When You Have Vampires, Part 1

Vampires: the princes of darkness, the scourge of innocence, and the sexiest goddamn dead people you’ll ever meet. Think you can survive? You’ve survived a zombie apocalypse, after all. You’ve avoided the pitfalls of being a superhero’s girlfriend. So you’re ready for vampires, right?

No, you’re not.

Unlike those shambling hordes of half-rotten zombies, and unlike those cretinous superheroes, vampires have a way of sneaking into your life before you even know they’re there. But there’s hope. If you follow these handy tips, you too can uncover, survive, and even slay the most seductive and cunning tribe of the undead.

Read on, mortal chattel.

The Proterozoic, Part 1

Imagine yourself on a barren world. The atmospheric pressure is high enough to walk around without a space suit, but there are only trace amounts of oxygen, so you'll have to wear a respirator. Oh and, I’d wear a hat too, since the UV radiation is high enough to kill you within hours. Sorry, I should have told you that before you got here. My bad. You might want to put some aloe on that sunburn.

The landscape is bleak, nothing but desert sands and bedrock scoured clean by unrelenting erosion. You see, there are no plants here to firm up the soil. There isn’t any proper soil, for that matter, because there’s nothing alive to make soil. Soil—the kind of soil we’re familiar with—is bound together with organic matter that doesn't exist here.

Yeah, this place is so barren, it doesn’t even have dirt.