Word is someone is going to take Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon and turn it into a movie. Even better, the person planning on doing this is James McTeigue; his last SF project was a film called V for Vendetta, so Altered Carbon may get the quality treatment it deserves. BTW, if you are having problems logging into Twitter, it suffered a DoS Attack (Denial of Service) earlier today. It seems to be back up now, but is a bit slow to respond.
It’s party time again! Thanks to the World Science Fiction Society, Worldcon 2009 is about to happen, from the 6th to the 10th of August. This time around, it takes place in Montreal, Canada, and goes by the name AnticipationSF. As always, it will include presentation of the Hugo Awards and the Campbell Award, as well as the Chesley Awards (and you might enjoy reading the Crotchety Old Fan’s Hugo Winner Prediction). Since this years Worldcon is also Canvention 29, the Aurora Awards will be handed out there as well. There will be the usual world-class writers workshops, the rather insane Masquerade, and so much more I can’t decide what to mention next. So I will just do the Masquerade historical reminder; Cosplay was invented by Forrest J Ackerman and his friend Myrtle R. Jones at the very first Worldcon in 1939. He came dressed in a space suit, while she wore a gown recreated from the classic 1933 film Things to Come (written by H.G. Wells, the movie was staged for 1936, and only 6 years in the past at the point the convention occurred). Neil Gaiman is the Guest of Honor this year, and Tom Doherty is the Publisher Guest of Honor. You gotta love Worldcon!!!
If you got here by way of Google, this probably isn’t what you were thinking it was, but you might enjoy it anyways. Bookslut put together an in-depth review of Philip K. Dick’s life, with some information I had not previously seen. Likewise Skulls In The Stars just posted a review of the works of Henry Kuttner; it is really good to see classic SF authors still appreciated in modern times. For some of them, this is the future they were writing about. THR reports that the original voice cast has signed up to return for the new season of Futurama. Click the City (don’t ask me which city, I didn’t look) has an interesting article about the GI Joe Costumes, looking at science fiction vs. science fact in the armament.
Traveling today… more later
Tonight was the series premiere of Defying Gravity on ABC, and it shows a lot of promise. Three actors I really like were part of the crew, the spaceship and FX were excellent, and the character development compacted an amazing amount of set up and backstory into a ninety minute presentation. There were a few holes in the actual science of how objects behave in zero-G, and once in the way a highly trained astronaut would react to a specific emergency situation, but even so, the program achieved the primary goal of any movie or TV show; it made me care about the people, and invest some emotional coin in wanting to see how it all works out. I’m giving this one 4 stars out of 5; we’ll see if they can keep up the momentum, and build on it.
Discover Magazine has an excellent interview with Jaime Paglia about the inspiration for a show he produces called Eureka; much of it comes from MIT. The NY Times has a review of Sunday’s ABC SF pilot Defying Gravity that makes it sound even more interesting than I previously suspected. Also in the NY Times, GUILLERMO del TORO and CHUCK HOGAN have an Op-Ed piece on Why Vampires Never Die. Finally, io9 has collected up some of the best last lines from science fiction novels in one place for us.