SFFWorld News – 11/8/08
(2008-11-08) SFFWorld News – 11/8/08
1) Director Jon Favreau and star Robert Downey Jr. have signed on for two more Iron Man movies for Marvel Pictures and Paramount. Downey will also reprise his billionaire genius character Tony Stark for the superhero team-up movie The Avengers, and to that end, made a cameo appearance in The Hulk. Favreau will be an executive producer on The Avengers. The Iron Man franchise made headlines recently by replacing actor Terrence Howard in the role of Stark’s military buddy Colonel James Rhodes with Don Cheadle. Iron Man 2 is scheduled for release in May 2010. The first Iron Man movie was a summer smash that has earned $578 million U.S. worldwide.
2) Solaris Press will publish a new anthology from ex-Interzone editor Jetse De Vries, called Shine. The anthology is a collection of near-future, optimistic SF stories by established and rising authors in the field. More information and guidelines for submission can be obtained at Shine Anthology Blog.
3) PS Publishing will release Powers: Secret Histories by John Berlyne, an extensively researched, illustrated bibliography and reference guide to the works of best-selling, award-winning fantasy author Tim Powers. The book contains poetry, drawings, research and plotting notes, draft narrative and other reference material, as well as commentary from Powers himself about the writing process for his fiction and an excerpt from his 1974 unpublished novel, To Serve in Hell. It also offers articles and essays on Powers from collaborators, friends, and critical scholars such as Dean Koontz, Jim Blaylock, China Mieville, Karen Joy Fowler, John Bierer and William Ashless. PS Publishing will be offering the book in a limited signature edition run and also in special collectors editions, and they are available for pre-order and at EasterCon in Bradford, U.K. in March 2009, where Powers will be the Guest of Honor. For more information, contact: http://news.pspublishing.co.uk
4) Actor David Tennant is leaving the role of Doctor Who in the BBC’s longest running SF franchise. He announced his departure after winning the outstanding drama performance prize at the National Television Awards. After lying fallow for more than a decade, the Doctor Who series was resurrected in 2005 with actor Christopher Eccleston as the ninth television problem-solving, body-changing Time Lord. Eccleston left at the end of the first run and was replaced in the role by Tennant. The show took a break after July 2008 but will return for a Christmas special, entitled “The Next Doctor,” and four more special episodes starring Tennant as the Doctor for broadcast in the U.K. in early 2009. The show has been spectacularly popular in the U.K. and abroad, and has spun-off several new shows. Doctor Who will return for a new series in 2010, but no announcement on who next will play the Doctor has been made.
5) The International Horror Guild Awards for works from 2007 were announced on Halloween. They are:
LIVING LEGEND: Peter Straub
NOVEL: The Terror by Dan Simmons (Little, Brown)
LONG FICTION: Softspoken by Lucius Shepard (Night Shade Books)
MID-LENGTH FICTION: "Closet Dreams" by Lisa Tuttle (Postscripts #10)
SHORT FICTION: "Honey in the Wound" by Nancy Etchemendy (The Restless Dead)
ILLUSTRATED NARRATIVE: The Nightmare Factory by Thomas Ligotti (Fox Atomic/Harper Paperbacks)
COLLECTION: Dagger Key and Other Stories by Lucius Shepard (PS Publishing)
ANTHOLOGY: Inferno by Ellen Datlow, ed. (Tor)
NONFICTION: Mario Bava: All the Colors of Dark by Tim Lucas (Video Watchdog)
PERIODICAL: Postscripts
ART: Elizabeth McGrath (for "The Incurable Disorder", Billy Shire Fine Arts, December 2007)
6) The World Fantasy Award Winners for 2008 were announced at the World Fantasy Convention in November:
NOVEL: Ysabel, Guy Gavriel Kay (Viking Canada/Penguin Roc)
NOVELLA: Illyria, Elizabeth Hand (PS Publishing)
SHORT STORY: “Singing of Mount Abora”, Theodora Goss (Logorrhea, Bantam Spectra)
ANTHOLOGY: Inferno: New Tales of Terror and the Supernatural, Ellen Datlow, Editor (Tor)
COLLECTION: Tiny Deaths, Robert Shearman (Comma Press)
ARTIST: Edward Miller
SPECIAL AWARD, PROFESSIONAL: Peter Crowther for PS Publishing
SPECIAL AWARD, NON-PROFESSIONAL: Midori Snyder and Terri Windling for Endicott Studios Website
7) Obituary: Michael Crichton, mega-bestselling fiction author, film director and screenwriter, has died from cancer at the age of 66. A doctor who attended Harvard Medical School and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, Crichton taught courses in anthropology at Cambridge University and writing at MIT. Crichton’s first novels were under the pen names John Lange and Jeffrey Hudson. His mystery novel A Case of Need won the 1969 Edgar Award and was turned into a movie called The Carey Treatment. His first novel under his own name, the 1969 SF thriller The Andromeda Strain, was a major bestseller and was made into a film in 1971.
Crichton produced a steady stream of best-selling, sometimes controversial novels, usually about science and technology, many of which were made into major films, such as The Great Train Robbery, Coma, Disclosure, Rising Sun, The Terminal Man, and the enormous hit Jurassic Park, about dinosaurs resurrected back to life with disastrous results, and its sequel The Lost World, both films directed by Steven Spielberg.
Crichton was the screenwriter for the disaster film Twister, and adapted the screenplays for many of his novels. He directed the film Physical Evidence, and wrote and directed the cult sci-fi hit Westworld. He directed and wrote the film adaptations of his novels Runaway, Looker, The Great Train Robbery, Coma, and Eaters of the Dead, the last retiled The 13th Warrior for film. Crichton is also famous for creating the hit, long-running medical television series ER in the U.S., about the staff of a hospital emergency room. The series won him an Emmy, a Peabody and a Writers’ Guild of America Award.
Crichton also wrote four works of non-fiction: Five Patients, Jasper Johns, Electronic Life and Travels. His most recent novel, Next, about genetics and the law, has been optioned for film, as have his recent novels Airframe, Prey and State of Fear. His novels have been translated into thirty-six languages. In 2002, a newly discovered ankylosaur was named for him: Crichtonsaurus bohlini.
8) To clear the ground for its ratings devourer American Idol, the Fox network in the U.S. is moving ailing SF franchise show Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles from Monday nights to Friday nights, and pairing it up with Joss Whedon’s new mid-season SF show Dollhouse. Forensics show Bones will be moved from Wednesday to Thursday nights, and medical mystery show House will move from Tuesday evening to Monday. The changes to the schedule will take place in January and February, when Dollhouse will premiere. The spy thriller series 24 will finally return in January and take the Monday night at 9:00 p.m. slot after a four hour, two-night premiere.
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