‘Tis the night before Christmas, and Asteroid 2003 SD220 is making its closest approach to Earth. NASA managed to snap a few pics of this pickle-shaped asteroid, which the space agency says poses no threat to our planet whatsoever.

This asteroid will breeze by Earth today at a distance of 6.8 million miles (11 million km). Using the Deep Space Network’s 230-foot (70-meter) antenna at Goldstone, California, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab acquired some grainy radio images of the large space rock. These scans were made from December 17-22 when the asteroid was at a distance of 7.3 million miles (12 million km).

“The radar images data suggest that asteroid 2003 SD220 is highly elongated and at least 3,600 feet [1,100 meters] in length,” noted JPL’s Lance Benner of JPL in a statement. “The data acquired during this pass of the asteroid will help us plan for radar imaging during its upcoming closer approach in 2018.”

Indeed, this asteroid will come back in a few years, but it’ll be even closer at a distance of 1.8 million miles (2.8 million km).

“There is no cause for concern over the upcoming flyby of asteroid 2003 SD220 this Christmas Eve,” added NASA’s Paul Chodas. “The closest this object will come to Santa and his eight tiny reindeer is about 28 times the distance between Earth and the moon.”

[ NASA JPL ]

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Email the author at george@gizmodo.com and follow him at @dvorsky. Top image by NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSSR

Happy Deadpoolmas! There’s a brand new full-length Deadpool trailer, jam-packed with insane violence, ridiculous jokes, fourth-wall-mauling, and totally inappropriate superhero behavior. Plus a redband trailer, feauring all that plus more swearing and sex jokes.

Here’s the redband trailer, which you might have to sign in to view.

What do you think?

Contact the author at charliejane@io9.com and follow her on Twitter @CharlieJane

Plus the show teases a bizarre crossover. Sleepy Hollow casts a new bad guy. Get a look at what’s next on The Flash and Arrow, as well as the debut of Legends of Tomorrow. Plus, more snippets from Batman v Superman, and another clip from tonight’s episode of Doctor Who. Merry Spoilmas!

Batman v Superman

Here’s an English-language version (with Japanese narration) of that recent International TV spot. Including a brand new bit where Batman taunts Superman.

Agent Carter

Good news, Angie fans! It’s official: Lyndsy Fonseca will be reprising her role as Peggy’s best friend and hopeful actor Angie Martinelli in the show’s second season. The twist? Angie will be appearing as part of a dream sequence, according to Executive Producer Michele Fazekas:

She’s your conscience and she’s speaking the things that Peggy maybe can’t say to herself. It ties things back together from the first season and it’s connecting all of these things in a way that only a dream can do.

It gets twistier. The dream sequence is actually an elaborate crossover with the reality TV show Dancing with the Stars, featuring several of the show’s professional dancers in an elaborate show routine, set to an original song written for Agent Carter by lyricist David Zippel and composer Christopher Lennertz:

Episode 8 ends with a cliffhanger where Peggy and Jarvis [James D’Arcy] get in big trouble and are knocked out. Episode 9 begins with a dream sequence that starts in black and white — by the way, [Atwell] was made for black and white. She looks like Rita Hayworth. She looks spectacular.

[Entertainment Weekly]

Sleepy Hollow

Charles Aitken has been cast as Dr. Japeth Leeds, a “twisted, mysteriously brooding genius” who was an enemy of the founding fathers—and whom Ichabod encounters once more in modern day Sleepy Hollow. [TV Line]

Once Upon A Time

Executive producers Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis tease that Hook may not be able to be rescued now that the cast has ventured to the Underworld to save him:

If they can bring Hook (Colin O’Donoghue) back, is there a chance they can bring anyone else back?

HOROWITZ: Who said they can bring back Hook?

KITSIS: He may die there. To be honest, he’s already dead.

HOROWITZ: He may die harder.

KITSIS: He may rot there.

[Entertainment Weekly]

Doctor Who

The Doctor meets Doctor River Song in a new clip from tonight’s special, “The Husbands of River Song”.

The Flash

Here’s an extended promo for the show’s midseason return, featuring the first official look at Caitlin’s “Killer Frost” persona, and Earth-2 versions of Barry and Iris.

Arrow

Likewise, the show has its own trailer for its midseason return, teasing bad news for Oliver and Felicity.

Legends of Tomorrow

Here’s a new promo for the show, teasing a time-travel jaunt to the 1970s.

Finally, a bevy of new promotional images for the show’s pilot have been released—go to the link to see more. [CBR]

Additional reporting by Gordon Jackson and Charlie Jane Anders. Image: Doctor Who. And a Merry Christmas (or a Happy Friday) to you all!

It’s that kind of party today. The GIF kind.

Contact the author at katharine@io9.com.

Christmas is a time of bringing people together—usually, with copious amounts of food, booze, and gifts. The Gwenpool Holiday Special might sound like a zany stunt comic, focusing on Marvel’s latest female star, but it’s really about togetherness, and uniting Marvel heroes big and small.

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Spoilers ahead for Gwenpool Holiday Special #1, by (big breath here) Charles Soule, Margaret Stohl, Gerry Dugan, Christopher Hastings, Langdon Foss, Juan Gedeon, Danilo S. Beyruth, Gurihiru, Megan Wilson, Tamra Bonvillain, Chris Peter, Travis Lanham, and Clayton Cowles. Phew!

This comic anthology gathers up a disparate mismatch of Marvel characters—from superstars like Ms. Marvel to underloved greats like Patsy Walker and She-Hulk, and of course, the titular Gwenpool—and gives them a sprinkle of holiday cheer. The resulting issue definitely feels like more than the sum of its individual stories.

Weirdly enough, its Gwenpool herself who is the most out of place here, given that she’s the title character, and the focus of the cover. Her story, while fun and a bouncy, interesting introduction to such a weird new character, lacks the Christmas-factor liberally sprinkled over the rest of the book. (Gwen, aka Gwen Poole, comes from an alternate universe where the heroes of Marvel aren’t real, just comic book characters—so she becomes a hired mercenary, thinking she’s just in a fantasy world of make believe.) Gwen’s story stands out in a somewhat awkward way—even if her adventure is a brief jolt of fun action that you won’t really find elsewhere in the issue.

The way it stands out best though, is in the great creative team of Chris Hastings and Gurihiru (the pseudonym for artists Chifuyu Sasaki and Naoko Kawano). Hastings quickly crafts a character that shares some of the ridiculousness of Deadpool, without feeling just like a female Deadpool—and the action has a fun tilt to it thanks to Gurihiru’s wonderful manga-influenced art style. If Gwenpool Holiday Special, overall, is a not-awful version of the Star Wars Holiday Special, Gwenpool’s short story would be like a not-horrifyingly-bad version of the animated interlude that introduced Boba Fett.

Elsewhere, it’s a Christmas-palooza. We’ve got Kamala Khan in “Ms. Grinch”, which offers an interesting take on your typical Christmas story by having Ms. Marvel—Earth’s happiest hero—get grumpy over the holidays. She’s envious of watching her friends celebrate Christmas and Chanukah while her Muslim family just orders pizza like it’s any other day of the year. There’s some interesting introspection, plus the funny family heart-to-hearts that dominate your usual Ms. Marvel fare (Kamala’s mom gets a particularly great line about the importance of stuffed crust pizzas). But the story ultimately has a very Christmassy solution, one that you only really let it get away with because it’s the holidays—and it involves Kamala cathartically punching a robber dressed as Santa Claus.

Because of course it does.

The next story sounds like a recipe for zany wackiness in the style of Gwenpool’s own short—Clint Barton, Kate Bishop, and Deadpool, teaming up to hunt down a Christmas pickpocket—but like Ms. Marvel’s, it goes down the heartwarming Christmas route. And the Santa punching, although this time it’s Clint, dressed as the raggediest Santa there has ever been, doing the punching.

It’s kind of a theme in this book.

But in actuality, it’s a feel-good tale of bringing people together—throughout the short tale Deadpool mucks up Clint’s plans, gets in the way, and makes a general annoyance of himself in a typically Deadpoolian fashion. But when Wade gets turned away from She-Hulk’s big holiday bash (more on that in a bit), the Hawkeyes decide to skip the party, to make sure Deadpool doesn’t spend the night alone, and it’s surprisingly sweet.

She-Hulk’s aforementioned party is what brings the Gwenpool Holiday Special together, though. It’s the thread that intertwines throughout all of these stories—because Jen needs to throw the biggest Christmas party in the world to distract her landlord long enough. Because said landlord has been put under a spell that makes her want to sell up the building, which she rents out pretty much exclusively to powered people like Jen, Howard the Duck, and Patsy Walker. Naturally, such foul magic can only be solved with hardcore Christmas partying.

It’s very Christmassy—in that it’s ridiculous, but with the right amount of sentiment that you adore it anyway. It emphasizes that togetherness that can make the holidays so special, while making some of Marvel’s underappreciated heroes the star. She-Hulk has been sorely missed as a part-time hero/full-time ever since her solo series came to a close, and Patsy—well, her own story is only really just about to begin, with the release of Hellcat #1 this week.

It’s what makes this issue such fun, aside from the silly Christmas trimmings—it’s shining a tinsel-coated light on a corner of Marvel’s New York that’s fresh, vibrant, and rarely the star. Heavy hitters like Storm, Captain Marvel, Thor, and Tony Stark? They’re all background characters, dancing their way into the night. The threat isn’t the end of the world—it’s the end of a community. The villains aren’t monsters, they’re realtors.

Okay so they’re also monsters, but that’s not the point.

It’s an intimate, small scale story, but it’s the ultimate symbol of the season—it’s about joy in the face of adversity, it’s about being together, regardless of who you are. It’s She-Hulk, saving Christmas for her friends, putting smiles on people’s faces. It’s a bit weird—but in the end, it’s a bit wonderful, too.

Everyone loves a good seasonally-appropriate special, and that usually means Christmas. Unless, of course, you’re a science fiction or fantasy story where real Christmas would make no sense. Then you’ve got to come up with something Christmas-like to fill the void.

Type One: The Satirical and Parodical Kind

This is the best kind of fake Christmas—the kind you’re not meant to take seriously. On the satirical end, there’s Discworld’s Hogswatch, which, being Discworld, winks at the similarities between that world and ours. It’s a book that deconstructs and then reconstructs the whole holiday season.

On the other side is the kind of Christmas that is clearly meant to be a joke. Here you have Futurama’s Xmas, where Christmas has changed into a holiday where people have to be inside before sundown to hide from the evil robot Santa Clause, who kills the naughty. Unfortunately, his subroutines recognizes everyone as naughty.

Other examples: Yaksmas, Ren and Stimpy; “A Solstice Carol,” Xena: Warrior Princess; Snowflake Day, Clone High

Type Two: Generic Winter Festival

This is what happens when it just feels weird to create a world which doesn’t have a some sort of winter celebration. This version of fake Christmas usually has only one or two Christmasy things in it, and the only reason we see it as “Christmas” as opposed to any other winter festival from throughout history is because that’s what’s prominent now.

The Belgariad had Erastide, where a play and gift-giving are the things that read as Christmas. Otherwise, the polytheistic religion’s foundation story bears no resemblance to Christmas. Tamora Pierce’s Tortall books spend significant time on Midwinter, a winter solstice holiday with the usual gift-giving and merriment.

Other examples: Winterfair, Vorkosigan Saga; Midwinter Festival, Heralds of Valdemar; Yule, Dragon Lance

Type 3: Literally the same as Christmas, but with a different name

This is the laziest type of fake Christmas: one where everything, down to Santa Clause, is the same. Sometimes it verges on being self-aware, but it’s not quite a full-comedy use. I’m going to give the standard bearer award to Wicked’s Lurlinemas, an Oz holiday which celebrates the birth of Lurline. Complete with gingerbread, snowball fights, gift giving, greeting people with “happy holidays”... it’s literally Christmas. The only thing missing is the color red. In typical Oz fashion, green got the top billing here.

Other examples: Spare Parts, Big Finish Doctor Who; Alvistide, Sealab 2021; Snoggletog, How to Train Your Dragon; Refrigerator Day, Dinosaurs; Hearth’s Warming Eve, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

Type 4: Not really Christmas at all, but tied to Christmas through timing

Why the two of the biggest science fiction franchises both fell prey to this, I do not know. Star Trek: Voyager brought us Prixin, a holiday for family brought to us by everyone’s favorite character, Neelix! And the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special was centered on the Wookie holiday of Life Day. Which was also about family. And actually a little too solemn for the special it appeared in. According to Wookiepedia, Life Day honors the dead and the young, as evidence that life goes on.

Contact the author at katharine@io9.com.

With a new Star Wars movie in theaters, we’re rediscovering our love for that galaxy far, far away. But there are always new ways to rediscover Star Wars, and one of the best is through looking at tributes created by talented artists.

For example, Sketchfab, a place where 3D artists can work and upload animation, just hosted a Star Wars contest. Users came with 3D animated images and scenes from all the Star Wars movies, then a panel of super talented and wonderful judges (which included this writer) checked out the 36 entires and picked their favorites. The results are incredibly cool, and might just kill your afternoon as you play around with them.

If you’re confused about what these are, it’s pretty simple. Either it’s a simple 3D image you can use your mouse to explore, or it’s a scene where you use the arrows to tell a story, and you can also explore all around. It’s gorgeous stuff.

There were two categories, animation and annotation. Here are the winners in each.

Third Place

Feel the Force - Star Wars Contest Entry 2015 by ayhankin on Sketchfab

Star Wars contest 15 ‘The Deliverance of Binks’ by JCulley3D on Sketchfab

Second Place

Star Wars - Journey through the planet core by romainrevert on Sketchfab

Star Wars Contest 2015 by Nikolay_Tsys on Sketchfab

First Place

Naaaaw! - Star Wars by elbriga on Sketchfab

STAR WARS - The Battle of Endor by Deca on Sketchfab

Grand Prize Winner

The Holographic Princess Leia by Kyan0s on Sketchfab

[Sketchfab]

Contact the author at germain@io9.com.

Hellcat’s new comic isn’t just for fans of Patsy “Trish” Walker’s awesome appearance in Jessica Jones. It’s not even particularly for long term fans of Patsy as a character. Patsy Walker, AKA Hellcat! joins a rare breed in the mainstream comic world: It’s a book that’s genuinely for everyone, and a delight to read.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/jessica-jones-...

Spoilers ahead for Patsy Walker, AKA Hellcat! #1, by Kate Leth, Brittney L. Williams, Megan Wilson, Joe Sabino, and Clayton Cowles.

Despite the growing mainstream appeal of the superhero world, most comic book series aren’t really aiming for a particularly broad audience—but there’s a few out there, the likes of Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, or Batgirl, or Ms. Marvel, that offer genuine appeal to adults, teens, and kids alike. This is tough to do, but when it works—and it really works in AKA Hellcat!—it makes for the sort of fun, breezy blast of a comic that you remember from your childhood.

There’s a sort of strange nostalgia in this comic, from Leth’s fantastically cheery writing to Williams and Wilson’s wonderful, almost candy-coated aesthetic. It combines cartoon and manga stylistic influences with a pastel color palette that gives the book a vivid, bold style that leaps off every page.

But for all the nostalgia it invokes for the lighthearted comics of the past, AKA Hellcat is, as Patsy herself calls for in the book, a fresh start. It moves her away from her long, stunningly complex backstory and gives her a new path, a new goal to strive for, and a new cast of characters to integrate with.

That goal? Living a life beyond superheroics. AKA Hellcat! Is a superhero comic that really isn’t about putting on a costume and fighting crime (although that is how Patsy meets her new best friend and room mate, the psychically-powered Ian), but about what happens in between those moments. And those bits haven’t really been going all that well for Patsy. She finds herself homeless and jobless when She-Hulk can no longer afford her services as an investigator, jolting Patsy out of her current status quo.

It’s a clever way to “reboot” the character, but even with Patsy finding herself in new situations, she is still the Patsy that Hellcat fans have loved for years, and tremendous respect is paid to her history and legacy. The sort of inspirational, almost unstoppable peppiness and positivity that defines the lighter side of Trish in Jessica Jones is still there. And the joy she takes in being a superhero, which has been a long time trait in the comics, is there too.

The series even deftly touches on Patsy’s bizarre, arcane history as a romance comic star (Patsy as a character has been around since the 1940s.) We see the return of Tom “Tubs” Hale, a character from the original Patsy comics back, as a bear-ish Brooklyn bookstore owner as a prominent supporting cast member. But it also carries on Marvel’s in-universe retcon of those old comics, as a seeming ongoing source of frustration of Patsy. It speaks to Leth’s masterful scripting that AKA Hellcat can be jam packed with callbacks and acknowledgements of Patsy’s long history, but also make them simple and easy enough to digest that any reader just bought into this first issue because they wanted a bright, fun looking comic.

And AKA Hellcat really is a ton of fun—there’s some great jokes, especially a recurring one featuring She-Hulk getting drinks spilled on her that leads to some fantastic reaction faces. And the premise really is a welcome respite from the sweeping events of Marvel’s “All-New, All-Different”. It’s a joy to read a comic where the final page “shock reveal” isn’t the return of a dead character or a sinister old villain returning, but the revelation that Patsy is going to need a retail job to kickstart her dreams of opening a super-powered temp agency.

If that makes you smile, you owe it to yourself to take a look at Patsy Walker, AKA Hellcat. It’s a joy of a comic—and a bright spot in an area of the Marvel universe that doesn’t have nearly enough light at the moment.

It’s now been over three decades since cyberpunk first exploded, and in that time we’ve seen gorgeous movies, read fascinating books, and seen dozens of offshoots like steampunk (and my new favorite, deco punk) develop. Here are the 21 cyberpunk books you absolutely must read.

The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester

This 1956 novel, originally serialized in four parts in Galaxy magazine, predates the cyberpunk movement by more than twenty years, but nonetheless serves as one of its more important ancestors. With its bleak future, cybernetic body modification and evil megacorporations, The Stars My Destination set up a number of themes that became central to later cyberpunk works.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick

The source material for Blade Runner, which has been inspiring cyberpunk movies and visuals for more than three decades, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is set in a near future (a near future that’s changed, actually, since the book’s publication: originally 1992, later editions set it in 2021) where bounty hunter Rick Deckard hunts fugitive androids. Although it’s less cyberpunk than Blade Runner, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is still an important forerunner.

The Girl Who Was Plugged In, by James Tiptree, Jr.

In this Hugo-award winning 1973 novella, corporations are king and computers allow people to control artificially grown bodies. When deformed seventeen-year-old Philadelphia Burke is chosen to be a “Remote,” she’s given control of a perfect, beautiful fifteen-year-old body named Delphi, and, as Delphi, immediately becomes a celebrity. The Girl Who Was Plugged In is essential reading, both for people interested in cyberpunk and for those interested in discussions about gender and the female body (relevant: James Tiptree, Jr. is the pen name of Alice Sheldon).

Software, by Rudy Rucker

The first book in the Ware Tetralogy, this 1982 novel is part of the first wave of the actual cyberpunk movement. Cobb Anderson is a poor, aging, ex-computer scientist who, many years ago, tried to give robots free will. Now they’ve offered to give him immortality, but, of course, how robots view immortality is a little different than what we may be used to.

Akira, by Katsuhiro Otomo

This hugely influential manga is set in post-apocalyptic Neo-Tokyo, where gangs fight for power, terrorists attack the government, and some people possess psychic abilities. Akira was also adapted into a cyberpunky and much beloved animated film version, and a live action version has been percolating in Hollywood for over a decade (the latest news is that Marco J. Ramirez, who will be the co-showrunner of Daredevil season 2, is writing the script.)

Neuromancer, by William Gibson

Henry Dorsett Case used to be a hacker, before his employer caught him stealing and he was dosed with a drug that made him incapable of accessing the global computer network. Now a mysterious person needs his hacking skills, and promises him a cure in return. The book that defined the sub-genre, this 1984 novel is likely the most essential of the books on this list (it was also the first winner of the science fiction triple crown, taking the Nebula, the Hugo, and the Philip K. Dick Award).

Gibson is, of course, responsible for any number of influential cyberpunk novels, including the rest of the Sprawl Trilogy (of which Neuromancer is the first), the Bridge Trilogy, and the short story collection Burning Chrome.

Frontera, by Lewis Shiner

Also written in 1984, this debut novel from Lewis Shiner is set in a world controlled by corporations, one of which decides to send an expedition to a lost Martian colony to discover and gain ownership of a crucial secret. Corporate control, body augmentation, and other cyberpunk themes blend with golden age elements.

Eclipse, by John Shirley

John Shirley is another writer usually grouped with foundational cyberpunk authors like Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Rucker, and Shiner. Eclipse, the first book in the A Song Called Youth trilogy, is set in a dystopian near future, but with an extra-punky twist. After the Third World War, a multinational police force has taken control, leaving only rock classicist Rick Rickenharp and the rebel group New Resistance to fight back.

The Glass Hammer, by K. W. Jeter

Following a “sprinter” who runs computer chips to the black market and becomes the focus of a new religion, The Glass Hammer is perhaps slightly less famous than many of its cyberpunk comrades. Nonetheless, it’s an early and important work from Jeter, who also includes writing three Blade Runner sequels and coining the phrase “Steampunk”among his accomplishments.

Schismatrix, by Bruce Sterling

Written in 1985, Schismatrix is set amidst a struggle between the Mechanists, a group who believe in cybernetic body modification, and the Shapers, who believe that modifications should be accomplished through genetics and mental training. A classic and important early work from a foundational author.

Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology, edited by Bruce Sterling

Another defining work, Mirrorshades (1986) is a collection of short stories from early and influential cyberpunk authors, including Gibson, Pat Cadigan, Rucker, Greg Bear, Shiner, Shirley, and several more.

Metrophage, by Richard Kadrey

Recently reissued in a deluxe new edition, this dystopian novel by the author of the Sandman Slim series takes place in late 21st-century Los Angeles, where the rich live in unimaginable luxury and everybody else lives in a wasteland of misery. And a small-time drug dealer discovers a strange new plague, and gets drawn into the secret warfare between huge economic blocs.

The Ghost in the Shell, by Masamune Shirow

First published in 1989, The Ghost in the Shell has spawned a ton of iconic cyberpunk artwork, several films (including a live action version scheduled for release in 2017), television shows and even video games. Set in a near future world where people have “cyberbrains” that allow them to interface directly with networks, the manga follows Public Security Section 9, a counter-cyberterrorism organization made up of members specializing in cyber warfare.

Synners, by Pat Cadigan

This book won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and was shortlisted for the Nebula. Cadigan creates a lively, bizarre vision of a world of pervasive brain implants—where the line between the virtual and the “real” is thinner than ever—and populates it with hackers, music-video makers, and rebels. What happens when brain sockets have unexpected consequences?

Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson

This delightful and hugely influential 1992 novel manages to combine Sumerian mythology with cyberpunk elements to create something new and incredibly fun. Set in the near future, Hiro Protagonist is a pizza delivery guy (in a world where pizza delivery is under Mafia control), but he’s also a hacker and the self-proclaimed greatest swordfighter in the world. When he comes upon a drug, Snow Crash, which is experienced both in the virtual-reality Metaverse and the real world, he decides to investigate and embarks on a truly wild journey.

Trouble and Her Friends, by Melissa Scott

Trouble is semi-retired from being a hacker, in a dystopian future where the frontier of cyberspace is being civilized by the forces of law and order—until someone starts impersonating Trouble online, and she has to take matters into her own hands. This is basically a Wild West thriller, set in cyberspace.

Diaspora, by Greg Egan

Written in 1997, Diaspora is set in 2975, by which time humanity has diverged into three different groups: the fleshers, who are biological, the gleisner robots, who are software-based individuals located in artificial bodies, and the citizens, software without bodies who comprise most of the population. The book follows Yatima, a newborn citizen who meets a flesher colony and, when disaster strikes, must try to rescue the species.

Transmetropolitan, by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson

This awesome cyberpunk comic book series (1997-2002) is set sometime in the 23rd century and follows the infamous gonzo journalist Spider Jerusalem as he fights corruption, exposes politicians and generally gets into trouble in the filthy, hedonistic City. A must read in cyberpunk and transhumanism.

Altered Carbon, by Richard Morgan

The first in the series of Takeshi Kovacs novels, in which cyberpunk’s noir tendencies are taken to their most brutal extreme. In the 25th century, the rich never have to die—they just upload their brains to cyberspace and then download them into a new body. But when someone hires Kovacs to solve a murder, except that he winds up uncovering a huge conspiracy.

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, by Cory Doctorow

Most cyberpunk novels feature a nightmarish world of corporate control and extreme wealth disparities—but Doctorow’s groundbreaking book was part of a move to link cyberpunk tropes to a post-scarcity world. So in Doctorow’s future, there’s no more wealth or poverty, and the only scarce resource is social capital, or “whuffie.” Which doesn’t mean you can’t still be broke.

Accelerando, by Charles Stross

This 2005 novel of connected short stories follows three generations of one family as they approach and then pass the technological singularity. Widely praised upon its release, Accelerando won the 2006 Locus (along with the 2010 Estonian SF Award for Best Translated Novel, which I think we can all agree is awesome).

This io9 flashback originally appeared in June 2015.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once advised, “Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.” The world would have been in for a bit of a shock if they’d found themselves at the door of one J.E. Bennett of Fredonia, Texas in 1882. That’s the year he patented the mousetrap pictured above.

Some form of mousetrap has been around since at least the Ancient Greeks: The Battle of Frogs and Mice references a “wooden snare, a destroyer of mice, which they call a trap.” But the classic spring-loaded variety was the brainchild of William C. Hooker, who was awarded the patent in 1894.

Bennett’s 50-caliber model seems to be of the spring-loaded variety, and predates Hooker’s patent by 12 years; I’m guessing it never really caught on. Maybe it was the addition of a “revolver or pistol” attached to the frame people found daunting. He wrote in his patent application that he wanted a trap that could destroy burrowing rodents in particular. He also thought it would make a nifty house alarm: “This invention may also be used in connection with a door or window, so as to kill any person or thing opening the door or window to which it is attached.”

Only in Texas... where the mice live in fear.

[Via Ptak Science Books]

Image: US Patent Office. Public domain.

“Yule Log 2.015” is a collaborative process where a bunch of different artists each make their own yule-log-based short, which are all stitched together into a montage that replaces the traditional video of a burning log.

You can learn more about the project here.

[via Vimeo Staff Picks]

Contact the author at katharine@io9.com.

Okay, seriously NASA, release your staff for the holidays. They’re clearly bored, and when nerds with access to world-class planetary data get bored, bad stuff happens. Case in point? Christmas Pluto.

Hasn’t Pluto suffered enough indignities? First, to have its planetary status revoked, then, to be memeified by the internet? (Have we already forgotten Wrecking Ball Pluto? Kim Kardashian Pluto?) Oh, and let’s not forget Psychedelic Pluto—wait that one was you, NASA. Now this. As Gizmodo’s George Dvorsky put it, “That’s planetary vandalism.”

You’ve done great work this year, making the citizens of Earth fall in love with a wee little ice rock 3 billion miles away. Don’t let it all go for some cheap ho ho hos.

[NASA]

Artist Joey Jacks has set himself a challenge: Every day this month, he’s posting a bit of fan art. His pen-and-ink style is full of humor, and each drawing is jam-packed with the kind of deal only fans can really appreciate.

The top image is a perfect match of subject and artist: it’s the chaos that ensued when the Weasley Twins decided to leave Hogwarts in a hail of practical jokes, from Order of the Phoenix. You can see the rest of Jacks’ work in this project on his tumblr and Instagram.

Here are a few more:

Contact the author at katharine@io9.com.

Cards Against Humanity is known for its original approach to viral marketing, which this year is a particular kind of evil choice: internet voters will decide if an original Picasso is preserved for history, or chopped into 150,000 tiny mementos.

Eight Gifts of Hanukkah is a Cards Against Humanity promotion running during the month of December. 150,000 people registered and sent in money, and in return received a mystery gift every few days.

Examples included pairs of socks and an investment into the Cards Against Humanity US Treasury Inflation Protected Securities Fund, but the weirdest has been saved for gift seven: the company purchased an original linocut of Picasso’s 1962 ‘Head of the Fawn’, and is now polling subscribers to see what happens to it.

Depending on which way the vote goes, the artwork will either go to a Chicago museum, or be laser-cut into 150,000 1.5mm pieces, and mailed out to all the subscribers. Voting opens tomorrow and ends on the 31st. It’s a difficult choice to make: be selfish and get something cool, or sacrifice personal gain for the benefit of art lovers? I know which one I would go for.

[Cards Against Humanity]

There have been some truly strange gallery shows dealing with science-fictional themes in the past several years. But SQRRL, a new show from artist John Russell, which runs until Jan. 10 at the Bridget Donahue Gallery in New York, could just be the weirdest.

The actual art is pretty jarring and strange, judging from the images that are available online. There’s a turtle impaled on a floor-to-ceiling pole, plus some strange paintings of chimeras having some kind of war (see above and below.) But there’s also a website that goes with the gallery show, in which we learn more about Russell’s future history.

SQRRL takes place in a nightmarish future in which transgenic upgrades have gone completely berserk. It’s the story of CarLEee, who lives nearly 200 years and receives 45 “body allocations” from other species. Including a squirrel (hence the name) but also a lot of others.

Russell has created a whole website that goes along with the gallery show, and it explains the whole story of CarLEee, including entries like, “CarLEee’s neighbor/Is called Jalled Hemmings/An accountant/Who works at CCCCCX./He is a tree spider/gorilla.” There are animated gifs, and you really have to see it for yourself. The “footnotes” to this extensive narrative are actually longer than the text, and include lots of discussion of cyborg theorist Donna Haraway and philosopher Luce Irigaray. So get your critical theory hat on, I guess!

The whole thing is just delightfully strange, and looks like a surreal art project crossed with a French comic book, with just a hint of Guardians of the Galaxy. Check out a few more pics from the exhibition below. [via New York Times]

All images via Bridget Donahue Gallery/press site.

Contact the author at charliejane@io9.com and follow her on Twitter @CharlieJane

Wow, we knew from previous reports (“Leto ... sent Margot Robbie [Harley Quinn] a dead rat”) that Jared Leto’s portrayal of the Joker in the upcoming Suicide Squad movie would be unbelievably edgy and raw, but Twitter users @boring_as_heck and @swarthyvillain got ahead of the film’s promotional cycle yesterday and put the real truth out there. Now, thanks to them, we’re wondering if the Joker is even a villain at all, or whether the suits who have turned America into the consumerist society against which the Joker is rebelling are the real villains. Don’t read on if you aren’t ready to have your fucking mind blown.

Follow @boring_as_heck and @swarthyvillain ... if you think you can handle the truth about the nuthouse that is our modern society.

Top image via Youtube

Turns out, the hard shell of a coconut is really, really good at trapping the heat of the molten copper! Because once you fill up the little brown ball with the molten copper, it stays hot forever and brings everything to a boil. What do you get left with once it all cools down? This donut shaped lug of copper.

SPLOID is delicious brain candy. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

We’re anxiously awaiting Elizabeth Hand’s next novel, Hard Light. But in the meantime, did you know she was also a prolific author of tie-in novels? In an article for the Washington Post, she explains how she wrote the novelization of Twelve Monkeys, and that opened some doors.

In particular, it led to Hand writing some X-Files and Millennium books, among others, and then she got an even better offer—to continue a series of YA books starring the 10-year-old Boba Fett. Hand writes:

I loved “Star Wars,” and my 10-year-old son was a huge fan. He had a Boba Fett helmet! How could I say no?

Those books were a delight to write. David Levithan, my editor at Scholastic and himself a successful Y.A. writer, introduced me to Lucasfilm’s Jonathan Rinzler. They both offered encouragement and very little in the way of restrictions. With each story, I was given a title and a character or place that had to come into play: Aurra Sing; Jabba the Hutt; Mace Windu; the planet Aargau (which existed in the “Star Wars” universe only as a name, so I got to create an entire planet’s history, ecology and culture).

Otherwise, I pretty much had free rein to create the plot, characters and young Boba’s own sensibility. Boba Fett grows up to be a bounty hunter, the nemesis of Han Solo, but as a mom, I felt I had a responsibility to show him as a resourceful, sensitive, sometimes frightened orphan who overcame his fears and even made a few friends his own age.

The best part is where she describes the fan mail she got, including one kid who had to write a book report about a great American—and it was down to Thomas Jefferson, or Elizabeth Hand. [Washington Post]

Contact the author at charliejane@io9.com and follow her on Twitter @CharlieJane

This is the time of year for reflection, for asking the big important questions. Like, which B-movie exploitation riff on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is better: Jacqueline Hyde or Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde?

Above is a clip from Jacqueline Hyde, a beloved direct-to-DVD movie from Rolfe Kanefsky, the science fiction softcore porn auteur whose work we’ve discussed before. In Jacqueline Hyde, Jackie (Gabriella Hall) discovers her grandfather had a secret formula that allows you to transform yourself—and she uses it to turn herself into a supermodel (Blythe Metz). But of course, there’s a terrible price to pay. Or something.

Below is a clip from Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde, a 1995 movie that I actually saw in the theaters. Tim Daly is a scientist who unexpectedly discovers a formula that turns him into Sean Young... but his female version is not only beautiful, but evil. Because this is the mid-1990s, there is A) a lot of stupid gender politics, and B) TONS of morphing, because morphing was new and shiny.

Below is a clip where Ms. Hyde seduces Jekyll’s boss, played by Stephen Tobolowsky. Warning: Clip is NSFW for naked breasts. Also contains horrendous “gay/trans panic” humor, and Tobolowsky saying “Mr. Monkey wants to play.”

So which is better? It’s so hard to decide!

This is almost as good as the time we compared The Witches of Breastwick with The Bare Wench Project.

Just to make things more complicated, here’s a clip from 1971’s Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, which is basically the same idea as Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde except made by Hammer Studios:

So who wins? Only YOU can decide!

Charlie Jane Anders is the author of All The Birds in the Sky, coming in January from Tor Books. Follow her on Twitter, and email her.