SFFWorld News – 9/22/08

  
SFFWorld News – 9/22/08

1) When Douglas Adams unfortunately was lost to us too soon at the age of 49 in 2001, he had expressed a plan to write a sixth and final novel in the world-famous satirical SF Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, saying that the fifth book, Mostly Harmless, had ended on too bleak a note. Now comes the news that Adams’ widow, Jane Belson, has asked best-selling fantasy author Eoin Colfer to write that sixth Hitchhiker’s novel, to be entitled And Another Thing... The title will come out late next year from Penguin. Colfer, a fan of the series, is best known for his popular YA series Artemis Fowl. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which started out as a radio series in 1978, and its four sequels have sold 16 million books internationally and been translated into 35 languages. 

2) Eoin Colfer’s own YA novel, Airman, is being turned into an animated movie by Gil Kenan and Robert Zemeckis. Kenan will also direct the film, which will use performance-capture technology for the animation. The adventure story concerns Conor Broekhart, a young man born in a hot air balloon over Paris, who befriends the princess of an island nation and her father, and attempts to build a flying machine.

3) True Blood, the new television series based on Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse vampire novels and starring Anna Paquin, has been renewed for a second season by U.S. cable channel HBO. The series, adapted by Alan Ball, concerns a telepathic bar waitress in the U.S. South in a time when vampires have revealed themselves to the human population, thanks to a synthetic blood substitute, and seek to live among them. In the series, Stephen Moyer plays Bill Compton, the U.S. Civil War-era vampire with whom Sookie slowly develops a romance, while she tries to solve the mystery of a serial killer and clear her brother’s name. The September debut of the series drew 4 million viewers and the second episode showed a 24% gain over that, prompting the early renewal. The second season of the show will likely be shown in Summer 2009. The cast also includes Ryan Kwanten, Rutina Wesley, Sam Trammell and Nelsan Ellis. 

4) Robert J. Sawyer’s SF novel Flash Forward has been picked up for a television adaptation by U.S. network ABC. The new show, which may debut in 2009, was created by film-maker David S. Goyer and Star Trek veteran Brannon Braga. The novel tells the story of the chaos that occurs when, due to a high-energy experiment by physicists, everyone in the world blacks out for a couple of minutes, leaves their bodies and experiences a vision of their future. Vince Gerardis and Ralph M. Vicinanza held dramatic rights to the book and will help produce the series. The project was originally with HBO, which will still be involved in the production. 

5) After its success with Pirates of the Caribbean, Disney is mining another of its classic theme park attractions, Tomorrowland, for a space movie starring Dwayne Johnson, who is also in Disney’s revamp Race to Witch Mountain film. Writers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore have been hired to write the adventure movie, using such famous rides as Disney’s Space Mountain roller-coaster as inspiration. 

6) Stephen Chow (Kung Fu Hustle) will direct and co-star in The Green Hornet movie for Sony Pictures. Chow, a major comedy star in Asia, will play Kato, the Green Hornet’s sidekick and valet. Seth Rogen, who co-wrote the script for the film with Evan Goldberg, plays the Green Hornet, a masked crime fighter. The super-hero started life as a radio show in the 1930’s, became the subject of film serials in the 1940’s and was played by Van Williams in a 1960’s television series that also starred famed martial arts artist Bruce Lee as Kato. The new movie version is slated for a June 2010 release. 

7) The best-selling children’s picture book Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, written by Judi Barrett and illustrated by Ron Barrett, will become an animated film for Sony Pictures. The story is set in a town where food falls from the sky like rain. The film will feature the voices of Bill Hader, Anna Faris, James Caan, Andy Samberg, Bruce Campbell, Mr. T and Tracy Morgan, and is scheduled for release in early 2010 as a 3-D project. The movie is co-written and directed by Chris Miller and Phil Lord.

8) The winners of the 2008 British Fantasy Awards are:

The Sydney J. Bounds Best Newcomer Award: Scott Lynch
BFS Special Award: 'The Karl Edward Wagner Award': Ray Harryhausen
Best Non-Fiction: Peter Tennant for Whispers of Wickedness Website Reviews (Whispers of Wickedness)
Best Artist: Vincent Chong
Best Small Press: Peter Crowther, PS Publishing
Best Anthology: Stephen Jones for The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 18 (Robinson)
Best Collection: Christopher Fowler for Old Devil Moon (Serpents Tail)
Best Short Fiction: Joel Lane for "My Stone Desire" (Black Static #1, TTA Press)
Best Novella: Conrad Williams for The Scalding Rooms (PS Publishing)
Best Novel: 'The August Derleth Fantasy Award': Ramsey Campbell for The Grin of The Dark (PS Publishing)

9) The 2008 U.S. National Book Festival, organized and sponsored by the Library of Congress and hosted by U.S. First Lady Laura Bush, will be held on Saturday, September 27, 2008, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., between 3rd and 7th streets from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and features SFF authors such as Neil Gaiman. The festival is free and open to the public. For more details, visit http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/