I received the following news link from about two dozen sources today: Syfy network shifts away from broad dramas and B-movies to its genre roots as it attempts to find the next “The Walking Dead” or “Game of Thrones.”
Apparently, SyFy is looking to produce a space opera, the SF equivalent of The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones. Presumably, a serialized show with intriguing characters and relationships, twists and turns, surprises galore. Maybe, oh, off the top of my head, something like…
Excerpt from the March 13th, 2014 article: “The network shifts away from broad dramas and B-moves to its genre roots as it attempts to find the next “The Walking Dead” or “Game of Thrones”.
Excerpt from the Dark Matter series overview: “What Game of Thrones did for the fantasy genre and The Walking Dead did for the horror genre, we want to do for the scifi genre…”
How perfect! I’ll have my people call your people (phone calls or names, depending on how things pan out).
In other SF t.v.-related developments, it looks like Frederik Pohl’s Gateway maybe be headed to a t.v. (or, knowing many of you, laptop/computer) near you: EOne & De Laurentiis Co. To Adapt Frederik Pohl’s Sci-Fi Classic … A great book with plenty of t.v. potential – so much so, in fact, that it’s been on my radar for years now. As recently as December, I was pitching a production company that it would make a great television series.
“A great idea for a series. An asteroid is discovered near Venus that contains thousands of ancient alien ships. Each ship is good for one return trip to a pre-programmed destination, and the crews don’t know where they are going or for how long until they get there. Sometimes they return with amazing stories and new technology, sometimes they return as lumps of molten metal, or don’t return at all.” (http://momentumbooks.com.au/blog/ten-science-fiction-books-that-would-make-great-tv-series/).
This follows the news that, back in February, FreemantleMedia acquired the film & television rights to Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. This one would be much trickier to adapt but, like Gateway, has enormous potential in the right hands – and with the right creative vision.
Also this morning, I received this link: http://www.gateworld.net/news/2014/03/stargates-legacy-a-video-introduction/ to an article and first instalment of a Gateworld column by longtime Stargate fan Adam Barnard. In it, he discusses what the franchise has meant to him and his plans to spotlight three personally meaningful episodes from each of the Stargate shows: SG-1, Atlantis, and Universe. According to Adam: “” I will examine three episodes from each of the three Stargate series — SG-1, Atlantis, and Universe — that I found to be specifically noteworthy. Not because they were the most entertaining or flashiest, but because they were unique, thought provoking, inspiring, or communicative of a theme or idea that resonated with me.” Interesting, no? So, which three episodes of each series left a lasting impression on you? How has Stargate influenced your lives? Head on over to Gateworld and weigh in with your thoughts…
Speaking of Gateworld, I’ve received oodles of emails (I do like the sound of that. Say it. “Oodles of emails”!) directing me to this story on Gateworld: BOOM! Unfilmed Stargate: Extinction Movie Script May Be A Comic Series
Alas, nothing much for me to say here outside of: 1. Sounds like a terrific idea, 2. BOOM! Studios produces awesome titles, 3. Ultimately, the decision or whether Stargate continues to live on as the television franchise we all love, or is rebooted for the big screen, is MGM’s to make.
Finally, recent releases, and upcoming releases, from some of the authors who have kindly taken the time to come chat with us in the past:
The Compleat Crow by Brian Lumley
To many thousands of readers world-wide Titus Crow is the psychic sleuth–the cosmic voyager and investigator–of Brian Lumley’s Cthulhu Mythos novels, from The Burrowers Beneath to Elysia. But before The Burrowers and Crow’s Transition, his exploits were chronicled in a series of short stories and novellas uncollected in the USA except in limited editions. Now these stories can be told again. From Inception which tells of Crow’s origins, to The Black Recalled, a tale of vengeance from beyond the grave, here in one volume, from the best-selling author of the epic Necroscope series, is The Complete Crow.
The author visited us to discuss his novel, Necroscope: November 16, 2008: Author Brian Lumley Answers Your Questions
The End is Nigh edited by John Joseph Adams
Edited by acclaimed anthologist John Joseph Adams and bestselling author Hugh Howey, THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH is a series of three anthologies of apocalyptic fiction. THE END IS NIGH focuses on life before the apocalypse. THE END IS NOW turns its attention to life during the apocalypse. And THE END HAS COME focuses on life after the apocalypse.
Visited us to discuss The Living Dead zombie anthology: February 5, 2009: Editor J.J. Adams Answers Your Questions
The Time Traveler’s Almanac edited by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer – Available March 18th
The Time Traveler’s Almanac is the largest and most definitive collection of time travel stories ever assembled. Gathered into one volume by intrepid chrononauts and world-renowned anthologists Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, this book compiles more than a century’s worth of literary travels into the past and the future that will serve to reacquaint readers with beloved classics of the time travel genre and introduce them to thrilling contemporary innovations.
Author Jeff VanderMeer visited with us to discuss his novel City of Saints and Madmen: January 29, 2009: Author Jeff Vandermeer Sweeps In – Like A Mini-Hurricane!
He also has this novel out:
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; all the members of the second expedition committed suicide; the third expedition died in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another; the members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within months of their return, all had died of aggressive cancer.
This is the twelfth expedition. Their group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain and collect specimens; to record all their observations, scientific and otherwise, of their surroundings and of one another; and, above all, to avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.
They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—they discover a massive topographic anomaly and life forms that surpass understanding—but it’s the surprises that came across the border with them, and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another, that change everything.
Which happens to be our April Book of the Month Club pick (as if you didn’t know!).
Working God’s Mischief (Instrumentalities of the Night) By Glen Cook
Arnhand, Castauriga, and Navaya lost their kings. The Grail Empire lost its empress. The Church lost its Patriarch, though he lives on as a fugitive. The Night lost Kharoulke the Windwalker, an emperor amongst the most primal and terrible gods. The Night goes on, in dread. The world goes on, in dread. The ice builds and slides southward.
New kings come. A new empress will rule. Another rump polishes the Patriarchal Throne. But there is something new under the sun. The oldest and fiercest of the Instrumentalities has been destroyed–by a mortal. There is no new Windwalker, nor will there ever be.
The world, battered by savage change, limps toward its destiny. And the ice is coming.
Author Glen Cook visited with us to discuss his novel The Black Company: October 7, 2008: Author Glen Cook Answers Your Questions
Labyrinth of Stars (A Hunter Kiss novel) by Marjorie M. Liu
After the Aetar nearly kill Maxine’s unborn child, and a betrayal within her own ranks leaves Maxine’s husband, Grant, poisoned and dying, Maxine is forced to attack a race of beings that possesses almost unlimited power. Doing so will require she make a deal with the devil—the devil that lives inside her—risking both her sanity and her soul as she slowly transforms into something more than human.
But even that might not be enough to save Grant, because the very thing that Maxine is becoming is destined to destroy the world.
Author Marjorie M. Liu visited with us to discuss her novel The Iron Hunt: January 17, 2011: The Iron Hunt, by Marjorie M. Liu
Her Husband’s Hands and Other Stories by Adam-Troy Castro
A utopia where the most privileged get to do whatever they want to do with their lives, indulging their slightest whims via the bodies whose wombs they occupy; a soldier’s wife tries to love a husband who is little more than backup memory; a society in which the citizens all make merry for nine remarkable days, and on the tenth get a taste of hell; the last ragged survivors of an expedition to a savage backwater world hunt down an infamous war criminal; a divorcing couple confront their myriad troubles to gain resolution, reason, respect – but not without sacrifice. Introducing these stories (and more) from Adam-Troy Castro, whose short fiction has been nominated for two Hugos, three Stokers, and eight Nebulas.
Author Adam Troy-Castro visited with us to discuss his novel Emissaries from the Dead: November 15, 2009: Author Adam-Troy Castro Answers Your Questions!
Like a Mighty Army by David Weber
For centuries, the world of Safehold, last redoubt of the human race, lay under the unchallenged rule of the Church of God Awaiting. The Church permitted nothing new—no new inventions, no new understandings of the world. What no one knew was that the Church was an elaborate fraud—a high-tech system established by a rebel faction of Safehold’s founders, meant to keep humanity hidden from the powerful alien race that had destroyed old Earth.
Then awoke Merlyn Athrawes, cybernetic avatar of a warrior a thousand years dead, felled in the war in which Earth was lost. Monk, warrior, counselor to princes and kings, Merlyn has one purpose: to restart the history of the too-long-hidden human race.
And now the fight is thoroughly underway. The island empire of Charis has declared its independence from the Church, and with Merlyn’s help has vaulted forward into a new age of steam-powered efficiency. Fending off the wounded Church, Charis has drawn more and more of the countries of Safehold to the cause of independence and self-determination. But at a heavy cost in bloodshed and loss—a cost felt by nobody more keenly that Merlyn Athrawes.
The wounded Church is regrouping. Its armies and resources are vast. The fight for humanity’s future isn’t over, and won’t be over soon…
Author David Weber visited with us to discuss his novel On Basilisk Station: January 17, 2009: Author David Weber Answers Yours Questions
If there’s anyone I’ve missed, let me know!
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