Written by Steve Horton Art by Stephen Thompson Colors by Lisa Jackson Letters by Neil Uyetake Edits by Sarah Gaydos Published by IDW Whenever I see the argument to “keep politics out of sci-fi” come up, I have an urge to point out the genre has always been on the forefront of political writing. Many […]
Drugs & Wires is a Clever and Flashy Cyberpunk Alt-history
For the most part, I never got the appeal of alt-histories. I had nerdy high school friends who would carry around hefty Harry Turtledove tomes about “the second American civil war” or apocalyptic visions of a Nazi-run America. Given that we’re currently living in what feels like a spin on that latter alt-history, maybe I […]
Judging the Book by Its Cover: The Synthetic Man by Theodore Sturgeon
As much as I agree with the old adage “don’t judge a book by its cover” as a life principle, I have to confess that I spend a lot of time picking up old books and records in bargain bins and thrift shops specifically because I judged them on their covers. I know I’m not […]
Counter Clockwise’s Ending Takes it From Mediocre to Hateful Garbage
The worst thing a movie can do is leave you unmoved. If you’re not going to be good, you can at least be memorable. For the majority of its runtime, George Moïse’s directorial debut Counter Clockwise is little else than a forgettable thriller with a sci-fi twist. That is until the last five or so minutes […]
AD: After Death Brings Out the Best in Scott Snyder and Jeff Lemire
As we hurtle ourselves closer and closer to ecological destruction, countless pieces of cautionary fiction about our bad behavior are emerging. Many of these works buffer pessimism for our future with optimism about our problem solving abilities, like the chic and methodical Arrival, but some works are a bit more realistic in tone if not narrative. Scott […]
Waking Up: Alex + Ada and Non-Human Personhood
Fiction has no shortage of stand-ins for the human fear of losing our place at the top of the evolutionary ladder, but as we hurtle closer and closer towards creating sentient artificial intelligence, androids have become the stand-in of choice. While Westworld is currently the trendy and needlessly brutal representation of this, Jonathan Luna and Sara […]
Westworld is Unsettling in its Lack of Self-Awareness
Have you ever noticed that the most advanced sexual pleasure technology is designed for women yet the bulk of sci-fi featuring any kind of “pleasure bot” centers around men’s pleasure? Taking that further, have you noticed that the best sex tech for women usually doesn’t look much like a penis (or any body part for […]
Dystopic Homesick Blues: The Long Walk by Richard Bachman
Because the world is always a mess, we’ve decided to look back at some of our favorite dystopic works and examine why they remain so potent no matter how many years have passed between their creation and now. Post-apocalyptic works never seem to go out of style, probably because the question of what happens after the […]
Electric Candyland Brings Heart to Mathematical Style
Comics has had a number of Wild Wests over the years, frontiers where rules are broken or ignored and outlaws flee the mainstream to carve out new niches. The ’60s had the comix crowd, the ’80s had the small press boom and the advent of the internet has brought the webcomic, a frontier that grows […]
Compassion is a Death Machine
Sometimes, it’s dangerous to have compassion. This is so widely known that it is in fact, “a trope.” A cliche. It’s widely appreciated. But unfortunately, in our knowledge of this fact, we have forgotten to see nuance; it’s more than just a stab in our own back that we risk when we reach out to […]