch:

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The Milgram Experiments showed that sixty percent of volunteers would help 'torture' someone if ordered to. What happened to the people who volunteered to be the torturers afterward? Not what you'd expect. More »
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A group of physicians and human rights activist claim that the United States government used shoddy and intentionally biased science in order to downgrade what was considered torture to "enhanced interrogation techniques." More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5724545&view=rss&microfeed=true Cube Zero, the prequel to Vincenzo Natali's Cube, is surprisingly great. And the best bit is this scene where one of the inmates reaches the "Exit." And faces the ultimate question: Do you believe in God? More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5560457&view=rss&microfeed=true Sturgeon's Law was too generous, argues science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer. Writer Theodore Sturgeon said that 90 percent of science fiction was "crud" (or "crap," depending on where he's quoted.) But actually, the chances of choosing a good SF novel at random are way lower than that, Sawyer tells Bookmarks: Someone who gets interested in science fiction and picks up a book from the "vast SF rack... will be turned off, because the work will almost certainly be crap. . . . Yup, you could read a good SF novel a week each week of the year, no doubt. But if you read an SF novel a week picked at random from the rack, you'd never come back for a second year of such torture." [Bookmarks, via Utne Reader] More »
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Welcome back to Horrorhead, a column all about the connections between horror and scifi. On Battlestar Galactica, there's an ongoing theme of torture: humans gang-rape an imprisoned Cylon; the Cylons beat a man so badly he loses his eye (not to mention all the humans they kill outright); and there's even a little human-on-Cylon washboarding early in the series. These are not scenes that take place entirely offscreen. We see beatings; we see the bloody, freaked-out face of Six the Cylon after she's been raped so many times she can't stand up and has lost the will to eat. The question is, do we need to see these scenes? Would this series be as powerful without them? And by extension, would any torture-laced scifi flick like The Hills Have Eyes or Cube be as enticing if it lost the mutilations or the razor net that falls from the ceiling and reduces living humans to little cubes of flesh? (Spoilers ahead.) More »
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Ronald D. Moore and David Eick sat down and went over the different types and social systems and moralities they've created for the new Battlestar Galactica, including the need to the government (and not just the military) to bring down the heavy hand of torture from time to time, and how the legal system works in the BSG-verse. These audio interviews are the kind of geekery you usually only get when fans debate these facets of the show in a forum somewhere, but they wax poetic for over 30 minutes, and that's not even including their thoughts on the politics, economy, and the fight for Cylon rights in their show. Hit the above links for the audio files, and keep staring at the clock until new episodes air. [Concurring Opinions] More »
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Nothing warms the hearts and soothes the soul at holiday time like a hot laser slicing through your pain receptors. That's why we put together this list of the top seven torture scenes from science fiction, including one that spawned one of the lamest action figures in the world. (We didn't include the Star Wars Christmas Special, even though it features Bea Arthur singing, because it's only unintentional torture.) Real torture after the jump! More »
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