If there must be a parody of Girls—and there must, because you don’t win a trunkful of Golden Globes when you’re under 30 without some blowback—then we’re glad it comes in the form of “Robots.”

“Robots” does what it says on the tin, re-imagining Girls if the main character was a robot and not Lena Dunham. But oh, what a perfect re-imagining it is. You don’t even have to have seen the show to get in on the joke.

Watch below while we eagerly await robot parodies of AMC and HBO’s entire line-up.

[“Robots”]

The web has been buzzing over the past several months due to the unmasking of some well-known internet trolls. A large portion of the online community has thrown up their hands in a collective sigh of relief, but a sizable number are enraged – by bringing the names of these people to light, real life identities have been comprised and people’s lives have been altered for the worse. And in the name of privacy, people have picked up their virtual boxing gloves and started winding up the good old one-two punch.

Yet it seems that this anger stems from the internet’s greatest fallacy, one the internet itself has long encouraged: the notion that the world wide web is somehow private in the first place.

[Keep away from those chat rooms…]

Today is Ada Lovelace Day, and to celebrate this computeering pioneer, we thought we’d ask artist Scott Brundage to illustrate Lady Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, as she works through the centuries, inspiring, creating, and perfecting the very device that the modern first world now cannot live without.

If you’re interested in hearing more about Lovelace’s life, read Ay-leen the Peacemaker’s tribute. Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

Fan chatter about TV shows like Doctor Who, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Downton Abbey, and Mad Men often revolves around the various spoiler-filled turns in long-game plot arcs. But the word “spoiler”—at least in the way we use it in relation to television—is relatively new. Though it’s possible fans of a bygone era of soap operas were afraid of other fans ruining the outcome of the previous day’s episode, the vehemence of these protests were probably not as serious as they are now. Notably, fans of 20th century soap operas didn’t have the internet.

But way back at the end of the last century, one of the first sci-fi fandoms did have the internet, complete with online spoilers! That fandom was centered around Babylon 5, and though we don’t talk much about Babylon 5 now, the narrative structure of the show, in tandem with internet discussion, essentially created the model for TV fandom today.

[Read more]

One of the first major blogging events we’ve done on Tor.com was for steampunk, and every autumn with the turning of the leaves, the H.M.S. Stubbington gets its engines stoked for another bout of gears, cogs, and 19^th-century know-how. Now, Year Four into this brass madness, the question comes to mind: “Why does steampunk still matter?”

[Read more about what we’re featuring this week]

What is Homestuck? Since the success of its Kickstarter, that’s what everyone has been asking. What is Homestuck? Well, that is the rub; in fact, “let me tell you about Homestuck…” has become an internet meme in its own right.

First off, let me say this: what Homestuck is and what Homestuck is about are two entirely different things, but they usually get lumped into the same breath, which really confuses things.

Don’t get me wrong; Homestuck is confusing on its own. Homestuck starts slow, with a measured mundanity punctuated by petty struggles wrought in epic terms…which provides only a baseline to be shattered by the surreal. For a story that is so big it contains worlds… and underworlds. The level of detail and complexity can certainly be maddening, even brutally so, but that is what the MS Paint Aventures Wiki is for. I’ll try to express in my own clumsy way what Homestuck is, and what Homestuck is about, but in all honesty, the only way to understand it to experience it for yourself.

[Read more]

We joke about it all the time. One day, we’re all just gonna have chips in our heads and we won’t need things like TV or computers anymore. But what if that actually happened?

That’s the starting point for a new web series produced by Warner Bros. and Bryan Singer called H+: The Digital Series, which launches next week. Although, “web series” is a bit of a limited term. Web experience, more like, as H+ is going to be hugely interactive, allowing viewers to watch episodes out of order, edit them together differently, and create their own experience of the world, much like the characters are able to do with their web experiences in the context of the show.

I had the chance to speak with H+ star, Alexis Denisof (Angel, Dollhouse), and producer, Jason Taylor (Bryan Singer’s Bad Hat Harry Productions), about this unique and exciting sci-fi project.

[Humanity goes offline. Survival goes on.]

Let’s start this article off right: I’m not here to make an attack on men, male writers, or male nerds. I’m not here to present a soap-box argument about the ills of the world and the dangerous political atmosphere that faces women today. I’m not even here to critique or attack works of fiction, be they literature, film, or video games that have portrayed women in unfortunate ways in the history of geek culture. This article is not about any of those things, and though there is a forum for all of those discussions, this isn’t it. Instead, this article is going to discuss something near and dear to my heart. We’re going to talk about the dangers of geek culture and trolling.

[Trolling starts like this...]

This isn’t a proper writeup of the Readercon panel of this name that I was on this weekend, it’s more a series of reflections of things around it. The description of the panel was:

Where science fiction once looked to the future as the setting for speculation, nowadays the focus seems to be on alternate pasts, fantasy worlds, or consciously “retro” futures. We’re no longer showing the way to what things might be like. We discuss whether this is connected to the general fear of decline and decay in the English-language world—or has science fiction simply run out of ideas?

Jim Cambias, the moderator and proposer, had stats from recent Hugo nominee lists compared to older ones that did show a decline in actual future-based SF. I think this combines with futures we can’t get to from here — steampunk, John Barnes’s The Sky So Big and Black, Ken MacLeod’s The Execution Channel, Stirling’s Lords of Creation series, etc. — to reflect an actual problem in current SF.

But of course, it’s more interesting than that.

[Read more: I have a question for your twelve-year-old self]

One of the highlights of last month’s WonderCon was the panel announcing Felicia Day’s latest foray into New Media. She, along with producing partners Kim Evey, Wil Wheaton, Veronica Belmont and Tom Merritt, and Mike Richardson, has created a new YouTube channel with a full slate of geek programming.

This new endeavor, Geek and Sundry, launches new shows TODAY!

[Wanna hear about the slate?]

Love cons, but hate things like spending money, or... you know... going somewhere? Well have I got news for you!

Today is the first day of Dot Con, the first geeky pop-culture convention that is held entirely online. Using the magic of streaming services — like Justin.TV and UStream — and Twitter, Dot Con seeks to bring the con experience right into your own home! It’s an intriguing idea, and to be honest, I’m surprised something like this hasn’t been done more often.

[Read more]

Interested in advance copies of forthcoming novels by N.K. Jemisin or John Scalzi? Rare books and signed books by authors such as Vernor Vinge, Lois McMaster Bujold,  Neil Gaiman, and Brandon Sanderson? Indian speculative fiction in English translation? How about snacks from Hawaii, Israel, or the UK; homemade candy and cookies; knitted goods? Or, perhaps, a print of one of the new Wheel of Time ebook covers?

They’re all currently being auctioned online at Con or Bust, the assistance fund I run that helps fans of color/non-white fans attend SFF cons.

[Learn more]

Shows like Community and The Big Bang Theory might have the obvious lock on SFF geek cred, but Portlandia is quickly catching up to these network shows in regards to introducing funny concepts with recent SFF.

Take this Battlestar Galactica read-through, for example. This scene features Edward James Olmos, James Callis, and two Ronald D. Moores in a bizzare read-through of a fan-created Galactica script. We can’t explain the perfection of this (especially not the ending!) without ruining it, so just watch:

Along with being a rather momentous anniversary for Charles “Chuck” Dickens, it’s also comedian Eddie Izzard’s 50th birthday! In celebration, let us view his 1999 bit about what it would be like if the Empire in Star Wars was completely British. “The Rebels are here?! Do they want tea?”

Stubby the Rocket is the mascot of Tor.com and stronger than a small pony but not stronger than the Force. Paradox!

What would a live action Thundercats movie look like? WormyTV took this question quite seriously and created a pretty convincing edit trailer for a Thundercats movie.

There’s a lot of great SFF movies in the mix here, starting with that first shot straight from Masters of the Universe. Indiana Jones, the Riddick series, the X-Men films, Farscape, Galaxy Quest, Star Trek VI, Garfield (for Snarf, obviously), The Lord of the Rings, Troy, and more are all used to great effect.

Stubby the Rocket is the mascot of Tor.com and loves kitties but is on the fence about Thundercats.

And out of the mists of the internet came Space Stallions, the most amazing thing we’ve seen all week.

Space Stallions doubles as a school film project from The Animation Workshop and as a cartoon parody of any 80s kids cartoon you can think of. Space horse gods will be questioned. Horse power will be used against the forces of evil. And someone’s sword will turn into a keytar!

Experience the glory of Space Stallions in full by watching the above video. Then visit the Facebook page of the creators to show your appreciation. And try not to yell, “Answer me!” at any horses you see afterwards.

Stubby the Rocket will team up with the Space Stallions any day, any minute, any time.

Don Draper = Darth Vader? This Star Wars-ization of the Mad Men intro by Dann Matthews puts the parallels between the two into clear view. Both characters come from nothing and grow to a point where they have everything. Their great struggles are behind them and they don’t know what to do. Don self-medicates to excess. Darth kills indiscriminately and uses the resources of an entire Empire to chase a young farmboy around the galaxy.

See, now we kind of want a Peggy/Leia team-up. Or Roger and Cooper taking the Emperor out to a fancy dinner. Or a whine-off between Pete and Luke.

Stubby the Rocket is the mascot of Tor.com and can think of a million more Star Wars/Mad Men crossover pairings.

Internet video mash-ups are nothing new, but it’s still thrilling to find one that’s done just right, like in this fan-made music video for Portal 2.

“This is Aperture” by Harry-UK combines the chipper tone of the homicidal robots from the Portal series with the gleeful creepiness of the “This is Halloween” musical number from The Nightmare Before Christmas. The song features all original lyrics and is yet another reminder that GLaDOS has a promising career as a singer/songwriter should the testing-humans-unto-death industry ever collapse.

Stubby the Rocket is the mascot of Tor.com and wonders... if you say “glee” in the mirror three time, will the cast of Glee appear?

Take heed, Tor.com readers, this the final year on Earth! Possibly of Earth!

2012 has always been a popular target date for those who do and do not joke of the end of the world. (Although why would you ever actually think the world is ending? Have you seen this world? It is huge.) The end of the Mayan calendar in 2012 is commonly cited as our collective stage bow, but that’s not the only thing gunning for us.

In fact, if the human race is really bad at anything besides skeeball, it is predicting when the world will end. To make that abundantly clear, Loren Madsen has assembled Pick a Year, a table of years that collects all of the various cries of doom that have piled up over the centuries.

[Infinite humans, photon belts, Black Deaths, and topless everything]