Imaginary Worlds

Gene Roddenberry’s name is synonymous with Star Trek, but he relied on a team to bring his vision to life. Most of his writers were men...

Imagine if Bruce Wayne had no money, if Superman grew up on Krypton and came to Earth with emotional scars, or if Wonder Woman had been...

Sinners got a historic 16 Academy Award nominations, which was remarkable for a film with vampires. But the film is also a rich exploration...

Scarlet Hollow is a successful indie video game – and that’s no small feat. It’s been a long journey, and the game is made almost entirely...

Darby McDevitt is a narrative director and writer at Ubisoft . He’s worked on multiple games in the Assassin’s Creed franchise, which spans...

In my annual audio drama, I interview several folklore figures who are synonymous with the holiday season outside America -- but they’ve...

When I was growing up, Bigfoot appeared regularly on the covers of supermarket tabloids, so I assumed he was a joke. But I’ve discovered...

As longtime listeners know, I worked in the animation industry before switching careers and going into broadcasting. Today’s episode...

When director Guillermo del Toro asked Tamara Deverell to be the production designer on his film adaptation of Frankenstein, she had a good...

In honor of the spooky season, we present two monstrous origin stories --Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. We know...

In the 1950s, the avant-garde music scene in New York and the movie studios of Los Angeles might have seemed like opposite ends of a...

Movies that change cinema often come from outsiders – whether it’s Orson Welles making Citizen Kane or George Lucas making Star Wars a.k.a....

I’ve covered digital and practical effects in film and TV, but creating special effects for live theater is a whole other challenge. J&M...

I didn't want the summer to end without joining in on the 50th anniversary celebrations of Jaws. I spent summers on Cape Cod as a kid,...

Coney Island still has the classic amusements you’d expect today like roller coasters, water slides, and carnival games. But over a century...

Creating a musical score for interactive video games is like trying to hit a moving target. Luckily, Hans Zimmer’s studio Bleeding Fingers...

The production design of the film Fantastic Four: First Steps is an homage to the early ‘60s comics created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby....

When Arvind Ethan David was a student, he decided to adapt the Douglas Adams novel Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency into a play....

The animated TV series Pantheon (streaming on Netflix) asks what if you could upload your mind to the Internet? Would still be human? Would...

Murderbot is a killing machine in the far future that would rather spend its time binging an intergalactic soap opera. Shooting bad guys...

Next year marks the 60th anniversary of Dark Shadows. The gothic soap opera wasn’t originally intended to include a vampire, but when...

We all have that one thing we just can’t watch. For me, it’s body horror -- the kind of horror where grotesque and disturbing things happen...

Last week, we heard about a new exhibit in New York called Syd Mead: Future Pastime. The exhibit closes on May 21st, and I know most...

The late Syd Mead was a visual futurist who was hired to imagine the worlds of Blade Runner, Tron, Aliens, Elysium and other sci-fi films....

The golden age of sci-fi was filled with utopian visions the future. These days, when sci-fi creators project ahead several decades, the...

In honor of Women’s History Month we’re producing a two-part series about two artists who were visionaries and trailblazers. In part 2, we...

In the previous episode, I talked with author Mallory O'Meara about Milicent Patrick, but there wasn't room to include this bonus material...

In honor of Women’s History Month, we’re producing a two-part series about two visionary and trailblazing artists: Mary Blair and Milicent...

This week’s episode comes from our Patreon podcast Between Imaginary Worlds. It’s a more casual chat show that appears between ad-free...

In the 1950s, an article about the popularity of folk music among science fiction fans had a typo where “folk” was written as “filk.” From...

The writer Jon Ronson and producers of the immersive theatrical experience Sleep No More have teamed up to make a vast new immersive show...

Lauren Shippen is one of my favorite creators of audio dramas. In 2015, she burst on the scene with The Bright Sessions, which was about...

In honor of Muppet*Vision 3D closing at Disney World, we look at the history of The Muppets before Kermit joined Miss Piggy and Fozzie...

There’s a fan theory that James Bond is a codename, and all of the Bond movies are in a single chronological order. In this original audio...

The Penguin series on HBO and Max has been one of the most critically acclaimed comic book-based TV shows in years. Much of the praise has...

In honor of the release of Wicked, we’re hitching a ride on a tornado to hear three different stories about Oz. We hear how the “rainbow...

All Hail Doom! The supreme ruler of Latveria has successfully defeated The Fantastic Four and The Avengers. Marvel Studios is bowing...

Horror movies are best known for their monsters and villains – but there’s another half to the equation. The Final Girls who survive horror...

For a long time, imagining what alien life could look like was mostly the job of science fiction creators. But in recent years, the field...

I'm excited to announce that we're starting a new Patreon-only ad-free show called Between Imaginary Worlds, which is a more casual chat...

Role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder aren’t just played in game shops or living rooms. They’re also very popular in...

In the second part of our retrospective on how Imaginary Worlds has covered sci-fi and fantasy since September 2014, we look at the world...

When I began my podcast in September 2014, I was mostly sticking with topics that I was familiar with like blockbuster movies and...

I used to think escape rooms were gimmicky activities where everyone scrambled to solve puzzles while I stood around feeling useless. On...

The field of audiobooks has exploded since the introduction of mp3 players, and it continues to expand. But it takes a unique set of skills...

In the years since my 2020 episode Fantasy and Fascism, I knew that I had to make a follow-up episode. The political landscape was changing...

Who really composed the scores of Dune, Interstellar, Blade Runner 2049, The Dark Knight, Man of Steel, Pirates of the Caribbean and The...

The hottest trend in fantasy novels – in fact the hottest trend in publishing overall – is fantasy romance or romantasy. These stories take...

Book banning is hitting libraries across America, and many of the titles being banned or challenged are fantasy books or graphic novels –...

Did you know that in retirement, George Lucas decided to host a live talk show with his sidekick Watto? That’s the conceit of The George...

Over the past 40 years, Shigeru Miyamoto has been inventing the modern video game one pixel at a time. From Donkey Kong to Super Mario Bros...

When Joe Dever died in 2016, he hadn’t written the last several books in his Lone Wolf series. The Lone Wolf books take place in a deeply...

When the writer Nnedi Okorafor coined the term Africanfuturism, she wanted to distinguish sci-fi written about Africa from Afrofuturism,...

Back in 2018, I interviewed language creator David J. Peterson about how he invented Dothraki for Game of Thrones and other fictional...

The Wizard of Oz is deeply ingrained into our culture. While many people can practically recite the 1939 movie, the original source...

In the previous episode, I interviewed documentary filmmaker Isaac Elliot-Fisher about He-Man and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Isaac had...

In the final episode of our mini-series Class of '84, we look at two iconic franchises that launched in 1984: Transformers and Teenage...

In the second episode of our mini-series on groundbreaking works from 1984, we jack into the system and upload our minds into Neuromancer....

When I interviewed special effects artist Shannon Shea about The Terminator and other villains of ’84, we also discussed his experiences...

This year marks the 40th anniversary of a lot of landmarks in pop culture, especially sci-fi and fantasy. So many franchises were born in...

I was blown away by the Netflix animated series Blue Eye Samurai. I’m not alone, it has 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I was pleasantly...

In the 1960s, Ursula K. le Guin represented a changing of the guard in science fiction literature. She was part of a generation of...

This week's episode is an original audio drama. In previous episodes, I’ve interviewed Captain Hook, vampires, colonists on the moon, and...

In honor of Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary, I’ve rewritten my 2018 episode about Doctor Who with updates on how the series has evolved, and...

One Piece is one of the biggest franchises in the world. The manga and anime have broken records in sales and viewership. The live action...

My guests from the previous episode, Carolyne Larrington and Ada Palmer, had so many interesting things to say about Norse mythology and...

Thor and Loki have become pop culture icons thanks to Marvel. But the influence of Norse mythology on contemporary fantasy runs through...

Kritika H. Rao, Shveta Thakrar, Roshani Chokshi, and Ram V are helping to create a new genre. They use elements of their Hindu backgrounds...

We all know the scenario. A nice young family moves into a new house. It’s haunted by an evil spirit. Mayhem ensues. These movies have been...

John Roesch is a legend in the field of foley sound effects. He mastered the art of creating bespoke sound effects using props or just his...

35 years ago, Doug Naylor co-created a sitcom called Red Dwarf about the last human left alive in the far future. But the character is not...

The writers’ and actors’ strikes have disrupted the pipeline of new shows and movies. We’re going to run out of new stuff to watch soon....

We’ve all had this experience. We get hooked on a show. We fall in love with the characters. We can’t stop thinking about them in between...

Who wouldn’t want a fairy godmother to solve our problems with the flick of a magic wand? We know that’s not a healthy fantasy and yet,...

These ships feel like old friends – The Enterprise, the Millennium Falcon, Battlestar Galactica, Serenity, The Rosinante. But would any of...

Science fiction has primed us for this moment when artificial intelligence starts to take on a life of its own. ChatGPT has baffled and...

As the Warhammer franchise reaches its 40th anniversary, the company Games Workshop’s stated goal of “total global domination” is going...

Our culture is going through a Gothic Revival -- partly thanks to the influence of Tim Burton. Gothic literature may have thrived in the...

A play by Charles Dickens. The Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland. A hologram of a famous dead pop singer. They’re all connected by a...

When Jim Henson hired Bonnie Erickson to design Muppets in the early 1970s, Bonnie had no idea this experimental project they were working...

This summer, Hayao Miyazaki will be releasing his final animated film before retiring. Environmental stewardship has been a consistent...

Discworld might be the most popular fantasy series you’ve never heard of. The late Terry Pratchett wrote 41 novels in the Discworld...

Margaret Cavendish was a pioneer of modern science fiction – except she didn’t intend to write science fiction. In the 17th century,...

When the March 1923 issue of Weird Tales hit newsstands, many people didn’t know what to make of this new magazine. But 100 years later,...

The town of Ong's Hat in New Jersey may have been the site of a top secret experiment that brought scientists to a parallel world in...

As we near the one year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I check in with the Ukrainian writers I interviewed for my 2022...

I’ve been following parallel media stories about visual artists in two different fields. Each story is about artists who create fantastical...

Nghi Vo's novels Siren Queen and The Chosen and the Beautiful have gotten widespread critical acclaim, which was a pleasant surprise to her...

When a fantasy or sci-fi story is set in a real location, what happens when fans go to that place looking for a glimpse of magic? How do...

This year marks the 75th anniversary of Octavia Butler’s birth. There have been commemorations nationwide, and I wanted to join in by...

In the subgenre of analog horror, there’s something sinister or supernatural lurking in the horizontal lines and vertical holds in those...

Was the tale of Hansel and Gretel inspired by a real crime in German history? It would make for a great story, if it were true. This week’s...

From TV and film to novels and video games, the artistic movement of Indigenous Futurisms has been gaining momentum and breaking cultural...

Jeff Russo has composed music for sci-fi fantasy shows like Star Trek Discovery and Picard, The Umbrella Academy, Altered Carbon, For All...

There is a booming culture of VTubers – people who create content online, but their fans rarely see their real faces or know their names....

One of the most common tropes in fantasy genres is personifying Death – turning this abstract and often terrifying concept into a character...

The stories we tell about the past can determine the way we understand the present. But what happens when we combine tales of magic and...

In part 2 of our mini-series on mentorships, we travel to a galaxy far, far away. Amy Richau (co-author of Star Wars; I am Your Father and...

In the first of a two-part episode on mentors in fantasy genres, we look at the roles of superheroes and their protégées. Matt Fraction...

When the artist Cliff Chiang co-created the comic book series Paper Girls, about four suburban kids in the ‘80s who get caught up in forces...

It’s not often that I’m watching a TV show and I think, “I should ask the writers about that.” Luckily, I was in the same undergraduate...

I’ve long been fascinated by automatons – wind up mechanical beings that create the illusion of life. People have been making automatons...

Our Flag Means Death is a hilarious anachronistic pirate comedy on HBO Max. But the backstory of its main characters is surprisingly real....

When I began this podcast in September 2014, I couldn’t imagine myself someday celebrating 200 episodes of Imaginary Worlds. It feels like...

Mystery Science Theater 3000 or MST3K is back once again. The show was first created by Joel Hodgson, then a stand-up comedian who was...

For the last 30 years, the real world has been catching up to Neal Stephenson’s vision of the future in his 1992 novel Snow Crash, which...

There’s an old saying that everyone wants to live long, but no one wants to get old. The same can be applied to our favorite sci-fi fantasy...

One of the most common requests I've gotten over the years has been to do an episode about why so many autistic people are drawn towards...

100 years ago this month, the vampire film Nosferatu was released in Germany. Not long after, it was hit with a lawsuit – which the...

The Russian invasion of Ukraine shocked the world, but this conflict was foreshadowed in Ukrainian and Russian speculative fiction. I talk...

It’s a future we’re all very familiar with. The rainy streets are full of neon dragons, noodle shops, and other Asian iconography mixed up...

In the sci-fi drama Beforeigners from HBO Nordic, Oslo is overrun with immigrants and refugees. But they haven’t come from other countries....

Have you ever watched a movie or show, gotten sucked into a mystery and come up with your own idea of what is going to be revealed – only...

Once upon a time, the funnies or the comics pages dominated newspapers – back when newspapers were the main source of information for most...

Once upon a time, the funnies or the comics pages dominated newspapers – back when newspapers were the main source of information for most...

Marvel and DC are jumping into the multiverse with multiple movies and shows crossing over into parallels worlds with different versions of...

The imagery of Christmas in most Western countries is of pure wholesomeness with Santa Claus or St. Nicholas, presents, candy, lights, etc....

Nathan Sawaya is one of the best-known LEGO Master Builders – people who can recreate just about anything out of LEGO. While he's worked...

The world of tabletop role-playing games is much broader than Dungeons & Dragons, and there’s been a boom of DIY tabletop RPGs in the last...

Many elements of modern horror movies and TV shows came from an unlikely source, a theater in Paris called The Grand Guignol. Beginning in...

Frank Herbert’s Dune has been hailed as a pioneer of environmental science fiction, where the Fremen on the planet of Arakkis, have had to...

Kasra Farahani has done concept art on a lot of big sci-fi fantasy films, and this year he took on his biggest job yet as the production...

Video games are an inherently visual medium that traditionally haven’t been very accessible to blind people. But there are plenty of blind...

Queer representation in children’s cartoons has never been better, but the road to get here has been fraught. I talk with podcaster Dawn H...

An entire subgenre of samurai films, shows, manga, anime and games can be traced back to one person – a real life samurai named Miyamoto...

If you’ve ever searched for my podcast, you probably came across a show with a similar title: Imaginary Advice. I quickly became a fan of...

Every year, I like to play a full-length version of an interview from a previous episode where a lot of great material ended up on the...

In superhero stories, the public is usually there to be saved by the heroes or killed by the villains. But as a journalist, I always wonder...

Is it possible that we are living in an imaginary world? That is the premise of many science fiction stories, but some scientists have...

Sci-fi and fantasy genres have come a long way from their pulp fiction and Saturday matinee origins to become respectable genres. But...

Disco Elysium has been called one of the best role-playing video games of all time. It's won a slew of awards and it’s a worldwide...

When Andy Weir wrote “The Martian,” he self-published the chapters to his website -- never expecting the story to become a best-selling...

Illusions that mask the true nature of reality. Meditating to gain control over your mind and body. Sending your consciousness to other...

Becky Chambers’ latest novel, “The Galaxy and The Ground Within,” is the final book in her Wayfarer series, which is about aliens, humans...

Sun Ra claimed to be an extraterrestrial being from Saturn who could teleport you to other planets with his music. That may or may not have...

One year into this pandemic, it’s been a struggle to feel a connection with other people digitally. That’s why I was inspired to hear an...

The 1982 movie Tron may seem outdated and even hokey today, but the film was more groundbreaking and prophetic than many people realize. I...

The story of the brothers Grimm and how they came to publish a book of fairy tales has become something of a folk legend in itself. The...

In the 1950s and ‘60s, the vibrating sound of the Theremin instrument was synonymous with sci-fi movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still...

Betty Boop is a beloved cultural icon, but she was controversial in her heyday. I talk with Mark Fleischer – grandson of Betty Boop’s...

The myth of Camelot runs deep in our culture. For over a thousand years, storytellers have felt compelled to tell the tale of King Arthur...

Every year, I like to play a full-length interview with a previous guest who had so much more to say than what I could fit into a...

2020 has felt monstrous on so many levels. So, it’s no coincidence that two of the top grossing movies of the year were Jaws and Jurassic...

Fan films allow filmmakers to tell stories set in the worlds of their favorite licensed characters, and fan films have taken off in recent...

Since we can’t pick up universal translators on The Enterprise or through the TARDIS, we have to rely on human translators to bring fantasy...

The anime series Cowboy Bebop is currently being turned into a live-action series for Netflix, but Cowboy Bebop doesn’t need to be...

You know the scene. A pair of muggers are in an alleyway when a superhero leaps down and beats them to a pulp. It’s a classic scenario, but...

Fascism is a common theme in fantasy worlds, especially the rebels vs. evil empire scenario. But what can we learn from stories about...

If you’re the type of Star Wars fan who knows the original trilogy by heart but hasn’t seen much else, Ahsoka Tano may be the most beloved...

Mission to Zyxx is one of my favorite and highly bingeable podcasts. It’s a sci-fi audio drama (although very much a comedy) about a ragtag...

You've probably seen Doug Jones many times without realizing it because he is best known as a creature performer. You may have been moved...

In 2016, I put out an episode about how JK Rowling’s themes in the Harry Potter series inspired a generation of progressive activists...

The works of H. P. Lovecraft have inspired a number of Black creators and other writers of color, from the new HBO series Lovecraft Country...

San Diego Comic Con is the high holiday of geekiness where fans converge to cosplay, buy collectables, show their appreciation to creators,...

If we ever make contact with aliens, they probably won’t look like humans with pointy ears or bumpy noses, but creature makeup design is...

Live theater has been shut down across the country, but live action role play (“larp” for short) is finding new ways to thrive in digital...

Time travel is one of my favorite genres, and it’s also my go-to daydream. But I’ve begun to wonder whether time travel fantasies are a...

When things go wrong, it’s tempting to say something’s cursed as a joke. But when things go dreadfully wrong on horror movie sets, some...

Many of us have imaginary friends when we’re young in the guise of a doll, stuffed animal or toy that give us a sense of comfort. Then we...

Cyberpunk was cool. Steampunk was hip. Get ready for Solarpunk. This new emerging genre of art and fiction imagines a future where DIY...

In 2005, the multiplayer online game World of Warcraft was taken over by a virus called Corrupted Blood, and the virtual pandemic in this...

We're craving an escape into our favorite fantasy worlds, but fans are complaining that all the "retconning" is ruining their suspension of...

The Good Place just ended after four critically acclaimed seasons, and it was one of several recent TV shows to imagine the afterlife as...

Tracing the history of the superhero genre can reveal a lot about how we understand our own history, and how history gets whitewashed....

2001: A Space Odyssey is considered a masterpiece, and a game changer for sci-fi on film. But the movie had a tumultuous origin story, and...

When it comes to tarot cards, there is an artistry to designing a world of emperors, fools, priestesses, hermits and other iconic figures....

Patrick Stewart is reprising his role as Jean-Luc Picard in the new TV series “Picard,” where the writers have promised a very different...

As far as Star Wars fans are concerned, there is no greater hive of scum and villainy than the 1978 made-for-TV Star Wars Holiday Special....

What does it take for a villain to be redeemed? That’s not a theoretical question when that villain is Kylo Ren who may or may not be...

Villains are having a moment. They’re getting their own movies, they’re inspiring hashtags that say they’re right. And they don’t want to...

Ronald D. Moore is probably best known for rebooting Battlestar Galactica as a gritty political commentary in the early 2000s. His latest...

Think of an alien abduction: humanoid creatures, medical experiments, lost memories brought back by hypnosis. But that narrative was...

Jason Suran wants you to know he can’t talk to the dead. Then he will convince you that he can. In Suran’s show, The Other Side, he...

We all know Godzilla’s iconic roar, but the musician who scored Godzilla's rampages is not as well known. The composer Akira Ifukube’s...

One of the most popular anime series just became widely available when Netflix started streaming Neon Genesis Evangelion. Evangelion is...

Walt Disney pioneered the art of hand drawn animation, but it was really his top animators, “The Nine Old Men,” who were responsible for...

Movie trailers have come a long way from the voice-of-God narrators in the ‘80s and ‘90s. So why do the big budget sci-fi fantasy trailers...

Mexican wrestling (aka Lucha Libre) has a lot in common with the superhero genre, but trying to be a superhero in real life has its own set...

I talked with legendary audio drama producer Dirk Maggs for an episode about the history of radio dramas last year-- but a lot of great...

He's one of the most popular pro-wrestlers of all time, but Mark Calaway’s undead character The Undertaker is also an anachronism from a...

Imagine walking into your living room, and alongside your couch is a prop from one of your favorite childhood movies. Sure, it was costly...

Burlesque has merged with geek culture to form nerdlesque – where characters from familiar fantasy franchises strip down to pasties and...

In the conclusion of our mini-series on sidekicks, we look at how Harley Quinn began as a sidekick to a villain, and found her way to the...

In part two of our mini series on sidekicks, we look at two characters that have travelled in parallel since they came out of the same...

To kick off our mini-series on sidekicks, we look at the most iconic and long-standing sidekick in pop culture: Doctor Watson. For 130...

Witness if you will a writer: Rod Serling. This is the story of a man with a vision -- a vision of what television could be if only men...

Ever since George Lucas cited Joseph Campbell’s 1949 book, “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” as the inspiration for Star Wars, Hollywood...

50 years ago this month, Kurt Vonnegut introduced Billy Pilgrim and the aliens who gave him time traveling powers in his novel...

In the 1930s Margaret Brundage was the hottest pulp fiction magazine illustrator. She primarily painted covers for Weird Tales magazine,...

Conan the Barbarian is generally thought of as a muscle-bound brute who fights his way through a made-up ancient world. But the character...

In some video games, you can choose which character you want to play, and you can customize the look of those characters. For many...

One of the unique aspects of video games is that you can control the characters. But game developers are often torn between wanting to give...

Madeline Miller received critical acclaim for her novels The Song of Achilles and Circe – which reimagine The Iliad and The Odyssey told...

In a special stocking stuffer of an episode, Stephanie Billman and I discuss why A Christmas Carol set the template for SF stories to come...

We all grow up playing board games and card games, and now those games are growing up as well. I check out BostonFIG (festival of...

In my 2017 episode Winning the Larp, I looked at the history of larps (live action role plays) and how the larping experience is deeply...

Long ago, before we found out about new movies from tweets about teaser trailers that advertised full-length trailers – the first glimpse...

Science fiction has not always been compatible with religion -- in fact many futuristic settings imagine no religion at all. But sci-fi and...

Forget Tinkerbell or those Victorian paintings of spritely pixies with wings. Traditional fairy folklore is much darker and weirder. Irish...

There has been a renaissance of audio drama podcasts over the last several years, so picking up where I left off in the previous episode, I...

The "golden age of radio drama" may have been a stellar period for storytelling -- but the stories weren't all golden bright. Science...

What is the role of food in worldbuilding? Characters usually have to eat to stay alive -- but food is also culture, and if you're creating...

Stubborn Lippi a.k.a. Stubbs is a halfling, a bard, and a sorcerer. He's also the character I've been playing since I produced my 2015...

Last year, I interviewed Francesca Coppa for my episode Fanfiction (Don't Judge.) She's the author of the book "The Fanfiction Reader," and...

Sci-fi fantasy worlds often use constructed languages (or conlangs for short) as a worldbuilding tool that can make us believe the...

Have you ever mourned the loss of a fictional character? It can be tough to get over, and difficult to convince people not caught up in...

The writer Neil Gaiman first became entranced with Fahrenheit 451 as a kid, but he says the novel is the kind of masterpiece that seems...

At its core, Magic: The Gathering is a card game and your goal is to knock your opponent down to zero points. But Magic: The Gathering also...

You may know her as Claire North, author of the best-selling novel "The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August." You might also know her as...

To promote season 2 of Westworld, HBO recreated the fictional Wild West town from the TV show just outside Austin at the SXSW festival, and...

Avengers: Infinity War brought together characters from across the Marvel universe, but many of them already shared a common bond -- their...

People have fantasized for ages about what it would be like to live in space -- whether it's living on the moon or Mars or on a space...

Philip K. Dick is best known for his fiction that have been adapted to movies and TV shows like Blade Runner, Minority Report and Man in...

The holy grail for many animators is to create digital humans that can pass for the real thing -- in other words to cross the "uncanny...

Ursula K. Le Guin was a master storyteller who was best known for her "thought experiments" -- like what if there were a planet in which...

They may not look scary to you, but the monsters on Doctor Who have scared generations of children to the point where hiding "behind the...

If The Doctor offered you a spot traveling with him on his spaceship/time machine The TARDIS, would you go? Would you still go if you knew...

We don't know his real name. We don't know who he was before he stole the TARDIS -- a spaceship/time machine that looks like a police box...

For the past year, I've been working with The Truth, an audio drama collective that makes "movies for your ears." In the second story that...

The Last Jedi may be the most controversial film in the Star Wars series. While the movie has been critically acclaimed, many Star Wars...

The Expanse novels by James S.A. Corey (the pseudonym for writers Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham) imagine how human beings would colonize our...

Are we prepared for a future where robots are the most sought after employees? Maybe not. Lawmakers will blame anything but automation for...

The military shows up in a lot of sci-fi and fantasy stories but the subgenre of military SF depicts soldiers holding their own in...

Sci-fi and fantasy have always been a big part of fanfiction, but fanfiction hasn't always gotten respect in return. My former colleague at...

The Haunted Mansion is one of the most beloved rides at the Disney theme parks, yet its development was anything but smooth. Walt Disney...

In the second of my two-part episode on musical worlds, I talk with Mega Ran and Sammus -- hip hop artists that create concept albums based...

In the first of a two part episode on imaginary worlds in music, I talk with members of Vertigo Drift, an indie band that created a...

This week, I team up with Helen Zaltzman of The Allusionist podcast to help me figure out why one set of poorly understood...

This week, I'm playing one of my favorite episodes of the podcast 99% Invisible where host Roman Mars and producer Sam Greenspan look at...

If the previous episode was all about villains, this one looks at the other side of that equation. In 2014 I interviewed the writer Scott...

They've tried to take over the world. They've tried to take away our free will. They've gone after ancient artifacts with vaguely defined...

Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune and its sequels tackled a lot of big themes. The books are about ecology. They're about journeys of...

EVE Online is a massive multi-player online role playing game, which means it's a game where there are no rules -- just a galaxy where you...

We were promised flying cars but we got Twitter instead. That's the common complaint against science fiction writers and the visions of the...

There's been a recent resurgence of radio dramas or audio dramas over the past 5 years. I've done a few myself on Imaginary Worlds. So I...

Most people think of Twin Peaks as a place in their imaginations or on TV. But the show caused an identity crisis for the folks living in...

Lisa Hanawalt had finally established herself as a freelance illustrator when her friend Raphael Bob-Wakesburg asked to borrow one of her...

Steven Sheil grew up in the era of "video nasties" -- a pushback by conservatives in the UK to ban Hollywood slasher films before they...

Imagine you're a New Yorker in the mid 22nd century. You have to deal with all sorts of headaches like traffic jams on the East River or...

Comrades! The USSR pioneered the craft of science fiction long before the decadent West. This is not an opinion - this is a scientific...

Imaginary Worlds goes live in this special presentation from the work x work on air festival. In celebration of Will Eisner's centennial,...

Cosplay has gotten huge in the age of social media, but when websites feature their ComicCon slides shows, they often don't reflect the...

Sam Kaden Lai takes the wheel of this episode of Imaginary Worlds to tell the story of how Avatar: The Last Airbender and its sequel series...

Larp stands for Live Action Role Play. That's about as simple as it gets when trying to understand what Larps are. They can be fantastical...

Tim Lapetino's book "The Art of Atari" is full of eye candy for anyone who grew up playing those games -- especially if you gazed at the...

Think of all the movies and TV shows that reference Star Wars. Most of those scenes are pretty forgettable -- except for a scene in the...

The Amazon series The Man in the High Castle is based on a 1962 novel by Philip K. Dick, which imagines what would've happened to America...

How much does an author's point of view influence her stories? And do those stories in turn influence us? Professor Anthony Gierzynski...

Harry was being a jerk -- or that's what a lot of kids and teens thought when they read the last few books of JK Rowling's series. Some...

Every 11-year old goes through this, right? Your teacher places a brown wizard's cap your head, and the hat tells you what your defining...