This Power Grid is dedicated to all the little kids out there that managed to befriend the gamut of alien races and improbably survive because audiences don’t much like watching little kids succumbing to the true horrors of alien related deaths in science fiction.

No, the tropes at play in these movies are much more about friendship and accepting differences in others… except when they’re not, because the whole genre is being deconstructed by Jhonen Vasquez or K.A. Applegate. Or when the movie is just awfully, unforgivably, MST3Kingly bad.

But mostly, these extraterrestrially tinged bildungsroman play it straight, giving us some of the biggest tear-jerkers in kids' sci-fi. Enjoy!

>>>List at The Mary Sue.

Animation is a medium and not a genre. It seems to bear repeating, since many professional critics, filmmakers, and a vast majority of the cinema-going public still don’t see it that way. Thankfully, this opinion has begun to shift in recent years, thanks to foreign productions like Persepolis, or the Best Picture-nominated Toy Story 3. Still, this cultural attitude has also led to some unusual reviews of animated films (including one about Princess Mononoke suggesting it was for 9-year olds seeking escapism), and (when combined with a number of factors including, but not limited to, Disney’s significant dip in quality for most of the ’80s leading to some serious competition from other animation studios and the influence of anime finally arriving on American shores), some very, very interesting childhood movie memories for people now in their 20s and 30s.

The directors of these films simply had a more … expansive view of what children could handle, which sometimes landed them in hot water with critics and outraged parents. Sometimes, it left an indelible impression on the young guns that watched it, an impression that they’re all too happy to share with others who remember too.

>>>List at The Mary Sue.

May 25th, while not the most logical of dates on the face of it, nevertheless is a holiday known to many geeks as Towel Day.  On Towel Day, all of Adams’ fans are encouraged to carry a towel around with them, or to at least know where their towel is, following the great tradition of hitchhiking, traveling, managing, and adventuring laid out in his work.

Naturally, this got us to thinking about all the hoopy (really together guy) froods (really amazingly together guys) that we know in fiction that really know where their towels are. You know, the characters who you could drop off anywhere and anywhen in the space time continuum, and come back in an hour and they’d already be lounging in perfect confidence and opulence, knocking back something highly alcoholic. Any one who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a person to be reckoned with.
>>>List at The Mary Sue.

We’ve been in a vampir-ey mood lately. Perhaps its the success of Being Human on this side of the pond, the imminent end of the Twilight movie franchise, or maybe it’s Priest. …naaaahhh, haha, it’s not Priest. The Vampire is a mythological creature that can function as something of a Rorschach test: it is what you make of it. Vampirism has been a metaphor for pretty much any moral threat to the social collective. Originally, vampires weren’t sexy, pretty, pale people, tormented over their fate. (Or not.) Nor did they have a penchant for Egyptian jewelry or lying around on couches in cheap velvet listening to the Smiths. They were in many ways the original zombies. You know…re-animated bodies, crawling from the grave to feast on the blood of mortals be they sexy or no. Today, Vampires can be whatever we want them to be: recovering addicts, stunted children, sinners seeking redemption, or the object of everyone’s uncontrollable lust. Here we have listed, for your eternal pleasure, some of the most common, most famous, most versatile vein bursting bloodletters in our contemporary culture. And believe us when we say… they all suck. >>>List at The Mary Sue.

Yes, Virginia, there are women on the Internet. Maybe the percentage of women working in tech-related fields is still low, but that certainly doesn’t mean there aren’t already major female power players in charge of some of the most successful tech companies. Their achievements range from revolutionizing Wikipedia, hacking into everything, and — seriously — controlling the Internet. Here, in no particular order, are 10 of the most powerful women in technology that you might not have considered. >>>Full list at The Mary Sue.

This Groundhog Day Power Grid is all about Groundhog Day. Not the movie, the trope of getting stuck in an infinite time loop. …wait, you mean it's not Groundhog Day? We escaped! Thank god! It turns out all we had to do to get it to not be February 2nd was… finish the Groundhog Day Power Grid! >>>See the list.

When we were making a list of small businesses within the geek canon, we realized that there were an awful lot of detective agencies. And the rule is, if we can come up with five of a thing off the top of our heads, it would probably be a mighty fine Power Grid. So tip your fedora up a bit, put that bottle and shot glass back in the bottom drawer, and kick that floosy broad out of the office. She's only going to betray you in the end, anyway. Here's a comprehensive survey of paranormal, or just somehow geeky, private detectives.

It's one thing to be a character in science fiction or fantasy. You've got all the rigors of a hero's existence, major disasters, war, famine, political upheaval, and even a slight chance of the apocalypse. But clearly none of that could compare to the rigors of running a small business. You don't see Perry White in tights, do you? Or Michael Scott? That's right. If supplementing your income by being your own boss was easy, everybody would do it. A space wasps, an army of ninja zombies, and a bloodthirsty panda? Fine. But dealing with a an insurance provider, a payroll company, and the IRS? All in the same day? Noooo thank you. >>>See the list.

Say the word superhero and it immediately conjures the image of somebody who can bend steel with her bare hands.  But some of our most beloved and enduring characters have no powers at all, but still manage to stand toe to toe with the likes of Captains Marvel and America. Just the fact that there's even an argument over who would win in a fight between Batman and Superman speaks to the power of a story about a person who can't move things with their mind, burst into flame, conjure giant green fists, or talk to fish. When all you've got is a cape, or a car, writers have proven that a character can be just as capable as, and maybe even more interesting than, the ones who are super. >>>See the list.

There comes a time of year when we're all either staring down the barrel of a new beginning or hoping for a chance to do it all over again, which is a position that, oddly enough, a lot of our favorite geek pastimes have also been in. The Batman movies woke up after a decade of binge drinking with Joel Shumacher and decided to go cold turkey. The James Bond franchise took a good hard look at that invisible car and decided it was time to get back on the treadmill. And Dungeons and Dragons decided that 3.5 was so last decade, and decided to dye it's hair 4 for a while and see if it could pick up some of those hot video gamers that everybody kept talking about. >>>See the list.