In 1922, eccentric magazine publisher Hugo Gernsback decided that the world needed a 1,000-foot tall concrete monument to electricity. Gernsback imagined that this monument might last for thousands of years, and rather than some static behemoth stuck in time, the interior of his monument would be constantly changed to reflect the technological advances of each new generation.

Gernsback’s article in the October 1922 issue of Science and Invention magazine explained why electricity was worthy of a monument. Interestingly, he saw it as a message to future generations that even if our civilization should be wiped out by war or natural disasters, we were still able to accomplish something great at one time.

In connection with our editorial of this month, we show on this page a monument dedicated to the age in which we are living. Electricity, more than anything else, has made our present civilization what it is, and if this civilization should be wiped out by war or some other cataclysm, nothing would remain to tell what Electricity did for the race during the past century.

Before the Egyptians built their first pyramid they probably foresaw that unless they built something of a tremendous size it would not stand the ravages of man and Nature. Hence the size and form were chosen in such a way as to make it last for practically all time.

Gernsback explained that this monument would look like a gigantic electrical generator, 1,000 feet tall. By comparison, the Statue of Liberty is just 305 feet tall, and the Empire State Building (which was almost a decade away from being built in 1930) isn’t that much taller than the proposed monument, at just 1,250 feet if you don’t count its spire.

When we therefore propose to build a gigantic monument to Electricity, we have the same objects in mind. On some plateau we could erect an electrical generator, molded in concrete, 1,000 feet high. Molded of the finest concrete, such a monument would last for a thousand years. It would probably not be affected by the weather and the climate, and it is doubted whether it could be easily destroyed by any savage race that might come after us.

In the inside passages, along the walls, could be inscribed, in diagrams and otherwise, electrical fundamentals, from the first static machine down to the latest radio developments. As new inventions come about, these can be inscibed from year to year.

If the entire electrical industry would think well of such a plan, a monument of this kind could be built without taxing any one concern a great amount. It would be a lasting tribute to our race, and to the progress that is exemplified by Electricity.

Gernsback doesn’t suggest where such a monument might be built, but judging by the illustration, it could very well be in Smalltown, U.S.A. The illustration is by Frank R. Paul, who would help define the 1920s and ‘30s pulp sci-fi era’s aesthetic. Four years later, in 1926, Gernsback began publishing Amazing Stories, the first magazine ever devoted solely to science fiction. Amazing Stories featured countless covers and story illustrations by Frank R. Paul, whose most famous illustration for the magazine appeared in 1927 for a reprint of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds.

This post originally appeared at Smithsonian.com.

Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight came out almost eight years ago. That’s so long! But even though it’s box office dominance feels quaint by today’s standards, it’s still fantastic, and these posters will remind you why.

First up, here’s The Dark Knight by the stellar Laurent Durieux! What you see above is the variant, a 36 x 24-inch screenprint in an edition of 225. It costs $90. Here’s the regular version:

That’s a 24 x 36 inch screen print in an edition of 425. It costs $60.

Those both go on sale at a random time Thursday by following @MondoNews. At the same time, this will be on sale.

That’s a 12 x 16-inch giclee of the Joker by Mike Mitchell costing $55. It’s a timed edition, so as long as you order one by Saturday, January 9, at 11:59pm CST, you’ll get one.

Contact the author at germain@io9.com.

Proudly schlocky indie studio Troma Entertainment built its rep on cult curios like The Toxic Avenger and Tromeo and Juliet, the latter of which was co-scripted by a pre-Guardians of the Galaxy James Gunn. But Troma’s latest achievement is supporting “the first prehistoric slasher film”—and its teenage writer-director.

BC Butcher, which stars O.J. Simpson trial “celebrity” Kato Kaelin, sounds very much within Troma’s typical wheelhouse, per an official press release from the company, which describes it as “a campy cave-sploitation horror-comedy”:

The story is prompted by an act of dissension by a member of an all female cave-tribe leads to her sacrifice and mutilation by her fellow tribeswomen. When a beast of mythical lore uncovers the body he falls in love at first sight and what follows is his homicidal rampage to avenge the death of his corpse-bride.

However. It was directed by Kansas Bowling, who is 19 now but was just 17 when she shot the movie! Bowling sounds like a pretty atypical kid:

She is a California native who gleans her film inspiration from her early exposure to Troma Films like, “Class of Nuke ‘Em High”, “ Nightbeast” and “Waitress” as well as 1960’s fashion and music, Barbara Bach, Raquel Welch and The Ramones. Her sartorial instincts and fresh, educated perspective lend informed wit, unique art-direction and hip styling to her work.

Bowling’s vision for “B.C. Butcher” was for a film shot on 16 mm film and the set was her father’s backyard in Topanga Canyon, California. The film, albeit expensive, was an artistic decision Kansas refused to compromise and was influenced by her interest in the aesthetic of the original version of, “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, which was shot on the same 16 mm daylight stock.

The release dubs Bowling the first of Troma prez Lloyd Kaufman’s inductees into “The Troma Institute for Gifted Youth,” which means we may see more young talents getting their start through the studio. Who knows? The next James Gunn could be out there, waiting to cut his or her teeth on the next backyard exploitation epic. There is a catch, though; to see BC Butcher, which is out January 8, you’ll need to be a subscriber to TromaNow, the company’s video-on-demand service.

Victorians loved to communicate via calling card. It was the proper, dignified way to communicate with other people. But wouldn’t you know, young people just had to mess it up. Check out these oh so risque Victorian flirtation cards.

Calling cards came into widespread use in the mid-1800s, when the middle class was trying to acquire a bit of an upper class finish, and when it became feasible for everyone to print up and carry around personalized bits of paper. They lingered for longer than you expect. One woman mentions in a memoir that her grandmother carried calling cards into the 1940s. The cards could be an elaborate communication device. Folding down different corners of the card let the receiver know when the giver would be in for a visit, or when they would be away. There were mourning cards, cards for different celebrations, and of course dance cards. All of them were a kind of social gauntlet—a formal way of getting acquainted and keeping in touch.

Which makes these so surprising.

These were Victorian flirtation cards. Their collector, Alan Mays, holds them up as an example that Victorians weren’t as uptight as we imagine them to be—especially young ones.

These were a cheeky way to get the attention of a woman which looked perfectly respectable.

Lots of them had little poems on them, like this.

Others were steamier, although with a lot of cheesiness mixed in.

Is it me or does “squeezemburg” sound like a town that treats dermatological conditions?

This one is short and sweet and provides a nice precedent of textspeak. Although why does an oven mitt mean “no”?

Others cards were surprisingly thought out.

It has the usual elaborate language. The chromo tintype on the right implies, of course, that the guy’s rival is an ass. What’s interesting is the Hamlet reference. Hamlet uses the line “Gaze on this picture, then on that,” when he’s upbraiding his mother, Gertrude, for marrying his father’s brother just after his father died. The speech goes on to heap praises on the father and condemn the brother.

And then there’s this:

Gee, thanks. Of the many cards out there, this is the only one that has an implied insult to the woman. It’s proof positive that the concept of “negging” is way older than modern pick-up manuals make it out to be.

A few suggestions for other “neg” cards:

“Dear lady, may I escort you home? I cannot help but notice that you have the bright pink cheeks of a consumptive foundling.”

“What good dress sense you have. Your corset must be the most well-built structure I’ve ever seen.”

“You’re no Victoria, but you have her plumpness, so you’ll do.”

[Alan Mays / Flickr]

Images Courtesy of Alan Mays

Hey, remember how boring season two of The Walking Dead was? All those interminable scenes at Herschel’s farm? It turns out the real drama was happening behind the scenes, according to a recently unsealed deposition by original TWD showrunner Frank Darabont, which practically drips with contempt for his former bosses at AMC.

The deposition was taken as part of Darabont’s lawsuit against AMC, which claimed that the channel withheld profits of the show’s second season from him. As THR explains, Darabont was fired while the season was being filmed, so AMC gave him financial credit for 75 percent of the season, and the equivalent portion of the profits.

However, Darabont claimed—and Glen Mazzara, his assistant turned TWD showrunner #2 corroborates—he worked on all the season’s episodes prior to filming, and thus deserved his showrunner’s pay for the season’s entirety. While it may sound like mundane greed on both sides, remember, this is from Darabont’s deposition, making it his sworn testimony—indicating the ex-showrunner presumably felt the facts would back him up.

Honestly, the bigger bombshell from the deposition might be that AMC somehow, for some reason, decided to cut the show’s budget from $3.4 million per episode to $3 mil. This is absolutely bonkers, because even by season two The Walking Dead was a ratings juggernaut, and must have been immensely profitable for the network. Regardless of what Darabont was owed for his work, the fact that AMC wanted to short-change its most successful series—and one of the most popular series on all of TV—is mind-boggling.

There’s actually a lot more fun (i.e., scathing) details about the AMC execs to discover at the link. Meanwhile, it’s worth remembering that whatever the reason, season two of The Walking Dead was indeed pretty bad—and the show has gotten pretty good ever since Scott Gimple took over at showrunner.

It could be that AMC is solely to blame, and/or maybe Darabont was stretched too thin during filming. Or maybe, as was rumored, Darabont was extremely difficult to work with, and Gimple just gets along better with the network and creator Robert Kirkman. Or maybe at some point the AMC executives realized how insane it was to needlessly hamstring the budget of their most popular, profitable show, and are no longer pulling such financial shenanigans. We don’t know!

All we know for sure is that as per usual, the biggest dangers on The Walking Dead aren’t the zombies, but the living—whether they’re in front of the camera or behind it.

Contact the author at rob@io9.com.

Steven Universe is never afraid to turn its deft characterization skills to characters other than Steven himself, leading to the entire cast being incredibly well-fleshed out. But the show is always at it best when it turns its hand to Connie, and through her, the growth of Steven as a character as well.

Spoilers ahead, of course!

Yes, even though “Steven’s Birthday” is about Steven celebrating his 14th birthday—and a nice acknowledgment of the long-running question of just how Steven ages as a half-human/half-gem hybrid—it’s really about how Steven perceives himself through the eyes of other people. Whether it’s the Gems, whom he has to prove himself as a fighter and one of their team, or to his father and Connie, whom he has to both protect and be a son and friend to. As someone who wants to do good, Steven thrives on seeing that he has a positive impact on other people as a sign of his own personal growth.

That’s the whole conceit of this episode, when Steven tries to artificially “stretch” himself into a teenage form using his gem powers—not because it’s his birthday so he feels like he needs a growth spurt, but to show the people around him, especially Connie (who he overhears seemingly freaking out at his weird aging process), how much he’s grown. But what Steven doesn’t realize is that Connie is so understanding, and close to him, that she doesn’t care about his appearance, as long as she’s still his friend, even if he isn’t human like her.

She doesn’t get weirded out when he’s taller than her after his growth, and when things go haywire and he accidentally reverts into a baby, she promises to look after him. Even her relief at his return to normal form (with the presence of a lone facial hair as proof of his actual physical aging) is tempered by the fact that she wants to stay by Steven’s side no matter how weird things get. All it took was a reminder of what a great friend Connie is to him for Steven to get himself back on track. D’aaw.

Also, this was an episode just packed with little gags, too. My favorite: Greg sneakily pulling out a pastiche of Estelle’s 2008 album Shine from his record collection, only for Garnet (who is voiced by Estelle) to disapprove:

Ugh, this show is so cute sometimes I think I have a toothache after watching it.

John Barrowman and his sister Carole have a history of teaming up to work on new stories for characters Barrowman has played in the past (including several stories about his Doctor Who/Torchwood hero Jack Harkness). Now the duo are turning their talents to Barrowman’s charming Arrow villain, Malcolm Merlyn.

Announced during an interview with TV Insider, Arrow: The Dark Archer is a digital comic series set between the third and fourth seasons of Arrow, following Merlyn as he flashes back—of course there’s flashbacks, it’s Arrow!—to how he became the mysterious Dark Archer that menaced Oliver Queen in his early days as the Arrow of a vaguely viridian hue.

With art from Daniel Sampere, The Dark Archer is a digital-first comic for DC, with 12 chapters releasing bi-weekly through a host of digital comics retailers, as well as DC themselves through the DC app. Following the series’ conclusion, all 12 chapters will release in a single print collection.

The Barrowman’s past forays into fiction together have been pretty decent, and both have experience in comic book storytelling as well, thanks to their work on the Torchwood comic in the past. Plus, let’s be honest, who doesn’t need more Malcolm Merlyn in their lives?

Arrow: The Dark Archer begins next week, on January 13th.

[TV Insider]

We’ve been eagerly following the rise of Satanic TV, thanks to new shows like Lucifer and Damien. But it turns out there’s room for another sinister trend: cults! A just-announced, Jake Gyllenhaal-backed drama for A&E joins upcoming Hulu series The Path in delving into this scary subject.

The Gyllenhaal project is as-yet untitled, but it will be an anthology series and its first season will draw inspiration from a real-life case: Peoples Temple leader Jim Jones, the magnetic preacher who led his followers from San Francisco to Guyana. In jungle-isolated “Jonestown,” nearly 1,000 people died in a 1978 mass murder-suicide, including elderly church members, children, and a U.S. Congressman who was investigating the commune on behalf of constituents who were concerned about family members who might be trapped in the cult.

Gyllenhaal, who is making his TV producing debut with the series, told Variety:

“Jim Jones is a complex character — one who has found his way into the collective unconscious. We want to focus on the undeniable magnetism of zealots and the danger of that kind of charisma. A notion not only pertinent to cult leaders but to the geo-political climate of today.”

Further details, including casting (suggestion: Gene Jones, who was so eerie as a Jones-like figure in Ti West’s The Sacrament) are TBD; the timing of the series announcement suggests it’s building off the current cultural obsession with true crime, in the wake of Making of a Murderer and its ilk, in addition to being part of the emerging cult craze.

As for the latter, The Path—which stars Hannibal’s Hugh Dancy and Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul, and is about a fictional cult led by Dancy’s character— premieres March 30 on Hulu.

Top photo: “Jim Jones in front of the International Hotel” by Nancy Wong. Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons.

The next book to be adapted off your bookshelf is Terry Brooks’ The Sword of Shannara Trilogy, which kicked off this week on MTV. We liked how it started off, and it’s a dense, entertaining introduction to the world.

The first episode is an exercise in worldbuilding exposition. The recent spate of bookshelf-to-television stories such as Game of Thrones and The Expanse have had to go through the same sort of thing in recent years, introducing their characters and worlds in just about an hour, without turning off the audience.

The episode moves at a pretty fast pace: There’s the Ellcrys tree is holding back a horde of demons in a post-human future/fantasy world. There are amazing shots of New Zealand, history, trolls, and fantastic cities that channel Lord of the Rings more than they do Game of Thrones. There’s critics out there that’ll lay the charge that this sort of thing is too complicated for regular television, with a ton of characters, storylines, and so forth, but this is the perfect show for binge watching (indeed, MTV has put up the first four episodes for subscribers on its website), where viewers can immerse themselves completely in the world and story.

The biggest problem with this episode is that the story takes a long time to really get moving, when Wil Ohmsford and Allanon realize that they need the elfstones that Wil possessed to help save the tree. Everything to start is set up, and worldbuilding, and it takes a little while to get running.

Upon returning to city of Arborlon, Wil and Allannon find that all of the Chosen have been killed, save for Amberle, a Princess of the Elves. Their quest is first to help save the tree, and in order to do that, they need to find Amberle. There’s some other behind-the-scenes politicking going on as well, not to mention some demons looking menacing as they’re resurrected.

There’s a lot going on in this episode. MTV managed to pack a considerable amount of material into the pilot: a whole host of storylines and characters with backstories. It’ll be worth watching the episode more than once to pick up everything that’s going on—and fortunately, Shannara is plenty of fun to watch.

Like calling those two-wheeled, self-balancing monstrosities hoverboards, the term ‘wireless charging’ has been incorrectly used to describe many technologies that really aren’t. But for the first time ever, today I held an iPhone in my hand that was charging without a single cable connected to it, and I was wowed.

The Cota transmitter technology that makes this legitimate wireless charging technology work was developed by a company called Ossia who is planning to get it into consumer’s hands by the end of the year. Let that sink in a little. Before 2016 is up, true wireless charging in your home will be a reality. Who cares about autonomous cars anymore?

So how does Ossia’s wireless charging system work? It might take a while to wrap your head around the technology, but it’s remarkably clever. Devices that are able to charge from the Cota base station, which looks not unlike a glowing garbage can packed full of thousands of tiny antennas, need to be upgraded with a built-in RF receiving chip that doubles as a beacon.

Having Ossia’s Cota chip built into a device isn’t completely essential for it to be able to charge wirelessly, but it’s a more elegant solution. A smartphone without the chip inside would need to live inside a bulky wireless charging case, which isn’t exactly ideal. Ossia is working towards further miniaturing the receiver chip so that smartphone makers are able to squeeze into their hardware, but it’s still good to know that older devices can be upgraded with wireless charging powers through a case.

One hundred times every second that Cota chip sends out an RF signal like a homing beacon that’s picked up by the thousands of tiny antennas inside the larger Cota base station. Every last one of those tiny antennas detects that RF ping from a slightly different angle, and the base station responds by then sending wireless RF power back out in the exact same direction. Those wireless RF power signals take the exact same path as the original RF signals from the device did, just in the opposite direction, ensuring they arrive exactly where they’re needed to efficiently charge a device.

It’s complex stuff, but what’s most important is that it works. The Cota hardware that Ossia plans to get into consumer’s hands later this year has a range of about 10 feet, enough to wirelessly charge devices in a single room. But the company eventually plans to follow-up with larger base station units that are capable of blanketing an entire home with wireless power.

Are there compromises that come with the first generation of wireless charging? Definitely. Charging your phone wirelessly with just a single watt of power being beamed through the air means it will take up to four times as long as it does when charging with a cable.

And only a single device can be receiving power at one time. Through an app and some intelligent back-and-forth communications with multiple devices in range, the base station can triage which devices need charging first, and will automatically juggle between them based on their power demands.

So don’t expect a quick charging turnaround if you’ve got a stack of phones in need of power in a room. But to demonstrate other useful applications of the technology, Ossia has also developed a AA battery that will stay perpetually-charged as long as its within range of the Cota base station.

Imagine never having to change the batteries in your TV remote ever again. Is that enough to justify the system once it’s finally available? Probably not for the average consumer, but if you’re an early adopter, this is without a doubt one of the coolest technologies to arrive in the past decade.

[Ossia]

Gizmodo’s on the ground in Las Vegas! Follow all of our 2016 CES coverage here.

Gizmodo Young People Used These Absurd Little Cards to Get Laid in the 19th Century | Gawker The New New Bristol Palin Pregnancy Conspiracy Theory, Explained | Jalopnik Conan, Ice Cube and Kevin Hart Teaching A Student Driver Is A Hilarious Shitshow | Lifehacker How Much You Have to Make to Be in the Top 1% of Your State |

Black holes are some of the most powerful but difficult to comprehend objects in the universe, operating mysteriously and practically invisibly out of the reach of our sight. Until now, that is.

Scientists have long used X-ray or gamma ray telescopes to figure out where black holes may lie—but a new study suggests that we could accomplish the same thing with nothing more than a standard, optical 8-inch telescope. It could feasibly even put these observations within the realm of backyard astronomy.

So how is it done? A new paper published this afternoon in Nature by researchers from Kyoto University, space agency JAXA, Hiroshima University, the Rochester Institute of Technology, and RIKEN laboratory uses a nearby black hole, V404 Cygni (and its recent flickering outburst) to explain how it’s done.

So about that how question. One common kind of black hole is called an X-ray binary, caused by a dead or exploded star sucking in everything around it. This kicks out massive amounts of X-ray radiation, but it turns out it also kicks out some low-level light:

Top image: V404 in action, Micheal Richmond/ Rochester Institute of Technology; Lower image: X-ray chart via Mariko Kimura / Kyoto University

Here’s the footage of V404 that shows exactly what that outburst looks like, through the eye of a telescope:

This footage was taken by Rochester Institute of Technology’s observatory—which is several magnitudes more powerful than what an amateur would have on hand. But researchers note in their study that all that would be needed for these observations is a telescope of 20 centimeters or more. That’s about 8-inches, well within reach of the backyard astronomer.

Of course, not every black hole is a suitable candidate for Earth-based observation. For starters, lead author on the paper Mariko Kimura told Gizmodo that the black hole binary would need to be close enough to Earth that it could be caught by our telescope. Beyond that though, there are some other obstacles that may make many of these hard to observe.

“If black hole binaries are far from Earth,” Kimura told us, “optical light from near them disappears in its long journey to Earth because it is absorbed into interstellar matter. Also, the number of black-hole binaries showing outbursts (the phenomena that the objects becomes more than 100 times brighter) is little and they undergo outbursts once in several decades. We need to get the information of outbursts as soon as possible when their outbursts occur in order to see the activity near a black hole.”

Beyond the opportunity to actually, physically see the results of a black hole in action, though, this study could also do something else. Kimura also told Gizmodo that she hopes that the results can also eventually be used to tell us more about how radiation energy moves around black holes and to explain more about the behavior of black holes that sit at the very center of galaxies, perhaps even our own.

Follow the author at @misra

[Nature]

Jane Lynch is one of our comedy gods, so it’s too bad her new TV show Angel From Hell is kind of a bust. (Although it could get better.) Luckily, there’s one hilarious scene in the first episode, and you can already watch it right now.

I was actually planning on posting the above clip after the episode aired on Thursday, saying “here’s the only bit of the first episode of Angel From Hell you need to watch.” But CBS obligingly posted it already. Sadly, I have watched the first two episodes of Angel From Hell, and.... it’s kind of a misfire. Jane Lynch is so amazing that I would watch her read the iTunes licensing agreement, but she’s currently the only good thing in this show.

In Angel From Hell, Lynch plays an angel, who’s kind of an alcoholic, profane wise-ass. And even though she’s supposed to be someone’s guardian angel, watching from afar and never revealing herself, she chooses to reveal herself to Dr. Allison, a dermatologist who needs help... doing something or other. To be honest, after two episodes, I’m still unclear on why Dr. Allison’s problems are so desperately in need of divine intervention. She mostly has the usual bland sitcom problems that everybody in half-hour single-camera comedies have. The supporting cast is uniformly dull—I noticed they cut out a subplot from the original pilot involving Allison’s dad having a younger girlfriend that she disapproves of. The jokes are almost entirely one-note and cookie-cutter, and any time Lynch is off screen, the show becomes kind of a snooze.

But Lynch is so fantastic, she almost makes the whole thing work. And maybe in a year or two—if this show does as well as some other CBS comedies and gets to stick around—it’ll randomly become watchable. In the meantime, please enjoy the one funny bit from the pilot. [clip via IGN]

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

Disney has already made a fortune off reinventing animated villains like Maleficent in live-action. And now, the latest of these films may have found its star. Emma Stone is in talks to play Cruella de Vil in a live-action 101 Dalmatians prequel called Cruella.

Written by Kelly Marcel (50 Shades of Grey, Saving Mr. Banks) Cruella is described as an origin story for the character whom we see in 101 Dalmatians as a well-to-do woman who wants to kill the dogs to create some cutting-edge fashion. You have to assume this movie will make her more sympathetic, and maybe show what she has against dogs in the first place.

Though there isn’t a director yet attached to Cruella, Disney reportedly wants to get it filming by the end of the year. Having Stone on board should help that.

De Vil was previously brought to live-action when Glenn Close played the character in a 1996 remake of the original film.

[The Hollywood Reporter]

Contact the author at germain@io9.com.

Sometimes you see the work of an artist and you just want to stare at it for a long, long time. Such is the art of Joe Eisner, whose digital images make mesmerizing, kaleidoscopic work of everyday items, landscapes, and God knows what else.

What exactly are we looking at? Does it matter? Not all all. We just know these abstractions are gorgeous.

Here’s a small sampling of the beautiful work.

See many more at the below link.

[Joe Eisner]

Contact the author at germain@io9.com.

It’s a fascinating question. Over at Charles Stross’ blog, he responds to a reader question: What would a technological society look like without written language? And could such a thing even happen?

Stross’ answer: probably not. After a certain point, a lot of things that we think of as necessary for an advanced technological civilization would require writing. Including laws, economic systems, and just the storage of large amounts of technical knowledge. (Although imagine if there was a species whose memory and lifespan were good enough that you could explain a machine to a member of that species, and they’d keep the knowledge alive, single-handed, for thousands of years.) Assuming the constraints of human minds, Stross says, we’d be lucky to reach a renaissance level of tech and mathematics without writing.

There is one possible out, however: If this hypothetical illiterate society was able to develop sound-recording technology (like wax cylinders) it might be able to store a lot of information without the written word.

The whole discussion is well worth checking out. [Charlie’s Diary]

Top image: Batman Adventures #5, art by Ty Templeton.

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.

After years of thinking the iconic binary superstar Eta Carinae was unique, astronomers have found five possible twins in other galaxies. With more examples to study, it’s looking good we might someday understand why Eta Carinae exploded so beautifully in the 1840s.

Between 1838 and 1845, the binary stars of Eta Carinae brightened then erupted. The system flung ten to forty times the mass of the Sun into space. The result was the gorgeous Homunculus Nebula, a twin-lobed shell of gas and dust. The still-expanding shroud is unique in our galaxy as far as we know. The system is the brightest and biggest within 10,000 light-years, making it relatively easy to observe. And yet for all our attention to detail, we don’t know exactly what triggered the cataclysmic event.

Large stars are inherently rare, and catching a star at just the right moment to watch it explode is even more rare. Astronomers Rubab Khan and George Sonneborn at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and Scott Adams and Christopher Kochanek at Ohio State were convinced they could find more examples if they just looked hard enough. After diving deep into the archives from the Hubble and Spizter space telescopes looking for similar systems, the astronomers found five suspected matches to Eta Carinae scattered in distant galaxies.

The trick was to look in both optical and infrared wavelengths. Dust dims the massive stars’ light while re-radiating that energy as heat. This means the team was hunting for stars that were dim in the optical wavelength captured by Hubble, while increasing brightness in infrared as seen by Spitzer.

The first survey of searching seven galaxies between 2012 and 2014 was futile, finding nothing in the same class as Eta Carinae. But they uncovered similar less massive, less luminious stars that were still scientifically interesting, although they weren’t the intended target.

The second search was more successful. The survey uncovered a candidate twin to Eta Carinae in NGC 6946, M101, and M51, galaxies between 18 and 26 million light-years away. The nearest galaxy also holds the the largest number of potential twins: spiral galaxy M83 is just 15 million light-years away.

But we’re going to need to wait to study these possible twins in greater detail. The James Webb Space Telescope will be ten times more powerful than Spitzer, and carries an instrument sensitive in just the right wavelength to catch Eta Carinae’s peak output. Once it launches in 2018, the new space telescope will be able to confirm if any of the suspected twins are echoes of the iconic pair.

[Discovery of Five Candidate Analogs for η Carinae in Nearby Galaxies]

Top image: Eta Carinae, the explosion that triggered the search for more. Credit: NASA

Contact the author at mika.mckinnon@io9.com or follow her at @MikaMcKinnon.

We’re living in an exciting era for fantasy literature, with a lot of really interesting approaches to magical worldbuilding. But I’ve still never read anything quite like Kai Ashante Wilson’s novella Sorcerer of the Wildeeps, which was part the first batch of Tor.com’s new line of short novels recently. [Full disclosure: Tor is also my publisher.]

In Sorcerer of the Wildeeps, a team of mercenaries gets hired to protect a caravan of merchants traveling towards the famed city of Olorum. There’s just one problem: They have to travel through a dangerous, magical wilderness called the Wildeeps, through which there’s only one safe path, an enchanted road. And there’s some kind of horrid creature, that’s sort of a tiger and sort of a wizard, stalking travelers who dare to pass through the Wildeeps.

The main character of the book is Demane, whom everybody calls Sorcerer even though he hates that nickname—and he does have magical powers, after a fashion. The leader of the company is Captain Isa Johnny, whom everybody calls Captain, and Demane and the Captain have a relationship that goes far beyond leader and second-in-command, even though they can never acknowledge it publicly. But it’s foreshadowed from early on that to get their men through the Wildeeps, Demane may have to embrace his magical heritage and stop being entirely human.

A synopsis of Wildeeps doesn’t entirely do it justice, however. A lot of the meat of this novella has to do with the everyday lives of the men in the mercenary party. Wilson spends a lot of time showing what it’s actually like to travel with a caravan, providing enough details and enough character-centric moments to let you feel the grime and sweat of their existence. A bunch of the other mercenaries are described vividly enough to make you feel like they’re at least acquaintances.

What’s really unusual about Wildeeps, though, is the way it’s written. The language is a weird blend of very fancy literary writing, Martin-esque fantasy prose, and hip-hop slang, often smushed together in the same sentence. This weird mish-mash of styles should be jarring, or distracting, but instead the result is strangely intense and immersive, in part because Wilson infuses his hybrid style with a great deal of emotion. It’s so literary, it becomes pulpy.

And meanwhile, even though this feels very much like a Fritz Leiber-inspired sword-and-sorcery world, every now and then Wilson drops hints about creatures traveling faster-than-light by leaving their bodies, and a 24th chromosome, and other weird bits of super-science. It’s clear that the backstory of this world, which Wilson only gives us glimpses of, includes some kind of advanced scientific civilization whose works now appear to be magic to those living in it.

The bond between Demane and the Captain is at the center of the story, and it has all the makings of a great relationship story. If it never quite becomes enough of a fully-drawn relationship for us to obsess about in that way, it’s mostly a reflection of the world that Wilson is writing about—one in which the comradeship among men at arms subsumes all other bonds, and there are certain things that nobody talks about.

And in any case, Sorcerer of the Wildeeps is a really fun, exciting story about the kind of fighters that most fantasy epics rarely dwell on—the mercs in the gutter, who are just fighting for gold and dying in often completely pointless fashions. It’s pretty short, but might still take you a while to read because you’ll be marveling at all of that lovely prose, and also getting caught up in each moment of filthy, bloody adventure. It’s great to see a new story that shows that fantasy still has some really fascinating places to go.

http://www.amazon.com/Sorcerer-Wilde...

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.

A modern remake of Fantastic Voyage has had a not-so-fantastic voyage through the Hollywood system. Several writers and directors have taken a crack at the project, which will be produced by James Cameron, and now another one is up to bat: Guillermo del Toro.

The Hollywood Reporter says del Toro is in talks to develop and direct the film, which follows a group of scientists who are shrunken down and go on an adventure inside the human body. David Goyer (The Dark Knight) wrote the latest script and Cameron is still on board to produce.

Del Toro was supposed to direct Pacific Rim 2 after his latest, Crimson Peak, but when that was shelved, he reportedly began working on a mysterious smaller project. Whether that’s still happening, would happen before Fantastic Voyage, or how the scheduling will work is still also a mystery. The director will certainly have lots of input on the script and design before production could happen, so it’s very possible he could squeeze another movie in between.

Over the past several years, directors like Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum), Louis Leterrier (Incredible Hulk), Paul Greengrass (Bourne Supremacy) and Roland Emmerich (Independence Day) have all had a shot at the project. Hugh Jackman was even rumored for the lead when Levy was attached. But of all of those names, del Toro is undoubtedly the most exciting. His wonderfully disgusting vision would pair nicely with this science-driven, potential studio tentpole.

The original Fantastic Voyage was released in 1966, directed by Richard Fleischer.

[The Hollywood Reporter]

Contact the author at germain@io9.com.

The iconic horror anthology series Tales From the Crypt is coming back to TV from one of our most polarizing filmmakers. M. Night Shyamalan will produce the reboot as part of new horror-centric block that’s coming to TNT.

Shyamalan will curate the two-hour block’s combination of long and short form programming, with Tales from the Crypt being the centerpiece.

“I couldn’t be more excited to be teaming up with Kevin Reilly, Sarah Aubrey and the entire TNT team in this unique endeavor,” Shyamalan said in a news release. “To be part of such a beloved brand like Tales From the Crypt, something I grew up watching, and to also have the chance to push the boundaries of genre television as a whole, is an inspiring opportunity that I can’t wait to dive into.” Other shows are expected to be announced in the coming months.

Though it began in other mediums, Tales from the Crypt became a household name when it ran from 1989 through 1996 on HBO. It had legions of fans who not only loved the show’s host, the Cryptkeeper, but its twisted tales of gore and fear.

[Hollywood Reporter]

Contact the author at germain@io9.com.