News: July 2008 Archives
This sounds like a cool Graphic Novel Omnibus:
Collected in this massive Star Wars Omnibus are tales of that time, shortly before The Phantom Menace: early missions of Jedi Knight Qui-Gon Jinn and his Padawan, Obi-Wan Kenobi; missions full of foreshadowing and increasing danger for noble member of the Jedi Council Mace Windu and Ki-Adi-Mundi; the Anzati-linked origin of Jedi-assassination specialist and bounty hunter Aurra Sing; and, last, Sith apprentice Darth Maul's own mission to clear the criminal system of any adversaries who could potentially hamper the rise and return for the Sith!
StarWars.com | First Look: Rise of the Sith
Star Wars Omnibus: Rise of the Sith is due out in January from Dark Horse Comics.
Niall has a review of The Gone-Away World on Torque Control. I think he may have captured the essence of the book better than I did. He cheated though and used more words and thought about it and stuff, rather than just typed.
Awesome news, there will be more of my current obsession Dr. Horrible. Hurrah.
io9 has a writeup of the Dr. Horrible's Singalong Panel at Comic-Con.
[Photo by Ewen And Donabel]
I have a good feeling about Steven Moffat running Doctor Who. Just check out some of his answers from some panels to see why. My favourite:
The Doctor's daughter didn't die, as originally planned, because Moffat made an off-hand comment to Russell T. Davies that introducing the character and killing her in the same episode would be "what Star Trek would do."
Neil Gaiman is going to write a Batman story.
Funnier, he even gets harassed by in call centres about the rumoured Doctor Who episode.
I just called my Visa card to fix something, and found myself being asked if I was the Neil Gaiman. I said yes, I was. "So," said the Visa person, "Are you going to be writing an episode of Dr Who?"
Updated...
The Royal Albert Hall, in London, hosted a special Doctor Who proms this weekend. The BBC has the information:
Thousands of Doctor Who fans have seen a specially-filmed scene starring David Tennant at a BBC Proms concert dedicated to the sci-fi drama.
The concert featured music from the series, as well as classical favourites from composers including Holst and Wagner on the theme of space and time.
The panto-style scene, showing Tennant addressing the 6,000-strong audience, was also shown on the show's website.
There's also a three minute video interview with Russell T Davies on that page, in which he proclaims Steven Moffat a "genius".
The whole event is on the BBC iplayer (in audio): part 1, part 2.
UPDATE
Some first hand news from Sanders The Great:
- The TARDIS was onstage the whole time.
- There were loads of monsters, including a squad of Cybermen marching down the aisles, there were Ood, Judoon, Graske and Sontarens.
- The music was accompanied by clips from the show.
- After The Doctor appeared on the big screen and interacted with the audience he conducted the orchestra.
- The second half was all about the Daleks who said they had surrounded the Albert Hall, one appeared on stage and then Davros appeared, rising out of the floor. All using the proper actors and voices.
- Mickey and Jackie were there.
- Surprisingly Donna (Catherine Tate) made an (unbilled) appearance to introduce some music.
- There was also the rock(ish) song from when the tenth Doctor first tried on his clothes.
- The finale was the theme tune.
- Even though it wasn't shown on TV, and all the Proms generally are, it was filmed. Expect a Christmas special.
For BBC Sport Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett have produced a two minut animated sequence, based on the classical Chinese novel, "Journey to the West". You can see the video here. I saw it on TV last night, without knowing what it was for, and was immediately hooked in: it has that Hewlett visual style with a soundtrack that is traditional Chinese music spliced with the Gorillaz.
There's loads of interesting facts about the piece here. And, if you want some more fun you can download a Desktop Monkey, an Adobe Air powered Monkey fronted Olympics news service.
Or if you want Monkey artwork on your phone, go here.
Anyone old enough will probably remember the live-action TV series of the story, Monkey Magic!
As I've said many a time:
io9: We've been debating on our site endlessly: Is Doctor Who a kids' program?
Steven Moffat: Yes. Debate over. It's good to fix those things quickly.
Via io9
More Star Wars themed flash drives from Mimobot. Essential if it's important to you how your flash drive looks, and you're a Star Wars fan.
[Via Gizmodo Australia via Jonathan]
Happy Birthday!
It only seems like yesterday when they were 2 and couldn't even walk.
BOOM! Studios and Disney Publishing Worldwide announced today that they will bring brand new stories from beloved Pixar properties to the comic book medium.
[Via Roy]
I particularly like the idea of comics for The Incredibles and Monsters Inc.
Could be groovy.
Wired has a great article on the evolution, history and influence of WarGames, one of my favourite films. [Via BoingBoing]
After seeing WarGames I wanted to get a modem for my BBC Micro, even though the only thing accessible online would have been Prestel. And here I am sat in front of a computer, still.
Anyone wanting to play Global Thermonuclear War should check out Defcon, the videogame. Pretty.
Jonathan has some interesting comments about the new Tor site, which they seem to have been trailing forever and have just put live (and still with a Beta tagline). John Scalzi responds to Jonathan's points in the comments and therein ensues an entertaining full-scale argument. He he.
What do I think about the Tor website? Well it's another feed to subscribe to and then click "mark all as read", and it has some short stories that I shall promptly download and then never read. I'm not sure if that is a comment about me, or about the amount of other SF material online? Probably both.
As you may have gathered, I have been watching Dr. Horrible and loving it.
So imagine my dismay when I return to my computer after a weekend of real-world computer-less stuff, to discover that Act 3 of Dr. Horrible has come and gone. :-(
Never fear says the website, it's exclusively on iTunes - but only in the USA.
Yeah, yeah, they're "working on" international access. Well shouldn't they have thought of that first? So what options do I have if I want to watch act 3 and not wait on the vagaries of anyone caring about the rest of the world? Torrents. It's all very well asking us to not "go all pirate-y" but it appears that we have no option.
Sure, many fans will download the torrent and then buy the DVD, many will probably not bother once they have a perfectly good rip on their machine, but perhaps if it had been available legally in the first place some of those people would have actually bought a legal copy?
Seems like some screwed up with the sales and marketing plan.
The Watchmen Trailer is online.
Hmmm, it'd make a good music video for The Smashing Pumpkins, but not convinced about the look. Doctor Manhatten looks good but Nite Owl looks a bit rubber.
Stylish though.
There are times when I wonder whether I Iook back on Joss Whedon's creations with rose tinted fanspectacles: was Buffy really that original and funny when I first watched it? Could I really watch Firefly on infinite repeat on a desert island? Is Toy Story really the best kids film ever? And so on.
And then I watched Dr. Horrible.
And the memories rush back.
Yes.
Dr. Horrible is genius, crafted especially for us. Forget your doubts and watch it.
The trailer for Terminator Salvation goes all Cloverfield on us. Which is annoying because I just want to see what's happening.
From what I could glimpse between the static it looks more Mad Max than Terminator.
When I read things like:
McG's take is to weave science fiction and horror elements into a state-of-the-art action film: The camera always moves, the imagery is raw and kinetic, the pace is insane. The creative challenge for me will be to bury the effects into the photography but to still protect our big visual moments.
It doesn't give me hope. But then it's Christian Bale, and would he sign up for rubbish?
ABC entertainment president Stephen McPherson admitted to SCI FI Wire that the rush to complete episodes of last season's Lost before a writers' strike may have led to audience confusion.
"There's no question there was a lot jammed in," McPherson said
via Sci-Fi Wire.
Don't APOLOGISE! We're not stupid. It was the best Lost season EVER!
Spooks : Code 9 is sounding very interesting. From the press release
The year is 2013. Thames House is gone and regional MI5 Field Offices have sprung up in its place. Are six young new recruits tough, moral and clever enough to protect Britain's future...? Spooks: Code 9 is a new six-part drama for BBC Three, due to be broadcast in August 2008.
London has been evacuated following a nuclear bomb and the country's power base has shifted north. In the wake of the attack, MI5 must completely restructure and establish field offices across the UK, working to gather intelligence from the very heart of local communities.
Hopefully they can return to the fresh style of the first three series of Spooks, when the plots were new, the acting was cool and nothing was cliched. But either way, it's a Science Fiction Spooks!
At the beginning of the year I said that I was going to read twelve post-apocalyptic books, inspired by John Joseph Adams' Wastelands anthology and the associated reading list.
I've done pretty well so far, I've read eight (two reviews outstanding!), the most notable ones that I haven't read so far being A Canticle for Leibowitz and Wastelands itself, which sold out at Amazon and missed being bought for my birthday :-( .
Enter the Octopus has a few more suggestions, some of which are non-fiction:
and A World Beyond Healing” by Nicholas Wade (which has no cover picture on Amazon).
Interesting, I shall investigate.
That post was, by the way, inspired by Cory Doctorow's post Post-apocalypse without the militias: The Outquisition, leading to a post on worldchanging.com, which talks about "super-networked post-apocalyptic Peace Corps who respond to the Great Fall by figuring out how to put it all back together". Sounds good to me. It's interesting stuff, and worth reading.
I should however point out that not all post-apocalyptic books are full of Mad Max style militia and violence and gloom (although most have doom, by definition). Some of the books I've read this year are in fact filled with hope in particular the wonderful Earth Abides and the fantastic Alas, Babylon.
Dead Space is a SF Horror Survival videogame by EA, out in October.
Here's the blurb:
When all contact is lost with the most famous Planetcracker, the USG Ishimura, Isaac Clarke and a small repair team are dispatched to restore communications. Isaac is a normal systems engineer, but what he and his team find upon arrival at the Ishimura is anything but normal. The ship is nearly lifeless and powerless. The crew has been horribly slaughtered and transformed into terrifying abominations. Now Isaac is cut off, trapped, and overwhelmed in a desperate fight to survive.
The “Lullaby Trailer” was banned by the United States’ ESRB, but released in Europe. It's below, and contains videogame blood and gore and monsters. You have to at least pretend you're 18 to watch it.
With the recent death of Thomas M. Disch, some people may be looking to read some of his fiction (like me). The Sci Fiction archive has one of his stories, Descending, so you can at least get a taste. [Via Gareth]
Amazon, of course, has a full selection of his books.
the broken world is a refreshing HTML site for the novel (very Radiohead-esque), with cool art, snippets from the book, hand-drawn game notes and a depth of links that will keep you entertained for a while.
There's also links to an interview with Tim Ecthells on the Blackwell's site and an article in Metro.
BBC NEWS says
The third series of sci-fi hit Heroes will be broadcast on BBC Two shortly after it is first shown in the US.
Each episode will be shown "hopefully within a week" of its premiere on US network NBC, the channel said at the launch of its autumn line-up.
Which is good news and eminently sensible; power down your bittorrent clients.
Also in Autumn, for anyone interested in the history of Physics, there's a drama entitled Einstein and Eddington, starring Andy Serkis as Einstein and David Tennant as Eddington.
The Man Booker Prize is probably the biggest literary award in the UK and the BBC has an interesting article about it:
Martyn Goff, who ran the award for 35 years, says the key is literary tourism - taking the reader somewhere they are not familiar with.
"It's going to give people information and feeling about something they knew very little about indeed," he explains.
"Yes, there should be a strong plot. But also there should be a description of something that most of us don't know anything about - Rushdie with India as it was, that sort of thing. People are very taken with that."
So does the same apply in Science Fiction?
Clearly something new in a SF novel is appealing, but then there's also the case that a lot of SF is built upon other SF; that old conversation with the genre discussion. I don't think it's as a clear cut (is it ever?!).
There are some problems that are nice to have, deciding on what to read next is one of them. Today The Night Sessions by Ken MacLeod arrived in the mail, and jumped to the top of the list.
I currently juggle the list in Backpack (although I change apps quite frequently) including keeping track of the publish date for review copies. Sometimes I miss the dates, but I do try. One day I'll get a list up here on the blog, integrated and everything, but in the meantime here's a snapshot of my To-Read list in whizzy Amazon widget style.
For some reason Amazon UK has no cover image yet for The Night Sessions and so cannot be included in the whizziness.
UPDATE
Darren has pointed me to the cover on the Orbit site. It's pretty:
I'm currently Reading The Mirrored Heavens by David J. Williams
...and I have three outstanding book reviews to write up!
Enough Doctor Who? Almost.
Interesting to note that the BBC are bringing up the reaction of the finale, Mixed reaction to Doctor's finale, although Russell T Davies (in the embedded video) seems more concerned that the kids are talking about the show in playgrounds.
So that's finished, what next?
Paul@Futurismic interviews Nancy Kress:
Nancy Kress: What interests me is that this – unlike, say, FTL – is the future happening right now. Food crops are already being massively engineered (despite all the political problems with this); so are animals. Even humans have taken the first step by genescanning in vitro embryos in fertility clinics and choosing among them for implantation in the womb.
She goes on to talk about her new book Dogs, which is a Bio-Thriller apparently.
Charles Stross has information on his next few books:
The books, which are due at roughly 12-month intervals, are:
* A new short story collection (provisionally titled "Palimpsest"), which will show up next summer in place of my usual SF novel. (I'm trying to complete two Merchant Princes books this year; I don't have the energy and time to do a new SF novel as well. However, I can promise that this one will collect a bunch of my short fiction from 1998 on, including the novella "Missile Gap", and a new novella/short novel, "Palimpsest".)
* A sequel to "Halting State", provisionally titled "419", set five years later. (It's not about Sue, Jack, or Elaine; it's about Inspector Kavanaugh, who has a singularly peculiar crime to solve — before it metastasizes and drowns the entire world in spam.)
* The third — but by no means the final — Laundry novel, "The Fuller Memorandum". ("The Atrocity Archives" was a Len Deighton tribute, and "The Jennifer Morgue" was Ian Fleming/James Bond; this time I'm planning to play chords in the key of Anthony Price.)
Which is cool, because I loved Halting State and enjoyed the Laundry books.
His new book Saturn's Return is next on my reading list.
