Bill Durgin’s Cyc-15 (2008). Hailed variously as the heir to the Kurt Vonnegut legacy, a Joseph Heller for the 21st century, and a Thomas Pynchon for the post-nuclear era, Nick Harkaway has garnered enough accolades since his recent authorial debut to turn a creative-writing MFA grad green with envy (if they weren’t already, thanks to his legacy: He’s the son of author John Le Carre). Harkaway’s first book, The Gone-Away World, is a gripping, satirical, postapocalyptic war epic populated with mimes, ninjas, bureaucrats, chimera, and gun-toting nerds. [Read More]

Here Are All of the Wigs Worn on The Americans So Far

spies like us March 13, 2014 5:00 pm By Margaret Lyons, Paolo Lorenzana Share Share Tweet Pin It 47 Photos Photo: FX The Americans is many things — an espionage drama, a domestic drama, a period piece. And it does many things well — those perfectly timed eighties music cues, those dazzling hand-to-hand combat scenes, the painfully real moments of marital bickering. But there is but one thing in particular that we can’t stop thinking about: the wigs. [Read More]

03 Greedo Released From Prison After More Than 4 Years

03 Greedo was released on Thursday, January 12, after being in prison for the last four and a half years. According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the Los Angeles rapper was scheduled to be released on parole. Vulture has reached out to Greedo’s attorney for comment. The news of his impeding release, first reported on January 8 by Jeff Weiss, comes as Greedo, who has not let up releasing music since his sentence began in 2018, dropped the new mixtape Free 03. [Read More]

10 Fun Bling Ring Tidbits You Will Not Learn From the Movie

BR_poster_27x40_v9_US Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring was initially based  on Nancy Jo Sales’s Vanity Fair article “The Suspect Wore Louboutins.” The author eventually expanded her initial piece into a full-fledged book called The Bling Ring: How a Gang of Fame-Obsessed Teens Ripped Off Hollywood and Shocked the World. By virtue of its length, it is able to delve much deeper into the case than the article or even Coppola’s film. [Read More]

11 Essential Hip-Hop Books

Hip-hop in its earliest incarnations was an experiential thing — not just because rappers and DJs had yet to secure the backing of major labels, but because their work depended on the texture and context that only a cramped nightclub or a sweaty multipurpose room could provide. Even as rap became a massive commercial force, it preserved the thrill of the impermanent: the sample chopped or flipped on the spot only to be nixed by the folks in legal affairs, the virtuosic freestyle that trails off into nothing. [Read More]

15 Irrefutable Reasons Why We Might Be Living in a Simulation

We Are Living in the Matrix A weeklong series about how a 1999 movie predicted kind-of-everything about life 20 years later. Are we, like Neo, living in a Matrix-like computer simulation of reality created by more advanced, possibly post-human beings? Almost certainly, at least according to the following evidence — ranging from the plausible, to the semi-plausible, to the maybe-not-so-plausible — under discussion at the endlessly delightful Are We Living in a Simulation? [Read More]

15 Stephen King Books That Should Be Adapted Next

This article was originally published on April 4, 2019. We’ve updated the list to include more great Stephen King works worthy of adaptation. Literary horror master Stephen King is no stranger to the screen. With the massive success of It, the critical acclaim for shows like the King-inspired Castle Rock and Mr. Mercedes, and more adaptations currently in the works, King has arguably never been hotter. And usually, it’s worth it. Sure, we get a dud like The Dark Tower every now and then, but we also end up getting good ones like Gerald’s Game. [Read More]

17 Indie Artists on Their Oddest Odd Jobs That Pay the Bills When Music Doesnt

“When is it gonna be when I have to get a real job? is always in the back of my head. But having a financially stable career is not why you make music.” “I don’t really understand how any musician can afford to stay in one place,” indie veteran singer-songwriter Cass McCombs told me during an interview for Vulture earlier this year. “We don’t make enough money to afford an apartment. [Read More]

20 Thoughts on the 20th Anniversary of Groundhog Day

This February marks the twentieth anniversary of Groundhog Day — the Bill Murray film about living the same day over and over again. This February marks the twentieth anniversary of Groundhog Day — the Bill Murray film about living the same day over and over again. Sorry. That’s the last time I do that, promise. Here are twenty thoughts, small and large, personal and not, on the occasion. 1. When Groundhog Day was released in 1993, pretty much everyone loved it. [Read More]

21 Savages Savage Mode Is Violent Music, But Its Oddly Comforting in Violent Times

Rap fandom is a peculiar pathology because it forces listeners to compartmentalize worlds of real and hypothetical violence, to revel in one while still finding the other jarring and unacceptable. This is not a distinction I gather the average American faces on a daily basis, barring fans of the bloodiest horror and action films, who retain the luxury of pawning all the guts and gore off as fiction. [Read More]