Inhaltsverzeichnis für August 2015 in SFX

There’s nothing the entertainment industry likes more these days than a recognisable brand. After all, why would you want to waste time selling a new product to the world when you can give them something they already know and have a lot of affection for? It’s a state of affairs that makes me a little sad – if this is the future, will there be room for movies like Edge Of Tomorrow to come out of leftfield and be amazing? – but even so, I can’t help getting excited about some familiar names making a return. Like The Man From UNCLE, the classic ’60s spy show that’s been rebooted by Guy Ritchie. Our Nick flew out to Rome to get all the intel from cast and crew, and we decided…

AFTER TAKING ON THE ROLE OF Scotty in the first two rebooted Star Trek films, Simon Pegg has been assigned extra duties for the forthcoming third instalment. Set to be directed by Fast & Furious’s Justin Lin and titled Star Trek Beyond, Pegg is currently co-writing the screenplay with Doug Jung (Banshee, Dark Blue). “It’s an enormous responsibility but I’ve enjoyed the pressure,” he admits. “I was terrified at first because it’s such a huge commitment to take on. But pressure can be a good thing in that kind of situation, as necessity is the mother of invention, as they say, and that has certainly been the case in the last three months.” Having stated that they want to return Star Trek to its traditional series roots, Pegg and Jung…

THE HUMAN LEAGUE “Humans is set in a parallel present in London; in a world where we have these things called Synths, these advanced humanoid robots which work for us in the home, the workplace, in schools, etc. We start with this suburban family who purchase my character, a Synth called Anita, to try and make life easier, but they soon realise Anita is not quite like the others.” STRANGER THAN FICTION “It’s very grounded, very character-driven. And I thought it was a refreshing take on the AI genre. We’ve seen AI thrillers with robots there to wipe out humanity or enslave us, and all that kind of thing. Which is great, but I love that this show shows us all different aspects of society and how this technology has…

“I didn’t grow up reading literary fiction, I grew up watching Doctor Who,” says AL Kennedy. The award-winning novelist and stand-up comedian has just penned The Drosten’s Curse, a new adventure for Tom Baker’s Doctor. “My agent knew that it was possible to write adult Doctor Who books, but we’d always get a reply going, ‘No, you’ll kill everybody!’” Indeed, before now Kennedy’s reputation had mainly been for powerful novels like The Blue Book and works of journalism such as On Bullfighting. The Drosten’s Curse in contrast is bright and funny, though shot through with darker undercurrents. The chance finally came on the Doctor’s 50th anniversary when she wrote a Who ebook – The Death Pit. “The treatment was miles longer. I said, ‘Well I could write the whole thing…

What the papers say: “If you haven’t seen any of Game Of Thrones so far, you might be wondering if it’s worth ploughing through 40 hours of fantasy hokum to get you up to speed. It certainly looks, at first glance, like a load of old nonsense comprising bare breasts, fighting, dragons and not much else.” (Telegraph) Very familiar – but it’s the teaser for a rave review. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung also loves Game Of Thrones, but wants it kept separate from that greasy Tolkien stuff. GoT, they say (in German), is “often erroneously regarded as fantasy, although there are neither magic rings here nor a fantastical triumph of good over evil.” Meanwhile, US TV host Joe Scarborough explains GoT without the prejudice instilled by watching it: “I think…

PORTAL COMBAT I’m looking for a film that came out in the mid-’90s. It was about men in black who were actually bad aliens who were possibly building some sort of portal to their planet. There was a young, good alien trying to stop them with the help of a human. Lawrence Jennings, email Guest SFXpert Glen Harrison says: This is The Silencers (1996), a direct-to-video effort produced by PM Entertainment, who churned out low budget movies throughout the ’90s. Dennis Christopher plays alien cop Comdor, who teams up with a Secret Service agent to foil an invasion-via-portal. Car chases, shootouts and much property damage ensues. It was released on all-region DVD and is still available if you shop around. Cash In The AT-AT will return next month. If you’ve got…

TOP SECRET AGENTS: NAPOLEON SOLO & ILLYA KURYAKIN ALIASES: Robert Vaughn & David McCallum AGENCY: UNCLE (United Network Command for Law and Enforcement) OPERATIONAL YEARS: 1964-1968; 1983 MISSION DOSSIERS: The Man From UNCLE, Return Of The Man From UNCLE INTEL: A microdot of an idea from Ian Fleming became TV’s answer to Bond. Vaughn had slick Don Draper charm but McCallum was the cool, cerebral heartthrob. ICONIC GADGETRY: Communicator pen; convertible Walther P-38. EYES ONLY: FBI Director J Edgar Hoover had to insist UNCLE was fictitious. TOP SECRET AGENT: APRIL DANCER ALIAS: Stefanie Powers AGENCY: UNCLE (United Network Command for Law and Enforcement) OPERATIONAL YEARS: 1966-67 MISSION DOSSIER: The Girl From UNCLE INTEL: A camp, colourful extension of the UNCLE brand, this femme-powered spin-off bombed despite a $1,000-an-episode budget for…

Even if your back yard is as huge as the solar system, there comes a moment when you need not just to look over the fence, but to open the gate and explore what lies beyond. Figuratively, that’s what Kim Stanley Robinson has done with his new novel, Aurora, his first science fiction novel set on a starship out in deep space, far beyond the warming glow of the Sun. “I wanted to do what I usually do, take a common science fiction idea and push it to: what would that really be like if we did it?” Robinson says when SFX meets up with him in London. Difficult is one answer that springs to mind – and not just because of the technical problems involved. In Robinson’s scenario, humanity,…

"I NEVER THOUGHT JASON WAS GOING TO BE A RECURRING CHARACTER" Is the original Friday The 13th really SFX territory? The case against will argue, rightly, that it is not the invincible Jason Voorhees who is stalking and killing the teenaged camp counsellors of Crystal Lake in this initial outing – rather it’s his vengeful middle-aged mother. Moreover, when Mrs Voorhees (played by the late Betsy Palmer) is decapitated by the last surviving cast member, Alice (Adrienne King), during the film’s splatter-packed showdown it’s evident that that is, indeed, that. The psychopath is no more and Friday The 13th’s slice and dice mayhem comes to an abrupt conclusion. However, the case for would surely point out that Sean Cunningham’s trendsetting terror title is every bit as supernatural as John Carpenter’s…

How did you prepare yourself to play someone who works with dinosaurs? We treated it very real. Disbelief was suspended, dinosaurs existed and someone was trying to train them. What techniques would you use? Who would you hire? I talked to people who train dolphins, canines and parrots. There’s a lot of different techniques used to train animals – you can shock them, you can give them a hug, and everything in between. How does Owen Grady compare to the goofier characters you’ve played? There’s definitely a darkness to him. It’s there underneath, but he still has fun. He also has a history with Claire, Bryce Dallas Howard’s character. Something went on between them that we sort of explore through the course of the movie. It’s reminiscent of Romancing The…

It’s a hectic month for cinema releases, with no less than half a dozen movies which haven’t screened yet out before the next issue hits. First up, on 26 June: Despicable Me spin-off MINIONS. Arnie’s back on 3 July, as TERMINATOR GENISYS lands, while on 10 July Mark Wahlberg returns with his potty-mouthed chum in TED 2. Finally, 17 July brings us a trio of releases, the big one (or should that be teeny-tiny one?) being ANTMAN. It’s joined by Blumhouse found-footage horror THE GALLOWS and Tarsem Singh’s consciousness-transfer film SELF/LESS. There’ll be reviews of all these available at http://bit.ly/sfxreviews just as soon as we can see ’em and write about ’em.…

Release Date: 29 June 2014 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD/download/video on demand Director: David Robert Mitchell Cast: Maika Monroe, Keir Gilchrist, Daniel Zovatto, Jake Weary, Olivia Luccardi, Lili Sepe DAVID ROBERT Mitchell’s first crack at genre cinema provides a thrilling reminder that all you really need to create a low-budget horror classic is a good idea with an appealing simplicity and purity. After Jay (Maika Monroe) has sex with a date, he chloroforms her, ties her to a chair, then apologetically drops a bombshell. From now on, he explains, Jay will be relentlessly followed by a mysterious entity which can take on any human form. Furthermore, “It” is completely invisible to anyone but its quarry. It’s not even a particularly original idea. Setting aside the screwing, there’s a touch of 1957’s…

Release Date: OUT NOW! 2015 | U | DVD Directors: David Scott, Theo Baynton Cast: Rasmus Hardiker, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, David Menkin, Rosamund Pike, Angel Coulby, Kayvan Novak, David Graham IT’S HARD TO imagine how ITV’s new Thunderbirds show could be a better tribute to Gerry Anderson’s classic original. Sure, there are changes – International Rescue’s been given a CGI makeover, and it’s been retooled for modern attention spans – but the essence of the series remains the same. That a 50-year-old premise can still feel fresh shows how ahead of its time Thunderbirds was. Thunderbirds Are Go works because it’s made with total love for the source material. As in the original, the (remarkably faithful) hardware and launch sequences are the real stars of the show, and they’re shot beautifully.…

THE AVENGERS SERIES FIVE Release Date: OUT NOW! 1967 | PG | Blu-ray The digital restorations of The Avengers’ first run in glorious colour finally make it to Bluray. NB: some guides consider these 24 episodes to comprise both seasons five and six. The stories themselves increasingly step further into the fantastic and tales like “Epic” and “The Winged Avenger” are delightfully absurd. We said: “Perhaps too many episodes follow a too-similar formula, and some of the scripts don’t quite have the pace and invention of the best of season four. But this is television that doesn’t come along very often: bold, original and visionary. It could only have been made in Britain and it could only have been made in the ’60s.” BIGGLES: ADVENTURES IN TIME Release Date: OUT…

Release Date: 13 July 2014 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD/download (6 July) Director: Tom Harper Cast: Phoebe Fox, Jeremy Irvine, Helen McCrory, Adrian Rawlins, Leanne Best, Ned Dennehy HAMMER FILMS was never shy about revisiting ideas, as lists of its Dracula films and Frankenstein movies can attest. So in a way it’s pleasing to see that tradition continued. But this follow-up to the revived brand’s adaptation of Susan Hill’s haunted house novella has no pressing reason to exist. Faithfulness isn’t a problem; Hill herself suggested directions in which the story could go next. We return to Eel Marsh House circa 1940, as it becomes home to a party of evacuated children. Soon teacher Eve (Phoebe Fox) has awakened the vengeful spirit, and the “accidental” deaths start stacking up. The period setting…

Release Date: OUT NOW! 2014 | 12 | Blu-ray/DVD Director: Dean Israelite Cast: Johnny Weston, Sofia Black-D’Elia, Ginny Gardner, Amy Landecker, Katie Garfield THE GEEK heroes of this breezy, undemanding time travel tale come prepped for quantum cliché. “You have to kill Hitler!” says one. “Have you never seen Timecop?” asks another. Someone references the rules of “Terminators 1 through 4”. Someone else declares “Boom! We’re Doctor Who!” If only it was that easy, kids. In truth Project Almanac feels like an ’80s Amblin movie reengineered for Generation Y. It has the wide-eyed, sweet-natured vibe of Explorers or an episode of Spielberg’s Amazing Stories, its wish-fulfilment premise distilled into a single line of dialogue: “So you’re telling me dad left a time machine in the basement?” Stumbling upon this experimental…

Release Date: OUT NOW! 2014 | 15 | DVD DO YOU LIKE Adam Green’s face? You do? Good, because about 78% of this mockumentary is the Hatchet director looking confused to camera. Green plays himself, the director of numerous indie shockers. He meets a supposed former detective (Ray Wise) who claims he’s found a portal to the Marrow – a realm with real monsters. Intrigued, he decides to shoot a film. The result is a playful cross between Nightbreed and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Despite endless promotion for other Green productions, Marrow is flimsy fun – if not actually creepy. There are ironic jabs at the found-footage genre, a few amusing cameos from the likes of Kane “Jason” Hodder, and Wise is always watchable. Extras: Deleted scene, behindthe-scenes feature.…

Release Date: 13 July 2014 | 15 | DVD IF THE FILM industry followed a Darwinian model, surely by now we’d be almost free of mediocre low-budget horror movies. Do enough people really watch them for others to be inspired to make more? It seems so. This British effort features a group of schoolkids who, following term’s end, spend the night patrolling their alma mater as part of an army training exercise. But not only is it being targeted by burglars, an ancient spirit is on the prowl too. How scary! Well, no, not really: supernatural stuff is low in the mix and the action develops along very familiar lines. The young cast – including Roman Polanski’s daughter Morgane and EastEnders’ Thomas Law – try hard, but the script lacks…

Release Date: 9 July 470 pages | Hardback/ebook Author: Kim Stanley Robinson Publisher: Orbit THE GENERATION STARSHIP novel is a staple of science fiction, a meta-story that authors from different eras revisit and reinvent. But certain essential, and contradictory, elements remain. The idea of a craft that will take a century or more to reach its destination is simultaneously stirring and scary, expansive and claustrophobic, majestic yet hubristic. It’s therefore not surprising that Kim Stanley Robinson, an SF novelist who’s always delighted in the tension between humankind’s notions about the universe and the way the universe actually works (so far as we can tell…), would be drawn to the form. What was far less predictable was that Robinson would craft a book that can be read as the embodiment of…

FIGURE FANTASY Release Date: OUT NOW! 120 pages | Hardback Author: Daniel Picard Publisher: Insight Editions Subtitled The Pop Culture Photography Of Daniel Picard, this book showcases the artist/photographer’s pictures of action figures and statuettes in real world situations. This is your chance to see Snowtroopers clearing snow off their SUVs, Harley Quinn taking a selfie and Buffy’s Gentlemen taking their dogs for a walk. The franchise mash-ups are particularly fun – notably Tim the Enchanter from Monty Python And The Holy Grail giving orders to Knights Of The Old Republic’s Darth Malgus. It’s effectively a really classy advert for Sideshow Collectibles, as their range of figures and statuettes provides the entire cast of the book. There’s a foreword from Simon Pegg and an afterword from Kevin Smith, both of…

RICHARD EDWARDS EDITOR RAVES The news of legendary make-up artist Rick Baker’s retirement feels like the end of an era. But I hope there’ll always be a place for prosthetics. RANTS I’m sad that Daniel Craig gets to be a Stormtrooper in The Force Awakens and I don’t. Lucasfilm: I’m available for Episode VIII or the Anthology movies if you need me. Please?! NICK SETCHFIELD FEATURES EDITOR RAVES Had a great time at the Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular. Big dumb thrill to see Daleks gliding about before my eyes… I just love the way they move! No, not in a sexy way. Shut up. Looking forward to Anthony Horowitz’s Bond novel Trigger Mortis. Still can’t decide if the title is genius or diabolical but everything else is ticking the right…

NEWBIES David Lynch back on board Showtime’s TWIN PEAKS. Reports say the season could now run to 18 episodes, and that Lynch will direct every ep. Damn fine news! George A Romero’s EMPIRE OF THE DEAD comic heading to TV with Romero and Peter Grunwald on script duty. Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie’s heavenly comic series THE WICKED + THE DIVINE being developed for the small screen by Matt Fraction and Kelly Sue DeConnick’s production company Milkfed Criminal Masterminds. Universal TV have already snapped up the rights. Ben 10 studio bringing cannon-armed videogame character MEGA MAN to TV in 2017 as a 26-episode animated series – just in time for his 30th anniversary. Disney musical TANGLED heading to TV as a 2D animation. Zachary Levi and Mandy Moore return to…

SPOILER WARNING! SCI-FACT! Alfred Bester created Legends Of Tomorrow’s Big Bad Vandal Savage in Green Lantern #10, 1944. DC’S LEGENDS OF TOMORROW The promised spin-off of Arrow and The Flash has arrived packed with six superheroes including the Atom (Brandon Routh) and White Canary (Caity Lotz). The whole lot of them are collected by former Whovian Arthur Darvill, who plays time-traveller Rip Hunter. He needs the heroes to help him stop supervillain Vandal Savage throughout time. Looks like a much lighter entry into the DC TV universe and, as they say, variety is the spice of life. Airs: The CW, early 2016. SUPERGIRL Also from the creators of Arrow, The Flash and Legends Of Tomorrow, Supergirl is all about the coming-of-age of Superman’s cousin, Kara Zor-El. As her human alter ego…

CASTING CALL Community’s Joel McHale (above) to gueststar in Fox’s X-FILES miniseries as Tad O’Malley – a news network anchor who becomes a Mulder ally. New Girl’s Max Greenfield checks into AMERICAN HORROR STORY: HOTEL, but according to showrunner Ryan Murphy, won’t check out. Greg Grunberg’s psychic cop Matt Parkman to guest star in HEROES: REBORN. ASH VS EVIL DEAD adds Mimi Rogers as a mother reunited with her family after an accident. Stephen King adap 11/22/63 enlists The Good Wife’s TR Knight as dangerous salesman Johnny Clayton. AGENTS OF SHIELD promotes Luke Mitchell’s electric Inhuman Lincoln to series regular for season three. Sherlock’s Tom Brooke cast as observing angel Fiore in Seth Rogen’s PREACHER pilot, which recently began filming. Harry Shearer – voice of Mr Burns, Ned Flanders and…

TILDA SWINTON rumoured to be playing the Ancient One in Doctor Strange… LUC BESSON adapting classic French SF strip Valerian… SAOIRSE RONAN and DAKOTA FANNING orbiting the female lead in Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them… SAMUEL L JACKSON joining the muthaf---ing Blob remake… Lionsgate turning The Odyssey into a franchise… Disney unplugging Tron 3… CHRIS PINE rumoured for the role of Steve Trevor in Wonder Woman… MICHAEL ROOKER joining horror The Belko Experiment… ALICIA VIKANDER in talks for the female lead in Assassin’s Creed… REESE WITHERSPOON playing Tinkerbell in Peter Pan spin-off Tink… ANDREA RISEBOROUGH in talks to play the villain in The Crow… Skyfall’s ROGER DEAKINS handling the cinematography on Blade Runner 2… VIVICA A FOX returning for Independence Day 2… Neuromancer movie still alive……

The good guys always win (or at least we hope so), but it’s the bad guys who look like they’re having the most fun. Just look at Lucifer. According to the Christian Bible, Lucifer — also referred to as Morning Star — was originally God’s favourite angel. But once he fell from heaven after refusing to bow down to Adam, he was demoted to running hell. Personally, I think he was promoted. We all know that real partiers never make it through the pearly gates. So when Lucifer shows up in TV, movies and comics, it’s not surprising that he’s depicted as the guy who knows how to have a good time. Also known as the devil or Satan, he’s been leading humans astray since that whole snake-apple-Eve incident. Really…

SFX Editor Richard Edwards is not in love with love saving the day I have nothing against love. It’s undoubtedly a good thing. It brings a lot of happiness to the world. It’s responsible for incredible acts of kindness and bravery. Yet, when used as a plot device in contemporary science fiction, love has become a contrived magical power, a lazy storytelling tool to help a writer who’s backed him/herself into a corner. It’s deus ex machina at its worst and it must stop. I’m not complaining about love saving the day in fairytales like Frozen. Here it’s a theme as old as storytelling itself, the power of “love’s true kiss” being so entwined with fairytale DNA that trying to separate them would be madness. No, I have issues with…

Let’s see an epic battle between Aquaman and Captain Birdseye with huge fish fingers as weapons! Or is that just taking the pisces? Keith Heeney Make Khal Drogo blond. Ashraf Ghori Aquaman sucks [lollipops? – Ed]. Mike Clark I’m pleased that Jason’s scars and tattoos are integrated into his Aquaman look. José Sanders Give it back to Marvel and call it Sub-Mariner. Wayne Smyth The film won’t be complete without an appearance by Aqualad. Or Aquababy. Or the Aquatoaster. Tim Nelson Monsters, badassery, Black Manta. Sorted. Paolo Bianco Forget Momoa, I want the Vincent Chase Aquaman movie. Andy Shaw James Wan seems like a pretty good shout for director, he did a great job with Fast & Furious 7. Lyndsey Perkins Aquaman’s mum and dad, Tom Curry and Atlanna, occupying…

Steven Ellis checks out the latest Dredd convention THE JUDGES WERE OUT IN force on the Spring Bank Holiday as Rule 32’s Judge Dredd convention Lawgiver descended on Bristol. Spread across five rooms, Lawgiver MKII was full of things to do and see. With two dedicated rooms for panels running all day (covering subjects such as Women in Dredd’s world, Mega City architecture, Dredd continuity and the ethics of the Justice Department), a room full of 2000 AD artists showing off and selling their wares, another with traders’ tables, and a final room packed with props and costumes from the 2012 Dredd film, the event certainly felt big. There were a good number of Judge Dredd creative types in attendance, including writers Michael Carroll and Rob Williams, and artists Pete Doherty,…

Evangeline Lilly never set out to be an actress, booking her first gigs as a means of paying her college tuition. But after working as an uncredited extra on shows like Smallville and Tru Calling, she found a calling of her own, and a legion of fans, after being cast as fugitive-turned-heroine Kate Austen; a role she played through all six seasons of TV’s phenomenally successful Lost. After taking some time off to have a baby, Lilly saw her big-screen career blossom with her turn opposite Hugh Jackman in Real Steel and as elf warrior Tauriel in director Peter Jackson’s Hobbit movies. A newcomer to the world of comic books, Lilly joins the Marvel Universe with this summer’s Ant-Man, in which she plays Hope van Dyne, the daughter of Henry…

DONKEY KONG “We’re in a 3D world and these games only lived in a 2D world. Donkey Kong [only had] a few poses and he just flipped between them. Everyone would have felt shorted if we took it too literally, so we found a hybridised solution where he’s continuously animated but we make it so you get those characteristic poses a lot of the time.” PAC-MAN “The script talks about how these alien life forms are based on light energy. When Pac-Man engulfs the fire truck in New York, as his lips touch truck the cubes inherit the properties that the local object has, so if Pac-Man’s biting a bit of a red enamel fire truck then that cube becomes a red enamel cube. It creates a more interesting graphic…

The ’90s are socking it to the ’80s this month with Scream the TV show about to arrive and news of another new sassy-smart metaslasher series on its way, while poor old Poltergeist didn’t do the numbers despite the insistent scary clown leering off the side of buses. But forget nostalgia: for new thrills all you need is a dirty Belgian wolf-boy… Dreadful Old Movie Notorious video nasty Anthropophagus is getting a rerelease from 88 Films this month. A lurid Italian cannibal gorno set on an island where a crazy killer picks off – and eats! – a bunch of tourists it’s directed by erotic horror maestro Joe D’Amato, though this isn’t in any way saucy. Unless you mean intestines slathered with red sauce. Only for the strong of stomach and not to…

Release Date: 17 July 15 (TBC) | TBC minutes Director: Henry Hobson Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Abigail Breslin, Joely Richardson, Douglas M Griffin, JD Evermore, Rachel Whitman Groves Maggie’s not the film that springs to mind when you hear the words “Schwarzenegger” and “zombies”. There are no pithy one-liners, no exploding heads, and Arnie barely has to flex a bicep in anger. It’s a zombie movie that aims for the heart instead of aiming for the head. It’s set several months after an outbreak of the Necroambulist virus. Every half-decent zombie film requires a twist on the format; in this case it’s how long it takes to “turn” – six to eight weeks. That tweak transforms zombiedom into a metaphor for terminal illness, making Maggie a weepie about coming to terms…

Release Date: OUT NOW! 15 | 98 minutes Director: Leigh Whannell Cast: Dermot Mulroney, Stefanie Scott, Angus Sampson, Leigh Whannell, Lin Shaye THE FIRST OF THE RECENT glut of slick haunted-house flicks, Insidious was, in places, genuinely unnerving, but ran out of story steam way before the last act. So what’s left for Chapter 3, the directorial debut of series scribe and co-star Leigh Whannell? Set “a few years before” Insidious, it re-introduces medium Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye) as a younger, sadder woman who’s given up on her gifts. When teenager Quinn (Stefanie Scott) knocks at her door, asking for help communicating with her late mother, Elise warns her off: “If you call out to one of the dead, all of them can hear you.” Quinn’s soon in contact with…

Release Date: 29 June (download OUT NOW!) 2015 | 12 | Blu-ray 3D/Blu-ray/DVD/download Directors: The Wachowskis Cast: Channing Tatum, Mila Kunis, Sean Bean, Eddie Redmayne, Douglas Booth, Tuppence Middleton “ASTROLOGY IS bullshit,” says Jupiter Jones, loo brush in hand, crouching over a toilet in Jupiter Ascending. That’s as may be, but the film itself appears to have been born under the sign of the turkey. It’s a shame, because the intentions are good. Jupiter Ascending is a cheery attempt to produce a good old-fashioned sci-fi romp – fastmoving, witty, spectacular, actionpacked. It’s all those things and less. In the extras, directing duo the Wachowskis mention how one of the biggest influences on their work is The Wizard Of Oz. Never has this been more the case than it is here.…

Release Date: 6 July 2015 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD/download Director: Neill Blomkamp Cast: Sharlto Copley, Dev Patel, Yolandi Visser, Ninja, Sigourney Weaver, Hugh Jackman HOLLYWOOD filmmakers continue to be preoccupied with artificial intelligence; Transcendence and RoboCop last year, then Ex_Machina and Age Of Ultron, Terminator Genisys stomping our way... heck, even Big Hero 6 was about Baymax’s sense of purpose. We’d say it was something in the water supply, except Chappie is South African. The latest opus from District 9’s Neil Blomkamp is suffused with the director’s distinctive grimy energy and the simmering violence of a near-future Johannesburg. It’s the story of programmer Deon (Dev Patel) who uses a damaged police “scout” for his experiments with consciousness, only for his creation to be stolen by gangsters and taught to commit…

Release Date: 9 July 2015 | Video on demand Director: Jon Schnepp Interviewees: Tim Burton, Jon Peters, Kevin Smith, Colleen Atwood, Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Rick Heinrichs IMAGINE A TIME, if you can, when cinemas were not filled with superhero movies. This dark epoch has a name: the ’90s. Following the spectacular flop of Superman IV: The Quest For Peace, producer Jon Peters and director Tim Burton planned to revitalise the Man of Steel’s fortunes with Superman Lives, inspired by the popular Death Of Superman comic storyline. But just before the film was due to start production, with Nicolas Cage in the lead, Warner Bros pulled the plug. Jon Schnepp’s documentary looks at what might have been had Superman Lives, er, lived, via interviews with Peters and Burton, screenwriters Kevin Smith,…

Release Date: 6 July 2014 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD Showrunner: David Eick Cast: Noah Wyle, Moon Bloodgood, Drew Roy, Connor Jessup, Maxim Knight FOUR YEARS IN, the Spielbergspawned show about humans resisting alien invaders continues to be a solid, modestly entertaining series that may dress itself in the rags of post-apocalyptic drama but has far more faith in the essential decency of humanity than most. The formula’s now cosily familiar: expect speeches about the importance of family, big hugs, and even bigger explosions. But the production team have found a reliable way to spray on some narrative Febreze: once again, the season opens by leaping forward several months, fracturing the family of the Second Mass as they split into three story strands. It’s not the most subtle show: one new…

Release Date: OUT NOW! 2014 | 15 | Download/view-on-demand Director: Joe Dante Cast: Anton Yelchin, Ashley Greene, Alexandra Daddario, Oliver Cooper IF YOU ONLY watch one movie about a girlfriend returning as a zombie this year… don’t make it this one. It’s no pleasure to report that this zom-com trails in second even in such a limited field, because Joe Dante is someone your average SFX reader roots for. The guy brought us Gremlins and Piranha, and is irrepressibly enthusiastic about our genre. Sadly, Burying The Ex is not a triumphant return to form. For starters, the basic concept feels fairly offensive, with domineering, jealous eco-fanatic Evelyn hit by a bus, then returned to bossy life. Presumably we’re meant to empathise with Anton Yelchin’s under-the-thumb horror store employee Max, but…

Release Date: 29 June 2014 | 18 | DVD IT’S A GLORIOUS grindhouse title – but an equally shameless bait-and-switch. There’s only one killer mermaid in this Serbian horror and she doesn’t arrive on screen for an hour. But the film’s original title – Nymph – feels even less appropriate. For all its intriguing hints of oceanic mythology, this is, at grisly heart, a slasher flick. A group of friends explore an island that is, we’re told, “drenched in blood” (doesn’t TripAdvisor warn against this kind of thing?). Soon they’re stalked by a harpoon-wielding killer who brings a distinct John Carpenter vibe, breaking the monotony of all the Spielberghomaging underwater POV shots. You want it to be Splash with bite but the action quickly devolves into a stabby runaround, the…

Release Date: OUT NOW! 2015 | 18 | DVD THIS portmanteau horror takes 13 shorts from around the globe and stitches them together with the flimsy connective tissue of a news anchor reporting on the end of the world. It’s a grab-bag of styles, some serious, most silly – and they don’t fit together well. Spanish short “Fist Of Jesus” finds the son of God fighting cowboy zombies with a swordfish. It’s the best of the bunch, but outstays its welcome. Others, like “Dead Stop”, are barely stories at all – simply gory scenes. The intermittent “How To Survive” PSAs, meanwhile, are uninspired. Taken on their own, most of these shorts would be diverting for five minutes. Jammed together, they soon lose their appeal. Extras: “Marathon Apocalypse”, another short designed…

Release Date: OUT NOW! 480 pages | Hardback/paperback/ebook Author: Victor Pelevin Publisher: Gollancz DURING THE TIME OF THE Soviet Union, science fiction was a favoured genre for writers to obliquely criticise the regime without censure. Those days have not quite returned under Putin, but Snuff performs a similar job, artfully satirising modern Russia’s divided society and its strange relationship with the truth. Damilola Karpov is a pilot of a hybrid media/military drone who lives in the flying city of Byzantion. “Big Byz” is anchored forever over the capital of Urkaina, a miserable land in a climate-changed Siberia. Karpov’s role is to simultaneously start ritualised wars with the “Orks” of Urkaine and report on them. Between times, he relaxes with his sex robot Kaya – a realistic “rubber woman” whose personality…

Release Date: OUT NOW! 600 pages | Hardback/ebook Author: Adrian Tchaikovsky Publisher: Tor Books FANTASY AUTHOR Tchaikovsky (writer of the Shadows Of The Apt series) makes a move into outer space in this SF tale of postcatastrophe survival for the creatures of Earth. He takes his interest in arthropods with him, however. Children Of Time begins with humanity on the verge of seeding life throughout a barren cosmos. Discord at this pretence to godhood simultaneously sees human society cast down across its fragile holdings. As war erupts, the terraforming project of Kern’s World is nearing completion, and from its ruin arises a race of uplifted spiders. This is a twin-stranded novel. The primary plot, concerning the nascent civilisation of the spiders, is the more effective, and the radically different course…

Release Date: 2 July 318 pages | Hardback/paperback/ebook Author: Natasha Pulley Publisher: Bloomsbury Circus FORGET STEAMPUNK. Welcome to tickpunk. Natasha Pulley’s debut novel is a whimsical fantasy set in Victorian London, but it’s clockwork not water pressure that powers the futuristic tech here. Actually, the tick-tech is just a minor element of this offbeat tale of a Japanese watchmaker in London who appears to be able to predict the future. Thaniel Steepleton, a Home Office clerk who runs his life like clockwork, crosses paths with the mysterious Keita Mori when he’s left a watch – by persons unknown – which emits an alarm just before a bomb explodes in Westminster. A clockwork bomb. Mori becomes the main suspect and Steepleton becomes part of the investigation, going undercover as the watchmaker’s…

Release Date: OUT NOW! 368 pages | Hardback/ebook Author: Al Robertson Publisher: Gollancz CYBERPUNK FICTION invariably brings with it plenty of expectations – data crime, weird tech, a noir-ish tone – but “foulmouthed AI ventriloquist’s dummies” isn’t generally on the list. They’re among some of the offbeat pleasures that debut novelist Al Robertson serves up in Crashing Heaven, a stylish blend of techno thriller and hard SF. It’s the story of Jack Forster, a man who fought on the losing side of a war between AIs and has returned to Station, an asteroidconstructed habitat orbiting a devastated Earth. Jack’s mind is permanently linked with a “puppet” AI named Hugo Fist, a virtual ventriloquist’s dummy who’ll soon be taking possession of Jack’s body thanks to a dodgy software licence. But while…

Release Date: 10 July 352 pages | Paperback Author: Rhonda Mason Publisher: Titan Books SETTING UP A FICTIONAL universe is tricky. The world has to be familiar enough to make sense, but not too familiar; otherwise, what’s the point? Rhonda Mason, whose debut novel this is, tackles the challenge head-on, creating a universe full of warring aliens, long-held grudges and weird futuristic plagues. Interplanetary politics take centre stage here, as nobles from across the galaxy come together to take part in an ancient ritual. The rules of the Empress Game are simple – it’s just a series of one-on-one fights – but with the eventual winner getting a crucial vote in the way the empire is run, the scheming that goes on behind the scenes is anything but. Our heroine…

DEATH IS THE ONLY PART of life that affects and judges everyone equally, regardless of achievement and power. But how hard must it be for someone who has the world at their fingertips to accept the same fate as the rest of us? What if there was a way to cheat death, for those few able and willing to pay the price? These were the questions that inspired the makers of Self/less, in which a dying billionaire with everything to live for uses all of his worldly resources to prolong his life, with horrific results. “The inspiration for the story came from watching those Apple presentations that Steve Jobs used to do in the years before he died,” says Àlex Pastor, who co-wrote the Self/less script with brother and writing…

While its first two seasons offered more than their share of mysteries, Under The Dome will, in its third year, finally give viewers some answers. Chief among them, the reason why the titular Dome came down. According to executive producer Neal Baer those answers will be provided in part by a new character, played by CSI’s Marg Helgenberger, who provides this season’s “story engine”. “We introduce Christine Price,” Baer tells Red Alert, “an anthropologist, who we learn has been in Chester’s Mill ever since the Dome first came down. The shocking reason for her being there – but not seen by anyone in the town – will be revealed. We also introduce Kylie Bunbury as Eva, Christine’s protégé and assistant. She too has been under the Dome since the beginning…

FAVOURITE SF/FANTASY FILM I love John Carpenter’s The Thing. I think it’s the last great gasp of hands-on model making in the genre before CGI. And because I’m so anti-CGI I’m prepared to forgive any little lapses in it, just because of the sheer imagination that went in to creating the effects. I’ve read the book too, but the book is terrible and meandering, and Campbell wasn’t a very good writer. But a lot of the stuff that I love about the film, the blood test, is there already in Campbell, and in that way it’s very prescient. FAVOURITE SF/FANTASY TV Doctor Who, without a shadow of a doubt. If I could get one TV writing gig it would be to write for Doctor Who. As for which Doctor, it’s…

Who knew that Scott Stewart’s film Legion would come back with a vengeance on the small screen? The show’s first season, set 25 years after the film, revealed the story of Alex Lannen (Christopher Egan), who is destined to become the saviour of mankind as warring archangel brothers Michael (Tom Wisdom) and Gabriel (Carl Beukes) grapple for power. Expanded to 13 episodes, season two opens a few months after Alex’s climb to Gabriel’s aerie. Showrunner Vaun Wilmott promises that scene will pay off in unexpected ways. “Alex will be very driven and active,” Wilmott says. “By the end he will be a much more seasoned leader that sees beyond himself, like his desire to protect Claire and their unborn baby. “We are packing in so much story,” Wilmott enthuses. “It…

THE ANNIE LEIBOVITZ Vanity Fair magazine photo shoot that revealed Adam Driver is playing three-pronged lightsaber wielder Kylo Ren and Gwendoline Christie is silver Stormtrooper Captain Phasma has delivered more key intel on The Force Awakens. Turns out Andy Serkis (the owner of the voice that told us “there has been an awakening” in the first Episode VII trailer) is playing Supreme Leader Snoke – and that (unsurprisingly) it’s a performance capture role. We reckon he’s a high-up (possibly the highest-up) in the First Order that’s replaced the Empire, and that he’s either an alien, or a human whose body has been through a lot. Also, could the lack of performance capture dots on his legs mean his lower limbs will be mechanical? In another Vanity Fair scoop – we can…

RONNY COX MADE HIS BIGscreen debut in Deliverance as the nice guy who duelled with a banjo-plucking local. Some 15 years later he bagged the role of one of the ’80s great villains as RoboCop’s evil corporate monster Dick Jones, the Senior President of OCP who was unceremoniously fired – then obliterated – at the end of the film. “Hollywood had typecast me as a boy scout kind of guy,” he tells Red Alert, “so when I got to play Dick Jones it all of a sudden opened up whole new systems for me – I much prefer playing bad guys!” Cox later reunited with RoboCop director Paul Verhoeven on Total Recall, and now tours extensively as a musician (see www.ronnycox.com for info and videos). He will soon be seen…

DOCTOR WHO Everything you need to know about the upcoming series nine ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING Simon Pegg meets Monty Python BRIAN ALDISS The legendary SF author looks back at his long career PLUS: Star Wars! China Miéville! Star Trek: Voyager! Phonogram! Z For Zachariah movie! The return of Robin Of Sherwood! And more! All contents subject to change. It’s just how they roll – they think it makes them cool. Go to gamesradar.com/sfx for details. NEVER MISS AN ISSUE Subscribe today – see page 32…

THIS MONTH’S LETTERS COMPILED BY Richard Edwards, Editor It’s a good job we’re always happy to talk superhero here at SFX Towers – spandex-clad titans in one form or another didn’t leave much space for anything else in the mailbox this month. Luckily, we’ve also squeezed in some chat about multiverses, book reviews and The Walking Dead. WRITE IN AND WIN! We know you don’t need payment to write in. In fact, we’re sure many of you believe the very prospect of remuneration cheapens the whole endeavour. Even so, we like to give a little something back to reward you for sharing your thoughts. That’s why Simon Hood, writer of this month’s Star Letter, will find his bookshelf enhanced to the tune of the latest instalment of the Horus Heresy…

The Llama God (“There’s one thing that Age Of Ultron gets very, very wrong – the complete lack of pert bottoms”); Keith Tudor (again, catching his breath after watching the spectacular Mad Max: Fury Road); Ann Hodnett (whose husband spotted a similarity between a Hexenbeast in Grimm and Victoria Beckham); Mike Garner (again, who thinks Grimm has got interesting all of a sudden – presumably you’re a Spice Girls fan, Mike); Neil Hickman (“Can’t believe you guys reviewed the trailer for Pixels and didn’t mention the bit from Futurama’s “Anthology Of Interest”, which has pretty much the same plot”); Robert Cassidy (“I’ve been enjoying The Flash immensely, but it occurred to me that Star Labs is freaking enormous yet only seems to employ three people. Not even a janitor in…

Because meeting up is every fan’s right ONE HARDLY NEEDS reminding that Cardiff’s now the home of Doctor Who, but it certainly underlines the point when you find yourself sitting three yards from Murray Gold as he happily nods along to his own tunes… The series’ regular composer since 2005 was just one of hundreds present when Who’s latest musical extravaganza stopped off in the Welsh capital. Thanks to the success of the Doctor Who Proms, Whovians are familiar with the concept of the BBC National Orchestra Of Wales performing Gold’s scores live, but this long-overdue touring show made the experience accessible to fans as far north as Newcastle and Glasgow. Over the course of several hours in Cardiff, it both revisited themes that can now be considered classics (like…

Hampshire Con 25-26 July Admire Mad Max’s Interceptor, learn to wield a lightsaber and meet Fifth Doctor Peter Davison with companion Sarah Sutton at Hampshire’s TV, Film and Comic Con. www.hampshirecon.com Yorkshire Cosplay Con 8 8 August The name says it all – dig out your best sci-fi duds and head down to the fabulously named Magna Science Adventure Centre for a day of anime, gaming and comic books. www.yorkshirecosplayconvention.co.uk Dublin Comic Con 8-9 August Wander round a series of elaborate sci-fi sets and displays (for nowt!) or buy a ticket and attend a packed day of panels in Dublin city centre. www.dublincomiccon.com Auto Assembly 21-23 August Roll out for Europe’s largest Transformers convention with a range of writers and voice actors in attendance, as well as dealer stands and…

Director Sam Mendes promises 007’s 24th official big-screen mission will be powered by a personal story. “The movie is entirely driven by Bond,” he reveals. “He is on the hunt, on the trail of somebody.” Crucially, the plot is ignited by “a cryptic message from Bond’s past”. Expect connective tissue to Skyfall, the first film in the series to unlock the secret history of MI6’s favoured blunt instrument. Mendes says SPECTRE is “the second part of a crucial story of Bond’s childhood”. But it’s a movie set to deal with Bond’s future, too: “It’s about whether or not to pursue the life he’s always pursued, whether he matters and is he going to continue or not.” Move over, Hydra… As the title declares, definitive criminal cabal SPECTRE is back in…

SELECTING OUR FAVOURITE NOVELS of SFX’s lifetime is of course a completely ridiculous task. An impossible mission, you might say. Just look at who we’ve left out – Philip Pullman, Christopher Priest, Justina Robson and so many others. So how have we arrived at the 20 books featured here? Simply, we’ve tried, as far as possible, to choose books that are not only fabulous novels that should be in any definitive science fiction and fantasy collection, but which in some sense represent how SFF literature has evolved over the past two decades – and it certainly has evolved over that time. Or, sometimes, books where an author has suddenly changed everything by challenging existing assumptions. Of course you may not agree with our choices, but we did our best and…

MIKE AND SULLEY’S A-DOOR-ABLE RIDE The climax of Monsters, Inc is superb, with its heroes slipping between the worlds of humans and monsters via the bedroom closet doors of millions of children the world over. DASH RUNS ON WATER The moment in The Incredibles when young Dashiell Parr realises the full extent of his superpowers perfectly encapsulates Brad Bird’s loving homage to superheroics. REMY’S K ITCHEN CHASE On paper this Ratatouille scene sounds like simplicity itself: a rat is chased through a kitchen. Yet Bird makes it a study of movement and vision to rival anything of Spielberg’s. CARL AND ELLIE The prologue to Pete Docter’s Up doesn’t rely on animation so much as moviemaking technique, as it tells the story of two soulmates and a shared life full of…

Release Date: 3 July TBC | 88 minutes Director: Grigorij Richters IT’S PRETTY difficult to make the end of the world seem dull, but this turgid, heavily improvised found-footage drama somehow manages it. Tied-in with 30 June’s Asteroid Day, it initially comes across like an attempt to educate The Kids by stealth, sneaking in talking heads with real-life astronomers as bellend vlogger Damon becomes obsessed with the idea of an apocalyptic asteroid strike. Cue interminable scenes of him arguing with his girlfriend and business partner. Then Damon discovers just such an event is imminent, and mostly mopes around in his flat. Only a sequence of a panicking crowd has any brio, and even that looks like an over-excited flash mob. When the debris finally rains down, you’ll have been praying…

This is a pretty epic film. Did it feel epic shooting it, or was it actually quite intimate? It felt pretty epic. You’re working on massive soundstages, you’re taking over the whole of Chicago and flying helicopters through it and swinging actors through the streets. You’re working on a big scale. The crew is five, 10 or 20 times the size of a small independent film, so you feel that scale. But you never quite appreciate what world you’re creating until you see the finished film because they add a lot of it in later. What was working with the Wachowskis like? Did they share responsibilities? It was the first time I actually worked with two directors so it was a new experience, but it was very seamless. They work…

Release Date: 13 July 2013 | PG | Double-play Blu-ray & DVD/Blu-ray/DVD Director: Isao Takahata Cast: Chloë Grace Moretz, Darren Criss, Lucy Liu, James Caan, Mary Steenburgen, George Segal FORM AND meaning. Were Pixar to make an animated version of 10th century Japanese folk tale Princess Kaguya – aka The Tale Of The Bamboo Cutter – it would, no doubt, be awesome. Wonderfully crafted and full of heart. It would also be CG, hyperrealistic and packed with incredible detail. Studio Ghibli’s The Tale Of The Princess Kaguya has all the heart, emotion and joie de vivre, but it has something else too: a visual poetry. It achieves this with a few scratchy lines, a pastel palette and an aching love of nature. This is the Japanese woodcut in motion. It…

Release Date: OUT NOW! 2014 | 18 | Blu-ray/DVD Director: Sion Sono Cast: Tomoko Karina, Akihiro Kitamura, Ryôhei Suzuki, Shôta Sometani, Riki Takeuchi JAPANESE dystopian rap opera. Those are four words we bet you never thought you’d hear together. But that’s exactly what Japanese cinema’s enfant terrible Sion Sono (think Quentin Tarantino with fewer inhibitions) has concocted here. In a crumbling near-future Tokyo a huge number of rival gangs of rappers are in a constant turf war. They rap constantly too. This isn’t a musical, it’s opera, sung throughout. The plot… well, it hardly warrants summarising, as it’s virtually non-existent and near incoherent, about as pure an exercise in style over substance as you’ll find. Often it’s more stylised than stylish, but there are moments when the blend of music…

Release Date: OUT NOW! 2015 | 15 | DVD Creator: Richard Zajdlic Cast: Joe Layton, Theo Barklem-Biggs, Shushila Takao, Temuera Morrison, Cian Elyse White, Alexander Tarrant FOR ONE EPISODE, BBC Three’s Supernatural Death In Backpackers’ Paradise looks like it could be a really good show. Oddly, that episode is neither the first nor the last. Usually, derivative old tosh like this either starts off promisingly then nosedives, or suddenly perks up in the last episode, way too late to alter its descent into TV obscurity. Tatau does neither. It starts off as it ends, as a feeble, listless supernatural thriller with little to offer other than a legion of half-dressed, good-looking twentysomethings. If you’ve ever seen any supernatural children’s shows which start with the kids going on holiday somewhere new…

Release Date: OUT NOW! 2001 | 15 | Dual-format Blu-ray/DVD Director: Takashi Miike Cast: Kenji Sawada, Keiko Matsuzaka, Shinji Takeda, Naomi Nishida, Kiyoshirô Imawano, Tetsurô Tanba TO CULT FILM fans in the west, the revelation that Takashi Miike (Ichi The Killer) once directed a musical is like learning that Tarantino’s directing the next Smurfs movie. Nevertheless it happened. And while The Happiness Of The Katakuris certainly has its weird and dark moments at heart it’s a very trad musical. A burst of “The hills are alive…” would not feel out of place. The dysfunctional Katakuris buy a guest house in the mountains. Unfortunately all their guests keep dying. Seeing as this might not be good publicity for the place, instead of informing the police, they bury the bodies. In one…

Release Date: OUT NOW! 1991 | 15 | Blu-ray TRANCERS WAS journeyman director Charles Band’s finest moment; sadly this follow-up to his 1985 cult favourite isn’t quite as entrancing. Once again, wisecracking future-cop Jack Deth (Tim Thomerson) must protect the rulers of the future from erasure. This time he’s pitted against the brother of the previous villain (Richard Lynch), and aided by his dead wife (don’t ask). There’s disappointingly little of the Tesco Value Blade Runner vibe that gave the first film an edge, and too much emphasis on comedy – much of it centring on the eye-rolling conceit that Deth’s now being fought over by two young women. But no movie where the hero foils an assassination attempt by throwing an exploding ham through a window can be all…

Release Date: OUT NOW! 2015 | 18 | Blu-ray/DVD IF THE presence of Bruce Willis’s name above the title of this SF thriller makes you think it’s a big and oddly overlooked studio picture, then the makers of Vice have pulled their canny con off. This is a bottom-shelf cheapo, a dunderheaded exploitation quickie with faint echoes of Westworld and Blade Runner in its story of sex androids servicing their clients’ rape and murder fantasies. It’s a juicy sci-fi premise, but not one that the writers of Vice ever explore, instead fashioning their script as an artless chase movie, populated by cliché thriller cyphers. Thomas Jane looks embarrassed, and Willis simply bored. In the career of the Die Hard star, Vice ranks somewhere below his adverts for Sky Broadband. Extras:…

Release Date: OUT NOW! 368 pages | Hardback/ebook Authors: Terry Pratchett, Stephen Baxter Publisher: Doubleday CAN WE EVER TRULY ESCAPE our responsibilities? Or more subtly, take on new responsibilities while leaving behind a former life? Not, it seems, if you’re the AI reincarnation of a Tibetan motorcycle repairman and you’ve relocated to an exotic Earth where, despite your protests that all you really want to do is live the rural life, events are about to turn very peculiar indeed. Welcome again to the parallel worlds of Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter’s Long Earth sequence, where if you don’t like the neighbours, there’s always the option of stepping to another version of home. Except, as AI-turnedfarmer Lobsang is about to discover, some neighbours can’t be safely left behind, not when they…

Release Date: 26 June 448 pages | Paperback/ebook Author: Bennett R Coles Publisher: Titan Books A NEW AUTHOR KICKS OFF a new trilogy, a military space epic set in an alien-free universe where war rages between Earth and its colonies. Virtues Of War tightens its focus to four Terran personnel – two men, two women – and their tensions and rivalries as the conflict heats up. Unfortunately, the war is envisioned more impressively than the characters. The book starts on a provocative note, with one of the quartet – a female Lieutenant called Katja – striking into enemy territory and blowing the head off an unarmed civilian to terrorise the locals. This has the risky effect of getting much of the readership to root against Katja and her comrades (it’s…

Release Date: 2 July 368 pages | Paperback Author: Jo Walton Publisher: Corsair ACCORDING TO THIS book’s Notes, Jo Walton came up with the idea of time travellers attempting to set up Plato’s Republic when she was 15. Reading the resulting novel, it appears she hasn’t actually thought much more about the concept in the intervening three decades. The Just City is an interesting idea desperately in search of a plot. It kicks off in misleadingly quirky and lively fashion, with the god Apollo perplexed that a nymph would rather transform into a tree than accept his advances. To understand this reaction he decides to spend a lifetime incognito as a human. Handily, sister Athene is planning to use people plucked from different ages to see if they can build…

Release Date: OUT NOW! 408 pages | Hardback/ebook Authors: Simon Guerrier, Dr Marek Kukula Publisher: BBC Books PART OF DOCTOR WHO’S original remit was to be educational – to teach young viewers about science and history. This was swiftly forgotten in the success of aliens and spaceships, of course, but that hasn’t stopped generations of children being inspired by wonders they saw on screen, and several books have sought to explore the real-life science behind the fiction. This volume contains 15 short stories, each touching on a scientific principle that’s followed up with a look at the real science behind it. A touching tale by Una McCormack about a woman who absorbed the memories of a dying culture leads into a look at how our short and long term memory…

Release Date: OUT NOW! 587 pages | Paperback/ebook Author: Stefan Spjut Publisher: Faber & Faber Susso Myrén is a trollhunter. Not of the internet variety, though she does run a website; Susso is an amateur cryptozoologist, and the trolls she’s interested in are the shapeshifting creatures of Swedish folklore. No one takes her seriously until her troll-cam snaps a photo of a weird-looking man lurking around the house of an abducted child. Then everyone’s taking her seriously – including the kidnappers. It’s being marketed as ideal “for fans of Let The Right One In”, but despite a promising set-up, Stallo takes way too long to get going. A missing child ought to provide a kind of ticking clock, but there’s no urgency to this story; relevant information is doled out…

Release Date: OUT NOW! 384 pages | Hardback Author: Jonathan Rigby Publisher: Signum Books IF YOU LOVE BRITISH horror films, buy this. It’s one of three or four books on the subject that you simply must own. If you already have the first edition, published in 2000, upgrade, since it’s been extensively updated. Fifty-five pages on horror from 2000-2015 have been added, but there are also updates sprinkled throughout. If you don’t own that, you’ve been missing out. Jonathan Rigby has an encyclopaedic knowledge of British horror, but more importantly he’s a good writer; he has an engagingly sardonic tone, a keen eye for a trend, and understands that a synopsis does not constitute a review. After a few hours’ reading you’ll come away with two mental lists: one of…