Science + Fiction = Zero History: An Interview With William Gibson
William Gibson’s new novel Zero History examines the 21st century’s techno-cultural fetishes with a deceptively simple directive: The future is now.
Interviews
Autolux Is On Our Robot Overlord’s Playlist
“I’m not sure whether to view it as a disease or an evolution. I can’t imagine what the world is going to be like in 200 years.”
Alan Moore’s Psychogeographical Unearthing
“We all grow out of the environment and times which we are born into.”
Is This The Last Airbender? M. Night Shyamalan Hopes Not
“I love this idea that there would be a mythical leader in our world who is equally learned in all religions, one person whose job is to constantly remind everybody that they are all the same.”
Avatar’s Cinematic Compression Implodes
M. Night Shyamalan’s compression of Nickelodeon’s stunning animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender has serious boots to fill. And it needs much more time to fill them.
In Praise of Ralph Bakshi, Animation Pioneer
One of animation’s most influential artists, Ralph Bakshi made his mark on pop culture by refusing to sacrifice his singular vision to popular tastes and trends.
Wikileaks Under Fire
On April 5, WikiLeaks.org plans to release at the National Press Club what it alleges is a video confirming a Pentagon cover-up of a wartime massacre of civilians and journalists […]
UN: Climate Crisis Attention Lacks Ambition
They would rather wait until the climate crisis has already ripped the roof off the world as they knew it, before doing anything significant about it.
Global Warming’s Catastrophic Polarities
Climate change deniers argue that the frozen storms battering America have nothing to do with the arrival of hell on Earth. But destabilizing intensity on either end of the weather spectrum is our new normal, and we better get used to it.
Alan Moore Is Ready For Post-Civilization
“I have largely, completely given up on the comics industry,” Moore said. “I really don’t believe it is going to do anything to address the modern world.”
Trip Out to 2009’s Best Unheard Music
From Trans Am’s revved jams to chilled hypnotics by Swervedriver’s Adam Franklin, there’s plenty of unfairly unheard music from 2009. Wrap your ears around a head-trip’s worth in the streams […]
Best Music of the Millennium (So Far)
What’s crazy is that few saw it coming.
Viggo Mortensen’s Apocalyptic Road
“Further devastation of the air, land and sea is obviously a very real possibility.”
The Prisoner: An All-Star Appreciation
Its revolutionary mix of geopolitics, sci-fi and psychedelia has influenced not just television, but also music, comics, film and more.
Margaret Atwood, Apocalyptic Optimist
When people first started writing this stuff, they didn’t call it science fiction.
Land and Water Grabs In The Age of Climate Change
The economic valuation of land and water has increased in concurrence with both price commodities and the ravages of climate change, whose droughts, wildfires and other extreme environmental events are quickly shrinking what’s left of the planet’s arable land and clean water
After Watchmen, What’s Unfilmable?
This list of five books and comics that may now inherit Watchmen‘s mantle as what Alan Moore called the most “unfilmable” texts around was a popular read.
Jeff Lemire’s The Nobody Takes Invisible Man To Twin Peaks
But like Lynch’s Peaks before it, The Nobody‘s impressive science lies not in the mad experiments of the Invisible Man, or the Nobody, but in its subtle dissection of psychology and interpersonal relationships.
Hydrogen Sulfide Is A Nasty Way For Life On Earth to Die
Unfortunately, you can usually find H2S whenever and wherever you’ve got mass extinctions.
Sonic Beacons: An Interview With Tortoise
Tortoise’s Beacons of Ancestorship, a potent dose of unclassifiable sound that veers from dub, funk and hip-hop to jazz, punk and rock without ever dissipating into incoherence, is the Chicago-based […]
Grand Duchy, Black Francis’ Family Affair
So I rapped with the pair for Rolling Stone and reviewed the disc for Metromix. All is well.
Neil Gaiman’s Final Love Letter to Batman
“I wanted it to have that love in there. I wanted to write the last Batman with honor and love.”
Mr. Lif Walks the Talk
“Whether you’re a suit with a desk job or a creative artist, you are still programmed to work. You can never ultimately escape from your responsibilities.”
How Long Will China Buy Our Debt Economy?
It started with a joke, but quickly went viral everywhere from the South China Sea to the White House.
Grant Morrison Gets Deep On Superman, Batman, Cosmology, Crisis
From mind-warping revisions of comic book heroes in All-Star Superman, Batman R.I.P. and Final Crisis, to pop-cultural and philosophical exegeses like The Invisibles, The Filth and We3, brainiac graphic novelist Grant Morrison is a master of the Gordian-knot narrative.