Happy New Year, Sym-Bionic Titan!
What I wanted this year was one of the greatest animated series ever, created by one of the greatest animators ever, to blessedly return for a second chance at changing programming as usual.
sci-fi
Cli-Fi: Merry Christmas, Peace On Earth
Harman’s animated anti-war masterpiece is both a harrowing and instructive climate fiction about what happens when humanity pushes itself and its planet (and that planet’s myriad species) to the brink of extinction.
Gulf Dead Zone Grows, Larger Than Ever
Stephen King’s horror novel never saw this real-time nightmare coming. A state-sized dead zone at the bottom of the South, which is so deprived of oxygen it might as well be deep space — which is, recalling Alien, where no one can hear you scream.
Cli-Fi: Tesla, Reanimated
The National Film Board of Canada is responsible for some of the finest animation the world has ever seen. It has also created world-changing documentaries exploring and analyzing how and why our world changes as it does, for better and worse.
At Last, Samurai Jack Returns
Last year, I once again interviewed Samurai Jack creator and animation auteur, Genndy Tartakovsky, who told me the samurai’s arrival was imminent. Now here he is, in all of his glory and wonder, when we need him most.
Rogue One: Star Wars’ Technocratic Takeover
You can’t get more cli-fi than a death machine pretending to be a planet.
R.I.P. Gene Wilder: 1933 – 2016
The Man Who Broke My Brain
Cli-Fi Is Real
Cli-fi is the cultural prism through which we monitor and experience ourselves as we bleed our planet dry while trying to become machines.
What Is Pre-Crime? Our Nationalist Pastime
Digital dragnets like Stellar Wind, PRISM and other psy-fi boondoggles have evidently not been surveilling enough of neither Us nor Them to predict or prevent terrorist attacks.
Four Things You Should Know About Your Third Eye
Located in nearly the direct center of the brain, the tiny pinecone-shaped pineal gland, which habitually secretes the wondrous neurohormone melatonin while we sleep at night, was once thought to […]
China Mieville’s Subversive Superhero Comic Dial H
The award-winning sci-fi writer’s worthy reboot of cult ’60s series.
Novel Approach: 10 Book-Based Sci-Fi and Fantasy Film Standouts
Transforming transfixing genre fiction into memorable cinema is no simple task.
Exclusive: Pinback’s Spacey Sherman
Pinback’s Rob Crow and Zach Smith touch down on a prehistoric planet in the new music video, “Sherman.”
We Need To Go Where Star Trek: The Next Generation Has Gone Before
Star Trek’s longest-running television series, which alternately bored and blessed us all with a sci-fi optimism now long since buried, blows out 25 candles
Six Organs of Admittance Enters the Space-Rock Race With Ascent
“This record has a pretty heavy gnostic sci-fi element.”
Exclusive: Barry Sonnenfeld and Grant Morrison’s Sci-Fi Experiment Dominion: Dinosaurs vs. Aliens
“Both dinosaurs and aliens can be seen as representatives of where we are as people right now.”
The Inventor Electrifies Nikola Tesla
“Tesla’s true story is more surreal than any fictional account I’ve seen of him.”
Sophistructuralist Rob Crow Thinks He’s People
“‘Sophistructure’ is the idea of creating a structured lifestyle plan around sophistry,” Crow told me. “Which is, of course, impossible.”
Paul Cornell, DC Comics’ Sci-Fantasy Brainiac
Those in search of an imaginative writer who makes you feel bad you didn’t find him earlier should take a head-trip through my recent Cornell coverage.
Futurama: The Sci-Fi Toon That Wouldn’t Die
Payback is a shiny metal ass, fully bitten.
Space-Walking Through Swervedriver’s Sci-Fi Sonics
Franklin broke down his band’s speculative soundtracking below for fans old and new. Come for the dystopian geekery and cultural esoterica, stay for the spacey rock signatures.
Sym-Bionic Titan Merges Rene Descartes, I Am Legend
The situation is made worse by the bot’s relationship with the hottest human cheerleader in school, and by his realization that he can analyze Jackson Pollock‘s splatter art in multiple dimensions but still can’t penetrate its meaning.
Grant Morrison’s Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne Is a Masterful Time-Wipe
No one mashes science, philosophy and superheroes as well as Grant Morrison. And his years-long run on Batman, the most iconic human superhero of all time, is an object lesson […]
All Hail Our Robot Overlords! Sci-Fi’s Best Bots
Czech playwright Karel Capek popularized the term robot in the 1921 play R.U.R., spawning a deluge of artificial life forms in popular culture.
Newest, Youngest Doctor Who Matt Smith Metamorphs Into Comics
I’m an old-school Doctor Who fan, who’s always loved its subversive sci-fi on television and in comics. The latest Time Lord is Matt Smith, who’s a hoot, who’s finally getting […]