Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2015 i SFX

SCI-FACT! Pixels is based on a superb 2010 short by Patrick Jean: http://bit.ly/PixelsSFX. RELEASE DATE 12 AUG 2015…

GAME OF THRONES season five debuts to record ratings on both sides of the pond despite the first four episodes leaking online 24 hours before the season premiere. The Nominees for the 29th ARTHUR C CLARKE AWARD have been announced. The six shortlisted entries are: The Girl With All The Gifts (MR Carey), The Book Of Strange New Things (Michel Faber), Europe In Autumn (Dave Hutchinson), Memory Of Water (Emmi Itäranta), The First Fifteen Lives Of Harry August (Claire North) and Station Eleven (Emily St John Mandel). The winner will be announced on 6 May at an event in London. GODZILL a heading to hell in new comic book series from IDW. Michelle MacLaren drops out of directing WONDER WOMAN over “creative differences”. Guardians Of The Galaxy co-writer Nicole Perlman…

This SFX comes rolling off the presses 20 years after the first issue, which was dated June 1995, priced at “£3 of your Earth Money” and imaginatively numbered #1. In the light of hindsight, true ubergeeks or William Gibson would have started the count at zero. Somehow, over the decades, I’d mercifully forgotten that my first column drafts were titled “Supercritical” – a quirk which inaugural SFX editor Matt Bielby wisely ignored. Those were the days when paperbacks cost £4.99, the hot new cover-billed film was Tank Girl, Glasgow’s first World SF Convention took a full-page ad, the tie-in merchandise spot was headed “Objets d’arse”, and readers were carefully briefed on this new-fangled Internet thingy: “All you need to connect to Futurenet is an Internet account, such as Demon or…

Did you reference the original theme park attraction when you were designing the movie? Oddly enough, we didn’t take any cues from the existing Tomorrowland. In fact, we specifically decided to avoid that. It didn’t suit our story’s purposes at all. The title is a bit misleading in that respect. Because it’s the first thing you would think. But Tomorrowland in our movie is quite its own thing. There’s a grand history of designing cities of the future. What informed Tomorrowland’s aesthetic? We started as urban planners. The writer, Damon Lindelof, created this wonderful, 35-page backstory of who in his mind the founders of Tomorrowland were. He posited that the greatest minds of the late 19th century until at least the first half of the 20th century got together to…

You launched Peter Capaldi very successfully last year. How do you build on that success now? This series we’re telling the next stage of the adventure. It’s the glory years of Peter Capaldi’s Doctor and Clara. As you saw in the finale and the Christmas episode he’s kind of answered his question of “Am I a good man?” and this year he’s having the time of his life, having dangerous and exciting adventures in time and space. These are the glory days of the Doctor and Clara. They’re having the biggest, most dangerous adventures they’ve ever had and they’re having great fun doing it. What’s your ambition for this series? Everything is based on the character of the Doctor. Interesting, intelligent TV characters evolve, and you see different sides to…

EXCLUSIVE CHINA MIÉVILLE SHORT STORY! THE FIRST REPORTED CASE OF NEW DEATH occurred on August 23, 2017, in Georgetown, Guyana. At approximately 2:45pm, Jake Morris, a fifty-three-year-old librarian, entered his living room and found his wife, pharmacist Marie‑Therese Morris, fifty-one, motionless and supine on the floor. “I opened the door onto the soles of her feet,” he has said. Mr Morris testifies that he checked his wife’s pulse and found her cold. His claim to have gone to her side to do so has been the source of much controversy in neothanatology, this action of course being impossible in the case of the New Dead. Mainstream opinion is that this is the inaccurate memory of a distraught man. A substantial minority insist that there are no grounds to assume such…

The kids aren’t alright this month, from the shy, secretive fish-worker in excellent Scando chiller When Animals Dream, to the bullied kid with a serial killer for a brother in low budget curio Found. Then there’s two little zombie girls, Maggie and Melanie, making their way to big screens soon. Plus David Lynch gets an alarming offer... DREADFUL THING TO DO Come to The Haunted Picture House. This is a brand new horror experience in a lavish gothic-themed haunted house in a secret central London location where a classic chiller will be screened and dressing up encouraged. Think “secret cinema” for old-school horror hounds. Events happen weekly, with the first night taking place on 9 May from 7pm till midnight (there’s a bar....) Grab your fangs and your velvety jacket…

NEAR DARK 1987 Kathryn Bigelow’s moody meld of Western and horror follows Bill Paxton’s farm boy, inducted into a travelling clan of vamps. A radical take on the genre, it strips out the paraphernalia of garlic, crosses and stakes, swapping seduction for slaughter. BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER 1992 The Buffy movie wasn’t a rip-roaring success, but Fran Rubel Kuzui deserves credit for pushing Joss Whedon in new directions. Before she suggested taking inspiration from John Woo, martial arts wasn’t part of the concept. Sadly, she also played up the comedy elements to the point of camp. VAMPS 2012 Accepting ageing is a major theme in this bittersweet horror-comedy, which reunited Clueless writer/director Amy Hecklering with star Alicia Silverstone. Silverstone plays a 170-yearold vampire in NYC, who struggles with issues like…

Release Date: OUT NOW! U | 94 minutes Director: Tim Johnson Cast: Jim Parsons, Rihanna, Steve Martin, Jennifer Lopez CANDY-COLOURED AND cute as a bug, this toon about an odd-couple quest dares to boldly go where… just about everyone’s already been. When accident-prone alien Oh (Jim Parsons) teams up with Rihanna’s feisty human Tip, we’re not going anywhere Lilo & Stitch or Shrek haven’t already taken us. Except they get there faster. Setting up the invasion by the cowardly Boov makes this sight-gag-sprinkled tale a slow starter. But once Oh has accidentally betrayed their co-ordinates to the Boov’s deadly enemies, the Gorg, his fugitive mission with Tip bombs along through swooping jeopardy, including wrecking Paris with a topsy-turvy Eiffel Tower. The comedy is gentle and age-appropriate – the Boov resemble…

Release Date: 4 May 2014 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD/download Director: Alejandro G Iñárritu Cast: Michael Keaton, Emma Stone, Edward Norton, Andrea Riseborough, Naomi Watts, Zach Galifianakis THE HYSTERIA surrounding the awards season means that director Alejandro G Iñárritu’s latest is now best known for beating Boyhood to the Best Picture statuette at the Oscars. That’s kind of a shame, but it’s striking enough to outlast such trivia. Divisive it may be, but what we have here is one of last year’s most intriguing and technically impressive films – as well as one of its funniest. Michael Keaton stars as Riggan Thomson, a washed-up Hollywood star best known for playing Birdman – a superhero clearly analogous to, well, who do you think? Tired of his flagging blockbuster career, he embarks on…

Release Date: 25 May 2015 | TBC | TBC/DVD Directors: Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead Cast: Lou Taylor Pucci, Nadia Hilker, Francesco Carnelutti, Jeremy Gardner, Nick Nevern THE LESS YOU KNOW ABOUT the plot of Spring, the better it’ll work for you. It’s a film of surprises, a slowly unravelling mystery that will lose much of its power if you know what’s coming. So let’s just say that it’s about a newly-orphaned twenty-something called Evan (Lou Taylor Pucci) who decides to spend his inheritance on a trip to Italy. There, he falls in love with evolutionary science student Louise (Nadia Hilker). And then something terrifying happens. Even that might be saying too much, because if you didn’t know this was a horror movie, you might not guess for quite a while…

Release Date: 18 May 1963 | 12 | DVD Director: Sidney Salkow Cast: Vincent Price, Joyce Taylor, Sebastian Cabot, Brett Halsey, Beverly Garland, Richard Denning THREE adaptations of tales by nineteenth century American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne make up this horror anthology, which could be mistaken for one of Roger Corman’s pictures of the era, in that it stars Vincent Price and is “tightly” budgeted. First story “Dr Heidegger’s Experiment” is probably the best. Price is the friend of the titular doctor who discovers a water supply that appears to restore youth, but of course there’s a shock in store – which provides the movie’s most memorable image. Silly but fun. Even dafter is “Rappaccini’s Daughter”, in which Price plays a sort of twisted Alan Titchmarsh, inoculating his daughter with poison…

THE ASYLUM Release Date: 4 May 2015 | 18 | DVD The latest from Marcus Nispel (director of the remakes of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Conan The Barbarian and Friday The 13th) doesn’t exactly have an excitingly original premise – teens partying in an abandoned mental institution end up being picked off one by one after unleashing a possessing evil force – but may well appeal if you’re a fan of The Evil Dead, and like your horror to have a knowing attitude. Originally known as Backmask, its dialogue is pretty dodgy, but the deaths are enjoyably gory, and there are some decent self-aware gags – this is the sort of movie where the characters know full well that using a Ouija board is not likely to end well……

Release Date: 11 May 2014 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD IN THE YEAR 2044, most of the world’s population has been wiped out by solar flares. The survivors created a race of robots, named Pilgrims, to help rebuild society, programming them with two protocols: they may not harm any form of life and they may not modify themselves or any other robot. So what happens when they find an override to the second rule? With robots now about to self-repair and upgrade at will, the Pilgrims look set to evolve rapidly, leaving mankind behind. There are a lot of good ideas in Automata, but the script doesn’t have the courage of its premise. Boring action, cliché-drenched subplots and poor casting torpedo the movie, and only Alejandro Martínez’s rich cinematography emerges with…

Release Date: OUT NOW! 2014 | 18 | DVD THE PROBLEM with werewolves is that they traditionally only come out once a month; there’s a lot of downtime between one full moon and the next. While most werewolf movies just hit fast-forward, Night Of The Wolf uses every long moment to develop its main character. When a mysterious creature kills his neighbour, blind Vietnam veteran Ambrose McKinley (Nick Damici) tools up. But the real fight isn’t with the wolf; it’s with his own demons, making this more of a meditation on death and sacrifice than a monster movie. Thanks to too many loose ends and an unearned emotional sting, it doesn’t quite work – but the ’80s-style werewolf effects are fun. EXTRAS: Director’s commentary, Making Of, effects featurette.…

Release Date: OUT NOW! 2014 | U | DVD/download After Spaceballs, Troops, Family Guy: Blue Harvest and Robot Chicken: Star Wars you’d think the universe had run dry of Star Wars gags. Watching this latest skit from Disney Channel toon Phineas And Ferb only serves to reinForce that suspicion. The show, a kind of Family-Friendly Guy with a cult following, does bring two innovations to the table: the toon’s characters are inserted into the plot of Episode IV Rosencrantz and Guildenstern-style, having their own, parallel adventure. Plus: musical-style song and dance numbers. AT-AT’s entertainment! It’s mildly fun, but relies too heavily on the show’s own running gags to appeal much beyond Phineas And Ferb fans. EXTRAS: Five further episodes.…

Release Date: 21 May 500 pages | Hardback/ebook Author: Brian Catling Publisher: Coronet IMAGINE A VAST primeval forest. Light barely makes its way through the dense canopy, and the tangled underbrush means you can only move with extreme difficulty and effort. Occasionally you glimpse what look like contorted human or animal shapes. The air is filled with weird, incomprehensible noises. Brian Catling’s The Vorrh is set in this jungle, and resembles it closely. Understanding barely makes its way through the dense, overwritten prose. The tangled storylines mean you can only follow the plot with extreme effort and difficulty. Contorted human shapes (you can’t really call them characters) make weird, incomprehensible speeches. By day Catling is an artist and a poet, and it shows. He creates vast surreal landscapes, and he…

HARRY POTTER: MAGICAL PLACES FROM THE FILMS Release Date: 8 May 208 pages | Hardback Author: Jody Revenson Publisher: Titan Books •An in-depth guide to the locations and sets used to create the Harry Potter movie saga. •A beautiful mix of on-set photos, stunning concept art, and well-chosen comments from the filmmakers. •It’s remarkable how much of the Potterverse was created in (or inspired by) real places – as well as being constructed at Leavesden Studios. For instance, Privet Drive is a real street in Bracknell, that was imitated on set after the first movie to avoid disrupting the locals. •Includes loads of stories and “did you know” trivia that’ll be catnip for fans – like Emma Watson telling the production designers there should be more books in Hermione’s room.…

Release Date: 21 May 416 pages | Paperback/ebook Author: Tony Gonzales Publisher: Gollancz CLEARLY THE FIRST volume of a series, Tabit Genesis belongs to the genus Space Opera Biggus Hairius, and is acceptably big and hairy, though it’s also rather diffuse and lightweight. In the far future, Earth has been lost to aliens, and surviving humans have set up a fractious mini-society in a distant galaxy – actually, several societies, with bloody beefs between them. One of the main rows is over a new class division between naturally born humans and those grown in machines. The book splashes around pleasurably with familiar ideas, rather than finding a really grabby hook of its own. The chapters skip between loads of different plotlines and characters: a boy making a wondrous contact with…

Release Date: OUT NOW! 400 pages | Hardback/ebook Author: Lucy Hounsom Publisher: Tor WITH PARANORMAL romance and urban fantasy often dominating the shelves, it’s good to have a solid, traditional fantasy to settle down to. And one with a female protagonist is already setting itself up ahead of the curve. Kyndra is an average girl living an average life in her small town, awaiting the day when she will become an adult and receive her inheritance – the knowledge of her true name and destiny – along with all the young people in her homeland. But a day that should have been full of hope goes tragically wrong and her neighbours turn on her, leaving her to be rescued by two passing strangers, wielders of magic who insist she leaves…

Release Date: 14 May 352 pages | Paperback Author: Paul Magrs Publisher: Firefly Press THOSE INTREPID SOULS who’ve signed up to establish a colony on Mars might think twice after reading this vivid tale of hardy frontier folk struggling to survive on the inhospitable prairies of the Red Planet. Regular Doctor Who novelist Paul Magrs has been guilty of overdoing the whimsy in the past. Here, he dials that right down in favour of a convincing exercise in world-building – albeit one with a walking, talking sunbed and the occasional line like, “It was late in our Martian autumn when we were allowed to hold the funeral for Grandma’s leg.” After a gritty start, the book – aimed at teens, but with obvious crossover appeal – shifts gear into quest…

BETE Release Date: 14 May Author: Adam Roberts Publisher: Gollancz Talking cows and a surly former farmer feature in Adam Roberts’s darkly comic satire about man’s relationship with nature, in which animal rights activists have injected domestic animals with artificial intelligence chips in a bid to win them greater rights. We said: “Roberts happily punches difficult thoughts through the reader’s skull like bolts from a stun gun… it’s obvious he is having fun.” EXTINCTION GAME Release Date: 7 May Author: Gary Gibson Publisher: Tor In this tale of alternate worlds (the first in a series), a guy is rescued from his Earth, where humanity’s been decimated by a virus, then tasked by a mysterious agency, “the Authority”, with exploring other post-apocalyptic Earths. We said: “The apocalypse scenarios are reasonably colourful,…

Release Date: OUT NOW! Platform: PS4 Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment YES, HIDETAKA Miyazaki’s debut PS4 hack ’n’ slasher is hard. No, it’s not quite as good as Dark Souls. But get ready to hurt and be joyously chuffed about it. From Software’s legacy shows through: the tightly choreographed quasi-open-world exploration of Dark Souls is welded together by the interconnected hub world system seen in Demon’s Souls. It’s a hugely successful structural mish-mash, and one that offers unparalleled player agency when it comes to dealing with the utterly exacting, wonderfully poised third-person combat model. This is the most overtly horror-flavoured game From has ever designed. The city drips with dread; its cobbled, gothic streets smother you as cramped environments and baying mobs look to end your mysterious Hunter’s life. The combat…

LOOK OUT FOR SF X TV REVIE WS AT GAMESRADAR. COM Mondays – Get the week off to a bang with Game Of Thrones on Sky Atlantic. Gotham (until 11 May) and Person Of Interest are on Channel 5. Tuesdays – Penny Dreadful’s second season comes to Sky Atlantic on 5 May. You can also catch The Flash on Sky 1, Supernatural on E4 and The Originals on Syfy. Wednesdays – New episodes of Once Upon A Time on Netflix, plus The Vampire Diaries on ITV2 and Grimm on Watch. Thursdays – Wayward Pines debuts on 14 May, plus Arrow on Sky 1, Resurrection on Watch, and Sleepy Hollow on Universal (until 14 May). Fridays – More japes with Agents Of SHIELD on Channel 4, plus time travel fun in…

RICHARD EDWARDS EDITOR (2014-) RAVES The arrival of Age Of Ultron means the biggest blockbuster season ever is finally here! Roll on Mad Max, Jurassic World, Ant-Man and the rest. HOPE FOR THE FUTURE I’m really excited about new Star Wars and Marvel movies, but I hope the success of mega-franchises doesn’t stop studios from making original blockbuster movies. DAVE GOLDER EDITOR (1996-2005) RAVES A bit late to the party, I know, but how fantastic is Big Hero 6? Knew so little about it before watching and was totally sold within 10 minutes. HOPE FOR THE FUTURE No more Doctor Who episodes where the conclusion is “love conquers all”. Really fed up that these days you can defeat Cyberisation by wishing really, really hard… NICK SETCHFIELD FEATURES EDITOR RAVES How…

RICH I love the premise – Donkey Kong reaping carnage with barrels? Yay! – but the tone of this trailer is all over the place. Pixels needs to be a hell of a lot funnier if it’s going to sustain an entire film. DAVE I adore the concept (Pac-Man and Donkey Kong are games from my youth) but the trailer is more slapstick and Adam Sandler-y than I was expecting. Still, it’s got Peter Dinklage in it. ALEX Adam Sandler should be given the occasional chance, just so he can squander it again and we can all move on. Thus Pixels, a silly movie about voxels with cringeworthy lines. No! JORDAN Great concept, but shame the trailer isn’t the strongest. With Chris Columbus at the helm I’ve got high hopes…

ON SALE WEDNESDA Y 27 may JURASSIC WORLD Chris Pratt goes prehistoric! TERMINATOR: GENISYS Exclusyv! Thi insyde wyrd on Arnie’s rityrn! ANT-MAN Meet Marvel’s latest hero! Just don’t step on him! PLUS: Star Wars: The Force Awakens! The Clangers! The Haunting! Sense 8! Neal Stephenson! Song Of The Sea! Bat-Mite! Loads more! • All contents subject to change. Except the past. You can’t change that, you mad fool! No! Don’t touch that switch! Go to gamesradar.com/sfx for details. NEVER MISS AN ISSUE Subscribe today – see page 32…

Clones get a bad rap. Sci-fimovies have been flooding our brains with anticlone propaganda for ages. Poor clones are either shown as mere obedient soldiers as in the Star Wars prequels or as walking organ farms in movies like Parts: The Clonus Horror (1979) and its dumber 2005 Michael Bay version The Island. But what about those of us who want human cloning to be a real option? Don’t worry; I don’t want to clone myself so I can swap livers after consuming a lifetime of strong martinis. I want a clone for something much more banal than better organs. I need a clone to get stuff done. I can’t ever say no to party invites, writing assignments, podcast interviews, web series appearances and convention panels. And then there’s all…

CANDLE KILLERS Q Can you help identify a movie I watched when I was a teenager? All I remember is a possessed young girl charged friends to watch her sister in her bedroom through a spy hole and someone being locked in a fridge. Would love to find out what it is. Mark Jeffreys, Guernsey GUEST SFXPERT PHIL ASKEY SAYS: I believe this is a film called Bloody Birthday, from 1981. It’s about three children born during a solar eclipse who were “born evil” and go around killing people. At one point they lock a young boy (who witnessed them moving a body) in a fridge. And the sister of the evil girl gets an arrow to the face on the trio’s titular anniversary. It’s widely available on Blu-ray and…

Brian Blessed for Ramirez, because anything he says will be awesome! Andy P Meakin Vic Reeves as MacLeod and Bob Mortimer as Ramirez. Pretty much the entire cast of House Of Fools really. Wayne Cowie The only acceptable change in the soundtrack would be to have Muse cover the Queen originals. Mark Causer Gerard Butler for Connor and Robert Downey Jr for Ramirez. Gee David Hannah Wright The original Highlander is my favourite film of all time and it’s defined by the quality music of Queen. No remake will ever come close to it. Gareth Eardley Base it in Edinburgh, with Gillian Anderson as the love interest. Ann Newman A great looking, digitally restored director’s cut on Blu-ray and a time machine to stop all the sequels from happening. Joeri…

Tomorrowland welcomed its first visitors when Disneyland California opened on July 17, 1955, presenting a look at the world of 1986. In its first six years Tomorrowland also offered guests a tour of the original sets of Disney’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Disneyland’s Monorail, Submarine Voyage and Matterhorn rides opened in Tomorrowland in 1959 during the park’s “second opening”. Before his death in 1966, Disney envisioned a “space port”, which became, in 1977, Tomorrowland’s most popular ride: Space Mountain. 1986 saw George Lucas partner with Disney\ when Tomorrowland acquired the Star Wars-centric Star Tours and Michael Jackson’s Captain EO.…

Some of those who knew him best discuss Jonathan Wright listens in IN 2007, SIR TERRY Pratchett was diagnosed with posterior cortical atrophy (PCA), a rare form of early onset Alzheimer’s disease. He raged against the prospect of his “embuggerance” taking away his sense of self and campaigned for assisted dying to be made legal. He wanted, he said, to die in his own garden at a time of his own choosing, with a glass of brandy in his hand. But to the relief of those closest to Terry, the end came naturally and very peacefully. After a slow and gradual decline, Terry’s health failed rapidly in his last few months. On 12 March 2015, in the words of Rob Wilkins, the novelist’s business manager and close friend for close…

ONE IS NEVER ALONE when one has a book,” actor Eddie Marsan declares. It’s a sentiment which anyone who’s read Susanna Clarke’s engrossing 2004 novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell – now coming to BBC One as a seven-part serial – might very well agree with. Indeed, if a book can adequately stand in for human company, then Clarke’s brick-thick fantasy – set in an alternate 19th century Britain where, after falling out of use for centuries, magic is making a return – can substitute for an entire social circle. On this chilly December day in South Yorkshire, it’s a statement the bewigged Marsan is expressing in character as the titular Mr Norrell, one of the mismatched magicians whose difficult relationship is at the heart of the story. In the…

THE SFX WRITER INTERVIEW BIODATA OCCUPATION: Novelist BORN: 1972 FROM: Prestwick GREATEST HITS: Welcome To Rosie Hopkins’ Sweetshop Of Dreams (2012) won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award. RANDOM FACT: While Colgan has “absolutely no ambitions to force my own personality onto the Doctor”, she adds: “I’m always excited when I get something sneaky in there that expands the character a bit.” There are those in this world who will tell you that The Terminator is an action-thriller about a time-travelling soldier pursued by a cyborg assassin. Rubbish, says Jenny T Colgan. It’s an SF romance. “Seriously, as far as I’m concerned, Terminator is about a great love affair between a woman and a tortured man and a very special baby,” she says. “The killer robot is really a…

P IS FOR... PREGNANCY ROSEMARY’S BABY Roman Polanski, 1968 Brilliantly paranoid chiller with Mia Farrow as the brittle young mother-to-be manipulated by her husband and the residents of the apartment block she moves into. An excellent demonic horror as well as an exploration of the strange invasiveness of pregnancy. INSIDE Alexandre Bustillo, Julien Maury, 2007 Ultra-violent French shocker where a recently bereaved and heavily pregnant woman is tormented by a deranged Béatrice Dalle who wants to take her baby by any means necessary. Highly disturbing example of New French Extremism with a killer climax. GRACE Paul Solet, 2009 This creepy feature debut follows another recently bereaved expectant mother who’s told her baby has been killed, but carries it to term anyway, only for the still-born child to come back to…

Release Date: 22 May 12A | 99 minutes Director: Thomas McCarthy Cast: Adam Sandler, Dan Stevens, Dustin Hoffman, Steve Buscemi, Melonie Diaz, Ellen Barkin THIS IS PROBABLY THE least-awful film Adam Sandler has made in quite a while. That being said, it’s still not good. It’s not even in the arena of good. It’s cloying and trite and ridiculous, and the whole premise is predicated on the idea that “sole” and “soul” are interchangeable concepts and not just words that sound the same. Max Simkin (Sandler) is a cranky, world-weary fourth-generation cobbler in a quaint eastside New York neighbourhood that is being slowly gentrified, a process that is pushing out old codgers like himself and his next door neighbour, a wizened barber (Steve Buscemi). One day Max is visited by…

Release Date: 8 May 18 | 93 minutes Director: Ivan Kavanagh THE SPECTRE OF J-horror looms large over this Irish horror (screening mainly in the Republic) about a cuckolded husband who, after his wife’s found drowned in the nearby canal, discovers their house has a bloody history. Like Ring, it features supernatural entities manifesting via a visual medium and a female wraith with unnaturally jerky movements. At times the homage borders on outright theft, but these sequences certainly inspire shivers. Artistic images of pylons and swaying reeds add ominous atmosphere, and Steve Oram amuses as a coarse copper. What sinks it are the hoary storytelling devices (conveniently-placed expositionary photos, for example) and its predictability – the “big twist” is about as hard to guess as a This Morning phone-in quiz.…

BIRDMAN This Birdman was the hero of ’60s Hanna-Barbera toon Birdman And The Galaxy Trio, a solar-powered, bewinged crimefighter given his powers by the sun god Ra. The character was later revived for spoofy Adult Swim animation Harvey Birdman, Attorney At Law. CONDORMAN In this 1981 Disney film, a comic book writer (Michael Crawford) gets mixed up in the world of international espionage, and ends up using a wing-suit based on his latest creation to rescue a beautiful KGB defector (Bond girl Barbara Carrera). HAWKMAN There’ve been several incarnations of this hero, but our favourite is the ’40s original: archaeologist Carter Hall. The reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian prince, he flies with the aid of a belt made of gravity-defying “nth metal” from the planet Thanagar. THE FALCON Mainstream comics’…

Release Date: 18 May 2014 | PG | Blu-ray/DVD Director: Rob Marshall Cast: James Corden, Emily Blunt, Meryl Streep, Anna Kendrick, Daniel Huttlestone, Lilla Crawford MUSICALS CAN be tricky things to translate onto screen – while there are plenty of show-stopping movie versions, they’ve more often been the preserve of Disney-lite children’s films than the emotional intensities seen on stage. And Stephen Sondheim is worlds away from “lite”, so can a film version of one of his most treasured works make it on the screen? With a screenplay by original writer James Lapine, it can. The plot is a mish-mash of all your favourite fairy stories. A baker and his wife learn the reason for their childlessness is a curse put on his family by a witch (Meryl Streep). In…

Release Date: 4 May 1988 | PG | DVD Director: Colin Cant Cast: Siri Neal, Tony Sands, Helena Avellano, Jacqueline Pearce, Arthur Hewlett, Valerie Lush MODERN-DAY kids might get to enjoy Doctor Who or Adventure Time, but the poor deprived things never knew Chocky, Children Of The Stones or the original BBC Narnia adaptations… Aaah, nostalgia. There’s always the unpleasant possibility, of course, that those series were never quite as perfect as they seemed to our pre-teen minds… Adapted by Helen Cresswell from her own novel, Moondial is the story of Minty, who’s staying with a family friend when her mother is ill. Exploring the grounds of a nearby mansion, she discovers the “moondial” there can transport her through time. Minty meets Tom, an abused servant in the Victorian mansion,…

Release Date: OUT NOW! 1955-1992 | 12 | DVD Creator: Gerry Anderson Cast: Shane Rimmer, Brian Blessed, Nick Tate, Nicholas Parsons, Ed Bishop, Peter Dyneley GERRY Anderson’s legacy is unassailable. Thunderbirds, Stingray. Captain Scarlet. Gems of Brit telly, exploding with imagination and charm, his muse on fire. But what lurks beneath this quality threshold? What’s rattling around in Gerry Anderson’s bottom drawer? This two-disc set gathers oddments and rarities from the string king’s career, some strange, some weak, all fairly fascinating. There are a couple of starchy curios: post-war magazine show You’ve Never Seen This marks Anderson’s directorial debut, while Blue Skies Ahead finds Nicholas Parsons in his tweedy ’50s pomp, extolling the virtues of Majorca in chilly black and white. 1973’s The Investigator is infinitely more interesting to Anderson…

Release Date: OUT NOW! 2013 | 15 | Blu-ray 3D/DVD Director: Shinji Aramaki Cast: Shun Oguri, Harumi Miura, Yu Aoi, Arata Furuta, Maaya Sakamoto DESPITE THE title, space pirate Captain Harlock isn’t the star of this CG anime spectacular. No, it’s his cool pirate ship, an intergalactic Flying Dutchman embossed with a skull, lunging shark-like out of black clouds (yes, in space). The film’s press notes invoke the grandeur of The Dark Knight, but the style ends up feeling silly, more like the Batman of The Lego Movie. In anime, Captain Harlock has been a space hero since the ’70s, an anarchist buccaneer. In past incarnations he often fought aliens, but in this reboot his beef’s with humanity – though his agenda’s only fully explained midway through the film. The…

Release Date: 11 May 2014 | 15 | DVD THIS TALE OF seaside seediness falls somewhere between Broadchurch and The Woman In Black. It follows Blue (Leila Mimmack), a call girl who discovers a stash of Victorian snuff movies and attracts the ire of a murderous spirit. The first half is nicely atmospheric, with loving shots of Brighton and a brooding score. Mimmack is a strong lead, too. The carefully balanced tone slips as the supernatural elements come to the fore, and the ending is messy, but overall this is solid and effective. Can we call a moratorium on horror villains wearing hessian masks now, though? EXTRAS: A three-minute short, an interview with director John Shackleton, an effects featurette, behind-the-scenes footage, a trailer and a gallery.…

Release Date: OUT NOW! 2014 | 15 | DVD EVEN Warehouse 13’s ace Allison Scagliotti can’t save this dire horror-comedy that’s about as scary as a box full of kittens and as funny as flesh-eating bacteria. Scagliotti stars as Leah, the local high school’s token feminist, who takes against abstinence councillor Liz Bathos with good reason: Liz is really a centuries-old Hungarian countess who murders virgins and bathes in their blood to stay young (yep, it’s another riff on the notorious Countess Bathory). The plot is bobbins, the performances less restrained than what you’d expect from the average pantomime, the gags fall awkwardly flat every single time and Hammer was doing more convincing gore in the ’50s. It has aspirations to be Mean Girls meets Cherry Falls but falls desperately short…

Release Date: 30 April 608 pages | Hardback/ebook Author: Alastair Reynolds Publisher: Gollancz THERE ARE NOVELS WHERE it seems clear the author always knew where the story was going. Then there are other novels that, if not quite seeming to have been made up on the fly, show evidence of how the author had to adapt and even ditch ideas in order to get to the end of his narrative. Poseidon’s Wake, the final offering in Alastair Reynolds’s Poseidon’s Children trilogy, falls into the latter category. Which initially seems strange because, according to a 2014 blog entry, Reynolds wrote a 12,000-word outline for the book. How to explain this apparent discrepancy? One answer may be that Reynolds initially planned to follow the Akinyas, the powerful African family in the books’…

Release Date: 7 May 232 pages | Hardback/ebook Author: Nnedi Okorafor Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton FOR HER FOLLOW-UP TO last year’s Lagoon, Nnedi Okorafor has gone back to the past, with a prequel to her World Fantasy Award-winning Who Fears Death. To put it simply, The Book Of Phoenix is the build-up to the apocalypse that Who Fears Death is post. Like the previous novels, it puts Africa and Africans front and centre of its imagined future, with a particular focus on the relationship between Africans and the United States. Phoenix is an “accelerated organism”, born and raised – in a way that gives her four decades of physical and mental development in two years – in one of a network of US laboratories devoted to producing genetically and cybernetically…

Release Date: 7 May 320 pages | Paperback/ebook Author: Amanda Downum Publisher: Solaris FOR MANY, THE NAME HP Lovecraft means tentacled, sanity-bending monsters, but the legendary horror writer’s work also headed in more lyrical directions, especially in tales like “The Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath”. It’s these peculiar stories that serve as the inspiration for new urban fantasy Dreams Of Shreds & Tatters – though the end results are somewhat frustrating. The plot follows Liz Drake, a woman who has bizarre dreams connected with the disappearance of her artist friend Blake. When she finally locates him, he’s comatose in hospital, but the trail leads her to Blake’s mysterious artist friends, and a series of unsettling secrets. It soon transpires that strange dream-creatures are overseeing these events, all in the service of…

Release Date: 22 May 544 pages | Paperback Author: Marc Turner Publisher: Titan Books A LOT OF FANTASY CALLS itself “epic”, but many books fall short of matching the enormous scope of the word. An epic fantasy should have armies, gods and monsters, quests and magic, the dread, the undead and the living. By design, if there’s a quest mechanic (destroy a ring, or in this case retrieve a book), then there’s also got to be lots of journeying via fantastical waypoints, with a few hair-raising sword and sorcery encounters along the way. When The Heavens Fall is chock full of such epic-ness. Perhaps it’s too much. An epic fantasy requires a large cast, and Marc Turner’s debut novel follows four POV characters: Luker (a Jedi-style Guardian), Romany (a priestess…

Release Date: 5 May 390 pages | Hardback/ebook Author: Taran Matharu Publisher: Hodder Children’s Books HARRY POTTER MEETS Warhammer. You don’t need to know any more. Really – you don’t. Well, if you insist. This is a YA novel of such monumental unoriginality it’s no surprise it turns out to be a self-published sensation snapped up by a risk-averse publisher. A commoner lad who’s an embryonic “Summoner” is enrolled in a military academy. He rubs shoulders with dwarves, elves and – worst of all – posh people. And they all have familiars… sorry, daemons… sorry, demons. Sorry… what franchise are we in? Having said all that, Taran Matharu has a cheerily page-turning style, and the book is fast-paced, action-packed and competently written. Pity it’s not more original. ? Taran Matharu once…

Do you spend your life with a book in your hand? Do you have opinions you want to share about everything you read? Then you’re the sort of person we’re looking for to become part of our exciting new SFX Book Club Reading Group. The Reading Group will be our first port of call every month for comments in the Book Club – we’ll give you advance warning of what’s coming up on the page, and invite you to read the book with us. Then, you’ll be given the opportunity to tell the world what you think about the book and what it means to you. The best bit? Every time you contribute, we’ll find you a free book from our vast repository in the SFX office. If you want…

Episodes Two And Three Release Date: OUT NOW! Format reviewed: PS4 Also available on: PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, PC, iOS Publisher: Telltale Games THE LATEST episodes in Telltale’s six-part Game Of Thrones graphic adventure continue the tradition of a family from the North finding themselves relentlessly shat on in Westeros. If you thought the Starks had it bad, wait till you see what’s in store for the Forresters. Episode Two, “The Lost Lords” establishes a new world order for the beleaguered family and introduces remaining players Asher and Rodrik. Asher is a particularly welcome addition, injecting a much-needed sense of fun into the endlessly miserable events elsewhere. But it’s a peculiarly uneventful 90 minutes that’s almost entirely lacking the moments of agonising diplomacy Telltale is best known for. Fortunately…

EXPECT TO PAY £13 SLIMER PIZZA CUTTER ETA: SEPTEMBER If Slimer is a ghost, what’s he a ghost of, exactly? An alien? A Lovecraftian beast? A fat bloke who somehow lost most of his body and turned green? Anyhow, the Ghostbusters gannet is the last thing you want around when you’re about to tuck into a pizza – it wouldn’t last five seconds – but he does make an amusingly appropriate handle for this kitchen utensil. EXPECT TO PAY £120 BOBBLE-FIGURE SUPERMAN ETA: SEPTEMBER What the devil is a “bobble-figure”? Well, it’s like a bobble-head, but the bit on a spring isn’t a wobbly noggin. In this case, it’s a car, being hoisted in the air by the Man of Steel in a recreation of the cover of Action Comics…

SUBWAY SPECIAL OF THE MONTH In Gotham, the cops don’t have to settle for just donuts and coffee. UNEXPECTED FANTASY SHOW OF THE MONTH Casualty did a Sliding Doors episode. Badly. It broke all the rules by changing the order events happened in each go-round. STRICTLY COME DANCING AUDITIONS OF THE MONTH Elijah and Freya perform their interpretation of Torvill and Dean’s “Bolero” in The Originals. CHILDREN’S LITERARY HERO OF THE MONTH So Grimm had a guy who morphs into a rabbit. And he’s called Peter. Was this some kind of Beatrix Potter crossover episode? FOOD CRITIC OF THE MONTH Root orders the 200-year-old ostrich egg at Heston Blumenthal’s restaurant in Person Of Interest. GEEKIEST QUIZ OF THE MONTH Full marks to game show The Edge. Acceptable answers for “Who’s…

NEWBIES It’s official: THE X-Files will return as a six-episode event series. Duchovny and Anderson are on board. E4 greenlights Aliens, from In The Flesh writer Fintan Ryan. The channel’s parallel universe comedy pilot Alt to be rebooted as TRIPPED. Walking Dead spin-off gets a title: FEAR THE WALKING DEAD . Stan Lee writing superhero show LUCKY MAN for Sky 1.ABC creating AGENTS OF SHIELD spin-off. A&E bringing LET THE RIGHT ONE IN to TV. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s future-set spy drama Incorporated gets a pilot at Syfy. George RR Martin developing Twilight Zonealike CAPTA IN COSMOS for HBO. THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS will continue on the small screen as Shadowhunters. Eighties-set supernatural mystery series Montauk heading to Netflix. ROBOT OVER LORDS TV show will explore the film/book’s robot occupied…

SHERIDAN SMITH and ROB BRYDON playing dwarfs in Snow White prequel The Huntsman… The Winter Soldier’s JOE AND ANTHONY RUSS O directing Avengers: Infinity War 1 and 2… Sony planning Robotech franchise… The Lego Movie’s PHIL LORD and CHRIS MILLER writing 2018’s The Flash… FOREST WHITAKER joining AMY A DAMS and JEREMY RENNER in alien contact tale Story Of Your Life for Paramount… Section 6’s AARON BERG rewriting GI Joe 3… Arrow’s STEPHEN AMELL playing Casey Jones in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2… STEPHEN DORFF to star in Texas Chainsaw Massacre prequel Leatherface… Disney planning liveaction Mulan… Monsters: Dark Continent writer JAY BASU to adapt Metal Gear Solid for Sony… Oscar-winner EDDIE REDMAYNE set to star in Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them… Ghostbuster ERNIE HUDSON…

Contact us: • Email sfx@futurenet.com • Write to Post Apocalypse, SFX, Quay House, The Ambury, Bath, BA1 1UA • Facebook Facebook.com/SFXmagazine • Twitter @SFXmagazine THIS MONTH’S LETTERS COMPILED BY Russell Lewin, Production Editor A bittersweet Your SFX this issue, because while you help us celebrate 20 great years of this magazine, it’s also time to pay tribute to a recently deceased literary giant. Elsewhere, Beauty And The Beast has a defender, Ghostbusters has a nemesis and Star Wars has a dreamer. WRITE IN AND WIN! We don’t expect you to give us all your words of wisdom for free, you know. Oh no. The winner of each issue’s Star Letter wins a gratis book courtesy of our chums at the Black Library. Oh yes. Which means that this month the…

Nick Setchfield says it’s time Batman got over The Dark Knight Returns Bruce Wayne saw his parents gunned down in a Gotham alley. Psychiatrists call that a defining event (the rest of us would call it a major downer). It’s his essential tragedy, the trauma he can never escape. He’s cursed to revisit it, endlessly, in merciless slo-mo, every time Batman’s brought to the screen. But there’s another defining event in his history, another shadow on his psyche, another scar that’s never allowed to heal. It’s called The Dark Knight Returns. Yes, I get it: Frank Miller’s graphic novel was groundbreaking, revolutionary, important. It was the kick in the cape the superhero genre needed in the doldrums of the mid-’80s. Alongside Watchmen it redefined and deepened the possibilities of the…

DON’T MISS IT! SCI-FI-LONDON 28 May-6 June 2015, Venues across London Festival director Louis Savvy on the films not to miss this year THE DEATH OF SUPERMAN LIVES “It’s our opening night film. The idea of Nic Cage with his mullet as Superman – you think, ‘Thank god they didn’t make it.’ It looks like it would have been an interesting story with much more off-world and him being a proper alien. The documentary’s got some of the pre-vis and test shots but I think I would have struggled with seeing it, which is why the documentary’s so interesting.” THE LOVERS “We’ve got Roland Joffé’s new film with Josh Hartnett. It’s set in 2020 in America. He and his wife are marine archaeologists. They find a ship with a ring…

SFX HAS BEEN ON HAND TO CHART the rise and fall of many fantastic (and, let’s face it, not-so-fantastic – hello Crime Traveller, Demons and Krod Mandoon And The Flaming Sword Of Fire) television shows over the past two decades. We’ve seen science fiction shows go from being a niche part of TV programming (Farscape, Babylon 5, Firefly) to hitting the mainstream so hard we’re still feeling the repercussions (The X-Files, Lost, Doctor Who). We’re sure you have your favourites – although not all of them might be present in this list – but here (in no particular order) are the 20 shows we believe have delivered the absolute best in small-screen fantasy from 1995 until today. Get your box sets ready now… DOCTOR WHO Our favourite Time Lord’s return…

TIME MACHINE THE STORY BEHIND THE SF AND FANTASY OF YESTERYEAR 1995 IMAGINE THE SCENARIO. You’re a starving screenwriter, living in Los Angeles. One day you come up with the idea for a script that starts out as a “low-budget Mad Max rip-off”. Somewhere along the line it gets more ambitious and, through a couple of friends, you get it into the hands of an agent, themselves just starting out in the business. Then things go nuts. Overnight, there’s a bidding war for your script. Major movie studios get involved. You go from zero to Hollywood hero. Before long, the script gets into the hands of a director-star combo, who decide to make it as the next collaboration in their successful series of movies. That, in a nutshell, is the…

Release Date: 22 May 15 | 101 minutes Director: Ana Lily Amirpour Cast: Sheila Vand, Arash Marandi, Marshall Manesh, Mozhan Marnò, Dominic Rains, Rome Shadanloo SOMEWHERE IN IRAN, IN the dead of night, a vampire skateboards down the street, her chador – a variation of the hijab – billowing behind her like a superhero’s cape. In the previous scene she threatened to eat the eyes out of a child’s skull; a few scenes later The Girl is sharing an erotically charged scene with a young man dressed up as Dracula, set to “Death” by indie-rockers White Lies. It’s safe to say that not since 2008’s Let The Right One In has there been a fresher take on the vampire genre than A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night; or, at…

Release Date: 1 May 15 | 83 minutes Director: Levan Gabriadze Cast: Heather Sossaman, Matthew Bohrer, Courtney Halverson, Moses Jacob Storm, Shelley Hennig, Will Peltz THE CONCEPT OF MAKING a film set entirely within chat windows on a computer screen is not completely new: director Nacho Vigalondo used it last year for schlock thriller Open Windows. But Unfriended’s Levan Gabriadze takes things a step further in exploiting the idea of social media and how The Kids Today communicate with his new horror movie, a morality tale for our time that is much more successful in ambition than it is in execution. Spurring this story is the suicide of Laura Barns, a high school student who shot herself after someone posted a video of her drunken antics and unleashed a wave…

It’s a busy month for movies, but sadly the studios are keeping all the big ones under wraps. This issue went to press before the first UK screening of AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON, so head to http://bit.ly/sfxreviews for a review. Out on 8 May: romantic fantasy THE AGE OF ADALINE, in which a woman mysteriously stops ageing in 1933. George Miller puts the pedal to the metal once more on 15 May as MAD MAX: FURY ROAD roars into cinemas. Finally, 22 May brings us a trip to “a secret place where nothing is impossible” in TOMO RROWLAND: A WORLD BEYOND, ’80s horror remake POLTERGEIST, and Tove Jansson animation MOOMINS ON THE RIVIERA…

Release Date: 25 May 2014 | PG | Blu-ray 3D/Blu-ray/DVD Directors: Don Hall, Chris Williams Cast: Scott Adsit, Ryan Potter, TJ Miller, Jamie Chung, Damon Wayans Jr, Genesis Rodriguez, James Cromwell, Alan Tudyk IT WAS ONLY A matter of time before Disney pulled together two heads of its giant multinational hydra to form an all-conquering movie superteam – the only surprise is that it didn’t happen sooner. With Big Hero 6 the Mouse House’s animation studio adapts a lesser-known Marvel comic, and the resulting hybrid is rather wonderful. Existing outside the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the city of San Fransokyo (the geography’s San Francisco, the architecture’s Tokyo), it’s a pure, unashamed superhero origin story about an unlikely sextet coming together to thwart a Big Bad. Like The Incredibles, it totally…

Release Date: 11 May 2015 | 18 | Blu-ray/DVD Director: Kiah Roache-Turner Cast: Jay Gallagher, Bianca Bradey, Leon Burchill, Keith Agius, Berynn Schwerdt, Luke McKenzie WHEN IT COMES to Antipodean zombie movies there’s little of note – so little, in fact, that this actionpacked Aussie effort might be the best to emerge from the region since Peter Jackson’s 1992 Kiwi splatterfest Braindead. That’s largely cos Wyrmwood (the title nods to the Book of Revelation) has a couple of intriguingly original ideas. Its zombies have flammable blood, which means they can be tapped as a fuel source – and allows for both sprinting à la 28 Days Later and classic George Romero-style shambling. And one central character (a kickass heroine) has the inexplicable ability to mentally control the undead – handy…

Release Date: OUT NOW! 2013 | 12 | DVD/download Director: Darren Paul Fisher Cast: Daniel Fraser, Eleanor Wyld, Dylan Llewellyn, Georgina Minter-Brown, Charlie Rixon, Lily Laight THERE’S A wonderfully quirky high concept at the heart of this lowbudget Brit-flick, of a kind you normally wouldn’t see outside of a film by Michel Gondry or Spike Jonze. But at its heart, Frequencies is far more SF thriller than black comedy, and that works both for and against it. The story takes place in a world where luck is a form of energy. High frequency people are the luckiest; low frequency ones the unluckiest. However, the higher frequency you are, the less emotional you become. When, as schoolchildren, the very low frequency Zak meets the very high frequency Marie, they discover they…

Release Date: OUT NOW! 2014 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD Creator: Simon Barry Cast: Rachel Nichols, Erik Knudsen, Victor Webster, Stephen Lobo, Lexa Doig IF YOU WERE having trouble following the convoluted plotting during seasons one and two of Continuum, you might as well give up now and bail on the adventures of Keira Cameron and her terrorist timeline woes. If, however, you’ve lapped up all the temporal twists and turns of this cunning little series, you’ll bloody love this newest batch of 13 episodes. We pick up this year with Keira stuck in Freelancer prison, while Alec has travelled back in time to save the life of the woman he loves. It’s not long before there are doppelgangers everywhere and characters we thought were good guys or bad guys suddenly…

Release Date: OUT NOW! 2013 | 18 | DVD THE BIG NOISE around this gruesome horror is that it was filmed entirely on an iPhone. Ingenious... and almost entirely pointless, given that the results look exactly like every other found-footage film. Better, in fact – the effects are solid throughout and the gore is pleasingly practical. Alas, the film itself is a very drab entry into the tourist-horror canon. Americans Peter and Tonio travel to Barcelona to try and get laid. They puke and piss and leer their way through a dull opening 20 minutes, before picking up a couple of girls. Unfortunately, one of them gives Peter a rather intimate and painful love bite... Cue a long, depressing hour of screaming, whimpering and blood. Loud, obnoxious and boring, the…

Release Date: 4 May 2015 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD IF YOU HAVEN’T already sworn off low-budget zombie movies, this might be the final straw. When a hapless documentary crew heads off to film at the site of the Battle of the Somme, you’ll find yourself rolling your eyes as the found footage clichés stack up. And when they steal a mystical amulet off a skeleton, you’ll be tempted to switch off completely. You wouldn’t miss much, either. Everything unfolds exactly as you’d imagine. In one scene, the fictional production crew discusses the ethics of turning human tragedy into entertainment – it’s a conversation the real filmmakers probably should have had, too, if not out of respect for the dead, then for the horror fans who’ve already seen enough of this…

Release Date: 21 May 440 pages | Hardback/ebook Author: Naomi Novik Publisher: Macmillan POPULARITY HAS ITS drawbacks. Like film stars, authors get typecast: whether it’s a bestselling series, a much-loved (or loathed) protagonist, or a specific mode of writing, they can be victims of their own success, as publishers and readers alike clamour for more of the same. Some resort to pseudonyms to write in a different genre, whether that be JK Rowling publishing crime fiction as Robert Galbraith, or Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden creating urban fantasy as Megan Lindholm and epic fantasy as Robin Hobb. A few authors – like George RR Martin – even get roundly abused by sections of their fanbase for daring to so much as think about doing something that takes time away from the…

Release Date: 7 May 317 pages | Hardback/ebook Author: Charlaine Harris Publisher: Gollanc HAVING ENDED SOOKIE Stackhouse’s story, Charlaine Harris can’t quite leave the world of the Southern Vampire Mysteries behind, as several familiar faces make a reappearance in the little Texan town of Midnight. To call Midnight a town is a bit misleading; it’s basically a crossroads with some houses and shops scattered along it. In the first book in the Midnight, Texas series, Midnight Crossing, the residents were all revealed to be eccentric verging on the downright weird – Fiji the overweight witch, Manfred the internet psychic, Bobo the pawnshop owner whose vampire landlord resides in his basement, and a scattering of others. It was charming, nonetheless. On the surface, this second story is Manfred’s, as his neighbours…

Release Date: 7 May 432 pages | Paperback/ebook Author: Susan Murray Publisher: Angry Robot SO MANY TRADITIONAL fantasies start with a hero, generally male, of humble beginnings, learning of their real destiny and leaving the farm life behind, that it’s refreshing to find one that starts with a highborn queen and unashamedly makes her the centre of proceedings. There’s a rough-around-the-edges soldier who’s pledged to protect her, of course, but he’s not the real star of this show. With an army on the way and traitors all around, King Tresilian sends his wife Alwenna and their unborn child off to safety with loyal King’s Man Ranald Weaver. She’s wary of this strange, sullen soldier, and Weaver has his own secrets and feelings for the queen. But with the capital about…

Release Date: OUT NOW! 379 pages | Hardback Author: Richard Marson Publisher: Miwk RICHARD MARSON’S biography of ’80s Doctor Who producer John Nathan-Turner was scandalous stuff. This life of first incumbent Verity Lambert can’t hope to compete. Plus, since her two seasons were just a small part of a long and successful career, it has a lot less to offer Who fans – less than 30 pages. However, it does share that previous book’s strengths. It’s meticulously researched, drawing on BBC memos, old interviews and fresh discussions with friends and colleagues. It’s no hagiography; and once again no question is off-limits. In JN-T that meant asking, “Was he a paedophile?” Here, it’s, “Did she get the Who job by screwing her boss?” The consensus is no… but some still insist…

Release Date: 7 May 420 pages | Paperback/ebook Author: Sarah J Maas Publisher: Bloomsbury BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN, and a touching romance, there’s only one problem with A Court Of Thorns And Roses: it’s a combination of Beauty And The Beast with fairy-abduction tale Tam Lin. We all know the former story; anyone with the vaguest interests in fairy stories will know the latter. And so, as engaging a heroine as Feyre is, and how swoon-worthy a heartthrob her shapeshifting High Fae captor Tamlin is, there are no surprises in the tale. Sarah Maas creates a suitably dreamlike vision of the faerie kingdoms and a marvellously villainous faerie queen living under a mountain, but what you never feel is tension, as you know that a happy ending is guaranteed. ? Maas was…

Release Date: 7 May 336 pages | Ebook Author: Pippa DaCosta Publisher: Bloomsbury Spark IT’S DISPIRITING TO think that a traditional “paranormal romance” cliché – “I must resist the allure of this beautiful yet dangerous man” – may be the high point that the rest of a novel struggles to live up to, but that’s the case here. A twist halfway through the book changes everything you thought was going to happen, and soon you’re looking nostalgically back on the yearning phase as a better, simpler time. Alina is an ex-reporter looking for a story; in rock star fae Sovereign she may have found it. As Alina struggles to follow the “no-touching” rules for fae, she learns there’s more to the beautiful creatures than humans know. Starting out so-so and…

FIRST READ AN EXTRACT FROM A NEW BOOK THE AUTHOR Adam Christopher is a novelist and comic writer. In 2010, as an editor, Christopher won a Sir Julius Vogel award, New Zealand’s highest science fiction honour. His debut novel, Empire State, was a Financial Times Book of the Year for 2012. In 2013, he was nominated for the Sir Julius Vogel award for Best New Talent, with Empire State shortlisted for Best Novel. Born in New Zealand, he has lived in Great Britain since 2006. Visit his website at www.adamchristopher.co.uk, or follow him on Twitter @ghostfinder. As humanity remains trapped in a losing battle against a mechanical race capable of tearing apart entire planets, trainee psi-marine Caitlin Smith is on the run from the Fleet Academy with a mission of…

Release Date: OUT NOW! Platform: PC Publisher: Paradox Interactive PILLARS OF Eternity is developer Obsidian’s love letter to classic RPGs like Baldur’s Gate, but while it could easily have been little more than a cynical nostalgia trip, it stands tall on its own. It’s the most captivating, rewarding RPG on the PC in years. Pillars really makes you feel like you’re on an adventure. Plunging the depths of ancient ruins, battling the monstrous creatures who lurk there, grabbing the loot, then limping back to the warm glow of an inn’s hearth to rest and steel yourself for the next quest. It’s a testament to the quality of the art, atmosphere, and writing that, despite the old school 2D visuals and isometric perspective, it completely transports you to its world. And it’s…

I switched off after the first episode I’m afraid. It just lacked that spark of oddness and originality the film had. Mark Anderson I saw the first episode and cannot bring myself to watch any more. There are so many TV shows and films about time travel that it has to have something special to stand out. I just didn’t get that hooked from the off. Mark Davies Enjoyable but can’t help comparing with the original movie which is far better. The leads are not Bruce Willis or Brad Pitt for a start. Robert William Graham It’s a very different animal to the film. I’ve not spotted a particularly duff performance yet so that’s good. Although no one has noticed that everything done in the past is just fulfilling the…

BROADCAST UK: THURSDAYS ON WATCH US: FINISHED AIRING ON ABC PREPARE TO ENTER A WHOLE new dimension of dull!” is either the world’s worst tagline or a warning that should precede every episode of Resurrection. Except that makes it sound too exciting. The show’s central premise screams “miniseries”; it’s basically a US variation on the French The Returned with dead people returning to life in a small town called Arcadia. By the end of the first run of eight episodes the writers were already lethargically treading water trying to convince us this was an ongoing series. Then somebody commissioned 13 more. Sadly, nobody came up with enough plot to fill more than three of them. The problem with high-concept shows that kick off with pilots full of mystery is that…