Atompunk robots (those in media from 1945 – 1965) tend to have the same sort of names. Short ones like Gort, cutesy ones like Robbie or Tobor (“Robot” spelled backwards) or functional ones combining scientific terms with letters and numbers. That’s the sort I was after here with this randomly generated list. These names showed …
Ursula K. LeGuin’s political science fiction novel The Dispossessed has as its subtitle “An Ambiguous Utopia.” But screw that. Isn’t this a whamdoodle of a cover? Twin worlds, close enough to touch, one lush and green, one red like Mars but cratered like the Moon, done up in a riotous rainbow of colors? (I’ll do …
You have to look closely at this map until it begins to look a little familiar…. (It’s Europe with water and land masses reversed and relabeled as new countries.) Like the map, here’s some places that currently don’t exist, but could. Imaginary Places German cities / towns Ulmesslen, Münrach, Spargán, Amsprechtdanberg, Munsilacht Icelandic cities …
The plasticity of fairy tales is demonstrated by these illustrations of Beauty and the Beast from over the years. In the original fairy tale, the Beast is never explicitly described, so artists had to use their imaginations. From the top left, going clockwise, he’s a spotted hyena, a wolf-boar, a very weird walrus-mole hybrid, and …
The 1980s were, perhaps, the Golden Age of the teen movie. Exemplified by John Hughes, these slightly raunchy, traditionally romantic movies had wholesome names like Sweet Sixteen and Pretty in Pink that belied the nasty origins of their conception. Which came from the pages of The National Lampoon, of which Hughes was a writer. Yes, …
Most Christmas songs are recognizable by their titles. There’s something Merry, something Snow, maybe something God or Jesus. Sometimes there’s an anomaly, like “I Want a Hippopptamus for Christmas.” But mostly it’s white bread. Here’s some titles yet to be used for your self-created Christmas tunes. Christmas Carols Young Father Christmas The Old Gray …
Santa, and Father Christmas and Sinter Klaas before him, is the penultimate character representing Christmas spirit, but he has many helpers. In Germany, there’s his evil counterpart Krampus, and since 1823 (when A Visit from St. Nicholas — better known as The Night Before Christmas — was first published) his reindeer. In the twentieth century …
States may not be able to change their names without a lot of legislature, but it’s possible to change their flag. Mississippi was just fine with this state flag for 126 years, even though it featured the Confederate flag that in recent years has gone from being a symbol of rebel pride to racist tyranny. …
If you were an American child of the 1960s, I can’t emphasize how awesome Scooby Doo, Where Are You? was when it debuted on Saturday Morning TV in 1969. It was radically different from anything that went before. The animation was top-notch and the storylines more complicated than animals chasing each other around with hammers. …
It’s not an easy task to worldbuild a fictional rock band. You need to have polished writing skills, a finger on the pulse of contemporary culture (or history of pop culture, if set in the past) and an in-depth knowledge of the music world. That’s a rare order. Nevertheless, some writers in recent years …