News: April 2008 Archives
Today is the BBC's flagship radio news programme, and Ian Whates has emailed to say that he will be on this morning talking about Science Fiction! Ian is the editor of the BSFA's news and media magazine Matrix, and also editor of several Newcon Press anthologies.
The Today web site says:
0810 Gordon Brown (that's the Prime Minister)
0849 Has science fact overtaken science fiction?
Don't let that ("tough and tenacious interviewer") John Humphry's give you a hard time, Ian!
There's a nice interview in The Guardian with Sarah Hall who is on the 2008 Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist for The Carhullan Army.
[Via SFSignal]
And whilst you're there, check out a cool article on Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle.
Adam Roberts' now traditional Clarke Award review is online at Futurismic, and very entertaining it is too.
The Arthur C. Clarke Award ceremony is on Wednesday. Bets on the winner? Erm, no idea.
Series two of Heroes started last night on BBC2. It's filling the now vacant Torchwood slot, and the BBC have been hyping it up a lot, with cast interviews and the custom BBC2 Heroes logo.
Everyone has been avoiding mentioning the issue that it's not very good.
There is no point resisting, Twitter shall consume you all. John from SF Signal is going to be Twittering from the Nebula Weekend.
I'm also hoping Paul will Twitter from the Clarke awards, and Darren from Alt.Fiction this weekend. Any other SF Twitterers out there?
As a reminder, my BDO Twitter account is bigdumbobject, for all the things that are too trivial to write full blog posts about.
Hmm, shall we use some imagination or perhaps just remake old stuff?
Let's REMAKE OLD STUFF!
"Sky One has is developing a remake of ’70s classic BBC SF series Blake Seven. Although the broadcaster hasn’t committed yet to making the series it has given the greenlight to the development of scripts for two 60-minute pilots. " Via SFX
Being Human which was one of BBC3's pilot season has been commissioned for a six part series. Apparently lots of people liked it, including me, I said "It left me wanting a series". Tada!
It was also a big hit on iPlayer. The most interesting thing about that is that the BBC are checking the iPlayer stats for viewing figures.
Via SFX
Anathem by Neal Stephenson is available for pre-order on Amazon UK and US. Here's some details:
928 pages! Still writing the long books then. Not sure about the artwork, a bit Da Vinci Code, but maybe that's the point?
(Thanks to Bascule the Teller for the tip.)
Empire have a quiz to test whether you're a SF TV Geek. It's old school, no polls, you have to add up stuff in your head.
I got 37.
"you're still OK, walking that fine line between having a social life and keeping up with the best TV around."
Although that's mainly because I don't remember stuff like Lost's numbers anymore, I just Google them.
Via Dave
Eoghann is blogging SF again, welcome back!
He has some great posts over the last week, including Seven Things Sci-Fi Fans Should Stop Doing and Do You Have To Finish Reading A Book You Don’t Like?
The seven things are of course completely correct. It continually surprises me how personally fans (especially SF fans) react to what are essentially business decisions. Watch and read the good stuff, enjoy that it existed at all, be happy.
The Night Shade Books 2008 Publication Schedule is online.
Incandescence by Greg Egan in May!
(Also published by Gollancz in the UK.)
Darren left PS Publishing to go to Orbit, but the tears of Pete Crowther are not falling because Paul has stepped into the fray. Congratulations!
I have to say that I really like the job Darren did on the PS site, it definitely feels alive. Also PS are doing PDF review copies is also another great idea (and I will get round to reviewing some soon!).
Via the PS Publishing News Room
Variety says:
"Battlestar Galactica" showrunner Ronald D. Moore is making a major move to the bigscreen, signing with United Artists to create and write a sci-fi trilogy.
And the UA label is basically Tom Cruise. Breakout the L. Ron Hubbard theories.
David Tennant will feature in Derren Brown's new TV series. He was fooled into thinking he could see into the past and future. And he screamed. Not such a big tough Time Lord now are you?
The April issue of The Internet Review Of Science fiction is online with the usual interesting selection of articles, interviews and reviews. (I particularly love Jay Lake and Ruth Nestvold's articles).
Also IRoSF now has a news page, unfortunately there's no feed so you'll have to go there to read it (or just forget which is what I'll probably do).
That's a bit of a third-hand rumour!
I'm not sure the continuing story of Jericho is much interest to me, it will, presumably, be all about reuniting the United States? It could work, if the focus remained on the post nuclear apocalypse aspects, but I have a feeling that the temptation to do more high-octane thriller plots like season two would be irresistable.
Amazon are running a buy two get one free offer on Blu-ray discs.
SF films in the offer include:
- Blade Runner
- Pan's Labyrinth
- The Fifth Element
- Hollow Man
- Flatliners
- Dawn Of The Dead
- Day Of The Dead
- Resident Evil: Apocalypse
I'll get a Blu-ray player one day, after HD TV's produce CRT equivalent quality for broadcast TV.
Might be a while.
Disney and Pixar have announced their film line-up for the next four years.
WALL*E - June 2008
Bolt - November 2008
Up - May 2009
The Princess and the Frog - Christmas 2009
Toy Story (3D) - October 2009
Toy Story 2 (3D) - February 2010
Toy Story 3 - June 2010
Rapunzel - Christmas 2010
Newt - summer 2011
The Bear and the Bow - Christmas 2011
Cars 2 - summer 2012
King of Elves - Christmas 2012
All of the films except WALL*E and The Princess and the Frog will be available in 3D. Don your glasses and be prepared to scream and shout at stuff coming out of the screen at you. The first two (great) Toy Story films should be particularly cool in 3D.
I'm not exactly sure what to make of this:
Despite trying to sell Battlestar Galactica as grim, gritty drama for everybody, and at every chance denying it is Science Fiction in an attempt to gain more audience, the women in the show seem to do scantily clad photo shoots at the drop of a hat.
I personally don't mind, but isn't that a mixed message?
Via io9, of course.
Bizzarely The Times has copied io9's style and done a Battlestar Galactica versus Doctor Who article:
It's back! The best science-fiction TV series ever created is at last returning for its long awaited fourth series. And so, by a curious coincidence, is Doctor Who.
I think bringing Battlestar Galactica to the attention of the masses is a good thing (if a little late), I think comparing it to Doctor Who in any sensible way is completely pointless.
Doctor Who is designed as a family show, for kids and their dads to watch together. It is fun, it is sometimes silly, it now and then has wonderful SF espisodes. BSG is a gritty, adult drama, with great acting, which is at times tiresome and never really lived up to its potential (although please prove me wrong with season4).
The UK SF Book News Network has had a redesign, which of course doesn't affect me because I read the feed, but I had a peek to be polite. It looks nice.
Darren (née Ariel) is now of course working for Orbit, who seem to be the most progressive of all the UK SFF imprints. Small request to Orbit, can the Orbit Tweeter feed do something else other than summarise the blog? Extra content required please.
There seems to be a bout of redesigns recently, seemingly inspired by everyone upgrading to Wordpress 2.5 (with varying amounts of success). Paul has also redesigned Velcro City Tourist Board recently too. I'm getting itchy css fingers...must resist, must resist.
Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright have confirmed that they will make a film called The World's End.
Asked by the Guardian if it suggested a sci-fi/doomsday theme, Wright said: "It's kind of going in that direction."
Which could mean anything. But please, please, make it SF, and cool, and funny (proper funny, not just taking the piss).
Dan Simmons's Hyperion series might be the next SF novels to get a full-on film adaptation, it's just been given the go-ahead by Warner Bros. FirstShowing.net has the details:
The Hyperion Cantos includes four individual books in total: Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, The Rise of Endymion (published from 1989 to 1997). The first book, Hyperion, won the Hugo Award for best novel in 1990 and the second, The Fall of Hyperion, was nominated for a Nebula Award for best novel.
I haven't read any Dan Simmons, but Hyperion is of course on my to-read list, being a Hugo winner.
Thanks to Sam for the link.
Joshua @ Braniac wonders which Iron Man the Black Sabbath song is about. the Marvel Iron Man, or the Ted Hughes Iron Man and comes down on the Ted Hughes side.
I'd just always assumed that was the case. Urban metal knowledge. Would four Brummie lads in 1970 have easy access to Marvel comics? Maybe it's just me, but I've never really heard much about Iron Man, isn't he just some minor Marvel character? Is it a UK / US thing? Or is it because I'm ignorant of Marvel comics? I think the upcoming movie will probably pass me by.
Via SFSignal I found out about the new Amazon Science Fiction store, Cosmotopia, which is, well, interesting. There's very little mention of books anywhere, and seems to be mainly an exercise in marketing SF DVD's. Oh well.
Also a talking point, the Sci-Fi Spectograph. I like the idea of a continuum between "crowd pleasers" and "geeky classics" but I think their classification is a bit off (or maybe it's just impossible?). Surely Tron is a geeky classic and Red Dwarf is a crowd pleaser? Something to argue about if you have nothing better to do.
As predicted the Doctor Who PR juggernaut is in full effect on the BBC, with Russell T Davies on Breakfast and David Tennant and Catherine Tate on Radio 1.
The most interesting piece of information was that Tennant has not had to decide whether he will be in the 2010 series, although he will be in the three specials to be shown in 2009. He didn't give any hint of which way he is thinking at the moment, just that he "mercifully" didn't have to decide yet.
Also, episodes 8, 9 and 10 are, according to Tennant, the scariest. And RTD is not impressed with the 6.20pm timeslot. PR disguised as news here.
Oh, and I made the Ben Kingsley thing up. April Fool! etc etc Although the BBC News site suggests he is a rumoured candidate to be The Doctor, along with erm... David Bowie.
Variety have more or less confirmed that Ben Kingsley will appear in the 2008 series of Doctor Who as Davros, creator of the Daleks. The articles is behind a paywall, but it says that Kingsley has "confirmed that he will play an evil genius" in the new series.
How many evil genius Doctor Who villains are left? The Master is gone. Surely that leaves just Davros! Russel T Davies has avoided the questions so far, but said that he had a gameplan for the show.
