That's because to this day, he insists that the inspiration for Stormbringer was Tyrfing, the cursed sword from Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword, which, at the same time, was an "actual" mythological sword from Norse myths (and, to be honest, it is the inspiration behind Gurthang as well, so both swords have, in…

Well, if we really want to nitpick, the origins of it are in the Kullervo cycle of kalevala, which is quite a bit older still.

Given my interests in both guns and swords, I don't know why I was unaware of the reality of these.

Airyaht Stamboul from Scott Westerfeld's 'Behemoth', by great Keith Thompson.

And you leave out the flying ships by Ian McQue?

Here's an old fave from Jean 'Moebius' Giraud.

I've always had a soft spot for the imagery in Treasure Planet

When you study time keeping and calendars, you quickly realize that it's all strictly a human artifact. It wasn't until the 20th century that all nations even agreed to use the same Gregorian calendar. The ISO8601 calendar — an international standard — is "proleptic" in the sense that it assumes that it's mechanism of…

I call shenanigans.

Terry Nation frequently cited the Nazis as an influence for the Daleks, which he created back in 1963. Traditionally, contemporary politics have always influenced stories in Doctor Who and it probably wouldn't hurt if they did a bit more of that. I suspect DiPaolo is overthinking it, but does he peg Bush as Supreme,…

Don't blame me; I voted for the Cybermen.

H.P Lovecraft ventured forth into that terrible den of iniquity, known as StarBucks. The sight that beheld him was as hideous as it was indescribable. Scions of well-mannered homes sat indolently in front of bizarre machines. Their fevered hands tapping away at the hideous keypads, typing out the feverish dreams of …

Community: Modern Warfare. This was the episode that started turning heads and made everyone aware of how hilarious this show is. It goes full-on into sitcom hyjinks but does it so very well.

We io9 editors were just debating this point — about whether this article is misogynist or not. I was really fascinated by the fact that the article revealed how a single, small change to a person's eyes could make them basically unrecognizable. So I thought of this as a story about the science of facial recognition…

I too would rather watch a Frankenstein show that focuses on the creator. Make him a serial killer who harvests human parts in order to bring his lover/wife/child/best friend/dog back to life. Make it take place back in the olden days so that when he uses things like electricity it will give him a moments…

If you want to learn more about that top feature, the Eye of the Sahara, we were looking at the geology of how it formed and more photos of it on the Space subsite last week.

That's why with CCGs you get the first hit for free. "Here, I have made you a crappy deck, but with some good cards you could be a master!"

on April 15, 1912 over 1500 people overdosed on water.