Table of contents for October 2016 in SFX

RICHARD EDWARDS EDITOR RAVES Really excited to be hosting a Ronald D Moore masterclass and a Red Dwarf screening at the Edinburgh International Television Festival on Wednesday 24 August. Get tickets at http://bit.ly/Edtickets. I can’t remember the last TV show I’ve loved as much as Stranger Things. Wonderful stuff. IAN BERRIMAN REVIEWS EDITOR RAVES Went on-set for Who spin-off Class and am now much more excited about it – I think people are going to be surprised how dark it gets. RANTS Discovery is a decent name for a Star Trek series, but the ropey CGI of the ship in the teaser doesn’t inspire much confidence. RUSSELL LEWIN PRODUCTION EDITOR RANTS (ISH) Shame that the Ghostbusters film only took one risk. A more adventurous plot and zanier humour were needed.…

Is Fet still working well with others or is he ready to go it alone this season? He’s got very strong ideas about how to solve this giant, wormy problem. He teams up with some new folk and still works with some of the old folk. Like always, he looks up to Setrakian and always listens to what he has to say, and is right by his side, but he’s also chasing down these new ideas. It’s been three seasons but the time frame of the narrative is barely a month. How do you keep Fet true to who he is, yet allow him to grow? It’s funny. At the start of the season, I registered it’s only been 23 days but it’s not like we’re hanging out in Malibu.…

MY SCI-FI Favourite SF/fantasy film Flash Gordon is great. As a kid, I loved all the crazy trials and tribulations they had to go through to defeat the bad guys. And I loved the ending when Flash killed Ming the Merciless. It’s funny because in Argo, my character was based on him. Ben Affleck put me in the same red cloak and beard, then sat me next to John Goodman during the table read of the film within the film. It was crazy, but I got to channel my childhood dream! Favourite SF/fantasy TV show The X-Files was a great show. It always left you wanting more, like Breaking Bad did; you had to watch the next episode. Actually, I know David Duchovny because we have the same manager. There’s…

FANTASY EPIC “We started developing Kubo five years ago; the pace of these things is glacial! We were still in production on ParaNorman, and the original idea sprang from the mind of our character designer Shannon Tindle, who imagined this incredible, sweeping samurai epic. It was just a really cool concept we’d never seen before. It spoke to me in a meaningful way because when I was a kid I was an enormous fan of fantasy epics. I loved Tolkien, Star Wars, Greek and Norse mythology. With Kubo, we had a canvas with which we could paint in those same colours.” THREE’S COMPANY “This is an odd assortment of heroes! Kubo [voiced by Art Parkinson] is the son of a goddess and through a variety of mistakes, he causes this…

“We want to put Torchwood back on the screen, and the fans need to know that now,” John Barrowman tells Red Alert. “That’s why we’re doing this [comic]. I want Captain Jack back on screen. Fans want him. I think somebody missed a trick when they didn’t continue with it. All I’ll say is I have a phone call, and I’m speaking with somebody about the future…” While we cross our fingers, there’s the small matter of that aforementioned comic, which Barrowman has written with his sister Carole. The duo previously collaborated on Torchwood novel Exodus Code, and the new story picks up after that. “We said, ‘If we’re going to create the new Torchwood, let’s take the core team who are left,’” explains John, “and that’s Jack, Gwen and…

Alicia Vikander’s Tomb Raider opening 16 March 2018… Kiersey Clemons is Iris West in the Flash movie… Akiva Goldsman writing Isaac Asimov adap The Caves Of Steel for Twentieth Century Fox… Oprah Winfrey joining Disney’s A Wrinkle In Time… Max Landis writing a Pepé Le Pew film…The Walking Dead’s Lennie James joining Blade Runner 2… Will Beall writing Aquaman… Willem Dafoe and Stellan Skarsgård joining Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote… Waypoint Entertainment adapting comic series Plutona… Steve Pink bringing Sega game Rent A Hero to the screen… Kiefer Sutherland returning for Sony’s Flatliners remake… Vinnie Jones joining Kingsman: The Golden Circle… Drive’s Cliff Martinez scoring Wolverine 3… John Malkovich joining comic con comedy Supercon… Karla Souza onboard Jacob’s Ladder remake… Amblin Entertainment optioning alien invasion tale The…

A new Blair Witch? A new Shyamalan? Horror has been a total ninja this month WITCHING HOUR So Adam Wingard’s The Woods is actually a stealth sequel to The Blair Witch Project, called Blair Witch . Mind blown. Given the ridiculous publicity machine that exists around movies – marketing campaigns that cost millions, carefully controlled screenings and, very frequently with horror, critics not even being allowed to see the film before it’s out, Lionsgate seems to have done something risky but genius. Not only did they not tell anyone it was happening, EVEN THOUGH THERE WAS A TRAILER, but they announced the movie and then immediately screened it to a massive fan audience, who loved it. Blair Witch didn’t give anyone time to moan about it. We’ve made Blair Witch,…

SEASON 1 US BROADCAST Fox from 23 September UK BROADCAST TBC NEW SHOW! Horror fans may vomit pea soup in excitement when Fox’s TV take on The Exorcist arrives this September. Based on William Peter Blatty’s book of the same name, the classic 1973 movie featured Father Merrin battling for the soul of possessed teenager Regan. The show’s executive producer Jeremy Slater stresses their main objective was to not rehash the source material, but to deliver a compelling, fresh take that scares the crap out of viewers. “The original film and novel cast a long shadow, so obviously audiences are going to be disappointed if they tune in for a show called The Exorcist and it’s not scary,” Slater tells SFX. “We’re talking the Rolls-Royce of horror films. If we…

SEASON 5 US BROADCAST The CW from 5 October UK BROADCAST Sky 1 from late October, TBC RETURNING SHOW! This is an important year for Arrow, the show that kicked off DC’s massively successful TV universe. The series was originally envisioned with a five-season arc, and that means that we’ll see Oliver Queen’s flashbacks catching up with the events of season one. “This year, in a lot of ways, is like the end of a chapter,” star Stephen Amell tells SFX. “It’s not the end of the show, but the show was conceived and pitched as a five-year journey, through the flashbacks to the present day. There’s a real sense of urgency right now with the flashbacks, and we feel like, ‘Okay, we have to get from point A to…

FACE TO FACE WITH THE BIGGEST STARS Biodata Occupation Actor Born 17 November 1978 From Cardiff, Wales Greatest Hts Lucifer, Rush, Miranda Random Fact You might recognise Ellis from Doctor Who. He played Martha Jones’s handsome doctor friend in “Last Of The Time Lords”. “THE STAKES ARE HIGHER AT THE BEGINNING OF SEASON TWO” The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was going from a supporting role in Miranda – Britain’s wackiest sitcom – to leading one of America’s hottest new shows: Lucifer, the strange and not-entirely-serious story of Satan’s crime-solving adventures in LA. It’s a show that initially confused the critics, who felt it was fluffy, disposable and nothing like the comics it was based on, which were themselves a spin-off from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. But the show eventually…

When the organisers of Star Wars Celebration booked London’s ExCeL Centre for this year’s do, they probably had little idea we’d be just a few stops on the Docklands Light Railway from an actual Star Wars location. Before we made our pilgrimage to Canary Wharf tube station (as seen in the Rogue One trailer), however, we thought it might be best to take in some bona fide Star Wars news. Here are the biggest stories we dug up between the merchandise, the cosplay and the mind-boggling number of people getting Star Wars tattoos on site… ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY Rogue One: A Star Wars Story marks out new territory for the series. The Force Awakens may be the biggest movie ever made by someone other than James Cameron,…

F Blade Runner: not just about the visuals. Sean Connery gets with the birds in You Only Live Twice. rom Stargate to Sherlock, Little Britain to the global glare of the 2012 Olympics, David Arnold remains one of our premier soundtrack composers. He’s won an Emmy and a Grammy while a run of five Bond films – transitioning from Pierce Brosnan to Daniel Craig – saw him hailed as heir to his hero, the masterly John Barry. Next month he returns to his score for Independence Day, reviving its flag-rippling melodies for a live performance at the Royal Albert Hall, in sync with the original movie. “It gives the film an extra lease of life,” he tells SFX. “It’s a different way of experiencing it, a different way of seeing…

LOGGING IN In Kirk’s opening Captain’s Log, he mentions that it’s the 966th day of the Enterprise’s five-year mission. Star Trek first aired in September 1966 – that’s 9/66. NEW YORK, NEW YORK Star Trek IV featured a USS Yorktown. More significantly, when Gene Roddenberry first pitched Star Trek to NBC in 1964, Yorktown was originally going to be the name of the ship. PEACH OF A SPEECH Kirk’s “There’s no such thing as the unknown” speech as the Enterprise heads into the nebula is a word-for-word pinch from 1966 episode “The Corbomite Maneuver”. NIMOY’S NUMBER The registry number of the Franklin – NX-326 – is another little tribute to the late Leonard Nimoy. The actor’s birthday was 26 March - 3/26 in US date order. HO HO HO, GREEN…

RELEASED 9 SEPTEMBER 15 | 108 minutes Director Alexandre Aja Cast Jamie Dornan, Aiden Longworth, Sarah Gadon Much like Pan’s Labyrinth, this adaptation of a book by Liz Jensen uses fantasy as deception, masking what is a dark and adult film underneath childlike whimsy. It follows, of course, Louis Drax (Aiden Longworth), a disturbed boy whose history of curious mishaps has led to him falling off a cliff during a family picnic. Or was he pushed? Either way, he lands in the fantastical world of a coma, where he makes friends with a sea creature, and attempts to take down his doctor (Jamie Dornan), who’s become romantically involved with his mother Natalie (Sarah Gadon). Louis’s father (Aaron Paul), meanwhile, has gone missing. The mystery unravels with the pace of a…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 12A | 109 minutes This Chinese fantasy is a work of nonsense so insane that it’s almost electrifying. Like a shark, it never stops, whooshing breathlessly from one confusing plot point to another. Somewhere in there there’s god-like being Lei, who must find a precious golden sword. But there’s also a talking plant with one eye, a guy who rides a panther, a fox-woman with nine tails and a six-armed baby who slaughters crabpeople with his farts. It’s clunky, it’s terrible, it might be the best film ever made.…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2015 | 18 | Blu-ray/DVD Directors Radio Silence, Roxanne Benjamin, David Bruckner, Patrick Horvath Cast Kate Beahan, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Susan Burke Five stories, one deserted highway… But not that deserted or we wouldn’t have this horror anthology, whose novelty is that the tales are interconnected – sometimes cleverly, sometimes less so. Steer clear if you dislike night shoots or a sometimes unclear narrative. We start with “The Way Out”, in which two thugs are caught up in a Twilight Zone-type scenario involving a roadside cafe that just won’t go away. The highlight: monsters that are like scarier versions of the Reapers from Doctor Who’s “Father’s Day”. “Siren” follows a familiar pattern – three girls in a van break down and are taken in by a weird couple…

League Of Gentlemen-ish Danish film MEN AND CHICKEN (out now, Blu-ray/DVD) sees two brothers travelling to a remote island after discovering they’re not their late dad’s biological offspring. We said: “Its grotesque oddity will delight and disturb in equal measure.” Jonathan Nolan’s techno thriller continues with PERSON OF INTEREST SEASON FOUR (5 September, Blu-ray/DVD) which has a run of episodes mid-run that all feel like season finales, as two potentially omnipotent AIs go into battle. The twist rate is exhilarating, and one episode, “If-Then-Else” – the cleverest Groundhog Day episode you’ll ever see – is worth buying the box set for alone. Readers old enough to remember Monkey may also have fond memories of THE WATER MARGIN (22 August, Blu-ray/DVD). Based on a 14th century Chinese novel, this martial arts…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 378 pages | Hardback/ebook Author Gavin Chait Publisher Doubleday The line between “general literature” and genre fiction is getting thinner every day, and the latest book to explore this territory is Lament Of The Fallen, a book that’s unashamedly sci-fi but is also being marketed as similar to recent work by literary authors like David Mitchell and Michel Faber. It’s to debut author Gavin Chait’s credit that the book is often strong enough to support these comparisons. His story explores a convincingly realised future world, as a self-sufficient West African community is disrupted by the sudden arrival of an augmented escapee from an American orbital prison. This escapee’s quest to return home forms the backbone of the plot. Around this Chait has crafted lyrical prose and imaginative…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 384 pages | Hardback/ebook Author Mark de Jager Publisher Del Rey Stratus isn’t sure what he is. Or where he is. Or even how he got there. What he does know is that he’s not entirely human, and that he’s got to find out more. This amnesia provides an intriguing mystery for author Mark de Jager’s epic debut, but can get a little wearing. Sure you want to know who Stratus is, and the reveal somewhat pays off, but for the most part, between Stratus’s inhuman instincts and his confusion about his identity he isn’t particularly likeable. Except when he’s hungry – his appetite is quite amusing. Getting an antihero right is a balancing act, and sometimes Stratus unfortunately leans more towards anti- than hero. Other characters…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 406 pages | Paperback/ebook Author KB Wagers Publisher Orbit SF may be a genre of ideas, but it also isn’t afraid to throw those ideas aside in favour of pulp thrills sometimes. The space opera subgenre is probably the best example of this, often retooling mythic fantasy in an SF setting (hello there, Star Wars) – but sometimes the process can go a little too far, as is the case in Behind The Throne. The first in a trilogy, it’s the story of Hail Bristol, a self-reliant gunrunner who’s also the runaway heir to the Indaran Empire. When Hail’s past catches up with her, she’s forced to return to the Imperial Court, where her remaining siblings have died in suspicious circumstances and there’s a dark conspiracy afoot.…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher Marvel Writer Nick Spencer Artist Jesus Saiz issues 1-3 If there’s one thing that superhero comics love more than anything else, it’s controversy. The right kind of big, unpredictable shock can get people talking and boost awareness – however, as new Captain America writer Nick Spencer has discovered, it can also result in getting death threats and being accused of betraying the legacy of Cap creators Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. This is all thanks to the dramatic twist in the first issue of Marvel’s latest ongoing Captain America title. The cliffhanger ending sees superpowered Steve Rogers confronting bad guy Baron Zemo – but then everything goes sideways when Rogers apparently commits murder and then reveals that he’s somehow always been a secret Hydra sleeper agent.…

ROGUE WARRIOR “I drew a lot from Han Solo and Indiana Jones. I wanted to present Wyatt as a badass, but I still wanted that touch of humour like Han Solo. That’s what people love about those characters. They are so effortlessly cool and that’s how I hope this character comes off.” MAN OF MYSTERY “We don’t know exactly why Wyatt is there. We know he’s Delta Force, but we don’t know if he’s currently active or why the government picked him out of all those military personnel they could have gotten.” LETHAL WEAPON “One of my good friends growing up, his brother used to be in the army. He told us he had to register his hands with the government as a deadly weapon. At the time, I was…

CELEBRATING ICONIC SCI-FI STARS Stephen Manley was handpicked by Leonard Nimoy to play the pivotal role of a 17-year-old Spock recovered from the Genesis planet in the director’s soulful Star Trek III: The Search For Spock (1984). His enactment of the Vulcan “blood burning” reproductive cycle of pon farr with model Robin Curtis (who played Saavik) was a highlight. We spoke to the actor at his LA home. Would you like to play the role again? Of course – I could pon farr with Robin for the rest of eternity! What’s the strangest request you’ve had from a fan? I haven’t had outrageous requests. When fans take a picture with me and we pon farr together they usually go blood red and jump up and down! Did you get any set…

Chasing Embers is “contemporary fantasy” – how close is it to our world? Pretty close, although it isn’t our world, not entirely. It’s our world as if mythological creatures actually existed. Tell us about your dragon protagonist. Fiery temper? Red-hot lover? Handy to have around when you need a campfire starting? All three! Though for the latter, Ben Garston might take out some of the surrounding forest too. And getting involved with him could get you killed… What was your thinking about how a dragon would talk? When I first heard Ben in my head, he was world-weary, hungover and wryly self-deprecating. He’s been through a lot. In human form, Ben sounds like any other grumpy Londoner! In dragon form, a tad more growly. Did anything particular inspire the book? After…

THIS MONTH’S COMMUNICATIONS MONITOR NICK SETCHFIELD, FEATURES EDITOR We’re living in an age of reboots – but has there ever been a Hollywood redo more divisive than Paul Feig’s female-fronted take on Ghostbusters? It’s the film that set fire to the internet this summer and, naturally, we wanted to know what you made of it, once you finally had a chance to catch it at the cinema… Plus, you told us your Star Wars dreams. We’re always keen to hear your views, whatever the subject – get in touch via the ways opposite. Who you gonna call? # THE NEW GHOSTBUSTERS Steve Edwards, email It was like watching a love letter to Ghostbusters fans. There were enough (respectful) nods to the original to keep fans happy, while still having enough…

“I THOUGHT, ‘I SHOULD’VE SAVED THE MONEY AND JUST REREAD THE COMIC’” Hey, have you seen that new Preacher television show? I’m a die-hard fan of the comic and wow – this has to be one of the least faithful adaptations ever. Following that kind of statement, you’d expect the rest of this space to be filled with swear words and crude hexes directed at the showrunner’s more sensitive bits. But no: I actually love the show, and not in spite of, but because of its unfaithfulness. We’re not even talking superficial differences here, like changing a costume or a setting: the Preacher TV show completely disregards the very heart of the book. The Preacher comic was a punk rock epic – not so much a statement as a middle…

SEASON 7 US BROADCAST AMC from 23 October UK BROADCAST Fox from 24 October RETURNING SHOW! After introducing Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s baseball-wielding antagonist Negan in the season finale, what does the adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s zombie-filled comic book do for an encore? According to Kirkman, it gets downright animalistic, introducing two more fan favourite characters – Ezekiel and his pet tiger Shiva. “We were reaching that point where Ezekiel is in the storyline so it was just a natural progression,” says Kirkman. “As we move through the storyline, we’ll be bringing more characters in, and some characters will arrive later. There will definitely be other characters that you can see this season and some surprises coming but right now it’s all about Ezekiel and Shiva.” To Kirkman’s clear relief, Shiva…

SEASON 1 US BROADCAST HBO from 9 October UK BROADCAST Sky Atlantic from October NEW SHOW! As Stephen Hawking issues a threat alert for the rise of artificial intelligence, HBO’s adaptation of the classic 1973 movie arrives on screen with a contemporary bite. The premise is intact: in the near future a frontier-themed amusement park lets its guests indulge their every violent, lustful fantasy, a population of robots servicing their desires. Naturally it all short-circuits… Showrun by Pushing Daisies writer Lisa Joy and Interstellar’s Jonathan Nolan – brother of Christopher – Westworld’s cast includes Jeffrey Wright, Sir Anthony Hopkins and James Marsden. Ed Harris inherits Yul Brynner’s role as the lethal android gunslinger, the role that defined the marketing of the original movie, while Evan Rachel Wood is the park’s…

AMERICAN GODS Neil Gaiman’s Hugo Awardwinning novel is brought to the screen by Bryan Fuller. Chronicling the struggle for survival of old gods and mythological figures in a new world of deities like technology, it stars Ricky Whittle as Shadow and Ian McShane as his employer Mr Wednesday. STAR TREK: DISCOVERY Bryan Fuller returns to his SF TV roots with this continuation of the “Prime” Star Trek universe. Set on board the USS Discovery – a ship inspired by designs for the never-produced ’70s TV show Star Trek: Phase Two – we’re promised a series true to Roddenberry’s vision of diversity and hope. POWERLESS The first live-action TV comedy set within the DC Universe, the show focuses on employees at an insurance company whose lives are complicated by living in…

Time Machine THE STORY BEHIND THE SF AND FANTASY OF YESTERYEAR 1978 Back in 1977, when the Force first awoke and the extraordinary spectacle of Star Wars erupted onto the big screen, audiences were understandably hungry for more adventures. However, it would be a long three years before they were finally reunited with their Empire-battling heroes – a gap unthinkable in our current age of seemingly relentless franchise expansions. Fortunately Splinter Of The Mind’s Eye, an original spin-off novel by Alan Dean Foster, tantalisingly offered “the next adventures of Luke Skywalker”. And despite being a low-budget contingency plan for George Lucas should his intergalactic opera not become sufficiently successful, it’s a story that offers an intriguing insight into the Star Wars sequel that nearly was. “I was called to the…

ROBIN HARDY 1929-2016 Twenty-one years ago, I interviewed the sometime film director Robin Hardy in the dining room of a moderately swanky Soho members club. I say “sometime” because he was keen to stress “I’m also a journalist, I write quite a lot for the New York Times, I write novels… I don’t think I would want simply to direct movies, although I like directing movies.” “You want a long epitaph on your gravestone?” I responded, toadyishly. “Not just ‘Director of The Wicker Man’?” “That’s right!” he laughed. Robin Hardy, director of The Wicker Man, died on 1 July, aged 86. That’s not meant unkindly. To have directed – in fact, co-created – a film as enduring as The Wicker Man is an extraordinary thing, because The Wicker Man itself…

RELEASED 26 AUGUST 15 | 98 minutes Director Tod Williams Cast John Cusack, Samuel L Jackson, Isabelle Fuhrman You know there’s something wrong with a film when you become obsessed with a hat. In this adaptation of Stephen King’s 2006 novel, a mysterious signal turns mobile users into homicidal, hive-mind “Phoners”. At the height of civilisation’s nosedive into chaos, John Cusack’s hero takes time out to pull on a black beanie, then spends the rest of the movie randomly taking it on and off. A bit of prop “business”? Cold head? Covering up for an operation? Who knows, but for much of the duration it’s the most intriguing question here. Cell has its moments: the original outbreak is ferocious, and a sequence that involves torching a playing field full of…

RELEASED 9 SEPTEMBER PG | TBC Director Travis Knight Cast Art Parkinson, Charlize Theron, Matthew McConaughey, Ralph Fiennes With Kubo And The Two Strings, stopmotion animation house Laika – the guys who brought us Coraline, ParaNorman and The Boxtrolls – have yet again proved that they’re a force to be reckoned with. It’s not hyperbole to say that this adorable adventure showcases some of the most beautiful model-making and stopmotion design ever committed to screen, with the kind of cinematography old-guard cameramen like Jack Cardiff would drool over. In fact, the models and animation here are so bloody good they make Pixar’s CGI adventures look sterile in comparison. As if all that wasn’t enough, Kubo also has a fantastic cast of characters, a script that never lags and a glorious…

RELEASED 19 AUGUST PG | 85 minutes After live-action turkeys starring Gérard Depardieu, it’s a pleasure to see Goscinny and Uderzo’s Gauls back in animated form. One of their more overtly satirical stories is recreated with much of its waspishness intact, the plot serving as a critique on gentrification. Jack Whitehall and Nick Frost lend vocals to an overly chatty dub that only marginally detracts from the boisterous 3D visuals.…

Did Civil War feel on a different level to anything you’ve done before? Yeah, it felt massive. Arriving on set I was shit-scared! It was like being a 12-year-old when you’re sent to a new school, and you know it’s going to be a big class. But I was welcomed in such a generous way – it didn’t feel like I was the new kid. Instead, people really embraced me and were very generous. Even the reshoot was quite big – it was only a couple of days, but with that crew you’d shoot an entire film in Europe! What was it like working with two directors? It’s interesting to figure out who’s responsible for what. I would say Joe is always closer to the actors, and Anthony is sometimes the overview…

RELEASED 22 AUGUST 2016 | 15 | DVD Director Simon Pummell Cast Lachlan Nieboer, Nora-Jane Noone, Nick Blood, Tony Way The feature film debut of praisebombed documentary maker Simon Pummell (Bodysong), Identicals is a visually impressive, if slightly chilly, SF tech thriller starring Downton Abbey’s Lachlan Nieboer as a man who’s given a “life upgrade” by the sinister Brand New-U corporation. Taking place in either a future London or an alternative reality (either way, it seems iPhone ringtones are the same as in 2016), there’s barely a shot that isn’t visually gorgeous. The movie has a steely, burnished look, and Pummell’s camera moves with panther-like grace. His script, however, is less sure-footed, mistaking sparsity for profundity. Nieboer gives a rather stiff performance as Slater, while Nora-Jane Noone has little to…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2015 | 15 | DVD Director Jaco Van Dormael Cast Pili Groyne, Benoît Poelvoorde, Catherine Deneuve, François Damiens God is a prick. At least he is in this blissfully blasphemous Belgian fantasy, which sees his daughter (less well known than his son) rebel against her old man. For one thing, she’s fed up with some of the rules he’s invented: toast with jam on will always land jam-side down, the queue you’re in will always go slower than the one you’re not in, and so on. So she does a fiendish thing to mess the world up: send everyone with a mobile the date that they’re going to die. So we get a fella who, knowing he’s not due to expire for 60 years, starts flinging himself…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 153 pages | Hardback Author Joanna Farrow Publisher BBC Books ○ A proper cookbook, with eccentric but do-able recipes inspired by monsters and other things from the series. ○ Some of the recipe pics look brilliant. Our favourites: Ood Head Bread, Slitheen Cuisine (potato based), Pizza Cassandra and Zygon Pie. ○ But some may not taste so good. Blueberries with hard-boiled eggs for Atraxi Snax, anyone?! ○ See if you can bake a better soufflé than the Impossible Girl – there’s a recipe for that too. ○ A “Hello, Sweeties” section features a selection of dessert delights, such as Adipose Pavlova and jelly babies. ○ Definitely better than the 1985 book of the same name, featuring Castrovalvan Kebabs and Chancellor Flavia’s Chicken Favourite.…

Getting the paperback treatment this month: Stephen King’s latest collection, THE BAZAAR OF BAD DREAMS 6 September, Hodder), which collects 20 works from the last six years, three of them previously unpublished. We said: “The overall standard remains remarkably high”, but warned that King’s introductions to certain stories give away a little too much. Read them afterwards, eh? New movie tie-in editions of The Girl With All The Gifts will be jostling for shelf space with MR Carey’s latest, FELLSIDE 25 August, Orbit). Set in the titular prison, it centres on a female inmate who makes contact with a ghost while dying on hunger strike. We said: “More twists and surprises would have been welcome, but on the whole this is a solid and enjoyable read”. Catherynne M Valente’s RADIANCE…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 106 pages | Ebook Author Peter F Hamilton Publisher Pan Macmillan If there’s an equivalent to the locked-room mystery within SF, it’s surely the time-paradox story. Readers so clearly understand what’s going on – the risks of killing your own father in the past and so on – that only a new and novel take on the subgenre is going to hold the attention, which is where the challenge lies. Enter Peter F Hamilton, whose time-paradox, crimethriller novella shows us the world from the perspective of a teenager, Julian, who has an eidetic memory. That’s unusual enough in itself, but when Julian begins to recall a London finance worker’s life in perfect detail too, things start getting really weird. The story is set in contemporary London and…

RELEASED 8 SEPTEMBER Publisher Rebellion Writers Pat Mills, Malcolm Shaw Artists John Armstrong, Brian Delaney, Shirley Bellwood GRAPHIC NOVEL Part of the same mid-’70s British comic boom that gave us 2000 AD, Misty was a girls’ anthology title with its sights set firmly on the spooky and the strange, delivering dark tales of ordinary teens encountering strange phenomena and evil forces. It ran from 1978-80 before being merged with other titles (and ultimately being phased out in 1984), but now Rebellion have packaged together two of the best-known Misty sagas. “Moonchild”, written by 2000 AD co-creator Pat Mills, is a shameless, slightly creaky take on Stephen King’s Carrie, in which shy Rosemary Black is bullied by her classmates and her harsh mother, until she discovers she possesses telekinetic powers. “The…

Stranger Things producer Shawn Levy is “definitely hopeful to go several more seasons”. Us, too. Game Of Thrones season seven is expected to air late in 2017. The show will only run for 13 more episodes. Bryan Fuller’s Star Trek: Discovery TV show will air on Netflix in the UK. Wynonna Earp has been renewed for a 10-episode second season. Season six of Teen Wolf will be its last – it will conclude with its 100th ep in 2017. New episodes of Daredevil and Jessica Jones unlikely before 2018, says Netflix boss Ted Sarandos. No fair! Serenity is returning in comic Serenity: No Power In The ’Verse, written by Chris Roberson and illustrated by Georges Jeanty. Samira Wiley has joined Hulu’s 10-episode A Handmaid’s Tale, from showrunner Bruce Miller. Black…

Lights Out will get a sequel! Director David F Sandberg is returning with producer James Wan. No word on the cast yet. Disney-owned Foodles production company pleads guilty to breaches of health and safety law over Harrison Ford’s injury on The Force Awakens set. Meryl Streep has joined Mary Poppins Returns. Chris Evans may be playing Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in Lionsgate’s Jekyll movie. “It’s possible that ship has sailed,” says Michael Keaton of Beetlejuice 2. Boo! Rogue One definitely won’t feature Han Solo or Hayden Christensen, according to Gareth Edwards. “Baby Groot’s an extremely important character for me in the movie,” James Gunn says about Guardians Of the Galaxy 2. Michael Fassbender promises Alien: Covenant will be “much scarier” than Prometheus.…

THE UNDISCOVERED DADDY! STAR TREK 4 Star Trek Beyond has barely warped into cinemas and already we know where the fourth film is heading. It’s set to re-enlist Chris Hemsworth as George Kirk, father of James T, whose heroic self-sacrifice in the opening moments of 2009’s Star Trek not only made you cry but took your hot tears and made a nice big cup of sniffle tea. The screenplay’s by JD Payne and Patrick McKay, the original writers of Star Trek 3 before the creative warp core breach that ousted director Bob Orci. Given the next movie will clearly meddle with the timestreams, what chance we’ll finally see William Shatner interact with the new cast? “I’ve talked to [Shatner] about it,” says producer JJ Abrams. “If Kirk had lived [in…

CELEBRATING CLASSIC SF & FANTASY NOVELS I’ll make a bold claim: any significant work of space opera written in the last 30 years owes a debt to Schismatrix. Even if not directly inspired, it will have been shaped by the motifs of other writers who did read it – and whose minds were suitably blown. I know because I was one of them. All of which is puzzling because Schismatrix isn’t precisely space opera, at least not by the usual parameters. It’s set entirely in the solar system, and the technologies are extrapolated from our current capabilities. Cloning, genetic engineering, cybernetics, environmental modification, fusion power – nothing too outlandish. Where the book scores is in taking each conceit and looking at it with a bracing freshness – and thereby refusing…

SEASON 3 US BROADCAST Fox from 19 September UK BROADCAST Channel 5, TBC RETURNING SHOW! Gotham continues to expand its matchless rogues’ gallery in its third season. Executive producer Danny Cannon tells SFX that the Illuminati-style Court of Owls will show its sinister hand with the addition of new bad guy, the Mad Hatter. “We’re very lucky that nobody really went back and did an origin story for Mad Hatter, and so we get to touch on that,” Cannon says of their treatment of the classic comic book character. “Penguin (Robin Lord Taylor) is going to try and dip his foot into the political pool this year. His relationship with Nygma (Cory Michael Smith) got close, so there was an understanding those two had. While that’s going on, we needed…

SEASON XI UK BROADCAST Dave from September US BROADCAST TBC RETURNING SHOW! It spent many years drifting in the wilderness, but now it’s safe to say that Red Dwarf is well and truly back. After 2012’s Red Dwarf X marked a spectacular return to form, the show’s new Earth home, Dave, picked up the show for two new six-part series, the first of which airs in September. But don’t expect any reinvention of the wheel – it’ll still be Lister, Rimmer, Kryten and the Cat winding each other up in deep space. “You’re still looking for a great character idea and how can it be expanded into a story, and that hasn’t changed at all,” says writer/director/co-creator Doug Naylor. “It’s science fiction ideas that get you excited and that’s just…

SEASON 3 US BROADCAST The CW from 4 October UK BROADCAST Sky 1 from late October, TBC RETURNING SHOW! Remember how Fringe had a thing for hitting the reset button? The Flash ventured into similar territory in its season two finale, when Barry Allen travelled back in time and saved his mum from death by Reverse-Flash. It’s the sort of behaviour that wreaks havoc with timelines, meaning that, at the start of season three, Central City is a very different place. “Obviously Barry’s parents are alive, which changes the whole dynamic of our show,” series star Grant Gustin tells SFX. “Barry never went to live with Joe and Iris, so Iris and Barry don’t really have a relationship.” If this sounds a little familiar, that’s because season three riffs on DC’s…

The Vampire Diaries It’s the final season at last, and the Salvatore brothers must decide what matters most to them, once and for all… Once Upon A Time Karen David plays Jasmine, Deniz Akdeniz takes on Aladdin and Oded Fehr is Jafar in a season adapting Disney’s animated classic... Grimm Monroe and Rosalee have a baby on the way in season six... The Last Man On Earth Season three promises more awkward comedy as well as another bold attempt to repopulate the Earth... The Good Place Kristen Bell stars as a woman who dies and enters the wrong part of the Afterlife – the part where everyone is too nice to each other… People Of Earth The Office USA’s Greg Daniels presents a new comedy about a support group for…

The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss… Not a bad way to launch your career in movies. And since producing that trio of James Cameron-directed classics, Gale Anne Hurd has continued to make her mark as one of the most successful producers in Hollywood, with the likes of Armageddon and Hulk among the standouts on a glittering CV. These days, however, she’s best known for what she’s doing on the telly, as one of the key creative forces behind The Walking Dead and its spin-off, Fear The Walking Dead. SFX sat down for a chat with Hurd to talk about blazing a trail in Hollywood – and of course, zombie invasions in Los Angeles… The California/Pacific/Mexico setting of Fear The Walking Dead’s second season couldn’t be more different to the parent show’s Atlanta…

Biodata Occupation Novelist Born 15 November 1932 From New York State Greatest Hits As well as The Dice Man and his other novels, Rhinehart has written several screenplays. Random Fact The Dice Man features in songs by, among others, The Cure, The Fall and Talk Talk. Richard D James, aka the Aphex Twin, sometimes uses “The Dice Man” as an alias. “I’M GUILTY OF PREACHING SERIOUSLY THAT WE SHOULDN’T TAKE ANYTHING SERIOUSLY” S ix or seven years ago, Luke Rhinehart thought he was done with writing. Then, a little to his own surprise, a new idea began to coalesce. Having toyed with the idea of writing a non-fiction book called The Lies We Live By, the author of cult classic The Dice Man (of which more later) realised he could…

RELEASED OUT NOW! PG | 103 minutes Director David Lowery Cast Oakes Fegley, Bryce Dallas Howard, Karl Urban, Wes Bentley Bearing only superficial similarities to the jolly 1977 Disney musical of the same name (it contains a boy named Pete and, er, a dragon), this is an adorable romp with a great cast, pretty CGI, lush landscapes and enough sweetness to fill a beehive. A cross between How To Train Your Dragon and Spike Jonze’s Where The Wild Things Are (only this time aimed firmly at kids), it’s the story of a sprog named Pete (an excellent Oakes Fegley) who finds himself stranded and alone in the forest after a car crash kills his parents. Saved from a pack of wolves by a dog-like dragon he names Elliot, Pete goes…

RELEASED 19 AUGUST 15 | 86 minutes This derivative SF effort is part Moon, part below-par Twilight Zone episode. Brandon Routh leads a team of four astronauts undergoing a 400 day-long Earth-based simulation intended to ready them for space travel. But things go awry when they start hallucinating... Clichéd characterisations and humdrum performances (there’s a reason why Superman Returns didn’t make Routh a breakout star) drag things down, and Matt Osterman’s script can’t reach the heights of its lofty influences.…

Four more films to fill you in on. NINE LIVES (19 August) sees Kevin Spacey’s workaholic dad no doubt learning valuable life lessons after getting stuck in a cat’s body. THE PURGE: ELECTION YEAR slipped back to 26 August after our review went to press last issue. We said: “the concept still has some entertainment value left” ( ). MORGAN (2 September) sees The Witch’s Anya Taylor-Joy playing a bio-engineered human. Also doing the rounds: a new restoration of THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH (9 September), Nicolas Roeg’s 1976 film starring David Bowie as a stranded alien.…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2016 | 12 | Blu-ray 3D/Blu-ray/DVD Director Cedric Nicolas-Troyan Cast Chris Hemsworth, Jessica Chastain, Charlize Theron Both a prequel and a sequel to Snow White And The Huntsman, Winter’s War is sadly nowhere near its equal – and not just because Snow is a no-show. While the first film was far from a classic it had a sense of wonder and some epic cinematography. Winter’s War, on the other hand, with its make-do effects, workmanlike script and misfiring comedy, feels uncannily like a straightto-video sequel from the ’80s. It begins with an origin story for the Huntsman and Ice Queen Freya, the emo sister of the first film’s über-witch Ravenna, set before the first film. Then there’s a big time-jump to a post Snow White period. That’s…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2013 | 15 | DVD Director Zak Hilditch Cast Nathan Phillips, Angourie Rice, Jessica De Gouw, Kathryn Beck We’ve had a fair crop of countdown-to-apocalypse films in recent years, with the likes of Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia, Abel Ferrara’s 4.44: Last Day On Earth and Steve Carell romcom Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World. These Final Hours sees Australia getting in on the act, as the firestorm from a meteor strike sweeps across the globe. To begin with, as the musclebound, sweaty-vested James (Nathan Phillips) fends off a machete-wielding maniac en route to an end of the world orgy/drugfest, it looks like we’re all set for action-packed, testosteronedrenched Ozploitation. However, saving a young girl called Rose (Angourie Rice) from abductors soon cracks the walls…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 643 pages | Hardback/ebook Author Jay Kristoff Publisher HarperVoyager A hidden castle, training teenagers in secret arts. Rivalries and family hatreds between classmates. A young orphan with hidden talents. There’s a lot about this novel – the first in a new trilogy from the author of Japanese steampunk series The Lotus War – that feels familiar. But that’s not a bad thing, especially when it’s as well written as this. Mia Corvere is 16 years old, a trained killer who wants only to become better still so she can avenge the deaths of her family. She joins the Red Church as an apprentice – a class of 28, they will study for a year until four of them are taken on as Blades, the most feared assassins…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 352 pages | Hardback/ebook Author Paul Crilley Publisher Hodder & Stoughton As urban fantasy novels go, Poison City is a solid example of the genre. The lead character, Gideon Tau, works as an investigator – specifically, for Delphic Division in Durban, South Africa. There’s a good selection of mythological creatures from a range of mythologies, from African gods to vampires to Abrahamic angels. There are crimes to be investigated, plucky secondary characters, and the usual smartmouthed comic relief (in this case, a urinating alcoholic Border Terrier that’s actually Tau’s spirit guide). While there’s nothing startlingly original about it, Poison City will suit readers of The Dresden Files or the Rivers Of London books right down to the ground. It would have been good if the story felt more…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 374 pages | Paperback/ebook Author KS Merbeth Publisher Orbit The Hunger Games and Divergent cornered the “teenage girl coping in a post-apocalyptic society” market, but Bite proves the premise still has plenty of teeth. It does so by baring those gnashers in a blood-soaked, giddy grin. Where those books move through the ruins of the world wearing pristine uniforms and a frown, Bite gleefully runs around its Mad Max universe covered in dirt and gore. It opens with our heroine, known only as “Kid”, catching a ride with a couple of miscreants, Wolf and Dolly, who are revealed to be “Sharks” – mercenaries who trade in meat, specifically human meat. When the folk in the next town realise what the gang are selling, all hell breaks loose. Kid…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 444 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Foz Meadows Publisher Angry Robot In 2016, it shouldn’t be noteworthy to say that a work of fiction has plenty of female characters, that it passes the Bechdel test, that it shows women in positions of power and represents a full spectrum of colours, sexualities and genders while it’s at it – but it is. So we’ll say all those things about An Accident Of Stars, because it’s great – and still, sadly, unusual – to see them, and also because that means we’re especially pleased that it’s a great read as well. Saffron is just another teenager trying to cope with abusive classmates and uncaring teachers before she follows a strange woman through a portal into another realm. Suddenly she’s involved…

Bradley Beaulieu’s epic fantasy series Song Of The Shattered Sands continues with OF SAND AND MALICE MADE (8 September, Gollancz), a prequel which brings us more of fiery female gladiator Çeda. Our reviewer rather liked opener Twelve Kings – though they found the worldbuilding a little bloated. Another series concludes in THE SPIDER’S WAR (8 September, Orbit), Daniel Abraham’s final The Dagger And The Coin book. We lauded saga-opener The Dragon’s Path – set in a medieval world populated by 13 breeds of humans – as “sharp and evocative”. THE WITCH’S VACUUM CLEANER (25 August, Doubleday Childrens) collects more stories penned by Terry Pratchett in the ’60s. Expect fantasy conventions lampooned with some charm; don’t expect the wit of Pratchett’s mature work. Meanwhile, anthology SHAKESPEARE VS CTHULHU (out now, Snowbooks)…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher Dark Horse Comics Writer Peter J Tomasi Artist Ian Bertram ISSUES 1-4 This is a true story, sort of. Sarah Winchester, heir to half of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, spent 38 years continuously expanding her mansion, to both house and drown out the spirits of everyone killed by Winchester rifles. At least, that’s the legend, and while it was probably embellished over the years, it’s that version which Peter J Tomasi and Ian Bertram have run with for this superb horror comic. The legend is already a fine piece of gothic narrative – a woman in fear of the past builds a labyrinthine house filled with redundant staircases – and the book gets full value out of it. Sarah, though quite mad, is a sympathetic…