December 2005 Archives

Normally my new years resolutions are something like "read more" or "write more". However this coming year I've decided to undertake a specific task, somewhat akin to John@SFSignals one story a day. But instead of reading, it's about writing. I got the idea from Jay Lake, he suggests writing one short story a week, and I'm going to try it.

I haven't talked much about my writing here, because there's not much to talk about yet, plenty written (about ten shorts and three novels ) but no sales yet (although the novels haven't been sent out yet, that's resolution number two). However if I can find time to write 52 stories in one year then I'm hopeful that a sale will not be too far away.

For those of you that missed the Doctor Who Christmas Special, or want to see it again (and haven't already found a torrent of it, presuming that there are Doctor Who torrents...), it's repeated tomorrow. that's New Years Day, 7pm, BBC3 with Attack Of The Graske on digital interactive straight afterwards.

I hope that everyone has a very happy 2006.

The browncoats site is closing down, from an email I received...

"It is with a heavy heart that I must inform you that on January 6, 2006, The Browncoats will shut down."

A new (independent) community is being set up at http://serenitymovie.org.

Big Dumb Object would like to thank the following people who made the Dumbies possible this year.

Hosting : 34sp
Everything else : James

<elvis>thankyouverymuch<\elvis>

And the winners are...

Just watched the Doctor Who Christmas special, The Christmas Invasion, and played the interactive adventure Attack of the Graske (twice!). Both of them were really, really awesome! David Tennant was great as The Doctor.

The BBC Doctor Who site has an MP3 commentary soundtrack plus loads of other videos and photos!

More details when I have a moment amidst the festivities.

I'd like to wish everyone who reads Big Dumb Object a very Happy Christmas!

The results for the inaugral Big Dumb Object awards (aka The Dumbies) will be released after Christmas and before New Year. The judges are currently cogitating (but will probably soon be eating and drinking instead).

Amidst all of Time's best-of lists, here's a shocker, their best TV show of 2005 is Battlestar Galactica!

They say "Most of you probably think this entry has got to be a joke. The rest of you have actually watched the show."

No video games are eligible for this year's Dumbies because the judges have busy lives and no time to play games. They are hoping however that a Nintendo Revolution may change this next year.

The list crazy IGN crew have now published their Top 25 Sci-Fi Movies of All-Time. It's nicely entertaining , with words and pictures and stuff. Here's just the list...

The books up for Dumbie nomination are:

- River of Gods
- Accelerando
- The Time Travellers Wife
- The Brief History Of The Dead
- Gridlinked
- Singularity Sky
- Ender's Game
- Light
- Flowers For Algernon

The Dumbies have neatly circumvented the raging "should the Hugos split Fantasy and SF" debate, by completely excluding all Fantasy novels. This is despite a large proportion of the Dumbie's judge's years being spent reading Fantasy (mainly Harry Potter 6 and the never ending but quite excellent Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell). Once again the judges are disappointed at how few books they have read looking back at the year (and are sure that they've forgot some), but the afore mentioned large fantasy books did eat up some time. The much anticipated conclusion to The Baroque Cycle has been put on hold until next year, after some much needed "thin" books.

The BBC have let their Fear Factor panel of kids watch the Doctor Who Christmas Special, the results are here. The conclusion is Fear Factor 3 which is "Very Scary"!

Locus has interview excerpts with Paul McAuley online.

Interesting. He talks about how his publish marketed White Devils as a mainstream thriller because they thought it would sell more. If you haven't read any of McAuley's books I can highly recommend Fairyland, which is outstanding, sort of bio cyberpunky kind of stuff.

Christopher Priest writes Robert Sheckley's obituary in the Guardian. [Via Locus]

SciFi Brain continue with their top ten lists and do one for the ladies, The Fembot's Top 10 Hottest Men in Sci-Fi.

Adam Baldwin comes out top, then they interview him.

Channel 4's web site for the ABC Science Fiction show, Invasion, is live here and includes details about the show, including the scheduled time of the first episode, 8th Jan at 8.30pm

Invasion is one of the wave of new Science Fiction programmes commissioned last year in the US based on the back of the success of Lost.

UPDATE
Read my first thoughts on the show

Entertainment Weekly (via TV Squad) are reporting that Joss Whedon has accepted the fact that the Firefly franchise has come to and end, with Serenity not making enough money for the studios to invest in any more films.

I'm sad. Very sad.

David Tennant was interviewed on BBC Breakfast this morning and you can watch it online. Worth a watch for Doctor Who fans, it includes some clips (new and previously seen) from The Christmas Invasion.

SFX has an interview with Doctor Who producer Phil Collinson.

SFX: How does the new Doctor change the dynamic with Rose?
PC: “I think the obvious initial dynamic changes because she has to learn to trust him again, and The Christmas Invasion is very much about that."

One of Google's Zeitgeist graphs shows that throughout the year more people searched for "The Force" thand "Dark Side"!

This years films contain the end of a saga and hopefully the start of a new one.

- Star Wars Episode III : Revenge of the Sith
- Serenity

The film nominations have suffered somewhat this year because of the judges inability to get to see Science Fiction films at the cinema, and then being lazy about renting them on DVD. Therefore a few of the years big films fail to qualify: The Hitchers Guide To The Galaxy, which the judges friends said was rubbish so don't bother, The War Of The Worlds which just sort of slipped by and probably deserves a watch on DVD and the critically unacclaimed The Island.

However the two films up for nomination made up for the lack of quantity with supreme quality, and both of them were critical successes.

Ain't It Cool News has an interview with Joss Whedon. You have to scroll down about half way down the page due to AICN's terrible formatting. It's a mildy interesting interview, nothing earth shattering.

I happened by chance to catch the new Doctor Who, The Christmas Invasion trailer which was shown on BBC1 today. It isn't online yet. The trailer was 30 seconds long and showed lots more of the aliens and Rose. Everything looked very cool (including The Doctor in his pyjamas).

This year's Dumbies Television nomination list contains an old show rediscovered and three new shows.

- Lost
- Battlestar Galactica
- Firefly
- Doctor Who

Doctor Who proved that Science fiction in the UK could be primetime family entertainment and was an incredible success for the BBC. Meanwhile Firefly continued to win over fans long after its demise thanks to the DVD release, and then managed to spawn a film. Battlestar Galactica won the critics over with its serious SF style, despite most of them desperately trying to discount it as Science Fiction or using cliches such as "redefining the genre". Finally Lost was a massive ratings success both sides of the Atlantic and qualifies as SF because the judges love it and it has a polar bear on a tropical island.

ABC's Invasion is coming to Channel 4 in the new year. The site is supposed to be http://www.channel4.com/invasion but it doesn't seem to be online yet.

Mark Kelly at Views From Medina road says "I have a perhaps unjustified suspicion of websites that do not identify their authors or hosts" he then goes on to mention Big Dumb Object, "Similarly Big Dumb Object, an SF blog covering both media and literary topics, by 'James'. Who be 'James'?"

Which made me chuckle. Let me just alay Mark's suspicions. Big Dumb Object is not a front for a major media conglomerate (although if you've read this blog I'd be amazed if you thought that!). BDO is a blog, written by me James. I don't splash my last name about here because I don't think it really matters. I don't particularily feel I'm anymore anonymous than anyone else out there in the SF blogosphere. Besides if you read this blog you'll know more about me, my likes and dislikes, than a paragraph of bio would reveal.

What else would anyone out there like to know about me? Questions in the comments!

According to Variety, Warner Brothers have bought the stalled "The Watchmen" film from Paramount and they are now seeking a new director and writer. Hopefully elongated production hell won't be detrimental on the film, because the comic was truly awesome.

Via The Doctor Who website, here's some more details on the interactive Doctor Who episode, Attack of the Graske....

Attack of the Graske is a mini episode of Dr Who with a twist - it allows viewers to become the Doctor's companion.

Viewers will get the chance to track down an evil alien life form by flying the TARDIS and completing a series of challenges set by the Doctor himself.

Via Solar Flare, there's three reviews of A Scanner Darkly on Ain't It Cool News. The opinion seems to be that if you've read the book you'll like it, the one person who hadn't read the book was completely confused.

I'm not sure how the film will live up to being my favourite PKD book (that I've read, still got loads to go), but I'm still looking forward to it.

SFX have reviewed the Doctor Who Christmas special, The Christmas Invasion. They give five stars out of five and absolutely loved it, saying "The Christmas Invasion is probably the new Who’s best yet."

Cool. What a great Christmas present!

If you're a Browncoat then you can log in and see a deleted scene from Serenity which features Inara and Sheydra talking. Nothing too stunning.

Sci Fi Wire has a clip from the Serenity DVD. It features Shepherd Book and an extended look at the camp when the crew of Serenity arrived. Available in QuickTime (high, medium and low) and Windows Media Player (high, medium and low).

SFWA Pressbook is a weekly compilation of press releases from SFWA members and has a RSS feed.

[Via Trufen]

I'd heard mention of Virgin Galactic, but suddenly it all seems very real. They reckon that the first flights will be in late 2008 or early 2009. On top of that the spaceships are looking really cool!

Nice one Branson for putting your money where we want it. They're also getting lots of publicity in the UK due to the fake space tourists in Space Cadets.

Flowers For Algernon is about Charlie Gordon, who starts the story with an IQ of 68. Then he undergoes an experimental operation that increases his IQ to genius level.

I'd heard of this novel and bought it along with my other bulk SF masterworks purchases. With the cover proclaiming that it was the winner of a Hugo and a Nebula I had high expectations.

Some new SPOILER! pictures for Doctor Who, The Christmas Invasion are now online, which includes pictures of the Sycorax. Scary.

The BBC Press Office has more details on the Doctor Who interactive adventure that will be available via digital television after The Christmas Invasion on Christmas Day.

"Attack of the Graske is a pioneering mix of live action, state-of-the-art special effects (from multi-award-winning The Mill) and individual tasks"

Sounds interesting.

Next week BBC Breakfast will have David Tennant's first live television interview since he took on the role as the Doctor in Doctor Who. Joining David will be Russell T Davies, who has written and overseen the rebirth of the show.

BBC Breakfast has just shown an extended clip of the TARDIS crash landing from The Christmas Invasion. The Doctor stumbles out in a confused and amusing manner!

Via Emerald City, The Observer has a nice long interview on, and article with, David Tennant about his life as Doctor Who.

The FPI blog announces that Forbidden Planet are offering web hosting..

" If you are a creative person in either of these fields - comics writers, artists, sci-fi novel or short story writers and you have had any work published in a professional capacity we are willing within some limits (see below) to host your website for free on our servers. "

They're offering:
150mb of FREE Webspace
2 FREE Email Addresses
FREE Web Stats
Frontpage Extensions

Sounds like a very cool thing for them to do.

Here's Sci-Fi Brain's top ten SF moments of the 90's

1. The Matrix is released
2. Doom the videogame is released
3. Terminator 2: Judgement Day is released
4. The X-Files
5. Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash is Published
6. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
7. Superman Dies
8. Final Fantasy VII is released in North America
9. The Star Wars Special Edition Original Trilogy is Released in Theaters
10. Starcraft is released

Hmmm. Not sure I agree with the inclusion of the videogames. Also choosing DS9 over Babylon 5 is surely just the decision of someone who has not seen B5?! And neglecting The Phantom Menance is surely an oversight, it's the film that introduced Star Wars to a whole new generation of kids, and for my mind still has the best lightsaber fight ever committed to screen. As for the Matrix at number one, maybe, I just wish they hadn't made those awful sequels.

SFX reports that the Region 2 version of the Serenity DVD (that's UK and I think Australia) will include a special feature that's not on the US version. Called "A Film-Maker's Journey", this featurette is billed as "a journey with Joss from script to screen", and is about 20 minutes long.

Other extras include nine deleted scenes, six minutes of out-takes and a few other short featurettes.

Big Dumb Object is pleased to announced the inaugral Big Dumb Object awards, henceforth know as The Dumbies.

Media are eligible for nomination if they have been seen or read by the judges panel in the year of 2005, no matter when they were released. Categories include Best Film, Best Book, Best Television Series and Best Videogame. There are no worst awards in The Dumbies, life is too short to consume bad media and the judges therefore try to avoid such matters.

After the nominations have been announced the judges will be open for bribes for an unspecified period of time. Once they are satisfied that the best offers have arrived and have cogetated on the nominations the judges will then make their decision and announce the awards in a grand ceremony that involves a single, but important, blog post.

Please feel free to specualte on the nominations until they are announced.

Ian McDonald talks about early movie discussions for his book River Of Gods. A movie which did the book justice would be amazing. Please be true please be good.

The full Doctor Who The Christmas Invasion trailer is online. And very good it is too. Almost 30 seconds of teasing, including a big alien spaceship, the "gherkin" getting destroyed Id4 style and a crazy TARDIS crash landing (which looks awesome!). Can't wait.

The Doctor Who radio episode Shada is being rebroadcast on BBC 7 on Saturday but is also available online. It's interesting because it's written by none other than the late, great Douglas Adams, and has Paul McGann as the doctor.

The second teaser trail for the Doctor Who Christmas special, The Christmas Invasion is online now, and includes creepy trumpet playing Father Christmases!

Another big name star has signed up for Christopher Priest's/Christopher Nolan's The Prestige.

That makes Hugh Jackman, David Bowie, Christian Bale, Michael Caine and Scarlett Johansson.

Awesome.

I watched the first episode of Space Cadets last night. It's is being tauted as "the biggest prank in television history" and edges reality closer to The Truman show than ever before. Initially I felt guilt about watching it. But then I got over it.

The first thing to understand is that the people applying for the show were in fact, as far as they knew, applying for some other show called Thrill Seekers, with minimal details revealed. Of all the recruits were tested for suggestibility and claustrophobia, then taken on an adventure weekend in the hills. The suggestibility tests were very amusing, with many people seeing outrageous things in random dot patterns. It was amazing what people would put themselves through when they didn't now any details about what the show involved. A sad statement on the UK's obsession for getting on TV I think.

According to the show's host Johnny Vaughn (who's a sort of comedy presenter) additional screening filtered out anyone who knew any astrophysics or could name more than four characters in Star Trek The Next Generation!

What's going to be interesting is whether the show can really fool these people. Can they make a disused airfield seem like a Russian space training camp? Can they make a shuttle simulator in a big hangar seem like outer space? Surely not? For a start the training camp has the acronymn STAR (space traning something blah) which doesn't sound very Russian. All in all though they've spent a fortune on making the transformation including grocery shopping in Moscow for everything on the base.

Suddenly all those conspiracy novels about the moon landings are looking entirely possible!

Bookslut calls David Marusek’s Counting Heads The Next Big Thing and loves it. A lot. [Via Locus I think, not sure, forgot because I left the window open too long before blogging it]

Here's 119 SF movies, whose copyright have alledgedly expired, and are available for download in a variety of sizes (iPod and PDA!) I say alledgedly free of copyright because I haven't investigated whether they truly are or not, but looking at the titles I think I believe it....

Atom Age Vampire, Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (episodes 1-12), Kong Island, Radar Men From the Moon (episodes 1-9), Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and so on...and on...

Via Outpost Gallifrey, a BBC press release gives some more info about the upcoming new series of Doctor Who...

"...battling a host of new and returning aliens and monsters, including the dreaded Cybermen, an evil race of Cat Women, the sinister Krillitanes and maybe even a Dalek!"

It also mentions the return of Sarah Jane Smith and "his faithful robot dog", K9.

Ansible 221, December 2005 is online and now includes an RSS feed. Unforunately the RSS feed just contains links to the monthly Ansibles with no content what-so-ever. Oh well.

SFSignal have had a rather entertaining run in with an author whose story they have reviewed. The author in question, on her blog, says...

"But it still pisses me off when I see people who obviously cannot master anything beyond the simplest narratives being allowed to review books right out in public where anyone can stumble across this crap."

!

Perhaps she would like a global interweb SF reviewing test to be incorporated to ensure that any bloggers attempting to review are of sufficient "quality" to meet her requirements?

Question 1: Are you comfortable reading complicated, non-linear naratives.
etc..

Apparently, begging for oscar votes is something that lots of people do. Lucasfilm have taken it to the extreme with several big posters listing the cast and crew.

Now via the iTunes Music Store, straight to your iPod, Battlestar Galactica episodes!

UPDATE
Masquerading as someone in the USA I've checked out iTMS for Battlestar Galactica episodes. You can get the miniseries for $15.99, season 1 for $25.87 and the 10 episodes so far of season 2 for $19.90. That's $1.99 per episode, like all other shows on iTMS.

SFX reports that james Cameron is beggining to cast Battle Angel. You need to be a 16-20 year-old female with voice and movement training.

Counts me out then.

The X-MEN 3 trailer is online and looking pretty spectacular. Next years US national landmark to be destroyed? The Golden Gate bridge.

Fed up of all that bonus DVD nonsense? Want to watch the original Star Wars trilogy on DVD? Then you want the Star Wars Trilogy DVD 3-Pack. It's exactly the same as last years orginal trilogy DVD release, but minus the fourth bonus disc. And presumably it costs less, at a guess.

Last weeks film reviews with Mark Kermode (on BBC Radio Five Live and available as a podcast), included an interview with Mark Gatiss who mentioned that the Doctor Who episode that Stephen Fry has written is going to be moved to season three because it is too expensive to make this season. He also talked about writing an episode for season two that would live up to the scariness of "The Unquiet Dead", his season one episode (which included zombies at 7pm on BBC 1!). He reckons he has done it though.

Because every home needs one (and just in time for Christmas) here's a 4 foot inflatable Dalek.

Presumably it's 4 foot and not the full Dalek size so that you can still feel dominant (and not too scared)?

The teaser trailer for the Doctor Who Christmas special, The Christmas Invasion i sonline (click "WATCH Teaser") ans also showing all over BBC 1.

It' a very short clip and it shows as spinning Christmas tree! It must be the psychotic tree that Russell T Davies mentioned in a previous interview. Funny to me, scary to young children?!

Also online are some photos from the episode, including the evil Father Christmases, looking scary with their brass band instruments.

I've finally found a copy of Samel R Delany's famous essay entitle About Five Thousand Seven Hundred and Fifty Words online. Can't remember how I got there apart from that it was via some tortuous journey through Live Journal.