http://cache.io9.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/io9.com.png http://io9.com/tag/triviagasm http://io9.com/tag/triviagasm

Valentine's day is coming up, which means it's time to get romantic with your alien loved one. But how exactly do you do the deed with someone whose DNA comes from the other side of the galaxy? How do you negotiate differing erogenous zones and the possibility that your lover may want to eat you after the act? Read our handy primer on getting down and dirty with a member of an extraterrestrial species. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5884390&view=rss&microfeed=true

This month is like exhibit A for Hollywood's propensity to churn out sequels that nobody asked for. You've got Journey 2, opening today. And then next week, there's Ghost Rider 2, in which Nic Cage tries to "improve" upon the first flaming-skull motorcycle movie. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5884082&view=rss&microfeed=true

Some people's futures are determined by popular vote: American Idol contestants, class presidents, and people who want to get gay married in California. But what if every aspect of our lives was determined by our reputation and popularity? Would our futures be better, or would the tyranny of the popular spin us into dystopia? More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5882240&view=rss&microfeed=true

With two spooky ghost movies in theaters this weekend, The Innkeepers and Daniel Radcliffe's The Woman in Black, it's only right to pay homage to the great ghost movies from the past. So here is our list of the very best spooks and hauntings to ever grace the silver screen.

More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5881641&view=rss&microfeed=true

Sometimes it seems like science fiction, and especially fantasy, are genres that lend themselves exclusively to trilogies and long-running series. But some of the greatest writers in speculative fiction have only written standalone novels, not series or trilogies. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5880602&view=rss&microfeed=true

So you've landed in an evil boarding school. Chances are your parents thought they were doing the right thing: giving you a great education, sending you to the top disciplinarians who will set you on the proper path in life. But there's something wicked going on behind the cute uniforms and impressive alumni list, and you might not survive until graduation. So what's a life-loving student to do? We look to the best in evil boarding school survivalism. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5880221&view=rss&microfeed=true

Space, the final frontier...of warfare? Science fiction tales often center around the militarization of space, with lasers and torpedoes made of light racing past (and through) battleships and star destroyers. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5879139&view=rss&microfeed=true

Science fiction and fantasy on television have gone full-on soap opera, thanks to shows like Lost, Battlestar Galactica, True Blood, Once Upon a Time and Being Human. But long before genre shows were doing soap-opera storytelling, actual soap operas were featuring totally insane science fiction plots. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5879651&view=rss&microfeed=true

Now that we're all 100% certain that the Space Jockeys will be making a cameo in Ridley Scott's Alien prequel Prometheus, it's time to sit down and get the lonely space pilot's story straight. For example, are they elephant people or suits? How tall are they? What is their role in Prometheus ? More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5879560&view=rss&microfeed=true

You don't need to be an eccentric billionaire or rugged survivalist to take up residence in a cave. All around the globe, living in an rocky recess is just a fact of life and can be way more homey than any manmade structure. Here are some real estate destinations to investigate should you attempt to cultivate that post-modern caveman chic.

More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5879272&view=rss&microfeed=true

Netflix and your local DVD store are bursting with more movies than you could watch in your lifetime. But tragically, some of the world's strangest movies will never be available on DVD at all. The TCM database estimates that only 4.8% of all films ever made are currently available to the public. Though the Internet has been invaluable in finding strange and forgotten relics, some films, whether through accident, disaster or perceived disinterest, have been lost or temporarily displaced. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5877874&view=rss&microfeed=true

Tomorrow's the Republican presidential primary in South Carolina, and you'll probably be hearing a lot of talk about families and family values. But science fiction and fantasy readers know that families come in all shapes and configurations. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5878002&view=rss&microfeed=true

All across the globe, there are monuments and tourist attractions that transform our otherwise boring reality into a gleefully tumescent fantasia. Here are the world's most otherworldly phallic vacation destinations. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5877589&view=rss&microfeed=true

This weekend, the Underworld series returns, and once again vampires will resume their endless war against the Lycans. (Plus the humans, this time.) These days, we're used to thinking of vampires and werewolves as mortal enemies — but vampires have also fought an assortment of much weirder foes. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5877408&view=rss&microfeed=true

It was the dawn of the third age of television, many years before networks would discover the power of long-form storytelling, when Warner Brothers helped former Murder She Wrote writer J. Michael Straczynski realize his dream to cross The Lord of the Rings with Casablanca...IN SPACE! More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5876320&view=rss&microfeed=true

Do fan campaigns ever work? With Community still in questionable limbo, it's time to step back, assess past save-our-show protests, and learn from those motivated viewers who did succeed (however briefly). Which fans saved their series, and what can they teach us today? More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5875356&view=rss&microfeed=true

We've all seen the predictions — both fictional and pseudoarcheological — that the world will end in 2012. But while some of science fiction's predictions for the year 2012 are apocalyptic, some are merely disastrous — and a few are downright upbeat. Let's see what triumphs and tribulations science fiction says we can look forward to in the coming year. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5873746&view=rss&microfeed=true

The history of genre movies is littered with massive, lavish failures — movies that took hundreds of millions of dollars and tossed the money down a sinkhole. But some of the movies that everybody "knows" were box office disasters actually did really well, when you look at the numbers. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5873224&view=rss&microfeed=true

Everybody knows that the movies can be a messy business — oftentimes, what reaches the big screen is the result of a process akin to sticking your fingers in a Cuisinart. And sometimes the original director of a project gets dropped just before filming starts — as happened with The Wolfman. Or sometimes the director gets dropped after shooting but during the editing phase, as was rumored to be happening with the Judge Dredd film recently. We also learned just a couple weeks ago that Steven Spielberg came perilously close to being sacked from Jaws halfway through shooting. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5868849&view=rss&microfeed=true

Cute robots have been a fixture in the pop culture landscape, ever since C-3PO and R2D2 crashed on Tatooine in the original Star Wars — but there have been cute robots in pop culture for way longer. The history of cute robots is a proud and totally cuddly one, full of beeping, blooping noises. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5865655&view=rss&microfeed=true

We've all been there: your first meeting with a member of another culture, or your first attempt at real communication in a foreign language. More often than not, disaster results. Learning to cope with other ways of speaking, and other cultural contexts, can be a major challenge — but science fiction is here to help! More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5863077&view=rss&microfeed=true

Last year we brought you the expert's guide to serving man on the day of thanks! This year, we've rounded up the most disgusting meals from television and TV to curb your appetite while you gorge. Bon appétit!

More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5862531&view=rss&microfeed=true

Today or tomorrow, most of us are journeying back to our ancestral lands, to confront an ancient evil: our families. But it could be much worse. As dreadful as your relatives are, you could be a member of the Harkonnen family. Or the Duras family. Or the Family of Blood. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5862288&view=rss&microfeed=true

It took several decades before the Muppets became the jovial mop-puppet hybrids we know and love today. Before they hung out with Alice Cooper and hosted wrestling competitions, the Muppets lived in a sometimes unsettling world full of hungry dismembered heads, Cookie Monster selling IBM computers, and Kermit extolling the virtues of pig meat. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5861270&view=rss&microfeed=true

You know that as soon as we invent a time machine, the first thing we're going to use it for is to destroy our enemies retroactively. (Well, maybe the second thing.) More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5858758&view=rss&microfeed=true

The Jim Henson Company's early 2000s serial space opera Farscape ran with multiple subplots, and some were more satisfying than others. As a viewer, the key to getting the most out of Farscape is to focus on the conflict between human hero John Crichton and his nemesis Scorpius over the development of galactic game-changing wormhole technology. Out of the series' 88 episodes and concluding miniseries, here are those episodes required for understanding the series' greatness. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5859054&view=rss&microfeed=true

This past weekend, Justin Timberlake totally failed to rock our dystopian future in In Time. But the man who brought sexy back is by no means the weakest singer-turned-actor ever to grace science fiction and fantasy — not by any means. The history of SF and fantasy is littered with tons of musician roles and cameos, with varying levels of quality. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5854931&view=rss&microfeed=true

It's almost Halloween, and you don't want to simply wear a t-shirt, alienate your friends, or buy a craptacularly slutty store-bought costume that will drop $30 come All Saints' Day. Good for you! The only problem is that daylight's burning, and you can't waste the last 72 hours of Halloween shenanigans on elaborate pageantry. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5854500&view=rss&microfeed=true

Many of science fiction's most rosy ideas of the future seem less and less likely, or they've already failed to materialize on schedule. But the future could still be a beautiful place. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5853540&view=rss&microfeed=true

Halloween! It's the time of the year when some of us get dolled up in our finest regalia, and others have trouble remembering it's October. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5852513&view=rss&microfeed=true

Last week, Fringe finally gave us the conclusion to a weird ghost story that's been simmering since last season. But Fringe isn't the only science fiction universe to dabble in ghosts — there have been hauntings and apparitions in Star Trek, Doctor Who, Star Wars and countless other science fiction universes. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5852217&view=rss&microfeed=true

Robots! They're not just our future overlords, they're also our replacements in almost any job you can imagine. America rushed to watch robots duke it out in Real Steel this past weekend — but "robot boxer" is not the most outlandish job a fictional robot has held. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5848333&view=rss&microfeed=true

Doctor Who's River Song has got a tough time ahead of her — she's joining the biggest science fiction team of them all: the Legion of Formerly Mysterious Characters. Along with Darth Vader, the Man in Black and the Cigarette-Smoking Man, she'll dwell in a place where almost everybody knows all about her. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5847023&view=rss&microfeed=true

The great thing about science fiction and fantasy is that they're full of surprises — you just never know what the universe will have in store. Like, sometimes, a totally random, surprising, shocking death. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5846555&view=rss&microfeed=true

A lot of the wonder of science fiction comes from imagining future structures, and the strange worlds they inhabit. So it's no surprise that several of science fiction's most influential creators have either studied architecture formally, or thought about it a lot. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5845565&view=rss&microfeed=true

Tonight, Steven Spielberg takes us back to the land of dinosaurs. How crazy will Terra Nova be? We'll find out over the next few weeks. But it can't possibly go as bonkers as some of television's other dinosaur shows. Here are our picks for the most demented dinosaur-centric TV shows in history. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5843703&view=rss&microfeed=true

We heard about all the scenes that were cut from Star Wars for years. And then, with the Blu-ray release, we finally got to see all of them... and we learned just why they were cut in the first place. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5843349&view=rss&microfeed=true

Nowadays, we take for granted the idea that if you go travel back in time and interact with your own past, you can create a huge crazy time paradox. But who first came up with this idea? More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5840846&view=rss&microfeed=true

Supergirl has generally been depicted as Superman's down-to-Earth cousin, but that doesn't mean she has daily trials that you and I can barely relate to. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5839448&view=rss&microfeed=true

This Wednesday, Grant Morrison's first issue of Action Comics hits the stands. This series focuses on Superman's brash early days before his powers hit their peak. According to Morrison, this is "a Superman who can be hurt, who can be messed up, who can bleed." In other words, no amnesia-inducing kisses for this guy. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5837411&view=rss&microfeed=true