A world ravaged by climate change is hard to imagine—but that world could be in our future, unless we do a better job of imagining it now. So we’re lucky that some of our most talented authors have tackled the challenge of depicting an environmental apocalypse.

There’s a whole genre of fiction taking on the literary world. Call it “climate fiction,” “eco-fiction,” or “cli-fi”—or don’t label it at all, if you prefer. This emerging genre features worlds like our own and futures not-too-distant, where a carbon-loaded atmosphere has caused the planet’s thermostat to go haywire, and societies are grappling with the consequences.

Here are seven novels that show the real terrifying prospect of climate change.

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade Books)

Unabashedly dystopian, Paolo Bacigalupi’s award-winning novel about an Earth ravaged by genetic engineering and global warming was the book that convinced me fiction has a role to play in the climate conversation. Set in Thailand several centuries in the future, The Windup Girl follows scientists working for Monsanto-esque calorie corporations as they attempt to steal precious genetic material from a country devastated by GMO diseases. Somehow, nothing about this tragic future comes off heavy-handed or preachy—it’s just a great biopunk thriller with some seriously flawed protagonists. If you haven’t read The Windup Girl, fix that immediately.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (Random House)

Humans have pondered many solutions to the climate crisis, from renewable energies to wacky geo-engineering schemes. But there may be another way to save the planet, and it’s even more radical than hacking the atmosphere: re-engineering ourselves.

That’s the premise of Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, the first novel in her MaddAddam trilogy. Disillusioned by the sorry state of the planet, the brilliant but psychopathic Crake genetically engineers a new brand of humans who lack “destructive features responsible for the world’s current illness.” Crake’s humans are efficient—they can obtain all their energy from grass—but more importantly, they have no interest in forming hierarchical, industrial societies. Then, in true mad scientist fashion, Crake unleashes a super-virus that kills everybody, so his “children” can inherit the planet. Let’s hope things don’t go down this way.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...

Odds Against Tomorrow by Nathaniel Rich (Macmillan)

In a not-too-distant future Manhattan, mathematician Mitchell Zukor is hired by financial consulting firm FutureWorld to crank out worst-case predictions for the future, which are sold to corporations at a profit. Just as Zukor’s scenarios are reaching apocalypse proportions, a disastrous hurricane floods New York City. A fast-paced literary thriller, Odds Against Tomorrow reveals a world where humanity’s worst fears about the future are being realized in the present. Eerily enough, Rich finished the novel right before Superstorm Sandy struck New York—so maybe there’s a touch of prophecy in here, as well.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...

2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit)

I wavered about putting 2312 on this list because it’s so much more than climate fiction—but Kim Stanley Robinson’s brilliant future history is also a tale of ecological change—both unwanted and engineered. Three centuries from now, humans are rocketing across space in hollowed-out asteroids, terraforming Mars and Venus and finding ways to colonize the Solar System’s hostile fringes. Contrast this picture of expansion and prosperity with the situation on Earth: runaway global warming has melted Greenland and drowned coastal cities, and billions live in urban squalor. As Annalee Newitz put it in her review, 2312 “demonstrates that hopeful futures can be as complicated as any dystopia.”

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...

Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins (Riverhead Books)

Imagine if the drought out West grew a thousand times worse—and you have the backdrop for Claire Vaye Watkins’ starkly beautiful desert nightmare, in which a young couple struggles to escape the the wreckage of post-apocalypse Los Angeles. Separated while crossing the vast dune sea that swallowed the Mojave, Luz and Ray must find ways to survive on their own. But many things about the desert are not as they seem—and in this broken future, illusions can be deadly.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...

The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi (Knopf)

After penning an almost universally acclaimed work of climate fiction in 2009, Bacigalupi was back this spring with an even grittier tale of ecological devastation and human greed, this one, set in a drought-ravaged southwest just over the horizon. Water is everything in this future, and corrupt states and corporations will go to any lengths to defend their claims on it. In a world of scarcity, desperation and violence, the fates of three characters—an assassin, a journalist and a refugee—become intertwined over the discovery of some legendary water rights. It’s a terrifying survival story, and it’ll keep you hooked until the bittersweet end.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...

Breathe by Sarah Crossan (Greenwillow)

While some who grew up before global warming was a household phrase still have trouble accepting it, to the kids forced to inherit our mess, climate change is reality. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that cli-fi is becoming a hit in the world of YA fiction. Sarah Crossan’s Breathe, set in a world where humans live inside environmentally-controlled biodomes after a global oxygen shortage kills most of us off, is in many ways your run-of-the-mill YA dystopia: a band of teenagers uncover a dark government secret and set out to change the world. But broad outlines aside, the plot is surprisingly original, and the characters well-written. This book is a terrific starting point for the budding climate activists in your life.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...

Follow the author @themadstone

Top image: Heran Pinera

Disney is well known for its on-screen Princesses but this weekend, it will celebrate the talented women behind the scenes with a new book and several pieces of art.

Lovely: The Ladies of Animation is an event taking place at the WonderGround Gallery in Downtown Disney, Anaheim, CA from 11 am-1 pm Saturday December 5. There, Brittney Lee, Claire Keane, Lisa Keene, Lorelay Bové, Mingjue Helen Chen and Victoria Ying, all of whom have worked or currently do work at Walt Disney Animation Studios. They’ll all be on hand to sign copies of the new book of their art (also called Lovely: The Ladies of Animation) and reveal several brand new prints from WonderGround, Cyclops Print Works and Disney Fine Art.

For more information on the event, click here, but below check out the work.

Mingjue Helen Chen

Lorelay Bové

Brittany Lee

Lisa Keene

Victoria Ying

Victoria Ying

Victoria Ying

[Disney Parks]

Contact the author at germain@io9.com.

Today’s installment in the Royal Institution’s beautifully designed online Advent calendar, which is themed “A Place Called Space,” features spoken word artist Mark Grist throwing down with a cranky version of himself over whether or not the benefits of space exploration outweigh its costs.

(Funniest skeptical line: “If you spend that much money on anything you’ll at least get a few inventions. All I see is people up there singing David Bowie anthems!”)

If you haven’t yet checked out the RI’s calendar, which features a new daily post through December 24 with creative, space-themed content, you’re not even a week out of the loop. Previous posts have so far included a lovely animated short in which astronaut Helen Sharman, the first Brit in space, talks about her dreams; an infographic that breaks down the stats of all who have been to the International Space Station (fun fact: not having facial hair helps your odds); and a history of Project Mercury illustrated with found footage.

You can check the RI’s page daily for updates, or subscribe here.

Lyell Glacier was Yellowstone National Park’s largest glacier. In 1883, park officials took a photograph of the ice giant. This year, NASA’s climate team recreated that photo with the glacier in its current state. The comparison is stunning.

Lyell Glacier is not only the largest in Yellowstone, it’s also the second largest in the Sierra Nevada range. Since 1883, it’s lost 80 percent of its surface area, to the point where it covers only 1/10th of a square mile—and of that loss, 10 percent occurred in just the last four years.

The historical loss is huge, but even more sobering is what it suggests for the future. We’re rapidly losing the ice and snowpack that have been especially key for Western and mountain states—not just in Yellowstone or the parks, but all over. That ice and snowpack has long made up a basic part of our water supply, and as it dwindles down, it’s looking like our future will be even drier.

Image: NASA Climate

Environmental change is big news these days, as is speculation on how that change will reorder, and possibly reshape, the world powers. It has happened before: one of the great powers of medieval Europe collapsed when the environment changed around it.

In the 1100s, the prominent merchants of a few German cities were each too weak to compete with larger territories. So they formed a coalition. They secured each other’s ships, froze out or threatened countries that weren’t trading fairly, and fought for territory and fishing rights. Over time the League got bigger, as cities in other nations joined up. The Hanseatic League did not represent a country, wasn’t a military force, and did not have a religion for which to fight—but no one wanted to cross the League.

The League succeeded because it kept its members fanatically loyal. The initiation ceremony for a traveling merchant often involved being beaten to within an inch of one’s life. Discipline at sea was strict. Each foreign trading city had its own Hansa complex, so members never strayed. Even in their cities of origin, league members kept an eye on each other.

The Hanseatic League also succeeded because it didn’t confine itself to exact definitions. When English ships were taken, and the English responded by confiscating League property, the League protested, claiming that, since each town in the group had its own ruler and there was no official Hanseatic nation, the English couldn’t confiscate one private merchant’s ships to pay the debts of a different private merchant.

That was a bit rich, given that in the 1300s, the Hanseatic League fought Denmark over fishing rights in the Danish Sound. The League won, and got rich off of its herring trade. It grew, it diversified, it controlled trade routes from Novgorod to London. Merchants who wanted anything shipped from the North Sea to the Baltic Sea, and quite a few places inland, either dealt with the Hanseatic League or took pains to cover up the fact that they didn’t.

Then, around 1425, the Danish Sound started yielding less herring. The decline didn’t stop. It wasn’t over-fishing that left the Hanseatic League without its staple money-maker. The vast majority of the herring simply moved to the North Sea, within easier reach of the English and the Dutch. This not only deprived the Hanseatic League of income, it gave it to other nations.

The question is, why? Why did the fish just go? There is no consensus, but some blame it on the “Little Ice Age.” This began in the early 1400s, and it was characterized by, among other things, the Danish Sound freezing for longer periods of time. The global climate changed and the fish went elsewhere.

At the same time, the Zwin River filled with silt. The river led to Bruges, a powerful League ally and valuable trading port. Bruges’ rise coincided with the rise of the Hanseatic League. A mega-storm in 1134 ripped into the Zwin, essentially ripping a path from Bruges to the sea. The river was wide and slow, which for a while added to its value as a trading route—until the silt came in the mid-1400s. Bruges was one of the southernmost ports available to the League, and its destruction as a point of trade delivered a second staggering blow.

The Hanseatic League declined slowly, and we can attribute its decline to factors besides ecology. The world at large was moving away from territories controlled by nobility and towards the age of the corporations—which meant this group of merchants would have had competition.

Still, it was two environmental disasters that cut the once-powerful organisation off at the knees. We rely on an unchanging Earth, but the Earth does change. And when it does, powerful and old entities can fall. So maybe we don’t want to help that change along.

Image: Vera Buhl Seal image: Wolfgang Sauber Map Image: Wm Heinemann / Friedrich Graf

After getting rained out yesterday, it’s time to start preparing for the next launch window for the Cygnus spacecraft. If it succeeds, this will be the first launch for the cargo tug since the previous one blew up in October 2014. UPDATE: Gusts of wind caused first delays and finally a scrub for the launch attempt today. The next attempt will be at 5:10pm ET on Saturday. See the bottom of article for more details.

The return to flight mission for Orbital’s Enhanced Cygnus spacecraft is a cargo run to the International Space Station. The launch window begins at 5:33pm EST, and you can watch the launch preparations live here starting at 4:30pm ET:

This is the first flight for the new Enhanced Cygnus spacecraft which has 25% more volume for cargo than previous Cygnus spacecraft. It is carrying 3,349.0 kilograms (7,383.3 pounds) of material. The manifest includes 1,181.0 kilograms of essential crew supplies (food and care packages), 1,007.0 kilograms of hardware (power systems, structural equipment, thermal control hardware, and EVA supplies), 847.0 kilograms of research materials (a new life science facility, microsatellite deployer, metallurgy and flame-resistant textile experiments), 227.0 kilograms of spacewalk equipment, and 87.0 kilograms of computer equipment (cameras and data handling hardware).

This is also the first time Cygnus is heading to space on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket instead of an Orbital Antares rocket. The Atlas V is unusual in that it allows for an extended 30 minute launch window, allowing time to resolve technical glitches or for foul weather to clear.

Launch schematic for OA-4 from launch to interception with the International Space Station. Image credit: Orbital ATK

It will take the spacecraft approximately 2.5 days to intercept the space station once it launches. It will stay attached for a month as astronauts unload cargo and refill the spacecraft with garbage. This is a one-way trip for Cygnus: when it undocks, it’ll burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere during destructive reentry.

If today’s launch is also scrubbed, two additional windows are open on December 5th and 6th. After that, mission planners will need to be creative about how to create orbital intercepts, possibly including a launch where the spacecraft will loiter in orbit for a few weeks before intercepting the space station. Due to an annual sun-angle blackout, no spacecraft can dock with the space station between Christmas Eve and January 3, 2016.

This is the fourth commercial cargo mission for Orbital, OA-4, since 2014. The company is contracted to deliver 28,700 kilograms (63,272 pounds) of cargo to the space station over approximately ten missions.

Artist’s concept of the Enhanced Cygnus approaching the International Space Station. Image credit: Orbital ATK

Update 6:03pm: Although the weather was better than during yesterday’s attempt, gusts of wind delayed today’s launch three times. Each failure reset the countdown clock to the final 4-minutes, and the rocket and spacecraft experienced no technical issues. With the final attempt set to the very end of the 30-minute window, that leaves the launch scrubbed for today. United Launch Alliance’s Vernon Thorp explained in the post-event briefing, “The winds were just a couple of knots too high, so we just didn’t feel comfortable launching tonight.”

The next windows open at 5:10pm ET on December 5th, and again at 4:44pm on December 6th. If Cygnus isn’t in orbit by the end of the weekend, mission controllers will need to do fancy planning to get around the orbital constraints of the International Space Station.

Check back with us tomorrow afternoon at 4pm as we follow the third launch attempt!

[NASA | Orbital | Orbital]

Top image: Atlas V rocket with Cygnus on board awaiting launch. The white-capped towers are lightening protection. Credit: NASA

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

The huge new Wii U JRPG Xenoblade Chronicles X seems like it wants about 80 hours of my life. I’ve given it 18 so far, and I’m going to give it some more.

I’m not really a JRPG guy, mind you. I love the Fire Emblems, but don’t really care about many Final Fantasys. I’ll take a Mario & Luigi over a Super Mario RPG (scandal!). But I did spend 65 happy hours on Suikoden V and think maybe it’s time for me to give a new one a go.

The best thing about Xenoblade Chronicles X is the scenery. Look at this game...

But did you see that pop-in at the end? That’s one of the worst things about the game. The Wii U can barely keep up. A jog through the streets of its hub city New Los Angeles is a tour of video game pop-in:

It’s not just that. The text in the game is so tiny and the Wii U’s GamePad screen is so low-resolution, that playing the game on the Nintendo console’s controller display is possible only for those who don’t like to read.

Hell, Nintendo has issued 11GB worth of downloadable data packs to speed up the game’s loading because, I guess, the system can’t pull data off the disc fast enough.

I also barely care about the game’s characters and am not getting a whole lot out of the story yet. Good concept—humanity flees aliens fighting over Earth, crash lands on the planet Mira, lives in a bubble city while scavenging the wilderness—but the characters and plot events haven’t grabbed me yet.

Wait, this has been a lot of negativity for a game that I just said I’m happy to stick with. Why in the world am I playing this?

Here’s why. I’ll be running over a ridge in the game and find a guy like this:

Better still, I’ll find something even bigger (and then learn to pick on creatures a little closer to my size):

There’s also the music, which is sometimes goofy, is usually really great:

And can I knock a game for being so silly that they throw in a version of LA on an alien planet?

What I’m getting from this game is a huge, beautiful world to explore and a pretty good combat system.

The battle system might look insane...

...but it works pretty well.

Your main character auto-attacks and you jockey through your special Art skills and trigger the right color-coded ones any time your allies ask for help. Do it right, and it kicks in extra bonuses. Once you get it under your fingers, battles achieve a satisfying rhythm. Your party members shout encouragement. You buff one another, become more mighty, and crush some giant beasts. I like it.

Xenoblade Chronicles X can be overwhelming. It sits somewhere between being a JRPG and being an MMO, with heaps of inventory items, reams of fetch quests, some passive multiplayer progression and even the occasional global event that I’m just not powerful enough to join:

I do find myself, though, slowly climbing this mountain, slowly getting my bearings, and liking so much of the breathtaking things I see. I might still lose interest before I hit that 80 hour mark; I might decide life is too short.

But I also might soon get a mech for my lead character and decide this game is even cooler than I thought. I might eventually not hate the cutesy companion character Tatsu, who runs around with my party. I might have fulfilling meetings with dozens more of this game’s constellation of characters.

And my character might eventually become powerful enough to take down that brontosaurus-looking alien and call it a day.

I usually turn to Nintendo-published games for polished excellence. Xenoblade Chronicles X ain’t polished. It is, however, a sight to behold and, rarity of rarities, a JRPG that might yet get me well and truly hooked. If you’ve got a Wii U, I’d say you should consider it.

For another take, read the Xenoblade Chronicles X review by our friends over at Kotaku UK.

To contact the author of this post, write to stephentotilo@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter@stephentotilo.

The holidays are almost upon us, which means one thing: lots of weird superstitions involving sprigs of vegetation and mandatory kissing. Which is weird. But it could be worse—those kisses could actually kill you. Just check out these kisses of death from science fiction and fantasy!

Kitana’s Kiss of Death in Mortal Kombat

The 10,000 year-old Princess Kitana mostly relies on her trusty steel fan to slice through opponents like bursting party poppers, but once she has an opponent on the ropes, she’ll finish them off with a unique finishing move: The Kiss of Death! Removing her bandana mask, she kisses an opponent, causing them to swell up like a water balloon, before suppurating like a lanced cyst. Talisa Soto plays her in the movies!

Trantor in Ernest Scared Stupid

In Ernest Scared Stupid, the fifth film to star Jim Varney as Ernest P. Worrell (the blue collar Pee-Wee Herman) a troll named “Trantor” is freed from inside the oak tree that has imprisoned him for hundreds of years. Now free, Trantor uses his magic to turn children into wooden dolls, and he plans to awaken his troll brethren to do the same.

Luckily though, Eartha Kitt is in this movie playing “Old Lady Hackmore”. She tells Ernest that a ”mother’s care” is the key to the troll’s defeat.

Kenny—one of the kids in the movie—decides this could mean that milk hurts the monsters, so Ernest and company raid the dairy section of a supermarket and load up their Super Soakers.

It should be mentioned that this is one of those odd, well-studied bits of the movie that shows the Ernest team were concerned, at least somewhat, with mythological and historical accuracy. According to legend, leaving an offering of milk on your doorstep works as a ward against brownies, imps, goblins and other species of European household spirits, forcing them to seek mischief elsewhere. In the text of Ernest Scared Stupid, and indeed the Ernest ouevre as a whole, milk causes trolls to die from within and melt into bony heaps of boiling skin. (Earlier in the film, Ernest delivers a monologue on Botswana’s defeat of the Ottoman Empire!)

But when milk proves to be ineffective against head-troll Trantor, Eartha Kitt reveals what she really meant by “a mother’s care”: the only way to truly defeat Trantor is with the power of “unconditional love”.

Understanding this, Ernest dances with Trantor, tells him exactly how much he appreciates him, then gives him a big, impassioned kiss on his sopping, oily lips. Naturally, this causes Trantor’s head to explode, violently, into a cloud of powdery black fragments.

Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge

Featuring an ambiguously closeted protagonist, the second Nightmare on Elm Street has invited some interesting subtextual analysis over the years. In the film, Freddy Krueger intends to hijack the body of teenager Jesse Walsh, and seems to selectively emerge each time he’s alone with his girlfriend, Lisa.

Jesse only gets the strength to fight back against Freddy at the end of the film, when Lisa finally manages to kiss him. This causes Freddy to melt, ghoulishly.

When Attitude magazine asked about the film in 2010, Robert Englund was quoted:

“The second Nightmare on Elm Street is obviously intended as a bisexual themed film. It was early ‘80s, pre-AIDS paranoia. Jesse’s wrestling with whether to come out or not and his own sexual desires was manifested by Freddy. His friend is the object of his affection. That’s all there in that film. We did it subtly but the casting of Mark Patton was intentional too, because Mark was out and had done Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean.”

Years later, actor Mark Patton, who plays Jesse is the film, wrote a diary documenting the character’s coming out following the events of the film!

The Rowdyruff Boys from Powerpuff Girls

Created by the mentally enhanced chimp Mojo Jojo after reasoning the best way to combat the Powerpuff Girls— made of sugar, spice, and “everything nice” (with a dose of secret ingredient Chemical X) – would be a male counterpart. Snips, snails and puppy dog tails were the ingredients chosen to create the nastiest little boys. While the Powerpuffs were at the mercy of the three “Rowdyruffs”— Butch, Brick and Boomer— for the duration of their introductory episode, the girls received some helpful advice from Ms. Sarah Bellum:

“Girls. You have what boys fear most. Try being…nice.”

The Powerpuff Girls knew what they had to do: in order to defeat the Rowdyruff Boys, they had to kiss them flirtatiously. This caused the boys, humiliated, to explode in black flame and blue electricity, disassembling into their component elements.

Cypher on Beware the Batman

Poison Ivy is known for her toxic kiss—and Michelle Pfeifer’s Catwoman famously uses her feminine wiles to kill the villainous department store manager Max Schreck in Batman Returns—but a more recent example appeared on the late Beware the Batman animated series.

Cypher, a villainous cyborg under the employ of Ra’s al Ghul and the League of Assassins, manages to mentally link himself with Batman, Kitana, and Dr. Jason Burr through a network of neon green cables. Realizing that each blow Batman deals Cypher affects each of them equally, Kitana kisses Dr. Burr. The ensuing arousal felt by Burr/Cypher gives Batman the opening to stab Cypher in the neck, overloading his senses.

Puna and Tanga in Invasion of the Star Creatures

Dr. Puna and Professor Tanga, two statuesque aliens from the planet Kalar commanding an army of seven-foot tall vegetable monsters, arrive on Earth with the intent to conquer. Regrettably, they are defeated by the bumbling army men, Privates Penn and Philbrick, after they introduce to them the concept of kissing—a foreign concept on their native homeworld of Kalar. The sensation proves to be so incapacitating and pleasurable, the alien women enter trance-like states and agree to become their submissive wives. (It’s a comedy.)

The Phages in Sailor Moon

Created from Star Seeds, the Phages were a subset of Sailor Stars who infected host bodies like bacteriophages. And the Sailor Scouts could only eliminate the virus with a finishing move: The Starlight Honeymoon Therapy Kiss! It essentially bleaches the infection, removing the bizarre, monstrous personage that has overridden the host body. Later in the series, the alternative Silver Moon Crystal Power Kiss is called upon when the threat demands it.

The Aliens of Species & Lifeforce

While the gorgeous Mathilda May famously sucks the titular “Lifeforce” from her prey with a battery of soul-sucking kisses, Natasha Henstridge’s feminine alien, Sil, kills with the power of her deadly, piercing tongue—right through the back of your skull!

Virgil Incanto from The X-Files

A “lonely hearts” killer with a rare medical disorder that prevents him body from storing fat, Virgil Incanto lures plus-sized women on dates, then kills them by sucking out their precious lipids orally. Thought to be responsible for the disappearances of 47 women, Virgil shows no remorse, and is assumed to have died from his affliction in prison.

Top image: Breathtaker from DC Comics, about a genetically engineered succubus who drains men’s life force. Not exactly a deadly kiss, but pretty close. Art by Mark Hempel.

Marvel’s Phase 2 box set truly is a trove laden with treasures. Earlier today we got to see Loki live out his fantasies in a deleted scene from Thor: The Dark World—but this time, we turn to the Guardians of the Galaxy, and the fantastic improv skills of Star-Lord himself, Chris Pratt.

The clip comes from Yahoo, and it shows part of Pratt’s audition for the role of Peter Quill, performing a scene alongside Dave Bautista in partial makeup as Drax the Destroyer. Check it out below:

It’s like the lowest budget version of Guardians of the Galaxy you’ve ever seen, but with the actual actors!

[Yahoo via Comicbook.com]

·Header Image Credit: Yahoo

Is Gollum a good guy or a bad guy? It’s a complicated question. At times, the former Hobbit is nothing but pure venom. Other times, he’s kind, sweet and caring. Plus he can change between the two in an instant. Finally, a court of law will tell us if the former ring-bearer is good or evil.

One of the ultimate Lord of the Rings debates will soon be settled in a Turkish court. Why? A man charged with disparaging the president of Turkey is arguing his photos comparing the politician and fictional character were not insults.

Sure.

Doctor Bilgin Ciftci posted the below photos on Twitter juxtaposing Gollum with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. What’s the problem with that? In Turkey, insulting the president is an offense punishable by up to four years in prison. Ciftci was brought to court and after his defense attorney’s argument for “freedom of expression” was shot down, they made the claim about Gollum not being necessarily evil.

Paramount to their argument was the following: That the photos weren’t of the evil Gollum, but of his lovable alter-ego Smeagol. To help bolster that, and in the absence of J.R.R. Tolkien himself, the defense went to the next best thing: Lord of the Rings writers Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens. Here’s their statement:

“If the images are in fact the ones forming the basis of this Turkish lawsuit, we can state categorically: None of them feature the character known as Gollum. All of them are images of the character called Smeagol.”

“Smeagol is a joyful, sweet character. Smeagol does not lie, deceive, or attempt to manipulate others. He is not evil, conniving, or malicious — these personality traits belong to Gollum, who should never be confused with Smeagol. Smeagol would never dream of wielding power over those weaker than himself. He is not a bully. In fact he’s very loveable. This is why audiences all over the world have warmed to his character.”

The trial has been adjourned until February 23 when Gollum’s fate will be decided.

[Comic Book Resources, Entertainment Weekly]

Contact the author at germain@io9.com.

It’s Screenwriting 101. When you’re taking a beloved character, who’s lasted decades or even centuries with a simple, streamlined origin, the first thing you do is add something terrible to his or her childhood. Because why would you ever want to preserve the character’s classic simplicity?

Lately, we’ve been just drowning in well-known characters who suddenly have a newly-introduced childhood misfortune. We won’t go into some of them here because it’s a bit of a spoiler—but feel free to go to town in comments. Please mention the name of the character, where he/she appears, the terrible childhood mishap that was added to their past—and please throw in a picture or clip!

Top image: Willy Wonka, from Tim Burton’s reimagining. Why? Seriously, WHY?

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

Recently, the Star Wars fanbase took time off from freaking out about The Force Awakens to freak out over a rumored ban on merchandise depicting Princess Leia’s “Slave” outfit from Return of the Jedi. Many words about the matter have been said since—a lot of them pretty good!—but leave it to Leia herself to put it best.

http://toyland.gizmodo.com/rumor-disney-m...

During the big marketing push for The Force Awakens, the debate over whether or not it’s right to sell toys of the scantily clad Leia has been put forth to the actor—and naturally, someone as wonderfully outspoken as Carrie Fisher does not hold back.

Here’s a tame, but still pretty damn fantastic, response she gave to the Wall Street Journal:

There’s been some debate recently about whether there should be no more merchandise with you in the “Return of the Jedi” bikini.

I think that’s stupid.

To stop making the merchandise?

The father who flipped out about it, “What am I going to tell my kid about why she’s in that outfit?” Tell them that a giant slug captured me and forced me to wear that stupid outfit, and then I killed him because I didn’t like it. And then I took it off. Backstage.

Yeah, empowered Hutt-slaying Leia! But Fisher had a far testier response when it came to a similar question over at the L.A. Times:

How about telling his daughter that the character is wearing that outfit not because she’s chosen to wear it. She’s been forced to wear it. She’s a prisoner of a giant testicle who has a lot of saliva going on and she does not want to wear that thing and it’s ultimately that chain, which you’re now indicating is some sort of accessory to S&M, that is used to kill the giant saliva testicle…. That’s asinine.

Thanks, Carrie Fisher. From now on I can no longer think of Jabba the Hutt’s name as anything other than “Giant Saliva Testicle”. Seems like after 30+ years of dealing with stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-lookin’ Nerf herders, Carrie Fisher still doesn’t tolerate your nonsense, either way!

Maybe we could just like, I dunno, treat her like Han and Luke and have BAZILLIONS of different Leia toys, instead of just slave Leia ones? No? Too sensible? Just give me my Hoth Leia action figure, goddamit.

Several months ago, director Ryan Coogler was rumored to be up for Marvel’s Black Panther movie. It didn’t pan out. Now though, after the success of his latest film Creed, it seems like he’s actually going to do it.

Birth Movies Death reports Coogler is in talks to direct the 2018 Marvel movie, which will star Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa, the prince of Wakanda who doubles as the superhero. The character will first be introduced in next year’s Captain America: Civil War.

Coogler first hit the scene with 2013’s powerful drama, Fruitvale Station. He turned that success into his dream project, the Rocky-spinoff Creed and with that movie now a hit, it seems he’s moving on up to a big budget superhero movie.

The initial reports by BMD were backed up by all of the Hollywood trades, which reiterated negotiations were currently taking place for Coogler to direct the film. That means it’s only a matter of time before Marvel makes it official.

Black Panther is scheduled for release February 16, 2018.

[Birth Movies Death]

Image Credit: Marvel Studios, Warner Bros.

Contact the author at germain@io9.com.

Captain EO has been a Disney park staple since 1986, the height of Michael Jackson’s post-Thriller fame—but the Francis Ford Coppola-directed, George Lucas-produced short will shut down December 6 to make way for new attractions. A new oral history sheds light on all the making-of drama.

It’s definitely worth taking the time to read the entire piece at Yahoo Movies. Though it ran only 17 minutes, Captain EO was a big-budget, groundbreaking special effects showcase, and it attracted all kinds of top talent of the era ... some of whom inevitably butted heads. There’s also all kinds of fun tidbits, like how Lucas (coming off a break from showbiz after Return of the Jedi) wanted the production design to have a “used future” look, like Star Wars did, and how co-star Anjelica Huston had a dream before she was cast that she’d work with Michael Jackson.

Speaking of Jackson, most folks agreed that he was shy and childlike when he was offstage, but became a different person once he started singing and dancing. Sounds about right. But there are a few surprising revelations about how Disney reacted to Jackson’s performance, as relayed by EO cinematographer Peter Anderson:

Michael had a propensity to do his crotch-grabs. It was kind of unheard of back then, and this was Disney. I was told to crop the upper torso or go for a tighter shot or something like that, [but] they were part of his routine. So it wasn’t like [he was only] occasionally doing it. It was on his beat. Disney started cutting [the film] together and saying, “Oh dear, oh dear.”

... [Michael also] had a rather high-pitched voice. People weren’t used to hearing him talk — they were used to hearing him sing. The studio was trying to figure out how to modulate or replace his voice for the talking scenes. There were groups of people at Imagineering and some at the studio that were afraid that that would make [EO] feel too comedic. There was some playing around with [the idea of] changing the octave. There was even a discussion about doing voice replacement for him… There was a whole thing going on in the background of, “How do we do it and not offend him?” And I remember sitting there and saying, “You’re actually going to change Michael’s voice?” They desperately wanted to, but no one had the guts to approach him on it.

Again, this was the mid-1980s, and Jackson was a huge, huge, mega-mega star. One wonders: how could Disney not have known about his voice, or his fondness for crotch-grabs?

Farewell, Captain EO—greeted with raised eyebrows by critics (and, apparently, studio execs), but beloved by fans for decades. And there’s always a chance it will come back; the attraction originally closed in 1996, but returned in 2010 as a Jackson tribute.

[Yahoo Movies]

The collectable poster, music, and toy company Mondo is teaming up with Marvel Comics for an officially licensed gallery show. It’s called Snikt Bamf Thwip: A Celebration Of Marvel Comics, and we’ve got an exclusive reveal along with more art.

Our reveal is this frighting 13” x 19” giclee of Thanos by artist Mike Mitchell. It’s an edition of 145.

But that’s not all. Here are several other pieces that have been revealed for the show, which opens at 7pm on December 11 at the Mondo Gallery, 4115 Guadalupe Street, Austin Texas.

Dark Phoenix by Becky Cloonan

18” x 24” screen print. Edition of 225.

Dark Phoenix (Variant) by Becky Cloonan

18” x 24” screen print. Edition of 125.

Loki by Matt Taylor

18” x 24” screen print. Edition of 175.

Thor by Matt Taylor

18” x 24” screen print. Edition of 175.

24” x 36” screen print. Edition of 275.

We Are Each Our Own Devil by Matthew Woodson

24” x 36” screen print. Edition of 125.

Wolverine by Tom Whalen

36” x 24” screen print. Edition of 325.

Wolverine (Variant) by Tom Whalen

36” x 24” screen print. Edition of 150.

Here’s the show card with all the info. Can’t make the show? Keep an eye on @MondoNews for the online sale dates.

[Mondo]

Contact the author at germain@io9.com.

Sword & Laser is a great podcast about science fiction and fantasy from Veronica Belmont and Tom Merritt—and now, it’s also a line of science fiction and fantasy books!

They’ve just announced their first book, The Life Engineered by J.F. Dubeau, which takes place in the far future, after the human race has been extinguished. Our robot descendants inherit the galaxy and have to figure out how to honor our legacy. Watch a book trailer above, and pre-order the book here!

Also, Sword & Laser is releasing two more books soon afterwards—and they’re already having a contest to find the next few books after that.

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

NASA has just received the first batch of the sharpest images of Pluto captured during the July flyby—and they’re incredible. Are you ready to go cross-country skiing and ice climbing three billion miles from home? Because Pluto’s terrain is a frozen wonderland.

The images below are part of a sequence captured by New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager about 15 minutes from its closest approach to Pluto on July 14th, from a distance of just 10,000 miles (17,000 kilometers) above the dwarf planet’s surface. Together, these images form a 50 mile-wide strip that begins northwest of Pluto’s “heart” region, traversing the icy al-Idrisi mountains, and finally taking us on a tour of Sputnik Planum’s patterned plains.

Instead of the usual “point and shoot mode,” LORRI snapped the pictures every three seconds while the Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera scanned Pluto’s surface. At 250-280 feet (77-85 meters) per pixel, they’re six times higher resolution than the global Pluto map the New Horizons team put together earlier this year. As such, they offer planetary scientists an unprecedented glimpse into the geomorphology of a world far more complex than we could have imagined.

“These new images give us a breathtaking, super-high resolution window into Pluto’s geology,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern. “Nothing of this quality was available for Venus or Mars until decades after their first flybys; yet [for] Pluto we’re there already – down among the craters, mountains and ice fields – less than five months after flyby. The science we can do with these images is simply unbelievable.”

More of these super hi-res images are expected to trickle down from outer space over the next few days, so stay tuned. Me, I’ve already packed my space-grade snowshoes—just waiting for the next flight out.

The “shoreline” of Sputnik Planum, the informal name for Pluto’s icy, block-shaped plains. The boundary between Sputnik and the al-Idrisi mountains is incredibly dramatic in this image, underscoring the complex geologic forces that brought these features together.

Pluto’s icy plains are pockmarked with craters from ancient impacts. In this image, we see distinct geologic layers—similar to those found in rock outcroppings or drill cores on Earth—within the interior walls of several craters. These features are a huge asset to scientists hoping to piece together Pluto’s geologic past.

The “Badlands”: A complex mess of topography sculpted by erosion and faulting. The cliff tracking from the left to the upper right near the top of the image is part of a canyon system that runs hundreds of miles around Pluto’s northern hemisphere. The mountains in the center are built mainly from water ice, but the New Horizons science team suspects they’ve been shaped over time by other exotic ices, including nitrogen and methane.

[NASA]

Follow the author @themadstone

Where are the stylish Joan Watson and dapper Sherlock Holmes this week? Taking a belated holiday! Elementary will resume with “The Games Underfoot” on December 10th with a recap on Friday.

Will next week bring a new Clyde sighting, or has the turtle gorged himself on homemade meals? Here’s hoping he doesn’t sleep through the winter in hibernation!

Elementary airs on Thursday nights on CBS. All images credit CBS.

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

Was 2015 a good year for movies? Sure, there were a lot of duds like Tomorrowland and embarrassments like Pixels and money printing franchises that weren’t nearly as awesome as the movies that came before it like Jurassic World and Avengers: Age of Ultron but I’m going to consider 2015 a good year for movies just because Mad Max came out in 2015. That’s all you really need.

Oh yeah, and something called Star Wars is coming out this year. Watch Final Cut 2015, a movie trailer mashup by JoBlo Movie Trailers below and revel in the awesomeness (and laugh at the bombs).

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

The science fiction movie High Treason was considered one of the most important films of its time, up there with Metropolis. It was also the first full-length “talkie” made in Britain, although it was released in both silent and “talkie” versions. And now, it’s finally rediscovered and restored.

For decades, only the silent version of High Treason was thought to be available, and the version with sound was believed to be lost. Until a Washington film collector came up with it, along with a bunch of other film cans. Sadly, this collector couldn’t get any film-preservation experts interested in their stash, so they ended up sending it to the Alaska Moving Image Preservation Association, on the grounds that there was some stuff in there involving Alaska. Then the Alaskans discovered the rare treasure included in this bequest.

Until recently, we didn’t even know much about the plot of High Treason. It’s set in the futuristic year of 1940, when—somewhat prophetically—a second World War is brewing. Based on a play by pacifist writer Noel Pemberton-Billing, the movie predicts aerial bombing of civilian targets during a war, as well as terrorist bomb attacks on American skyscrapers.

As the Alaska Dispatch News explains:

The world is divided into two great powers. The Empire of Atlantic States includes South and North America (except Canada and Alaska), Japan and China. The Federation of European States is just about everything else. A third entity, the League of Peace, has sway with both superpowers. When a border incident turns into a firefight, the drums of war start beating and unscrupulous weapons manufacturers surreptitiously crank up the volume. Women are mobilized for combat — in cute pixie uniforms — but really have their hearts set on peace and face off against their male military counterparts in perhaps the best scene in the film.

The script’s sexual stereotypes were a source of ridicule for critics at the time it was released and remain so now. But blustery attractive men and busty airheaded women continue to be staples of blockbuster movies. No less ridiculous is the preachiness of the thing — another evergreen element in most of the modern movies we seem to love — and the absence of any effort to give credible motivation to characters. People are either very good or very bad. You can tell which is which by whether they wear black or white.

The film is getting a rare screening, with its original “talkie” soundtrack, at the Anchorage International Film Festival. [ADN]

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.