SFXの May 2018 の目次

If it was DVD box sets that showed that watching loads of TV episodes in one sitting could be a hell of a lot of fun, it was the advent of streaming that turned it into an international pastime. Nowadays, with Netflix, Amazon and even the Beeb often dropping entire seasons in one go, it takes serious amounts of willpower to resist losing entire evenings to your new favourite show – and when there’s so much great stuff out there, why would you want to? We’ve devoted this issue to celebrating the most bingeable television on the planet. We’ve been on set for Netflix’s new take on Lost In Space (p40), interrogated the showrunners of this year’s two most hotly anticipated returning shows, Westworld (p46) and The Handmaid’s Tale (p56),…

Leila is characterised as strange and reclusive. How did you find playing her? I did quite a lot of research into autism, even though I discussed with lots of people whether she is autistic or not. She might not be. It’s just she’s basically spent her entire life being a carer, which means she hasn’t been introduced to traditional ways of socialising. It felt like the character was upside-down. Her delivery of lines are opposite of how a “normal” person would say them. You’re always trying to play naturalism but it felt like I had to turn everything on its head in order to understand where she comes from. You’re essentially playing two characters – Leila in real life, and Leila as Shadowfax, her online avatar. How was that? It…

SCI-FACT! Joseph Morgan first portrayed Niklaus “Klaus” Mikaelson in 2011 Vampire Diaries episode “Klaus”. KLAUS IS GOING BACK TO OLD WAYS 1 Season four culminated with the Mikaelson clan – Klaus, Elijah, Rebekah and Kol – splitting the supernatural Hollow into four, and each sibling absorbing a portion of the malevolent entity in order to save Hope. When The Originals returns for season five, a time jump shows that Klaus has regressed back to his old wicked ways. “Without having his daughter standing in front of him to make him be a decent soul, he’s back on his own,” reveals consulting producer Jeff Lieber, who shares showrunner duties with franchise overseer Julie Plec. “When we meet Klaus at the beginning of the season, he’s come undone. The first scene is…

SCI-FACT! Haldeman and Marvano also produced Dallas Bar, a graphic novel series based on Haldeman’s novel Buying Time. The forerunner of future war strips like 2000 AD’s Rogue Trooper, Joe Haldeman’s classic 1974 novel The Forever War has also been adapted into comics. Scripted by Haldeman himself with his wife Gay Haldeman, and drawn by Belgian artist Marc Van Oppen, aka Marvano, it first appeared in Europe in 1989 and has now been published in English by Titan Comics, who will release sequel Forever Free in April. “Marc Van Oppen met me at a UK science fiction convention many years ago, and asked whether I would be interested in collaborating on a graphic novel edition of the book,” recalls Haldeman. “We spent a year or so breaking the story down…

SCI-FACT! John Wagner set 1987 Chopper/Judge Dredd epic Oz down under at McCarthy’s request but he only draw part of it. Marlon “Chopper” Shakespeare is returning to the Judge Dredd Megazine in a new series by David Baillie and Brendan McCarthy. But rather than taking place in the Sydney-Melbourne Conurb, “Wandering Soul” sees the Midnight Surfer in the devastated Aussie outback. “It’s probably not a spoiler to say that his lifeguard gig didn’t end well,” laughs Baillie. “How he goes from there to the Radlands is covered in the first couple of episodes, and the emotional fallout from that drives his decisions throughout the story.” With Chopper confronting a threat to the mythical Songlines, McCarthy explores the long-standing interest in Aboriginal culture and painting that he developed during the six…

SCI-FACT! For the first time since the show returned in 2005, the new series of Doctor Who will not be scored by Murray Gold. ARTY McFLY While you could never call Back To The Future “timeless” – that would mean denying its central premise – it is the sort of classic tale that could be retold forever. Illustrated by Kim Smith, the artist who went back to Mulder and Scully’s youth for X-FIles: Earth Children Are Weird, this new book makes Marty McFly and Doc Brown’s adventures between 1985 and 1955 look cuter than they ever have before. This illustration gives a hint of what to expect when the book arrives on 24 April… SIGN OF THE TIME (LORD) We’ve heard her speak, we’ve seen her outfit, and now we’ve…

Subscribe at myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/sfx THUNDERBOYLE! BOND 25 Despite intel to the contrary, Christopher Nolan won’t be reporting for active duty on the 25th Bond film. “I won’t be the man,” he tells BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs. “No, categorically. I think every time they hire a new director I’m rumoured to be doing it.” Step forward Danny Boyle, latest frontrunner to helm 007’s next adventure. Word is the Trainspotting director is collaborating with writing partner John Hodge on a screenplay – and that’s a rival script to the one already being worked on by franchise veterans Neal Purvis and Robert Wade. Boyle already has a Bond credit on his CV: he directed Daniel Craig and beloved bit-part actress Elizabeth Windsor in that skit for the 2012 Olympics. Production begins later…

WORTH £800! A QUIET PLACE IS IN CINEMAS FROM APRIL 6 In the modern horror thriller A Quiet Place, a family of four must navigate their lives in silence after mysterious creatures that hunt by sound threaten their survival. If they hear you, they hunt you. John Krasinski directs and stars in A Quiet Place, a nail-chewingly intense post-apocalyptic horror thriller, playing a father who must use his ingenuity to keep his family alive. They learn sign language to communicate, lay down sand paths to mute their movements and use a lighting system to alert each other to danger. You can read more about the film, which co-stars young British actor Noah Jupe (The Night Manager), teen actress Millicent Simmonds (Wonderstruck) and Krasinski’s real-life wife Emily Blunt (who’ll be seen…

CELEBRATING CLASSIC SF & FANTASY NOVELS Apartheid – a mad social experiment run by people who shouldn’t have been trusted with a mechanical pencil – ended in 1990. But nearly 30 years later, you can still feel its shadow darken large areas of life in South Africa. Our country still has rampant inequality, insane corruption, and small groups of over-privileged loonies who think it wasn’t all that bad, really. This coloured the type of stories that come out of the place. For a long time, a story written by a South African author, or a movie made by one of our filmmakers, came with a question behind it. That question could be out in the open, or somewhere in the background, but it’s always there. Namely: how does this person…

THE COMIC Gold Key Comics put a sci-fi spin on Johann David Wyss’s 1812 novel The Swiss Family Robinson long before CBS did. First published in 1962, Space Family Robinson followed the adventures of the titular family. Lost In Space’s network never acquired the licence. Rather than sue, a deal was struck allowing the publishers to add the title Lost In Space from its January 1966 issue onwards. THE MOVIE William Hurt, Matt LeBlanc and Gary Oldman were among the cast of the 1998 movie. Batman Forever writer Akiva Goldsman’s script retained the basic setup, but added carnivorous space-spiders and a lot of time travel. It grossed $136 million – a moderate success, but not enough to warrant a sequel. THE TV PILOT In 2004, John Woo shot a pilot…

WHEN JIM STARLIN first created Thanos in 1973, it never occurred to him that three decades later the Mad Titan – along with future Guardians of the Galaxy Drax and Gamora – would become one of the main players of a major movie franchise. “When I was starting out, computers weren’t capable of producing the visual wonders that they are today,” he tells SFX. “It just seemed that the visuals alone would have kept filmmakers from tackling those stories. Plus I always figured that my characters and tales were too off-beat to appeal to a mass audience, as I always thought of them as sort of cult icons.” Thanos has often been erroneously described as Marvel’s answer to DC’s similarly megalomaniacal alien, Darkseid. “I’m partially responsible for the mix-up after…

“WHAT IF WE GOT AI RIGHT AND MANAGED TO NOT MAKE IT A TOTAL DICK?” We live in a world where disturbing news items can be buried away in places you don’t expect. A while back, James Smythe was reading an article about Google’s DeepMind research into artificial intelligence (AI). “They did some game theory stuff, getting [the AI] to play Pong, that sort of thing,” he says, “but they were gearing up to get it to teach itself how to play Space Invaders. And I thought, ‘But that’s a game where the fundamental basic rule is that you shoot these things before they reach you.’ You have to shoot to survive. That’s a strange place to start when teaching an AI.” Smythe, a writer whose fiction constantly coalesces around…

Get sci-fi news, reviews and features at gamesradar.com/sfx RELEASED OUT NOW! 12A | 118 minutes Director Roar Uthaug Cast Alicia Vikander, Walton Goggins, Daniel Wu, Dominic West, Kristin Scott Thomas Remember how our first look at Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft generated copious pisstaking because her neck looked stretched and weird? Whether it was a Photoshop faux-pas, the shot being taken from a weird angle or just the fact that Vikander has a lanky old neck (not that she has), it made us chuckle. Now hold onto the memory of that chuckle, because there’s nothing – absolutely nothing – to laugh about in the actual movie. This new flesh-and-blood Lara Croft angsts. She cries. She gets injured. She has wounds stitched up without drugs. She screams, croaky-voiced, in rage or pain. She’s…

RELEASED 6 APRIL 15 | 98 minutes Directors Jeremy Dyson, Andy Nyman Cast Andy Nyman, Martin Freeman, Alex Lawther, Paul Whitehouse Based on their award-winning play, which was itself inspired by classic horror films, Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson’s creepy, clever portmanteau chiller has come full circle. Now a movie in the style of old Amicus anthologies, bringing in influences from modern horror trends, Ghost Stories is a love letter to genre cinema that absolutely works on its own terms. It might not exactly feel new, but it’s an excellent update of a British subgenre that’s been missing on our screens for too long. Framing the triptych is Nyman himself, playing professional debunker of the supernatural Professor Goodman, who’s contacted out of the blue by an old TV hero who vanished…

Get sci-fi news, reviews and features at gamesradar.com/sfx RELEASED OUT NOW! 2018 | SVOD Showrunner Melissa Rosenberg Cast Krysten Ritter, Rachael Taylor, Carrie-Anne Moss, Eka Darville, Janet McTeer DRINKING GAME Knock back a beverage of your choice every time… Jessica drinks some booze, or an energy drink (warning: may cause death). Dr Malus – the scientist responsible for Jess’s powers – is wearing a different t-shirt for a ’60s rock band. Jessica legs it down the street in pursuit of someone. Trish takes a hit from her super-inhaler. Someone riffs on Spidey’s Uncle Ben’s “With great power…” line. Jessica sacks Malcolm, yet again. NETFLIX With its strong female characters (and by “strong female characters” we don’t just mean “capable of punching a hole in the wall”), Jessica Jones was always…

Get sci-fi news, reviews and features at gamesradar.com/sfx EXTRAS RELEASED 2 APRIL 1979-1981 | 15 | Blu-ray Creator Glen A Larson Cast Gil Gerard, Erin Gray, Tim O’Connor, Eric Server, Felix Silla BLU-RAY DEBUT Ah, the early post-Star Wars years: a time when showrunners were desperate to bring in the kind of big bucks George Lucas’s epic had earned, and threw spaceships at the screen willy-nilly. There were certainly no flies on Glen A Larson: he launched the colourfully cheesy Battlestar Galactica in 1978, and his next baby, based loosely on the pulp character of the ’20s and ’30s, was ready in March the year after. Gil Gerard plays the eponymous astronaut, propelled through time from 1987 to a future Earth. He teams up with kickass pilot Wilma Deering (Erin…

EXTRAS RELEASED 9 APRIL 1961 | PG | DVD In this recently rediscovered episode from the first series of The Avengers, Ian Hendry’s suave Dr Keel is the nominal hero but it’s Patrick Macnee’s puckish Steed who’s an icon in waiting. Meanwhile, the funfair backdrop of ghost trains and fortune tellers is the kind of oft-kilter Englishness that later seasons would mine gloriously + Extras Big Finish recreation/writer interview; interviews with Hendry/Macnee; missing episode scripts/slideshows; 64-page booklet.…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2018 | Available via www.stargatecommand.co WEBSERIES This 10-part prequel to the original Stargate movie is set in 1938, and features Nazis, well-meaning scientists and a gormless British army officer making the first trip through the portal. Cheap-looking, with rushed direction and who-needs-rehearsal acting, it’s thin on plot, with cringey business from a comedy sidekick and an unconvincing romance. But it livens up towards the climax, with some genuine shocks, lively action and pleasing nods to continuity.…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 1970 | 15 | Blu-ray Director Chou Hsou Chiang Cast Chang Mei-Yao, Yang Li Hua, Ko Hsiang Ting, Ko Hsiao Pao Piano crash! Eerie female wail! Creaky-door percussion scrape! The score for this Hong Kong horror is quite something, emphasising sinister shadows with all the subtlety of someone writing a passive aggressive note about pinching milk from the office fridge in ALL CAPS, underlined three times. Otherwise, by the 88 Asia range’s standards, this Shaw Brothers Studio production is comparatively tame. A melodramatic period piece based on a tale from the same 18th century collection that inspired 1987’s A Chinese Ghost Story, it sees a homeless scholar moving into a house reputed to be haunted. There he meets a young woman he makes his wife. Locals…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2017 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD Director Angela Robinson Cast Luke Evans, Rebecca Hall, Bella Heathcote, JJ Feild One of the most fascinating things about Wonder Woman is her origins as a pioneer of sadomasochistic fantasy. Her creator, psychologist William Marston, believed people fell into the categories of dominant and submissive, and filled his initial comics with spanking, bondage, torture and other “sexual perversions”. In this honey-lit period drama, director Angela Robinson delves behind the pages to look at what inspired Wonder Woman, chiefly Marston’s relationship with his wife Elizabeth (Rebecca Hall) and grad student Olive Byrne (Bella Heathcote) – a relationship the film depicts as polyamorous (though the Marston family dispute this). Refreshingly, Professor Marston avoids falling into skeezy male fantasy; it’s not just a chance…

Get sci-fi news, reviews and features at gamesradar.com/sfx RELEASED 26 APRIL 560 pages | Hardback/ebook Author Raymond E Feist Publisher Harper Voyager This first book in Raymond E Feist’s new series The Firemane Saga follows the fortunes of two youths growing into their full potential in a world ruled by powerful kings and barons. Once, there was a pact: the five kings would rule separately, but peacefully. All that changed when the King of Ithrace was betrayed and murdered by the other rulers. Now the peace that’s lasted for centuries is teetering on the brink, ready to fall away into all-out war. Declan is a young master smith, making his way in this world. He’s a moral, hardy, salt-of-the-earth lad. Hatushaly (or Hatu for short) is in training with the…

RELEASED 5 APRIL 400 pages | Hardback/ebook Author James Smythe Publisher The Borough Press Nothing lasts forever. An easy thing to say, but harder to accept when the end we’re contemplating is that of someone we love. For Laura Bow, whose computer programmer father disappeared when she was seven years old, the problem is made worse by not knowing if he’s alive or dead. Reading her father’s old programming manuals in an effort to connect to his memory, Laura builds a rudimentary artificial intelligence program on the computer in her bedroom. She names it Organon, a reference to Kate Bush’s song “Cloudbusting”, a favourite of both her and her father, which – because they were listening to it together the night before he vanished – forms the core of her…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 185 pages | Hardback/ebook Authors Jacqueline Rayner, Jenny T Colgan, Susan Calman, Dorothy Koomson Publisher BBC Children’s Books “Is the future going to be all girl?” “We can only hope.” Doctor Who is having a bit of a female moment. First Missy, now the Doctor herself – but of course, the Doctor has always been “assisted” by capable women. This book features four stories in which the companion saves the Doctor. In Jacqueline Rayner’s “Sarah Jane And The Temple Of Eyes”, Sarah Jane helps the Fourth Doctor escape from a female-dominated cult in ancient Rome, while in “Rose And The Snow Window” by Jenny T Colgan, a time leak links modern-day Toronto with pre-revolutionary Russia, and Rose must rescue both the Ninth Doctor and a young Count…

RELEASED 3 APRIL 464 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Edgar Cantero Publisher Titan Books It’s a premise so delicious it should make ’80s and ’90s pop culture fans rub their hands together like a caretaker in an episode of Scooby-Doo with a plan to steal some gold. In the late ’70s, four teenage self-styled detectives foil a dastardly plan by apprehending a criminal dressed as a sea creature pretending to haunt an ancient mansion. But 13 years later the team must reunite when it looks like the case might not have been so simple… Playing like a live-action Scooby-Doo with lashings of Enid Blyton, via Stranger Things nostalgia, with an icky dose of HP Lovecraft, Meddling Kids could have been geek culture gold with a rollicking plot. But as with many…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 307 pages | Hardback/ebook/audio Author Peter Laws Publisher Icon Books What’s the appeal of the macabre? That’s the question Peter Laws sets out to answer in this book, subtitled Why We Love Monsters, Ghosts, Death & Gore. Chattily melding thesis, travelogue and memoir, it sees the writer quizzing psychologists and academics, dragging beef steaks around Hull in search of a werewolf, and trawling the net for serial killer memorabilia. The answers he comes up with are pretty obvious, really: horror can provide a safe outlet for our violent urges; witnessing death can make us feel alive. Along the way, Laws unearths some amusing nuggets of trivia, but surprisingly, given that he writes a monthly column on horror for Fortean Times, a few errors slip through too. The…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher DC Comics Writers Gabriel Hardman, Corrina Bechko Artist Gabriel Hardman GRAPHIC NOVEL The 2011 movie adaptation of Green Lantern had many problems, but one of the biggest was that the original GL mythos is packed full of old-fashioned comic-book concepts that don’t translate well to a mainstream audience. Now, as if acknowledging this, the latest of DC’s Earth One graphic novels – a series that aims to deliver accessible versions of iconic superheroes – takes a radical approach. This new interpretation leaves out the spandex, the domino mask, the “In darkest day or blackest night” poem, and even Hal Jordan’s identity as a hotshot pilot. Instead, Green Lantern is now an engagingly gritty space opera, in which Jordan is an ex-NASA astronaut in need of redemption…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher DC Comics Writer Andrew Constant Artists Brad Walker, Andrew Hennessey ISSUES 1-4 Since he entered into a Faustian pact with his infernal counterpart in 1972, it’s usually been Jason Blood that’s tormented by his demonic other half. So it’s refreshing to see him turn the tables on Etrigan in this six-part series. With the Underworld literally descending to Earth after a nuclear explosion in the suitably hellish surroundings of Death Valley, Andrew Constant’s tale treads a well-worn path to Armageddon. But he concludes the first issue with an intriguing twist, as the merging of two realms means that Etrigan and his human host exist on the same plane. Wisely keeping Etrigan’s trademark rhyming couplets in check until he really works up a head of steam, “Hell…

OPEN UNTIL 9 SEPTEMBER Venue The O2 EXHIBITION As you might expect, this celebration of the DC Universe is heavily slanted towards Superman and Batman. There’s a much smaller section on Wonder Woman, while other heroes are left with scraps. But it’s still great fun, packed full of content. There are comics pages; film storyboards and concept art; video and audio commentaries; props and costumes. The comic highlights include vintage original artwork, some with whited-out patches and glued-on bits of card. There are paintings for the never-made Superman Lives film. There are cute Lois and Superman dolls made to test the flying effects in the 1978 movie, and Anton Furst’s art for the fantasy Gotham City of Tim Burton’s Batman. But it’s the costumes that really stand out, allowing you…

RICHARD EDWARDS EDITOR RAVES Thanks to everyone who came to our first SFX Book Con at Foyles in London! Really excited about the prospect of a new TV series set in Iain M Banks’s Culture universe. It’s about time! Congrats to Guillermo del Toro, Jordan Peele and Roger Deakins on their Oscar wins! Best year for genre since The Return Of The King. IAN BERRIMAN REVIEWS EDITOR RAVES An out-and-out horror film, Get Out, won the Oscar for Best Screenplay! Brilliant! Picking up Paddy Kingsland’s soundtrack for ’70s kids TV show The Changes on Record Store Day. RANTS Tom Baker’s first season of Doctor Who is coming out on Blu-ray, but using the new logo on it makes me twitch… JONATHAN COATES ART EDITOR RAVES Finally saw the utterly vibrant…

Subscribe at myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/sfx SCI-FACT! As a live-action director, Oz has helmed Little Shop Of Horrors, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Bowfinger and more. Cue the music and light those lights because after more than 60 years it’s finally time to hear the inside story behind the creation of Jim Henson’s ragtag group of Muppets. Helmed by Henson’s closest collaborator (as well as Miss Piggy, Fozzie, Cookie Monster and Yoda’s real-life alter ego), Muppet Guys Talking sees the multi-talented Frank Oz make his documentary directorial debut and return to where it all began by gathering four original Muppet performers to hear first-hand how this beloved troupe of frogs, pigs, dogs, chickens – and whatever the hell Gonzo is – came to be. “What’s interesting is that we’ve always been interviewed separately for years…

Subscribe at myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/sfx SCI-FACT! Blue Season was only the third short Daisy Ridley made before signing on to Star Wars. Every year, Sci-Fi-London invites budding filmmakers to craft a five-minute masterpiece in just 48 hours. Registration for this year’s competition is now open, and it’s free: just create an account at www.sci-fi-london.com. Make sure you log in on Saturday 7 April at 11am to receive directions, including the title, a piece of dialogue, a prop list and an optional theme. You’ll then have 48 hours to create your masterwork. Need inspiration? Here are some of the best… IT’S NO GAME David Hasselhoff co-stars (as HoffBot) in this short co-scripted by an AI programme called Benjamin (no, really). Fittingly, it’s a savagely satirical Hollywood nightmare in which human writers have become…

“I was walking around a Comic-Con in Glasgow and there wasn’t anything there from Scotland,” recalls Fraser Coull, creator of supernatural web drama Cops And Monsters. “It showed the lack of sci-fi or supernatural shows from my own country, so I thought, ‘We can do better than this!’” Set in a near future, the show follows the Paranormal Investigation Team Scotland (PITS) responsible for policing the country’s supernatural community. Although the first series is now available on Amazon, it’s been bankrolled by crowdfunding, one episode at a time. “[National funding bodies] hadn’t coughed up any money because we were unknown quantities. I thought if we could get some money through crowdfunding, it was our own responsibility to make it happen – we had no excuse not to make it.” The…

Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape Of Water wins Best Picture and Best Director at the Oscars, Get Out wins Best Original Screenplay, and Coco gets Best Animated Movie. Roger Deakins wins Best Cinematography for Blade Runner 2049. Del Toro also wins a Bafta. Black Panther becomes fifth Marvel movie to take over $1 billion at the worldwide box office. Apple to muscle in on TV with new psychological thriller from M Night Shyamalan. Veteran Star Wars composer John Williams says next year’s Episode IX “will be quite enough for me”. Neil Gaiman expanding The Sandman Universe with comic series by new writers, kicking off this August. Next James Bond novel will be a Casino Royale prequel from Anthony Horowitz called Forever And A Day. British Library’s hit Harry Potter exhibition…

Chris Hemsworth orbiting the Men In Black reboot… Simon Kinberg directing a female-fronted Logan’s Run… 20th Century Fox bringing Silver Surfer to cinemas with a script by Brian K Vaughan… Christopher McQuarrie reportedly frontrunner to direct Green Lantern Corps… Arnold Schwarzenegger joining Michael Fassbender and David Hasselhoff in Kung Fury… The Six Billion Dollar Man set to be released 31 May 2019, starring Mark Wahlberg… Star Trek: Discovery’s Rekha Sharma to star in an adaptation of Ursula K Le Guin’s novel The Telling… Kenneth Johnson developing a V movie… Sony setting a 11 October 2019 release for Jason Momoa in The Crow… Highlander reboot has new draft by Ryan Condal… Gemma Chan joining Captain Marvel… Spider-Man spin-off Silver And Black delayed… David Goyer dropping out of Masters Of The Universe……

GRUDGE MATCH When someone makes a film in the grip of a powerful rage… they are cursed to make the same movie over and over again, apparently. Yet another reboot of J-horror classic The Grudge is in the works from Sony, and the latest news is that Andrea Riseborough is attached as the lead. Riseborough will play a detective and single mother, in a twist on the Sarah Michelle Gellar US redo from 2004 where she took the role of the social worker from the original. Nicolas Pesce, who made 2016’s gruesome horror The Eyes Of My Mother, is set to direct, while Midnight Meat Train writer Jeff Buhler is on screenwriting duties. Ju-On, aka The Grudge, has had 11 iterations so far, not including the videogame and graphic novel…

What shapes the story for your character in season two? So much of the season is about motherhood. I mean, you could say the first season was as well, but I definitely feel like we’ve locked into the idea of motherhood in season two in a whole new way. Bruce (Miller) and I always talked about this child that’s growing inside her as a bit of a ticking time bomb, and the complications of that are really wonderful to explore. It’s a wonderful thing to have a baby, but she’s having it potentially in this world that she may not want to bring it into. And then, if she does have the baby, the baby gets taken away from her and she can’t be its mother. So obviously it’s very…

Created by writer Chris Claremont and artist Bill Sienkiewicz, David debuted in New Mutants #25. He is the son of Professor Charles Xavier and Gabrielle Haller, and an Omega-level mutant. His mutant name is Legion from the Biblical passage in Mark 5:9, “My name is Legion for we are many,” which references David’s multiple personalities. David can use his powerful psychic powers to telepathically connect with others, even to the point of absorbing them into his own mind. After witnessing his stepfather’s murder by assassins, David went catatonic for years. He absorbed the assassin Jemail Karami, who remained a separate entity inside his head and eventually helped integrate the multiple personalities into a cohesive whole for David’s sanity. When he awoke from his catatonic state, he absorbed Professor X’s colleague,…

We gather you’re a fan of China Miéville.le. I’d read the book, and loved it. I’m also a fan of his short stories. They’re strongly rooted in contemporary life, but he brings a leftfield element. With this book, in particular, he gives you a landscape and characters that you’re familiar with. And it’s about how one populace can absolutely deny the existence of another populace. I think that’s a very contemporary idea – it’s how most cities work, in a very subtle way. It was a great privilege and pleasure to meet him. How does Tony Grisoni’s take on the story differ? China keeps you very much in the present. He’s interested in how the story’s moving forwards. Tony’s given it an element of this man having some historical demons.…

After Back To The Future beat Bill And Ted’s Time Van to the punch, writers Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon and director Stephen Herek were forced to go back to the drawing board regarding their heroes’ time-travelling device. It was Herek who ultimately came up with the idea of a phone booth but before that, any and all suggestions were welcome. “There was a draft where they all put on rings essentially and they just sort of fly through time,” remembers Matheson. “Just out of control, flung through the time void, falling and pin-wheeling and landing really roughly. That seemed funny but pretty chaotic and disorganised and unfocused,” he recalls with a smile. “That didn’t make the cut and I think it’s probably better that it didn’t!”…

How does your character relate to Lara? → I think Lu Ren has a parallel path story to Lara. Both their fathers went missing and they never got closure on that. But the difference is that he’s become really cynical about it, because he never really respected his father. Lara always respected hers, she just didn’t know what he did, and then he disappeared and left a lot of questions for her. Lu Ren always thought his father was a deadbeat. When Lara says, “Hey, let’s go look for our fathers,” he’s like, “I don’t give a shit about him.” Finally she convinces me. I think subconsciously Lu wants to know. He wants closure. Did you have input into the fight scenes? → It was just a matter of coming…

Get sci-fi news, reviews and features at gamesradar.com/sfx EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2017 | 12 | Blu-ray (4K/3D/standard)/DVD/download Director Zack Snyder Cast Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, Henry Cavill, Ezra Miller, Jason Momoa, Ray Fisher Turns out Wonder Woman was a bit of a false dawn. Just as we dared to believe that DC might have discovered the formula for making a fun superhero movie, the soulless, by-the-numbers Justice League suggests that the Amazon’s solo outing was just a glorious blip. Why Bruce Wayne assembles a bunch of metahumans is less important than the fact he does it – it is, of course, Justice League’s key selling point – but for what it’s worth, Earth’s finest join forces to fight off Big Bad Steppenwolf, an alien who wants to conquer the…

EXTRAS RELEASED 2 APRIL 2017 | 18 | Blu-ray/DVD Director Takashi Miike Cast Takuya Kimura, Hana Sugisaki, Sota Fukushi, Hayato Ichihara Based on a manga, this somewhat overlong film isn’t quite up with Takashi Miike’s very best work, but should sate bloodthirsty admirers of the likes of Ichi The Killer. It centres on a samurai given immortality by sacred bloodworms that repair any injury, who’s hired by a teenage girl to exact vengeance for her parents’ death. Manji is a world-weary, laconic type, and of course the kitten-eyed Rin eventually thaws his icy heart. This relationship isn’t quite as well-developed or touching as it could be, though. Miike fans will be more interested in the battles, which pit Manji against scores of assailants. Though occasionally too overcrowded – at times…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 1974 | 15 | Blu-ray Director Shin Sang-Ok Cast Lin Wei Tu, Lee Ching The life of South Korean director Shin Sang-Ok is more intriguing than any of the films he made. Kidnapped in 1978 by the North Korean state, by 1984 he was making Pulgasari for Kim Jong-Il: a monster movie in which a Godzilla-style beast leads a farmers’ uprising. Eventually, while on a business trip to Vienna in 1986, he fled to the US embassy. It’s a bizarre saga, but this Shaw Brothers movie by the director more than matches it in the weirdness stakes. When the handsome Mr Han returns after many years’ absence to visit his betrothed, he discovers that she’s just passed away; but at night, her elderly nanny leads him…

EXTRAS RELEASED 2 APRIL 1987 | 15 | Blu-ray & DVD (dual format) BLU-RAY DEBUT Joe Dante and John Landis were two of the five directors of this channel-hopping comedy, split into 21 skits; some, like the titular ’50s B-movie spoof, recur. It’s a hit-and-miss affair, and some reference points will leave younger viewers scratching their heads. But segments like spoof paranormal show Bullshit Or Not? are irresistibly silly. + Extras Commentary; two interviews; deleted scenes; bloopers; gallery; trailers; booklet.…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2004 | 15 | Blu-ray Director Masaaki Yuasa Cast Koji Imada, Sayaka Maeda, Takahashi Fuji, Seiko Takuma Mind Game is a Japanese animation whose slapstick and sublimity goes well beyond conventional anime style, much like the trippy, sexy Satanism of Belladonna Of Sadness. Imagine A Matter Of Life And Death with a sensibility closer to the Bugs Bunny cartoons or indie animator Bill Plympton (who called Mind Game “the Citizen Kane of animation”). The story begins in a bar in the Japanese city of Osaka, where a small-time comics artist tries reconnecting with the girl he adored at school. Then the bar’s attacked by monstrous yakuza. In short order, our hero’s dead and meeting a kaleidoscopically shapechanging God. Then he’s alive again, in the middle of…

Get sci-fi news, reviews and features at gamesradar.com/sfx RELEASED 13 APRIL 2018 | 15 | Download (also in selected cinemas) Director Lennart Ruff Cast Sam Worthington, Taylor Schilling, Agyness Deyn, Tom Wilkinson Despite its title, and the almost nostalgic presence of Sam Worthington as its lead, this isn’t a second sequel to 2010’s Clash Of The Titans, but a wearyingly glum story about a US marine (that’s our Sam) who volunteers for a life-altering genetic experiment. With only a few decades until Earth conks out on us, NATO’s eyes are on Titan. But instead of terraforming Saturn’s largest moon, the scientists here plan to genetically evolve a test human to live in its hostile climate. As the volunteers go through their Right Stuff-and-then-some tests, it becomes clear that Professor Collingwood’s…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 1967 | PG | DVD Director Barry Letts Cast Patrick Troughton, Deborah Watling, Frazer Hines, Mary Peach Once one of the lost grails of Doctor Who, “The Enemy Of The World” arrived in fast-tracked vanilla form shortly after news of its recovery in 2013. This special edition release delivers a remastered picture among other reasons to double-dip. A near-future tale of global intrigue, it’s very much an outlier in the Troughton era, borrowing from Bond and The Avengers, while its vehicle fixation – hovercraft! Helicopter! – would make Jon Pertwee green. Patrick Troughton provides an outrageous double-turn as the villain, all cigar, eyebrows and Accent of Evil. + Extras A TARDIS-load of bonuses compensates for 2013’s bare-bones release. Documentary “Treasures Lost And Found” (59 minutes) sends Toby…

RELEASED 5 APRIL 455 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook Author Leo Carew Publisher Wildfire The Wolf is a confident first novel. It navigates familiar literary territory – an untried ruler faces threats from foreign powers and political rivals at home – but it boasts a distinctive setting, and it maintains a brisk pace from cover to cover with no loss of momentum. Author Leo Carew cooks up a meaty broth of early medieval history, myth, and original fantasy. There are references to capital Lundencaester, the Abus (the Roman name for the Humber) and various European powers, but it’s not our world. Perhaps it’s best thought of as a parallel version of the Saxon era. The seven-foot-tall Anakim maintain a militaristic society in the north of Albion. Young prince Roper is thrust onto…

RELEASED 29 MARCH 486 pages | Hardback/paperback Author Kate Mayfield Publisher Point Blank That immortality would be a curse, rather than a blessing, is vividly demonstrated in Kate Mayfield’s debut novel: a sumptuously gothic tale that stretches from Iceland in 1783 to present-day London. Having drunk from a mysterious pool, Elísabet and her family are rendered immortal, but the change brings them to the attention of a mysterious enemy. Fearing for her son Rafe’s life, Elísabet sends him to live with her estranged sister Clovis in London, where different factions vie for control. A historical novel with a fantastical framework, The Parentations is epic in scope but personal in nature. While it spans more than 200 years, its focus is always on character. This is primarily the tale of four…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 496 pages | Paperbook/ebook Author James Brogden Publisher Titan Books The mystery of who put Bella in the wych elm is one of the most fascinating – and horrifying – unsolved murders in UK policing. In 1943, four children found a woman’s skeleton inside a tree in Hagley Wood near Birmingham. The culprit was never found, nor was the identity of the victim. Rumour and myth were quick to spread around “Bella”, and it wasn’t long before witches and Nazis were being touted as possible perpetrators. James Brogden uses the case as the spine of his second novel, weaving many of the historical elements into a plot about “Oak Mary” – a spirit pulled into our reality by amputee Rachel, whose missing hand can reach into the…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 320 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Shea Ernshaw Publisher Simon & Schuster It’s hard to review this YA debut without using the word “haunting”, because not only does that sum up the prose style, but The Wicked Deep is about… well, a haunting. Specifically, the haunting of an Oregon town named Sparrow, which is visited each summer by the ghosts of three sisters drowned 200 years beforehand by the witch-fearing townsfolk. The ladies, understandably rather pissed off by their watery demise, possess the bodies of three women and use these vessels to drown as many young men as possible in the sea. We see the events of the latest haunting through the eyes of lighthouse-keeper’s daughter Penny, who meets a handsome stranger on the night the sisters arrive,…

Fast Show/Young Bond veteran Charlie Higson adds another string to his bow with THE GATES OF DEATH (5 April, Scholastic). This latest Fighting Fantasy gamebook sends readers on a quest to the Kingdom of the Dead to defeat the Queen of Darkness. Prophetic dancing bears, exploding children and a lovesick Kraken are just some of the things to feature in THE SEA BEAST TAKES A LOVER (out now, Apollo); Michael Andreasen’s short story collection contains 11 strange tales. We awarded to A Man Of Shadows, Jeff Noon’s tale of a down-at-heel PI, an apparently invisible serial killer, and a zone in which you can purchase time. Follow-up THE BODY LIBRARY (3 April, Angry Robot) takes John Nyquist to a city where reality is infected by stories. Book three of Adrian…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher Marvel Comics Writer Chip Zdarsky Artists Jim Cheung, Valerio Schiti, John Dell ISSUES 1-3 The Fantastic Four’s Reed Richards and Susan Storm have been missing in action since 2015’s Secret Wars 2; this mini-series seems to lead up to their long overdue return. While the original Marvel 2-In-One series teamed The Thing with a host of different heroes, this six-parter is a two-hander between Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm, with the pair often resembling a pair of squabbling siblings. Chip Zdarsky’s poignant script emphasises the hole that Mr Fantastic and the Invisible Woman’s disappearance leaves in their lives. With some critics attributing their absence to tension between Marvel Studios and cinematic rights holders Fox, Zdarsky has some sly fun, as Johnny expresses outrage over how “disrespectful”…

Get sci-fi news, reviews and features at gamesradar.com/sfx RELEASED airing every Thursday at 6.30pm/available on iPlayer Broadcaster Radio Four RADIO SERIES In taking Douglas Adams’s creation home to celebrate its 40th anniversary, Dirk Maggs, writer/director of this sixth radio series, was presented with a massive creative challenge. His biggest problem: the source material. Eoin Colfer’s 2009 Hitchhiker’s novel And Another Thing… just isn’t very good. As impersonations go, it’s about as successful as your average karaoke singer having a crack at Whitney Houston. The storyline’s also pretty weak. After the destruction of Earth, a human civilisation does survive: Nano, a planetoid populated by ultra-rich Irish folk. Facing labour problems, Nano’s leader, Hillman Hunter (Ed Byrne, dialling the blarney up to 11), auditions for a God to provide order. But then…

SCI-FI TV ROUND UP Jon Favreau to create live-action Star Wars TV show for new Disney streaming service. Amazon working on TV adaptation of Iain M Banks’s first Culture novel, Consider Phlebas. Logan’s Dafne Keen to play Lyra Belacqua in BBC adaptation of His Dark Materials. Lin-Manuel Miranda to play Lee Scoresby, with The King’s Speech’s Tom Hooper lined up to direct. Parks And Recreation hero Nick Offerman to play Warlock’s dad in Good Omens. Black Mirror renewed for a fifth season, while Midnight, Texas gets a second. The Librarians cancelled after four years. “We’re just trying to work out how and when,” says Red Dwarf co-creator Doug Naylor of a possible series XIII. He adds that co-creator Rob Grant, absent since series VI, “may want to return to Red Dwarf…

Centring around a New York musician who reinvents himself as an online prophet after waking up one morning with 108 future predictions in his head, The Oracle Year is Marvel comics scribe Charles Soule’s debut novel. “I just about wanted to know if my dreams would come true,” Soule tells Red Alert. “I conceived the main idea behind the novel while I was still working as an attorney. It was very intense, and I was just scraping up any spare seconds I could find to pursue my goal of making a living from creativity. It seems to me that we all have questions like that which really boil down to ‘will I get what I want?’” Stating that “The Oracle Year is part of a very specific sub-genre in which…

CELEBRATING ICONIC SCI-FI STARS You don’t need superpowers to be a hero, reckons cult entertainment legend David Hasselhoff. “We’re all heroes. If you make somebody smile, if you help somebody, is a big thing in my life.” Which is one of the reasons why he’s still so proud of 1980s TV classic Knight Rider. “It’s got heart, humour and action – the three keys to making a good show.” We spoke to the Hoff at For The Love Of Sci-Fi, www.fortheloveofsci-fi.com. Would you like to play the role again? I’m working on bringing it back – bring the same car back and continue the saga. About 10 years ago NBC did a new version, and they didn’t really do a fantastic job, because I wasn’t involved, but I want to…

Tell us about your protagonist. What’s her story? Freya feels responsible for her beloved older sister going missing at 17, and has been stuck in a rut ever since. She gets a virtual assistant that has her sister’s personality and knows everything about her, which tempts Freya into a risky quest. What first sparked the idea for the book? It was a slow-burn concern about living online, building up our identities in the cloud. The next generation will have their “data ghosts” fed with information from an early age. Box this up as an artificial intelligence and you have something dangerously trustworthy. How long did the novel take to write? It took about six years, and was a real shape-shifter of a book, partly because I was trying to write…

SCI-FACT! Douglas Adams’s “City Of Death”, “Shada” and “The Pirate Planet” weren’t in the first Target run. For Doctor Who fans growing up in the ’70s and ’80s, a first introduction to the Time Lord’s adventures could just as easily have been through the classic Target novelisations as the television show. Now, three decades after the last title hit shelves, a new generation of Whovians are set to enjoy the same experience with the release of five new adaptations, including the very first new Who episode “Rose” by former showrunner Russell T Davies, and 50th anniversary multi-Doctor crossover “The Day Of The Doctor” by his successor, Steven Moffat. “I read ‘The Cave Monsters’ before I watched the show, and it was my first introduction to science fiction,” says Paul Cornell,…

THIS MONTH’S COMMUNICATIONS MONITOR RICHARD EDWARDS, EDITOR Unsurprisingly you responded in your masses about this month’s Hot Topic, the magnificent Black Panther – and you largely loved it. This month’s Very, Very Warm Topic was the exciting news that Amazon is adapting Iain M Banks’s Consider Phlebas, while you’ve also been very complimentary about the first-ever SFX Book Con. Thank you! As ever, our favourite letter of the month receives a book from our friends at the Black Library – so Jonathan Harvey will be getting Imperator: Wrath Of The God Machine in the post very soon. #WHAT DID YOU THINK OF BLACK PANTHER? Jonathan Harvey, email I really enjoyed Black Panther – definitely one of the best Marvel movies with a lot of memorable scenes. All the main characters were…

“CERTAIN TRACKS CAN TAKE ME TO OTHER WORLDS” Being able to write for a living really is a dream come true. This dream comes with an addiction to Red Bull, an extremely unsociable work pattern, and the kind of posture only to be rivalled by that of a mad scientist’s accomplice. Navigating the muddy waters of an isolated and unsociable profession can be challenging at times, and as a writer of science fiction and fantasy novels, I often have to immerse myself in imagined worlds, really taking myself away from “normal life”, usually writing for 8-12 hours a night. With only my thoughts for company, this can often be a tough and weary landscape to navigate, let alone an incredibly isolated one. Facing a dark hole of writer’s despair, I…

How does your Dr Smith compare to the original? Jonathan Harris was so inventive. I was obsessed with him as a little child – I adored him! He was very theatrical, and there’s a bit of that, but they’re grounding it with this Smith being a con artist – in the original, he was a spy. So I pretend to know what’s going on on the spacecraft: “That wasn’t my strong suit in training… Will, could you explain?” It’s that kind of thing. How does Dr Smith relate to the others? I feel like what I do is I take on each person that I’m with and act like they do – or like their shadow side. I pretend to be a therapist. I help people who need to talk…

Biodata Occupation → Actor Born → 15 June 1973 From → Albuquerque, New Mexico Greatest hits → Doogie Howser, M.D., Starship Troopers, Stark Raving Mad, Spider-Man: The New Animated Series, How I Met Your Mother Random fact → Harris voiced different versions of Marvel Comics’ webslinger in Spider-Man: The New Animated Series and the videogame Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions. For TV viewers who only know him as Doogie Howser, MD or Barney Stinson in How I Met Your Mother, Neil Patrick Harris might not seem an obvious choice to play Count Olaf, the flamboyant malefactor in A Series Of Unfortunate Events. But Harris’s acting pedigree extends far beyond his iconic TV roles. In particular, his success in Broadway musicals, such as Cabaret and Hedwig And The Angry Inch, speaks to a…

Tell us about Kate Caldwell… • She’s a discredited genetic engineer. She wants to use science in a way that’s going to help the planet but unfortunately her work gets taken over by an evil brother and sister duo who use her advances to make weaponised DNA. At the start of the movie she is trying to clear her name, and she teams up with Davis Okoye to try and secure an antidote to the weaponised DNA, and get the mutated animals back to their regular size. How did the stunts in Rampage compare to the Bond movies? • I thought that Bond was challenging, but it was nothing compared to Rampage. I was strung up to the ceiling on a plane that was tilted at 90 degrees, being flown…

What was the appeal of Ghost Stories? • I worked with Andy [Nyman] on a BBC film, The Eichmann Show. Lovely man. He told me that Ghost Stories had a bit of Sleuth to it, so he had me from that point: Sleuth was a film I watched every day from the age of 10 to 12. Then I read the screenplay and thought it was an interesting part to get my teeth into. Was it scary on the page? • It did prickle the skin. I certainly remember the bit where Paul Whitehouse’s character is in that abandoned warehouse and sees a horrifically misshapen little girl who puts her finger in his mouth. Did it help having practical effects to react to? • Absolutely. The nappies that all flew…

Bill and Ted have stuck with stars Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves since we first met them back in 1989 but they weren’t always the first choice for their respective roles. “They were really fun to watch from the start,” recalls Matheson, “but I’m pretty sure that the original idea was that Keanu would play Bill and Alex would play Ted,” he reveals. “I don’t know whose idea it was and I don’t know why it didn’t happen that way but it’s good that it didn’t. It’s better the other way around,” he admits. “It’s better that Keanu plays Ted and Alex plays Bill although I can’t exactly say why,” laughs Matheson. “But it is better.”…

Get sci-fi news, reviews and features at gamesradar.com/sfx RELEASED OUT NOW! PG | 109 minutes Director Ava DuVernay Cast Storm Reid, Reese Witherspoon, Chris Pine, Oprah Winfrey In adapting Madeleine L’Engle’s head-tripping 1962 children’s book, Disney’s spared no expense, and hired a director who’s brought a unique point of view. But while it opens up sci-fi/fantasy to those who don’t often see themselves represented, and embraces the moral ideas of the source material, it doesn’t make for a satisfying time in the cinema. Meg Murry (Storm Reid, who flits between decent performances, barely making an impression) is still heartbroken by the disappearance of her scientist dad (Chris Pine). Turns out he found a way to travel through space and time, but is now trapped by a nebulous evil. Three celestial beings…

Supercomputers built from the mysterious Element X, Justice League’s Mother Boxes are a core part of Fourth World mythology. Created by Jack Kirby in 1970, the saga of the Fourth World was told over four DC titles: The New Gods, The Forever People, Mister Miracle and Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen. An epic sprawl of Thor-style world-building and hippie-era freakiness, it’s the tale of two rival worlds, New Genesis and Apokolips, remnants of a planet blown in half. The villainous Darkseid seeks the Anti-Life Equation, which will give him mastery over the thoughts of everyone in the universe. Opposing him is his son, Orion. Some say George Lucas mirrored this dynamic in Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader – while Kirby’s concept of the Source, the metaphysical energy behind the Fourth World,…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2018 | SVOD Director Alex Garland Cast Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson NETFLIX While Alex Garland’s second feature has shades of a magnificent sci-fi opus, it often feels like the pop video equivalent of a truly haunting novel. Natalie Portman plays Lena, a biologist specialising in the life cycle of cells. When her husband falls into a catatonic state after returning from a covert mission, Lena is recruited by the Southern Reach to investigate what happened. Alongside four female scientists, she enters a quarantine zone called Area X, where an unexplained phenomenon has radically altered the landscape. Garland’s directorial debut, Ex Machina, was an icebox of gothic horror set in a single location. In contrast, Annihilation revels in the fresh air of its…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 1979 | PG | Blu-ray & DVD (dual format) Director King Hu Cast Chun Shih, Feng Hsu, Sylvia Chang, Rainbow Hsua This sedate pastoral curiosity from Wuxia master King Hu was originally heavily edited for length; this release finally makes the full cut available. Young Ho (Shih Chun) is dispatched to a temple to work on an ancient sutra with the power to free lost souls from limbo. He meets a number of odd folk, not least the beautiful Melody (Feng Hsu), whom he quickly marries. But supernatural forces are at work and his bride may not be all she appears to be… It’s a departure for Hu, more an impressionistic journey through the countryside than a martial arts fantasy. The cinematography is beautiful and Hu…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2016 | 18 | DVD Unlucky-in-lust Nico doesn’t know what to expect when he goes home with the mysterious Medea. But who could? His ordeal might be the squelchiest, splatteriest ritual committed to film. Director Roberto San Sebastián works his way through a list of bodily fluids – you name it, it gets splashed about – so while this is nominally a comedy, you’ll gag more often than you giggle. Far too slow to get going, it still has an unforgettable climax. + Extras None…

Get sci-fi news, reviews and features at gamesradar.com/sfx EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2017 | 15 | DVD Creator Bruce Miller Cast Elisabeth Moss, Joseph Fiennes, Yvonne Strahovski, Max Minghella In different hands, this adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 feminist dystopian novel could have been heavy-handed. Instead those hands are in part Atwood’s own; she co-wrote each of the 10 episodes, and with creator Bruce Miller and the assured direction of five helmers (four of them women) has created a must-watch show that’s prescient, nuanced and current. It’s eminently binge-able, but beware, it’s brutal. It envisions a future where dwindling fertility rates and a civil war in the US have created a totalitarian society known as Gilead. With women now forced into colour-coded castes, it follows Elisabeth Moss’s “Handmaid”, a fertile…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2018 | SVOD Director Duncan Jones Cast Alexander Skarsgård, Paul Rudd, Justin Theroux, Seyneb Saleh NETFLIX Expectations can be bothersome. The bullet points of Duncan Jones’s fourth feature – mute hero, missing girlfriend, near-future Berlin – lead you to expect a certain sort of story. So does the presence of Paul Rudd and Justin Theroux as a pair of M*A*S*H*-style wisecracking surgeons. But Mute is a far bleaker, stranger and more discursive film than these elements suggest. As Amish bartender Leo, Alexander Skarsgård is excellent – in the absence of any dialogue, forced to give those soulful Swedish peepers a serious workout. But his hero’s journey through a sleazy underworld is a blundering, doomed affair. And he has to share the limelight to a surprising degree. Jones…

Though not really a fantasy film, being instead (like Polanski’s Repulsion) a portrait of mental collapse, Robert Altman’s 1972 film IMAGES (out now, Blu-ray) is certainly hauntingly strange. Susannah York is excellent as the children’s author whose hallucinations lead to murder. Often leaving it unclear what is reality or psychosis, it’s beautifully shot, with an effectively eerie atonal score. Guillermo del Toro meets DreamWorks in TROLLHUNTERS SEASON ONE (out now, DVD). When teenage Jim (voiced by the late Anton Yelchin) discovers a mystical amulet, he unwittingly becomes a Trollhunter and is quested with saving the entire troll race from evil Gumm-Gumms. It’s gloriously funny and beautifully animated, bringing del Toro’s fascination with monsters and outcasts to a younger audience. Happy 40th birthday, BLAKE’S 7 (out now, DVD)! Don’t get too…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 368 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Leni Zumas Publisher The Borough Press The President has passed a new amendment to the United States Constitution: now, a fertilised egg is considered a person, with all the rights to life, liberty and property that come along with it. Sounds worryingly like a real headline? As Leni Zumas’s dystopian novel explores the dilemmas of several women dealing with the consequences of the amendment – a teen desperate for an abortion, an infertile woman aching for a child, a depressed mother who wants to escape her marriage, and an outsider accused of offering illegal terminations – it all feels depressingly familiar. Like Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Red Clocks explores the way female bodies are politicised and controlled, with grim consequences. It…

Get sci-fi news, reviews and features at gamesradar.com/sfx Stephen Baxter has returned to his Xeelee series for XEELEE: VENGEANCE ( 5 April, Gollancz). The first book of a new duology, it features recurring character Michael Poole, and sees the titular aliens coming through a wormhole gate and laying waste to the Solar System. We said: “Baxter thought his readership wanted to see Michael Poole vs the Xeelee. Xeelee Vengeance sets up this encounter splendidly, in a book with a sense of grandeur few other SF novelists can hope to match.” Set in a near-future where a second American Civil War broke out over fossil fuels, war reporter Omar El Akkad’s debut novel AMERICAN WAR ( , 5 April, Picador) is a topically-minded tale, which deals with climate change, drone warfare,…

RELEASED 10 APRIL 304 pages | Ebook (paperback due later in the year) Author SJ Morden Publisher Gollancz One Way has an extremely plausible premise: in the near future, a private contractor has been hired to build a Mars base and realises people are cheaper than robots. Accordingly they put together a team of convicts to go and do the job. The flaw in this plan is that they’re not the most stable bunch, and when they arrive one of them starts killing the others. The book trails itself as a murder mystery, but the murders don’t actually begin until well over a third of the way through. The time until then is taken up with training for the mission and arriving on Mars, giving the reader an awfully long…

Get sci-fi news, reviews and features at gamesradar.com/sfx RELEASED OUT NOW! 312 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Jason Fry Publisher Century Being sold as an “Expanded Edition”, this Episode VIII novelisation had extra input from writer/director Rian Johnson to go beyond what we saw on the screen. Anyone expecting it to provide answers to The Last Jedi’s major unanswered questions will be disappointed, however. This is very much a Director’s Cut in literary form, with the deleted/extended scenes ranging from the throwaway to the intriguing – not much is essential. As a novel it’s a decent read – not surprising, as Johnson gifted author Jason Fry a great story to work with. Its biggest problem is that many of the movie’s best moments are so cinematic they feel like damp squibs…

Get sci-fi news, reviews and features at gamesradar.com/sfx RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher DC Comics/Young Animal Writers Gerard Way, Steve Orlando, Jody Houser, Cecil Castellucci, Jon Rivera Artists Aco, Ty Templeton, Mirka Andolfo, Langdon Foss, Nick Derrington ISSUES 1-5 DC’s Young Animal imprint has had an impressive run since its 2016 launch, reviving some of the DC Universe’s weirder characters and bringing back a healthy dose of 1990s Vertigo-style craziness. They’re now celebrating their success with a crossover that brings their characters together with some of DC’s biggest heroes for a truly bizarre event comic. Milk Wars kicks off with the Doom Patrol discovering that the evil corporation RetConn is starting to rewrite reality with the use of its special, oh-so-tasty milk. Soon Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman have been transformed…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher Dynamite Entertainment Writer Mike Carey Artist Kenan Yarar ISSUES 1-3 A sci-fi heroine who also heralded the arrival of the sexual revolution, Barbarella is still best known for the groovy Jane Fonda-starring cult movie of 1968. However, she originated as a comic book character created by French artist Jean-Claude Forrest in 1962, and now she’s returned to life in a new ongoing title from Dynamite Entertainment. “The right mix of sci-fi weirdness, offbeat satire and camp” This first three-issue story arc wastes no time establishing the right mix of sci-fi weirdness, offbeat satire and outrageous camp, as Barbarella is imprisoned on the planet Parosia, a crazed religious dictatorship where sex is outlawed. She soon breaks out of jail with the aid of a female spy, but…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 180 minutes | CD/download Publisher Big Finish AUDIO DRAMA Under Russell T Davies, Doctor Who’s production team had a habit of referring to certain episodes as “love letters” to a particular era or person. Now it’s the turn of RTD’s space opera stories to get their own affectionate pastiche – though if this box set came as a missive in a scented envelope you’d be forgiven for skim-reading it to get the gist of things. Picking up after the events of 2007’s “Gridlock”, Tales From New Earth follows child of the Elevator Guild Devon Pryce, as he teams up with the feline Senator Hame to uncover conspiracies that are repeatedly circling back to a cult-like threat known as the Lux. Their search for truth leaps to new…