Wednesday 24 February 2016

A Wrinkle In Time In Cinemas Some Time Soon?

It looks like A Wrinkle In Time is on its way to cinemas, adapted by Frozen co-director Jennifer Lee and Selma director Ava DuVernay, although she may make another SF movie in the meantime if Lupita Nyong’o is available to star in it.

I’ve mentioned A Wrinkle In Time here before due to it being a story from the early 1960s involving time travel, alien threats and mysterious people called Mrs. Whatsit, Which and Who.

Tuesday 23 February 2016

Blackstar: The Series

UNBOUND is a drama miniseries on Instagram, based on David Bowie’s Blackstar.
“In the Fall of 2015, David Bowie gave us unique pre-release access to the music from ★ (pronounced ‘Blackstar’), his 28th studio album, allowing us to create our own visual interpretations of his songs, with no limits or preconditions on his part.
Completed in December 2015, UNBOUND: A★InstaMiniSeries takes the audience on a journey of evocative images inspired by the moods suggested in the album’s music, lyrics and artwork.”
Judging by the introductory clip it appears to have people appearing from thin air in a dark library, a sinister silhouetted figure and a Labyrinth style crystal ball. Something fantastical, perhaps?

I doubt it will involve a mysterious stranger opposing the apocalypse cult ruling a failed space colony like my interpretation of the Blackstar video... be cool if it did though...

Friday 12 February 2016

Future Retro Space Tourism Posters

For NASA and JPL, artists created posters for sites like Mars and Venus for a golden age of space travel that hasn’t happened yet. (Thanks to ShortscaleDave on Lead Adventure.)

Ceres - Queen Of The Asteroid Belt!

Thursday 11 February 2016

The BBC made the first SF TV show

R.U.R. aired on this day in 1938, a adaptation of the play that introduced the word Robot, making it apparently the first piece of SF ever televised. Inevitably there are no recordings, and that photo might not be from it...

Tuesday 9 February 2016

A great SF author... who does not exist.

Edson McCann won a new SF writing award despite (a) submitting after deadline and (b) actually being Fredrik Pohl and Lester Del Rey, already well-established and, oh, friend of the judge and sometimes published by the contest sponsors. Not the most dramatic case of needing a nom de plume, but the backstory of a nuclear physicist writing in secret about the sinister power of corporate interests would be...

All Souls

All Souls, or possibly A Discovery Of Witches, is a new series from Jane Tranter and Julie Gardner, based on an urban fantasy novel series and to be adapted by Ashley Pharoah of Life On Mars.

Monday 8 February 2016

Happy New Year Of The Monkey

It’s New Year in the Chinese Zodiac, and year of the Monkey. The monkey is a major feature in Chinese mythology, not least the anti-hero of Journey To The West, which to a certain generation in the UK was the basis for MONKEY and a long-term influence on us.

Like the Horse and unlike the Sheep last year, the role of monkeys in Chinese culture can suggest a variety of adventure hooks - monkeys who can speak or take human form, creatures that look like moneys to deceive.

The Periodic Table

Here in the UK a Google Doodle celebrates Dmitri Mendeleev’s 182nd birthday (making him six years younger than Jules Verne) and the Periodic Table, the great ongoing work of organising and instruction of chemistry.

Wednesday 3 February 2016

Do you wanna come with me?

The main Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer is so good that it can make just about anything feel grand and emotive and epic. Need an example? Masters Of The Universe.

So... for something already emotive and a wee bit epic... like the return of Doctor Who in 2005...

Tuesday 2 February 2016