News Archive: July 2006

Babylon 5 coming back to life
30/07/2006. The B5 television series might be coming back via the straight-to-hell DVD dump bin in your local video store, and i-Tunes, naturally.

Black holes do not exist
30/07/2006. Apparently black holes do not exist, they are just bizarre and compact balls of plasma called MECOs.

Joe talks Great British Comics
29/07/2006. Joe Gordon over at Forbidden Planet International talking about Paul Gravett and his forthcoming Great British Comics.

Nessie down under
29/07/2006. Loch Ness monster discovered in Australia. Fair dinkum.

John Clute web site
29/07/2006. SciFi literary critic John Clute gets his own web site, but it sucks like a Dyson, man.

War of The Worlds snit between Pendragon and Dark Horse
28/07/2006. Pendragon Pictures has announced that they have given formal legal notice to the principals of Dark Horse Comics alleging replications of images from Pendragon's period-accurate movie version of The War of The Worlds.

Spider Man 3 goes dark
28/07/2006. Spider Man 3 will be directed by Sam Raimi, who also directed the first two installments of the Marvel Comics superhero, Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2, which reunites the cast led by Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst and James Franco.

The corpse that is Star Trek shudders back to life
27/07/2006. Planet Xpo and the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame have partnered to do a US Star Trek 40th Anniversary Gala Celebration set for September 8th-10th, 2006. Most the cast that are still alive will be there.

Heroes with capes visit Arab states
27/07/2006. DC superheroes arrive in the Middle East as Lebanon burns and Iraq eats its own.

Supernova is back
26/07/2006. Rob Brydon returns as Dr Paul Hamilton for a second series of the out of this world comedy Supernova. Paul and his eccentrically brilliant colleagues from the Royal Australian Observatory are back for six episodes all about life, love and the universe.

John Jarrold blogs it up
26/07/2006. Science fiction and fantasy literary agent John Jarrold sets up his own blog.

The Antbully
25/07/2006. Following three years of completing concept art for animation studio DNA Productions, in conjunction with Playtone Co. and Warner Bros., New England-based scifi artist Bob Eggleton finally sees his creative talents arrive on the cinema screen in the new animated movie, The Antbully. Due in US theaters 28 July, 2006.

Torchwood update
25/07/2006. Torchwood follows the adventures of a team of investigators as they use alien technology to solve crimes, both alien and human.

Farmerphile 5 gets ready to ship
24/07/2006. Farmerphile is a quarterly magazine completely dedicated to works by and about Philip José Farmer.

Paul Kincaid resigns from the Clarkes
24/07/2006. The Arthur C. Clarke Award has appointed a new administrator as Paul steps down.

Surface on dvd
23/07/2006. Science fiction TV thriller Surface makes it way onto DVD.

Silent Universe
23/07/2006. The Silent Universe is a sci-fi adventure drama. Unlike a typical talk format podcast, the Silent Universe is remix of audio theater, featuring a cast of actors, sound effects, foley work and musical scoring.

Joe Gordon the comic
22/07/2006. The Forbidden Planet store's Joe Gordon always wanted to be a cartoon character. Now his wish has come true.

The Prestige
22/07/2006. Trailer for the new SFF movie The Prestige hits the virtual streets.

SciFi film Allegro
21/07/2006. Here comes Allegro, starring Helena Christensen and Ulrich Thomsen and directed by Christoffer Boe. The film is an art-house sci-fi romance scheduled for UK release on September 15th 2006.

Stamping on superheroes
21/07/2006. Comicbook superheroes are due to get the US Postal Service stamp of approval. Stamp, gettit. Groan.

Doing it Locus style
20/07/2006. US science fiction web site Locus Online is interviewed by the slightly more traditional SF magazine Asimovs about what it takes to run a major scifi site.

Xanadu on Titan
20/07/2006. Cassini space probe reveals Titan's Xanadu Region to be an Earth-Like land.

Go go Gaiman
19/07/2006. Neil Gaiman's speech at the SciFi Hall of Fame.

A Scanner Darkly
19/07/2006. The soundtrack for the movie A Scanner Darkly to be released by Lakeshore Records.

Philip Palmer three-book world rights deal with Orbit
18/07/2006. Lit. agent John Jarrold has concluded a three-book deal for World rights with Tim Holman, Publishing Director of Orbit Books, the SF and Fantasy imprint of the Little, Brown Book Group.

My other starship is a balloon
18/07/2006. An Inflatable spacecraft aimed at the space tourism industry successfully undergoes its first trials. Anyone got a pump.

Science fiction, latin-style
17/07/2006. The Xatafi Cultural Association announces the winners for the Xatafi-Cyberdark Prize by Critics of Fantastic Literature, awarded to the best works of fantastic, science-fiction and horror literature published in Spain in 2005 according to a board's discretion.

Flight of the ornithopter
17/07/2006. The first flight of a working ornithopter takes place in the USA. Flap your wings, baby, flap your wings.

A big finish for Gary Russell
16/07/2006. Gary Russell is to step down from his role as full-time Producer of Doctor Who at Big Finish.

Sawyer wins for Canada
16/07/2006. SFF author Robert J. Sawyer wins the John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

Kirk on your answerphone
15/07/2006. Here comes a competition to win the chance to get William Shatner to record a personalised answerphone message for your phone.

Signings update
15/07/2006. Fantasy director Terry Gilliam is heading down London way, but SFF author David Gemmell has had to cancel due to illness.

Jack of Ravens
14/07/2006. Author Mark Chadbourn to start blogging about his new fantasy novel.

Anna Kavan's Ice
14/07/2006. Classic sixties science fiction novel reissued with praise from classic author Brian Aldiss.

Young Kirk
13/07/2006. The young Kirk and Spock at Star Fleet movie concept is possibly being resurrected under the helm of Lost chappie JJ Abrams. But will Matt Damon cut the snuff as a young James T.

Doctor in the house
13/07/2006. Freema Agyeman confirmed as new companion to Doctor Who. I've been keeping this secret from my friends for months, she gushes to SFcrowsnest.com

Buy only American Sci-fi
12/07/2006. Lou Anders, editor at US science fiction imprint Pyr, issues a plea to US readers to stop buying the UK import editions of science fiction authors and wait for the USA editions to ship instead.

Futurama flies again
12/07/2006. Proving you can't keep a good intergalactic shipping company down, the Matt Groening science fiction cartoon series Futurama gets a brand new TV series.

Transformers trailer
11/07/2006. The movie version of the new Transformers film gets its first download clip.

Space Tug
11/07/2006. Murray Leinster's classic science fiction novel goes out of copyright and is made available as a free e-book on Gutenberg.

NASA's Chandra solves black hole paradox
10/07/2006. Black holes light up the universe and astronomers may finally know how. New data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory show for the first time powerful magnetic fields are the key to these brilliant and startling light shows

Google's Fantastic Planet
10/07/2006. The old French animated scifi classic Fantastic Planet gets a music video makeover.

Swedish SF writer raps the future
09/07/2006. Swedish SF writer and artist A.R.Yngve has released a satirical space-opera novel, THE ARGUS PROJECT, through CafePress.

UFO hacker spills the beans
09/07/2006. He's going to jail in the USA, he's really, really annoyed, and he's spilling the beans on the USA's ET secrets.

Suzanne Mcleod joins John Jarrold Literary Agency
08/07/2006. New British fantasy author Suzanne McLeod has become the latest client of the John Jarrold Literary Agency.

K9 spin-off series
08/07/2006. Get set to enter the Tardis as the Paradise Room at the UK's Pleasure Beach, Blackpool hosts a Doctor Who event featuring showbiz guests, entertainment and memorabilia from the world of the UK's TV series.

Zoran Zivkovic story to be read on BBC Radio Seven
07/07/2006. John Jarrold Literary Agency sells short story rights for this Serbian SFF author to the Beeb.

Pay no attention to the demons behind the curtain
06/07/2006. Zumaya Publications has announced the release of a collaboration between an American and a Russian writer, Lords of Terror, by Alan Cole and Nick Perumov.

Baen Books send in their Jim Baen tribute
05/07/2006. Science fiction publishing mverick departs earthly plane.

Jim Baen eulogy
01/07/2006. Science fiction author David Drake, and friend of Jim Baen, sends SFcrowsnest his eulogy of one of the great US editors of science fiction and fantasy.