Table of contents for July 2017 in SFX

I still remember my first encounter with a Xenomorph. John Hurt’s chest started spluttering and convulsing before an alien burst out of his stomach... and did a song-and-dance routine in a diner. (I should add that Spaceballs also ruined the end of Planet Of The Apes for me.) My second Alien encounter had rather more impact. I must have been about 13 when I caught the first hour of Aliens on ITV one Christmas. I was hooked, so my horror when my parents suggested it was probably time for bed was palpable – and subsequently multiplied by a factor of “Aaargggh!” when the video didn’t record the rest. Luckily I was saved when a mate lent me his VHS – and I was blown away by what is still one…

A FAMILY AFFAIR Time travel shenanigans may be front and centre on 12 Monkeys, but Matalas says character development remains paramount. “This season is very much about the children. It’s about Ramse (Kirk Acevedo) and his son, Sam. It’s about Cole and Cassie hunting for their kid. It’s about Jones’s relationship with her daughter, Hannah. It’s about the things we do for our children. That often dictates the major decisions we make in life. In this case, the fate of the world hangs in the balance, so what do you do?” BANK ON LLOYD Matalas is geeking out a bit, because the Back To The Future super-fan has landed Christopher Lloyd for a recurring role this season. “We didn’t set out to get Doc Brown on the show,” he admits.…

SCI-FACT! Before she was cast as Uhura, Saldana played a Star Trek fan in Steven Spielberg’s The Terminal. FANDOM FIRST “I love science fiction. When I’m not shooting it, I’m reading it, and when I’m not reading it, I’m watching it… Where would all these scientists at Nasa be if it wasn’t for all these sci-fimovies like Metropolis that inspired them when they were growing up? Or reading Dune or reading Brave New World or Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?. It’s fucking beautiful.” READY TREK “My mom was able to share with me what it meant for her to watch a show like Star Trek when she was a child; and how she was able to transcend through that show and dream bigger when she was just a little…

BRISTOL ANIME CON 29-30 April Whether you’re a gamer, a cosplayer or an anime lover, this event at Future Inns Bristol has something geeky for you! www.bristol animecon.com ENNISKILLEN COMIC FEST 5-6 May A celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic, 2000 AD, with guests of honour John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra, plus Steve MacManus, Alan Grant and others. http://bit.ly/ SFXEnnis SHADOCON 3 June Taking place at the Quad Cinema in Derby, this one’s for fans of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s cult 1970s TV programme UFO. With special guests and model displays. http://bit.ly/ SFXshado BIRMINGHAM COMICS FESTIVAL 24-25 June A city-wide series of comics-related events (taking place at locations including MAC Birmingham and the Mockingbird cinema) that kicks off with the Birmingham Comic Art Show. birmingham comicsfestival.com…

OUT 17 NOV 2017 SCI-FACT! While Darkseid’s presence will be felt, Justice League’s main villain is Steppenwolf, played by Ciarán Hinds. The Buzz NICK Zack Snyder usually gives good trailer, at least – but this feels as though someone’s neutered his bombastic impulses. There’s not a single showstopping visual, no wow. RHIAN Oh DC, why are you so bad at this? Would a bit of colour kill you? It doesn’t look terrible, but I still don’t understand the obsession with keeping everything (literally) in the dark. IAN Why is the Cyborg CGI so terrible? Why does the Flash’s costume look like it’s made of 97 panels? At least there are some gags, but they’re lame. Clinging onto the straw of Wonder Woman. WILL A couple of semi-good lines and it…

IT’S BULLET TIME AGAIN! THE MATRIX You know the global nostalgia cycle has reached peak late ’90s when Hollywood’s itching to relaunch the Matrix franchise. So let’s bust out our floor-length leather pimp-coats and loosen our already tenuous grip on reality at the news that The Avengers’ Zak Penn is in talks to write a new version of the Wachowski classic. Just don’t call it a reboot. Or a remake. “Look at what people are doing with the X-Men universe,” says Penn. “Do I want to see more stories set in the universe of The Matrix? Yes. Because it’s a brilliant idea that generates great stories.” One story Penn may be telling is a prequel tale, with the studio reportedly eyeing Michael B Jordan to play a younger version of…

SFX's high priestess of horror GUYS AND DOLLS Annabelle: Creation is a sequel which is really a prequel to a prequel which is also a spin-off of The Conjuring which has its own sequel and another spin-off on the way in the form of The Nun. Still with me? I hated Annabelle but the trailer for Creation looks alright, boasting Anthony Lapaglia and Miranda Otto as parents whose daughter is killed and are visited by what they believe is her spirit. Lights Out director David F Sandberg is at the helm and it all looks suitably jumpy. But my problem is this: if your beloved daughter dies, and her ghost requests that you, as a professional doll maker, create a special figurine for her soul to reside in, why would…

TOP 5 SCARIEST MOMENTS THE CHESTBURSTER(Alien) Back in 1979, nobody had yet heard of the word “chestburster”. So when audiences first saw Kane (John Hurt) writhing in agony after wolfing down noodles, they might have figured it was just indigestion. Then, all of a sudden, that baby alien spits out of his chest, spraying red-hot blood onto his panicked crewmates in what would become the franchise’s most searingly iconic scene. THE BOTCHED RIPLEY CLONES(Alien:Resurrection) The story for Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Joss Whedon-authored reboot saw Ellen Ripley cloned back into existence 200 years after her self-slaughter in Alien 3. But the Ripley here was, we discover, the eighth attempt, and the scene where she encounters one of the other failed clones, a mangled cross-breed of Xenomorph and human, begging Ripley to kill…

THE COMPLEX LIFECYCLE “It’s not uncommon for species to have multiple hosts in the real-world. The lancet liver fluke, for example, goes from snails to ants, then the ants get ingested by cattle or sometimes people, who then poo out the eggs. The flukes can’t do anything [to procreate] without the hosts – it’s an essential part of their developmental process.” EGGS LAYING DORMANT INDEFINITELY “Seeds can last hundreds of years for some species of plants, but for eggs in animals, longevity isn’t quite so extreme – generally you wouldn’t be looking at years. Certain species can actually stay dormant for reasonably long periods of time, and you will find some waiting for certain conditions before the developmental process gets started – nature’s quite good at developing mechanisms that get…

FACE TO FACE WITH THE BIGGEST STARS Look at the early years of Michael Rooker’s CV and he barely ventures into SFX territory – after breaking out in Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer, his career was instead marked by high-profile supporting turns in the real-world likes of Days Of Thunder, Cliffhanger, Tombstone and JFK. Since James Gunn cast him as the human host of an alien with world domination on his mind in Slither, however, he’s become something of a genre stalwart. “If you look back most of my work is pretty naturalistic,” he says. “I didn’t do a lot of science fiction, and then all of a sudden it just started happening and I’m really happy. Sometimes you start doing a certain type of film and you start…

THIS IS PROBABLY THE MOST FANTASTICAL ROLE YOU’VE EVER PLAYED. WAS THAT LIBERATING FOR YOU? Yes, but you have to hold the horses. There’s a little demon in your right ear saying, “Go, go, go!” And you’re like, “Hold on, hold on, hold on…” It’s a great fiction but it also has to be realistic. It has to have real roots. You are wearing that fantastic wardrobe and you have that crazy hairstyle moving around you that is so phantasmogoric, so ghostly. You are playing with these fantastic notes, but at the same time you have to bring them to earth, or it doesn’t work. HOW DO YOU APPROACH THE PHYSICALITY OF THE CHARACTER? When I read the script, the image of a wounded bull in an arena came to…

“I MIGHT AS WELL WRITE THE THINGS THAT I FEEL STRONGLY ABOUT” P aris isn’t just the city Aliette de Bodard calls home, it’s a city she adores. Although, as she herself concedes, she has a strange way of showing this when it comes to her fiction. “Apparently, my way of writing love letters to cities is to write books where they’re completely nuked and people are fighting to death in the ruins,” she tells SFX. She’s talking about her Dominion Of The Fallen series, a “Gothic dark fantasy” set in an alternate Paris torn apart by “a great magical war”. As portrayed in new novel The House Of Binding Thorns, a standalone sequel to The House Of Shattered Wings, it’s a place of “magical residue clogging the skies”, where…

Quinn Martin personnel were taken aback with how seriously Roy Thinnes took the role. Thinnes claimed to have seen a UFO over Wilshire Boulevard, while travelling in a car, and was reportedly upset that members of the film crew had mocked his claims. Denying that it was simply a publicity stunt, Thinnes claimed in 1967: “I believe in unidentified flying objects and that covers a vast variety of possibilities that are now being investigated.” He gained a reputation for taking a strong interest in UFO sightings throughout the US, mirroring the protagonist’s quest in The Invaders.…

What appealed to you about Ghost In The Shell? It’s epic. It deals with these huge existential questions, on top of the physical part of it, and being able to kick ass and be vulnerable and strong. It’s iconic. It’s a hugely physical role… I had to do a lot of prep. I’m lucky in the sense that I’ve done a lot of fight choreography and weapons handling for all the Marvel stuff and other things. So I had a basis for that. But this character needed to have a certain level of tactical competence that I didn’t necessarily have. So I trained a lot with various weapons specialists, and New York City police officers as well. I did a lot of mixed martial arts fights training. What’s your relationship with…

RELEASED 19 MAY TBC | 110 minutes Director Nacho Vigalondo Cast Anne Hathaway, Jason Sudeikis, Tim Blake Nelson, Dan Stevens The giant monster in a movie usually has some sort of metaphorical meaning – Godzilla, for example, channels fears of nuclear fallout and destruction. Colossal takes a slightly different angle, with the massive beastie linked to Anne Hathaway’s hot mess Gloria more reflecting her own faults. She’s a wayward drunk, out of work, wobbling through life and recently dumped by her boyfriend (Dan Stevens – who’s having a good year on our screens – making the most of a small yet important role). Returning to her home town from New York, Gloria falls in with Oscar (Jason Sudeikis) and learns the weird truth about her connection to a kaiju that has…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2016 | 12 | Blu-ray 3D/Blu-ray/ DVD/download Director Gareth Edwards Cast Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Riz Ahmed, Ben Mendelsohn, Alan Tudyk, Mads Mikkelsen CONTAINS SPOILERS! Emotional beats hit hard – even more so on a second viewing Even for a life-long Star Wars fan, taking on the stress of directing the franchise’s first standalone movie is quite something – particularly when you’ve only directed two films before. While Gareth Edwards’s much-hyped Godzilla wasn’t the success it could have been, with Rogue One he definitely lives up to expectations. It helps that he’s got a good base to work from, thanks to a screenplay that avoids all the self-referential repetition that many thought hindered The Force Awakens, while still holding onto its Star Wars charm. There’s a…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2017 | SVOD Director Kevin MacDonald Cast Richard Madden, Haley Joel Osment, Antje Traue AMAZON Remember Outcasts, that short-lived BBC One drama about castaways from a dying Earth making a new start on a planet light years from home? Turns out it’s the unlikely soulmate of Oasis, the latest in the stream of Amazon Prime pilots that previously spawned The Man In The High Castle and Transparent. Based on Michel Faber’s 2014 novel The Book Of Strange New Things, it sees recently bereaved priest Peter Leigh (Game Of Thrones’ Richard Madden) relocating to the remote world of Oasis. When he lands, he discovers the base’s founder has gone AWOL, encounters mass indifference to his presence, and learns that most of the residents are suffering from vivid hallucinations...…

Was SF and horror your first love? Absolutely! When I was a kid they used to play the Universal monster movies on TV all the time. Every Saturday night they had a show that’d play a different movie. I was banned by my mother from watching! But she’d go out and the babysitter would be talking on the phone, and I could sneak in and watch the movies... delightful stuff! Was making Phantasm a struggle? No question! Traditionally in a film like that you just have someone in a monster costume or something. We were sending our characters to alien worlds – you don’t do that on a $300,000 budget! Now I would probably not have the nerve to try something like that, but I was really ambitious and just had that…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 1960 | 15 | Blu-ray & DVD (dual format) Director John Moxey Cast Christopher Lee, Venetia Stevenson, Valentine Dyall BLU-RAY DEBUT A British horror playing dress-up as a tale of New England sorcery, The City Of The Dead makes a virtue of its studio-bound production. Smothered in atmosphere, this is a movie to wander in, lost in the mists of a monochrome Massachusetts where it’s always night. Nothing’s quite right in these shadows. Not least the accents. We begin in 1692, where a witch is about to be burnt at the stake. As she curses the Puritan city of Whitewood in the name of Lucifer, we zip through the centuries to 1960, where an intense Christopher Lee is telling a class of students that “Witchcraft is…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2014 | 15 | DVD Director Nicholas McCarthy Cast Ashley Rickards, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Naya Rivera Nicholas McCarthy’s debut The Pact was a chilling but confused cross-breed of haunted houser and serial killer thriller. This sprawling satanic-panic, pregnancyparanoia, ghost-story-mystery has similar highs and lows. Ashley Rickards plays a teenage girl who messes with supernatural forces for the sake of a holiday romance and finds her life invaded by an unseen evil; Catalina Sandino Moreno is a lonely estate agent flogging a house with a history; Naya Rivera is her arrogant artist sister, unwittingly drawn into the mystery in a game of protagonist-tag which means it’s difficult to care about what actually happens to anyone. The film traverses Insidious, The Exorcist and Paranormal Activity before settling on Rosemary’s…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 1955 | PG | Blu-ray & DVD (dual format) BLU-RAY DEBUT Creature From The Black Lagoon helmer Jack Arnold supersizes the threat level with this superior piece of B-movie hokum. It’s all the fault of creepy old science, naturally, but for once the A-bomb’s not to blame: this giant, rampaging arachnid is the result of a nutrient experiment gone wrong. Arnold deploys the beast like a crawling shadow, a quivering blot of ink, scuttling over an eerily barren and howling Arizona desert. Extras Poster.…

EXTRAS RELEASED 8 MAY 2017 | 15 | DVD Directors Various Cast Natalie Brown, Melanie Lynskey, Breeda Wool, Christina Kirk A decade ago you could pretty much count female horror directors on one hand. Thankfully that’s starting to change. Hopefully this anthology, all written and directed by women, may help further correct the imbalance. Do female filmmakers have a different perspective to offer? XX suggests they may: three segments focus on mother/child relationships. Annie Clark’s (aka St Vincent) contribution is the weakest – a broad black comedy about a mum finding hubby dead just before their daughter’s party. Roxanne Benjamin’s campfire-tale monster movie is better, but very generic. Better still is Karyn Kusama’s segment: basically Rosemary’s Baby 18 years on, it’s an effective character piece. The standout story sees a…

RELEASED 4 MAY 390 pages | Hardback/ebook Author Sebastien de Castell Publisher Hot Key Books There’s a wonderful conceit at the heart of Spellslinger, but it’s one which the book doesn’t fully exploit: in a society where magic is the norm, the chosen one could be the guy whose special gift is something other than magic. Like, say, intelligence. Kellen is the son in a family of great mages, whose dad might be up for election to be the next big boss mage – if only Kellen’s near complete lack of magical ability wasn’t seriously denting the family’s standing. Meanwhile, his bitchy classmates are putting big dents in his ribs, annoyed that such a magical inept hasn’t been booted out of spell academy yet, presumably because of who his dad…

RELEASED 4 MAY 369 pages | Paperback/ebook Author John Marrs Publisher Ebury Publishing Dating can be a minefield, but what if science could fix it? What if, by taking a simple DNA test, you could find the one person in the world you’re genetically meant to fall in love with? That’s the premise of The One, and if you’re already rolling your eyes at the idea of genetically pre-determined soulmates, you can stop right there. Because rather than promoting love and happiness, what mega corporation Match Your DNA actually ends up doing is wreaking havoc on people’s lives, as they discover their long-term partners aren’t their “one” – or, worse, that their “one” is really, really not relationship material. Through five parallel stories, the book explores the various ways matches…

DOCTOR WHO MR MEN RELEASED OUT NOW! 36 pages each Paperback/ebook Author Adrian Hargreaves Publisher BBC Children’s Books Here’s a charming idea: little books that mash-up Mr Men with Doctor Who. The first four releases follow the renamed Dr First, Dr Fourth, Dr Eleventh and Dr Twelfth as they’re chased by Daleks/ menaced by Cybermen/ pursue Missy through time, and so on. Writer/illustrator Adrian Hargreaves is the son of Mr Men creator Roger Hargreaves, so they feel utterly faithful – Hargreaves’s classic smiling worm keeps popping up, for example. Chief delight: seeing classic monsters like the Zygons, Silurians and Weeping Angels in Mr Men-ised form. You could read these to kids, but at £4.00 a pop we suspect most copies sold will end up gifted to grown-up geeks. Another four…

RELEASED 4 MAY 400 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Syd Moore Publisher Point Blank Rosie Strange has found herself as the new proprietor of the Essex Witch Museum, after inheriting it from her grandfather. Initially determined to sell the place, she finds herself embroiled in a life and death situation, tracking down the bones of long-dead witch/Essex girl Ursula Cadence. Strange Magic starts with a reasonably spooky possession of a little boy in hospital, and from there takes a nose-dive into the much more mundane life of Rosie. Hunting for witch bones sounds like it should be interesting, but somehow it really, really isn’t. The magic isn’t particularly overt, but let’s choose to believe that it’s real, not all in Rosie’s imagination. When it does poke its head in it really…

RICHARD EDWARDS Editor RAVES Congratulations to the gentleman next to me. Yes, our very own Nick has just signed a deal with Titan Books for his first novel. The War In The Dark will be published in summer 2018. Excited to see what Joss Whedon does with Batgirl. The DC movies need a shot of wit – perhaps he’s the spark that makes their movies belatedly catch fire. NICK SETCHFIELD FEATURES EDITOR RAVES Logan was astonishing. Bleak, brutal but ultimately uplifting, it’s the best superhero story for years. Jackman’s career best performance too. If you love retro Doctor Who merchandise and ephemera as much as I do then be sure to check out thespacemuseum.net – oh, those lucky ’60s kids and their Dalek wallpaper! IAN BERRIMAN REVIEWS EDITOR RAVES Excited…

SCI-FACT! The original Secret Empire was a Hydra subsidiary. It has previously ruined Captain America’s reputation. Ever since he was sensationally revealed to be a Hydra agent in last year’s Captain America 75th Anniversary Special, Steve Rogers has been playing a dangerous double game. But now the Sentinel of Liberty’s true allegiances are to be exposed, as he becomes the focus of Marvel Comics’ 2017 summer crossover Secret Empire, which author Nick Spencer has been building towards in not only Captain America: Steve Rogers and Captain America: Sam Wilson, but also last year’s Avengers: Standoff. “The storyline was Nick’s pitch,” Marvel executive editor Tom Brevoort tells Red Alert. “In point of fact, I wanted to keep Steve older for longer and give Sam more of a chance to shine without…

SCI-FACT! The rumoured budget for Infinity War and its sequel – filmed back to back – is a suitably Stark-esque $1 billion. IF THE GLOVE FITS... “I’ll do it myself.” Well, if you want a job done properly… Thanos is finally about to start filling his big gold gauntlet with the six Infinity Stones with a view to re-ordering the galaxy as he thinks it should be, which is a shade of “mostly obliterated”. Avengers: Infinity War will see the death-obsessed Mad Titan finish his universe-wide shopping trip on Earth, where two stones are waiting for him… along with the planet’s Mightiest Heroes. STONE COLD SOUL But Thanos’s first stop on his intergalactic itinerary will likely be at the other side of the Nine Realms, where the events of Thor:…

We’re used to seeing them scrap on screens big and small and, in May, the very best (and worst) comic-book personalities fandom has to offer will go up against each other at the Olympia London. The Heroes & Villains Fan Fest sets the stage for an entire weekend of dazzling clashes as the likes of Hayley Atwell, Stephen Amell and Melissa Benoist take to the stage for a convention that celebrates the very best in modern comic books, and fantasy TV and movies. Of course, there’s no actual sparring involved (unless you include the verbal sort). This fest (“by fans for fans”) is purely an excuse to get your favourite cult types chatting about their favourite genre stuff. The schedules for the main stage panels won’t be revealed until the…

SCI-FACT! Brian Bolland based Anderson’s original look on Debbie Harry after drawing the Blondie singer for an advert. By the time you read this, Star Wars Celebration may have revealed the identity of Rey’s parents, Chewbacca’s middle name, and whether or not we’re getting a Ree-Yees prequel as the next standalone movie. Assuming none of that came to pass, however, here’s a snapshot of other important happenings in that galaxy far, far away. Disney CEO Bob Iger is fast establishing himself as the most listened-to suit in Hollywood. “I’ve seen [Episode VIII] and VIII is quite good,” he told the Scale: Future Of Tech And Entertainment conference in Santa Monica. No surprises there – he was hardly going to mention the words “VIII”, “massive” and “disappointment” in the same sentence –…

CELEBRATING ICONIC SCI-FISTARS SCI-FACT! Late LOTR Oscar-winning cinematographer Andrew Lesnie was a mentor to the Blue World Order filmmakers. Although he remained uncredited, William Daniels’s clipped vocals are instantly recognisable as talking car KITT in the original ’80s version of Knight Rider. Daniels was creator Glen A Larson’s first choice, believing the “prissiness” lent an interesting dynamic to the show. As a result crime fighter Michael Knight (David Hasselhoff) and indestructible KITT became one of the all-time great television double acts. We spoke to Daniels about voicing the ultimate supercar. His autobiography, There I Go Again, is out now. Would you like to play the role again? Yes, why not! I enjoyed doing it and if they wanted it back I’d be happy to do it. What’s the strangest request…

Laurel Lance (Black Canary) may have been killed off in season four of Arrow, but Katie Cassidy is confirmed as a season regular for season six as Black Siren. Talulah Riley promoted to series regular for the second season of Westworld. Brit artificial intelligence thriller The Machine to get Syfy pilot. Battlestar Galactica’s Katee Sackhoff and Aliens’ Lance Henriksen will star. CBBC to venture into the anthology market with Creeped Out, a 13-part series that will “combine sci-fi, horror, adventure, suspense, fantasy and mystery to thrill young viewers”. Netflix and BBC One teaming up for Requiem, a “taut psychological thriller with subtle supernatural undertones”. Star Trek Beyond’s Lydia Wilson stars. Stranger Things and Luke Cage among the finalists for this year’s Peabody Awards, recognising the best electronic storytelling of the…

Robert Downey Jr playing Dr Dolittle for Universal… Zazie Beetz playing Domino in Deadpool 2… Robert Rodriguez in talks to direct the Escape From New York remake… Hasbro rebooting GI Joe… Aquaman’s Will Beall writing Creature From The Black Lagoon at Universal… Greg Rucka adapting his own comic Old Guard for Skydance… Disney announces name for Wreck-It Ralph 2: Ralph Breaks The Internet… Danny DeVito in talks for Tim Burton’s liveaction Dumbo… Edward James Olmos joining The Predator… Amy Schumer leaving the Barbie movie due to scheduling conflicts… Paramount adapting Garth Ennis’s graphic novel The Pro… Gwendoline Christie orbiting YA adap Darkest Minds… David Goyer rumoured to be directing Green Lantern Corps… Malin Ackerman in the frame for Rampage… Jumanji remake now Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle… The Legend Of Tarzan’s Adam Cozad writing the Suicide Squad sequel… JD Dillard remaking The Fly for 20th Century Fox… Benedict Cumberbatch to star in How To Stop Time……

WHERE WRITERS AND OPINIONS COLLIDE “ORWELL AND ROWLING HAVE SHOWN US WHAT WE’RE UP AGAINST” My routine for the next four years is set: wake up in a cold sweat an hour before my alarm goes off, log on to Twitter and, rubbing my eyes in disbelief, read the latest dispatches from the United States of Dystopia. It is no exaggeration to call them that, when Trump-whisperer Steve Bannon has outlined his goal of “deconstructing the administrative state”. Do that and what’s left? The clue’s in the military spending… Given such a grim state of affairs, it is perhaps no wonder genre authors have called attention to their work on fighting oppressors. As JK Rowling tweeted to one reader swearing off Harry Potter because of Rowling’s outrage: “You can lead…

WHO IS DANIELS? She’s the chief terraformist on this colonising mission. Once we get there, we’re pioneers setting up a new world. So when they get to the planet, she’s in charge of making things grow there. There’s a massive section of the ship where all of the little plants grow in space greenhouses. So she’s in charge of all of that. HOW DID YOU PREPARE FOR THE ROLE? There’s two things that keep her from getting killed for most of the film, and they are courage and good fortune. She’s not a soldier. She’s not a martial artist. She’s a terraformist. So I kept trying to get the guys to teach me: how do I use this stick like an axe? How do I use the tools that I…

"RIPLEY IS A CALM CONTRAST TO THE FIST BUMPING AND BULLET-HEAVY BRAVADO" Iwish I could say Ellen Louise Ripley is my namesake but I’m proud to just share a few organised vowels with the first lady of sci-ficinema. Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley is the Alien franchise. She epitomises the fight against the Xenomorphs like no one else. There’s a reason Aliens is often listed as one of the great films and no coincidence that Weaver earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination at the same time. Since when has the Academy ever cared about a movie where spit makes the floor melt? She’d already survived in spectacular form before James Cameron even got his hands on a camera but Aliens is where Ripley is defined for me. A fighter who has lost…

“He’s lost his luck,” says Joachim Rønning, co-director of Pirates Of The Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge. “And luck was a big part of his lifestyle. He’s lost his way. He’s lost his horizon.” Johnny Depp’s freewheeling, rum-drenched buccaneer is out to reclaim his magic. And the Disney franchise that spawned him is on a similar quest. Released in May, the latest Pirates adventure is being sold as a return to first principles, plundering the cocky, swashbuckling spirit of 2003’s The Curse Of The Black Pearl. “My goal was always to go back to the roots,” Rønning tells SFX when we catch up with him on the line from Los Angeles. “We all fell in love with this franchise because of the first one. That’s what I’ve been trying to do: to…

WHAT CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT CARINA? She’s an astronomer and a horologist, which means she studies time. At the beginning of the movie she gets called a witch, because she knows so much about the stars and because she wants to study at university, but because she’s a woman she’s not expected to want those things. She’s very much on her own journey, which I liked. HOW DOES SHE FEEL ABOUT THE SUPERNATURAL SIDE OF THE PIRATES UNIVERSE? Being a woman of science she’s sceptical, and that’s where a lot of the arguments she has with Henry Turner, who believes in these fables, come in. And when she does come face to face with the supernatural she has quite a strong reaction [laughs]! HOW DID YOU FEEL COMING FACE…

WHAT APPEALED TO YOU ABOUT VORTIGERN? I was curious about this guy’s history. I like the idea he’s the second brother; that he’s someone who’s been used as a democratic pawn and that he’s got an understanding of this magic. Ultimately, he’s rotten in the middle. I saw him as this glorious fruit – he looks great on the outside, but inside he’s decaying and corrupt. He represents the true threat of fascism; the threat of ego and power gone mad, which is more relevant today than ever before, right? DID YOU ENJOY WORKING WITH CHARLIE HUNNAM? Charlie’s one of those actors that has great clarity but is also very generous and fun to be on set with. It’s an interesting collision because there you are on a set in…

In 1995 Fox decided to reboot The Invaders, following its success with the X-Files. A four-hour TV movie, starring Quantum Leap star Scott Bakula, told the story of Nolan Wood, who’d recently been released from a mental institution. Wood subsequently learned that his wife had married an alien, and that his son was in danger. Bakula was a worthy successor to Roy Thinnes, but talk of a rebooted Invaders TV series quickly faded.…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 12A | 124 minutes Director Dean Israelite Cast Naomi Scott, Becky G, Dacre Montgomery, Emily Maddison After an opening sequence so crammed with portentous moments that a cut to a (comparatively simple) title card caused giggles in our screening, Power Rangers soon settles into its groove as a fun teen-drama about a bunch of likeable outcasts who have great responsibility thrust upon them when they find a bunch of magic medallions in a quarry. Yep, this movie’s most significant location is a quarry – your first clue that it’s a genuine tribute to the ’90s TV show half of its audience grew up on. Straddling the line between aspirational kids’ blockbuster (each member possesses the kind of “edgy cool” little brothers and sisters look up to) and…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 12A | 120 minutes In earlier forms, Sword Art Online involved gamers diving into deadly VR worlds. In this cinematic sequel, subtitled Ordinal Scale, the new game recalls Pokemon Go, conjuring up monsters in Tokyo for plugged-in youngsters to fight. As anime spin-offs go, it’s above average; the pace often drags and the story ideas are familiar, but they’re woven together gracefully with nostalgic themes, a girl goddess pop-singer, and a fan-pleasing final battle.…

What appealed most about the role? The first thing I heard from my agent was, “I’ve heard about this new Star Wars film and I know there’s this incredible female character at the centre.” I thought, “Great, perfect. I’ll do that!” So then I met up with Gareth Edwards and there was a rapport between us immediately. Do you think the fact that Gareth’s such a big Star Wars fan helped? It’s a passion, an enthusiasm, and that’s always going to be infectious. You’ll be working and talking about how you’re going to play a scene, in quite entrenched discussions, and suddenly you’ll look up and there’s a giant monkey hanging out of a ship, or a Stormtrooper walking around drinking a latte. It’s this slightly dreamlike existence that you have. It’s…

EXTRAS RELEASED 8 MAY (Blu-ray/ DVD) 28 APRIL (download) 2016 | 12 | Blu-ray/DVD/download Director JA Bayona Cast Lewis MacDougall, Liam Neeson, Sigourney Weaver, Felicity Jones Terminal illness, death and grief might be tough subjects to tackle, especially for a younger audience, but there’s no shortage of examples in both literature and film. Which means any attempt must find a new approach. Having author Patrick Ness adapt his book (begun by the late Siobhan Dowd shortly before her death) was a good start, and placing his script in the hands of JA Bayona was an even smarter move. The director behind The Impossible and The Orphanage is an old hand at creating spectacle that never eschews emotion, and knows how to draw good performances from youthful actors. In Lewis MacDougall,…

EXTRAS RELEASED 8 MAY 2017 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD Director Stacy Title Cast Douglas Smith, Lucien Laviscount, Cressida Bonas, Doug Jones, Michael Trucco You’ve got to feel sorry for actors sometimes. Okay, they get to dress up and play pretend for a living while the rest of us toil away in boring normal jobs, but at least no one’s going to ask you to do anything as ridiculous as acting terrified of the phrase “the Bye Bye Man”. Giving its villain such a silly name is only one of many bad decisions made in this messy, unscary nonsense. The story follows a trio of college kids who move into a creepy old house where they find a curse scribbled inside a drawer: a name that, when spoken aloud or even…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2016 | 15 | DVD Director Danny Perez Cast Natasha Lyonne, Chloë Sevigny, Meg Tilly Centred on two bongsmoking, pill-popping rock chicks, Antibirth is the sort of trippy effort which makes you wonder if the filmmakers were getting high on their own supply. Natasha Lyonne plays the perma-smoking, potty-mouthed Lou, who finds herself showing all the signs of pregnancy despite not having done the deed for months. It’s the kind of film which makes for a deceptively promising trailer, thanks to a scattering of eye-catching imagery – the highlight being a weird dream sequence with bowling alley mascots resembling Teletubbies on acid. A final descent into OTT body horror features the sort of outré effects that’ll have Brian Yuzna fans grinning – and any expectant female…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 1982 | 15 | DVD There’s stiff competition for the title Worst Nazi Zombie Film, but Euro-sleaze director Jess Franco’s slapdash effort is hard to beat. It helps that his zombies look like students in carefully ripped army surplus, with Gloy on their faces. This being Franco, there are gratuitous boobs and pubes to stop you nodding off. Pointless WW2 flashbacks featuring laughably bad interpolation of an actor into grainy stock footage clinch the trophy. Extras Trailers.…

EXTRAS RELEASED 8 MAY (Blu-ray and DVD)/OUT NOW! (download) 2016 | 12 | 4K Blu-ray/Blu-ray 3D/ Blu-ray/DVD/download Director Morten Tyldum Cast Jennifer Lawrence, Chris Pratt, Michael Sheen, Laurence Fishburne In screenwriting parlance it’s the “meet-cute”: the contrived, improbably charming moment a potential couple encounter one another for the first time. A bashful meeting over the cheese counter, a shared bus stop in the rain. Or, y’know, waking from a century of cryogenic suspension to discover you’re the only functioning humans on a starliner heading for a distant colony world. You can sense the romantic electricity from here, right? Passengers throws the marquee power of Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence into this high-concept scenario. They’re not entirely alone on the vast starship Avalon – Michael Sheen gives a wry, suave turn as…

What could be better than monsters or trucks? Bringing both together in one tentacled, fourwheeled fusion. MONSTER TRUCKS (8 May, Blu-ray/ DVD/download) sees an underground-dwelling beastie hide out in a young fella’s truck, who then uses the critter to power it. A throwback to ’80s family features, it’s silly but innocuous. Edward Woodward’s reporter continues to kick against the pricks in 1990 SERIES TWO (1 May, DVD). We reviewed series one of this downbeat dystopian show set in a near-future Britain in issue 285, saying “the best episodes remain quite chilling in their depiction of the way that an unfeeling bureaucracy can crush an individual under its tank tracks.” One that wriggled through the net last month: a HD release for suspenseful 1970 SF thriller COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT (out…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 304 pages | Paperback Author Kieran Shea Publisher Titan Books When Jimmy Vik, an unimportant mineworker on the asteroid Kardashev 7-A, finds a seam of gold in a subterranean shaft, he thinks he’s struck it rich if only he can smuggle the precious metal back to Earth. But his impulsively conceived scheme becomes tangled up with the local and very sleazy contraband dealer, Jimmy’s angry ex-girlfriend who’s now his supervisor, a lethal assassin, and inter-corporation warfare. Opening with a fist fight aboard a shuttle in the middle of atmospheric re-entry, Off Rock sets a rollicking pace and sticks to it. Kieran Shea consistently finds inventive new ways to increase the stakes for Jimmy, whose momentary greed in claiming the gold for himself is the pebble dropped in…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 326 pages | Hardback/ebook Author Sam Peters Publisher Gollancz What does it mean to be human? The latest novel to wrestle with this concept is an SF thriller that attempts to meld a pulpy, noir-ish mystery with a character-driven exploration of loss. From Darkest Skies follows the story of Keona Rause, an intelligence agent on a distant human colony who’s investigating the death of his wife Alysha in a terrorist attack five years ago. To help his search, he’s used the digital traces of Alysha’s life to build an illegal AI recreation of her, but his relationship with this copy has grown emotional and complicated, while his investigation is soon heading in dangerous directions... Author Sam Peters manages to give the book an effective and moody tone…

SCI-FITV ROUND UP Marvel’s making another assault on the small screen – and this time it’s having a crack at comedy on US network Freeform. The 10-part New Warriors will focus on six young powered-up people living and working together, among them the muchloved Squirrel Girl (aka Doreen Green). Unsurprisingly, Sonequa Martin- Green has now departed The Walking Dead, allowing her to take on her lead role on Star Trek: Discovery fulltime. She’ll play First Officer Michael Burnham, while The Office’s Rainn Wilson has joined the cast as the original series’ Harry Mudd. Legion renewed for a second season, while Humans and The Expanse will be back for third outings. HG Wells timetravel adventure Time After Time cancelled after just five episodes. They didn’t see that one coming… Godzilla anime movie coming…

Andrew Garfield’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 may not have done great things for Sony, but it certainly helped author Jenny Colgan. “When Peter’s late for graduation, then Gwen is cross and you’re meant to side with Spidey, I thought, ‘No, I want a bit more than that!’” the author reveals. Fast forward to 2017 and she’s written Spandex And The City, a cheeky, loving ode to comic-book stories that sees PR Holly Phillips striking up a romance with swaggering hero Ultimate Man. Far from an aloof takedown of the comic-book genre, though, SATC simply shifts the focus away from the guy with powers. “As the years go by the girls became more insipid,” Colgan says of looking to redress the state of non-powered female characters in super-stories. “Even Pepper Potts, whom…

There’s a treat coming for fans of Legend author David Gemmell. Although the writer died in 2006, an unpublished book turned up in his effects and will soon hit shelves. It’s not a swords-and-sorcery romp, though... Rhyming Rings is a supernatural whodunit set in 1980s London. Newspaper hack Jeremy Miller is investigating a psychic who’s aiding police with a murder case. It’s not the genre for which Gemmell achieved fame, so does it deliver? “It absolutely stands up as a crime story,” insists author Stan Nicholls, a friend of Gemmell and now chair of the awards named after him. “There’s a wellconstructed plot with interesting twists, a plausible collection of suspects and a satisfying denouement.” But his readers will recognise familiar themes, explains Nicholls: “A flawed hero, the tyranny of…

SCI-FACT! New Fighting Fantasy books are on the way, starting with The Port Of Peril in August. Tell us about your protagonist. Following a traumatic early-life event, Jamie shies away from close relationships and second-guesses every choice she makes. She comes to understand that our lives aren’t a simple pattern of cause-and-effect, and you just have to make the best choice you can at any given moment. The book is set in a plague-ravaged universe. Did you have to do much medical research? I’m afraid I did very little research at all. I didn’t set out to write a science fiction book as such. At various points I panicked about not having detailed scientific explanations, and tried to shoe-horn in complex descriptions of airlocks or landing systems, but it was…

If you wish every week was packed with sci-figoodtimes, you’re in luck, because Sci-Fi-London is back! This year, the genre love-in boasts a schedule more stuffed than a rancor’s belly, with the usual costume parades, all-nighter programmes of shorts and features, plus workshops and networking events that “combine the best of ‘science’ and ‘fiction’”. Because dogs love to dress up just as much as the humans, Sci-Fido offers your pooch the chance to strut its sci-fistuff during a dog show at Juju’s Bar (29 April). Plus there’ll be a chance to experience the VR project that won the fest’s VR competition (which closed in March). And, of course, we’ll learn the results of the annual 48-hour challenge, in which fledgling filmmakers are tasked with creating a minimasterpiece in just two…

THIS MONTH’S COMMUNICATIONS MONITOR RICHARD EDWARDS, EDITOR Turns out you quite like Alien and Aliens, the films that introduced thousands of young minds to sci-fiaction horror in the ’80s and ’90s – before condemning them to the realisation that nothing would ever be quite so good. This issue we’ve also found some of the only haters (we think) for X-spin-offs Logan and Legion, some love for the excellent Get Out, and some unlikely love for critics – thank you! If you want to be part of the conversation next month, make contact via the nodes on the page opposite. We’ll be here waiting. James E Parsons, Twitter Possibly the best cinematic depiction of our collective fear of the most dangerous first contact imaginable. The Alien films have been best for…

CELEBRATING CLASSIC SF & FANTASY NOVELS This book can take you on one of the most intense head-trips you will go on. I recommend it highly to any reader of SF for its immersive surreality and astute grasp of the modern condition. For the purposes of writing this article I went to check out the plot points again – it’s a while since I read it – using the Wikipedia entry. Don’t do this. It’s a perfect example of how a good book is much more than the sum of its parts, and a great book is a transcendence of its parts. The Wikipedia entry marches through the plot with solid determination to state every event in order. This makes the story come across as wooden, formless and bonkers. It…

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA WAS THE INSPIRATION FOR DAVID, WHAT INSPIRED WALTER? For Walter, there’s no vanity to him. He doesn’t have feelings of inferiority, or any of those human traits present in David. And that ambiguity present in David in Prometheus – Walter wouldn’t have that. He’s more like Leonard Nimoy’s Spock. He just operates under logic and whatever’s necessary to keep the crew and the ship safe. DO YOU REMEMBER WATCHING ALIEN FOR THE FIRST TIME? Yeah, I was about 11 or so. I remember very clearly that image of the alien bursting out of John Hurt’s stomach. And I remember it affected me in a different way. There was just something different about Alien. It was a new world introduced to me; that idea of sci-fiand horror movies…

In 1986 Hollywood lore held that sequels routinely fell short of their predecessor. Aside from the shining exceptions of The Godfather Part II (1974) and The Empire Strikes Back (1980) follow-up films were generally seen as opportunistic cash-grabs. No wonder Aliens was such a revelation – a thrill-ride of splatter, suspense and slime that, arguably, even improved on the visual motifs and intergalactic horror of Ridley Scott’s original. “I was working at Stan Winston’s shop out in Los Angeles at the time,” explains Tom Woodruff. “I was quite new to the business but I was a big James Cameron fan and I knew we were going to embark on something really exciting. I think what made Aliens great is that it was an all-out action film. James kept the sci-fitrappings…

While Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson teamed up on an excellent adaptation of Ridley Scott’s original film in Alien: The Illustrated Story for Heavy Metal, the franchise has since found a more regular comic book home at Dark Horse Comics. Appearing in the pages of Dark Horse Presents, Mark Verheiden and Mark A Nelson’s Outbreak was groundbreaking when it made its debut in 1988. Marking the then-fledgling independent publishers’ first foray into licensed comics based on film and television properties, it and subsequent miniseries Nightmare World and Female War followed on from the events of James Cameron’s epic sequel, chronicling what Newt and Hicks did next. Since then Dark Horse has continued to release Aliens comics on an almost monthly basis, keeping the ominous legacy of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation alive…

Tell us about your character… I play a guy called Henry, who’s in the British Royal Navy. We see him team up with Jack Sparrow and Carina Smyth because they have a common goal to get a certain treasure that will help them in their individual journeys. Henry and Carina have their differences and throughout the film they come to an understanding that they are really on a similar path. HOW PHYSICALLY DEMANDING WAS THIS ROLE? It was a physical role. The stunt team on this movie were amazing – I had a great stunt double who I’d worked with before on Gods Of Egypt and so I felt pretty safe in doing a lot of stunts. There wasn’t really anything that was too crazy – although a lot of…

E ven if you don’t recognise Bear McCreary’s name, you probably know his work. Since making his name on the Battlestar Galactica reboot, he’s become sci-fiand fantasy TV’s composer of choice, working on an impressive roster of shows including The Walking Dead, Defiance, Agents Of SHIELD and Outlander – even cropping up to supply tunes for the odd movie, like 10 Cloverfield Lane. Arriving at this point was no accident for the prolific composer. “I definitely did not fall into it,” he says. “It was my goal from childhood. Around the time I was five or six was when I started really noticing the music in my favourite movies, and then, very quickly, I would go to movies because my favourite composers were scoring them – they were my heroes. “It was always my singular focus,” he laughs. “I…

DOCTOR WHO BATTLEFIELD(1989) Arthurian knights do battle in near-future Britain in a Sylvester McCoy-era story penned by future bestselling novelist Ben Aaronovitch. “Battlefield” also throws in UNIT, the Brigadier, a giant blue demon and the revelation that a future Doctor will turn out to be Merlin. CAMELOT3000(1985) This 12-issue DC Comics series was written by Mike W Barr and drawn by the legendary Brian Bolland. In the far future King Arthur returns to take on an alien invasion led by old enemy Morgan Le Fay in a clever blend of sci-fiand fantasy. BABYLON 5 A LATE DELIVERY FROM AVALON (1996) A peculiar instalment of the ’90s sci-fiepic saw a man claiming to be King Arthur show up on the space station and try to right wrongs. The truth about his…

WHAT’S HAPPENED TO COOP? 1 The last time we saw our special agent, he was trapped in the Black Lodge, while his body, inhabited by BOB, roamed free. So has Coop managed to free himself, or has BOB been using his body to wreak havoc in the real world for the last 25 years? “HOW’S ANNIE?” 2 Coop’s girlfriend, played by Heather Graham, was kidnapped by Windom Earle and taken into the Black Lodge. Although she is later found by Truman in the real world, she was seriously injured. Did she make it? Graham isn’t on the official cast list, but her return could be a surprise. WHAT WAS GOING ON WITH DAVID BOWIE? 3 The Starman played FBI agent Phillip Jeffries in Fire Walk With Me, materialising from thin…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 12A | 107 minutes Director Rupert Sanders Cast Scarlett Johansson, Kaori Yamamoto, Takeshi Kitano, Michael Pitt, Pilou Asbæk, Chin Han At the beginning of Ghost In The Shell, Scarlett Johansson wakes gasping into a new artificial body, and the script describes her as the first of her kind. But this Ghost is transparently unoriginal, its borrowings as naked as ScarJo’s cyborg as she slams her foes into concrete. Even if you’ve never seen the anime, you’ll be reminded of Minority Report, RoboCop and umpteen other futures past. But that doesn’t stop Ghost In The Shell being an enjoyable story and a colourful treat for the eyeballs. Johansson’s amnesiac Major is told she was saved from death and recreated as a machine-human fusion. Her human brain controls a bodily…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 104 minutes Director Daniel Espinosa Cast Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, Ryan Reynolds, Olga Dihovichnaya, Hiroyuki Sanada Pretty much any film that traps a group of unfortunates on a spaceship with a ravenous extra-terrestrial is doomed to suffer a slow death by comparison with Alien. Life fares better than most by dishing out some inventive scares, channelling Gravity, and exhibiting a very healthy disregard for the life expectancy of A-list stars. In a near-future, the crew of the International Space Station intercept a probe carrying the first material ever brought back from Mars. They discover a protoorganism that rapidly evolves from most important scientific discovery in history to serial astronaut killer – and picks up the slightly incongruous name of Calvin (for reasons that do make…

RELEASED OUT NOW! U | 90 minutes murfette (Demi Lovato) addresses identity issues on a quest to a secret Smurfs enclave in this starry-voiced, allanimated adventure. It’s a pity no original ideas await her, only echoes of Ice Age 3 and others as the plot loses focus in the jungle journey’s garish fauna. Trolls’ Poppy would gag on the sickly scenery and sweetness here, against which Gargamel’s evil puns can’t compete. “Prepare for Gar-mageddon!” Or worse: more Smurfs films.…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 1979-2016 | 18 | Blu-ray Directors Don Coscarelli, David Hartman Cast Angus Scrimm, A Michael Baldwin, Reggie Bannister BLU-RAY DEBUT Don Coscarelli’s oddball horror series may never have quite breached the mainstream, but it retains a cult following despite gaps of years – sometimes decades – between instalments. They’ll surely be delighted by this high-def box set. The 1979 original – here presented in a beautiful restoration – is an underrated horror classic. A young, recently bereaved boy, Michael (A Michael Baldwin), becomes suspicious of the local undertaker and discovers that actually he’s some sort of terrifying extra-dimensional being. Mixing sci-fiand horror, it’s blessed with a great villain in the form of Angus Scrimm’s monosyllabic Tall Man and his arsenal of deadly flying silver balls. It…

EXTRAS RELEASED 1 MAY 2016 | 12 | DVD Filmed in 2014, Fallen’s release date ricocheted around like popcorn in a pan – never a good sign. Now it’s finally here, we can attest that it wasn’t worth the wait. Based on a YA novel about a girl meeting a fallen angel, the cinematography is pretty but the plot is sub-Twilight/ Vampire Diaries porridge. However, if you like studly, angsty boys fighting over a moody teenager with no personality, you’ll love it. Extras Three featurettes; eight minutes of deleted scenes.…

RELEASED LATE MAY 2017 | 15 | Vimeo/YouTube FAN SHORT Strontium Dog is a perennial favourite from 2000 AD’s back catalogue and an obvious choice for adaptation. This fan film may not quite have the scope of a Hollywood blockbuster – it’s a little over 15 minutes and concentrates on one simple case for mutant bounty hunters Johnny Alpha and Wulf Sternhammer – but it’s lovingly made and has genuinely impressive costumes, effects and sets. Matthew Simpson doesn’t quite nail his Alpha, but Kevin Horsham excels as Sternhammer.…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 1959 | 12 | Blu-ray & DVD (dual format) Director Riccardo Freda Cast John Merivale, Didi Sullivan, Gerard Herter, GR Stuart Never mess with Mayans. Archaeologists learn this the hard way when they uncover the ruins of an ancient city and its sacrificial pool, awakening the monster within. Soon it’s The Blob meets The Quatermass Experiment – only in a foreign tongue, because this is a rare Italian monster movie of the period. Its credits are intriguing too: Riccardo Freda, the guy behind several notable Euro shockers, part-helmed, but as much as 60% was directed by one Mario Bava, nominally credited here for special effects and cinematography. His elegant work is rather more than the scrappy script deserves. The plot moves slowly to begin with and…

RELEASED 4 MAY 288 pages | Hardback/ebook Author Patrick Ness Publisher Walker Books Part JD Salinger’s Catcher In The Rye, part Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, part Neil Gaiman, Release has a similar conceit to Patrick Ness’s last novel, The Rest Of Us Just Live Here, with the fantasy elements only occurring in the fringes of the main YA relationship plot, and the two only occasionally coinciding. Based in a rural town in Washington state, Release takes place over the course of one pivotal day in the life of gay teenager Adam Thorn. It’s not a coming-of-age tale so much as a tale about the age of coming; 17 year-old Adam is on his fourth sexual partner. His school friends are refreshingly liberal, though he does have a pair of fundamentalist Christian…