Table of contents for Summer 2017 in SFX

RICHARD EDWARDS EDITOR RAVES Spent a fun morning putting SFX reader questions to the four stars of Red Dwarf. You’ll be able to read their answers later this year… Had a great time filming Syfy’s Dark Matter aftershow, After Dark, in Toronto. Nice shortlist for the Arthur C Clarke Award – just don’t expect me to stick my neck out and guess who’ll win! IAN BERRIMAN REVIEWS EDITOR RAVES After going on set, I’m looking forward to seeing how anthology show Electric Dreams builds on Philip K Dick’s short stories. Hugely enjoying Doctor Who series ten. Highlight of Record Store Day: Silva Screen’s gorgeous vinyl reissue of Tristram Cary’s music for Hammer’s Quatermass & The Pit. JONATHAN COATES ART EDITOR RAVES Loving how the new Blade Runner movie is shaping…

SCI-FACT! Season three’s Otto family will be played by Dayton Callie, Daniel Sharman and Sam Underwood. Call it The Brady Bunch goes to hell… Over the last two years zombie fans have gotten to know the blended family of Fear The Walking Dead. The show’s first season saw them survive the fall of Los Angeles, and year two found them sailing to Mexico, where they faced new perils. Now on the cusp of their third season, Madison Clark, her children Nick and Alicia, and her boyfriend Travis – as well as their friends Victor Strand and Ofelia – are caught up in a new struggle mirroring a very real conflict: the border division between the US and its southern neighbour. “The intention was always to get to the border and…

Freeze Frame Top trailers dissected SCI-FACT! In the comics, Hela is the child of Loki – albeit a different incarnation. She was appointed Goddess of Dea by Odin. So, what has Thor been up to since he departed Earth in Avengers: Age Of Ultron? Well, hanging around, mainly... Meet Cate Blanchett’s Hela – in the comics the Asgardian god of death. She’s certainly making an impact here, destroying Mjolnir. “Asgard is dead," says Hela ominously and, moments later, we see a fireball tear through the city streets. We’re in uncharted territory... This film looks set to change the tone of the series dramatically, with a more cosmic feel as Thor travels to the planet of Sakaar. Creed star Tessa Thompson plays Valkyrie in the movie, one of the nine Valkyrior…

SCI-FACT! John Boyega, aka Finn, asked EA for a single-player Star Wars Battlefront campaign on Twitter back in 2015. Tell us about your protagonist – what’s her story? Caro is a flintlock-toting 17 year old who crews on her father’s wherry and longs to find her place in the world. When her father’s arrested for smuggling, she agrees to deliver a mysterious cargo. Trouble is, a pirate gang is also after it… Did you have to do much research? I’ve done a lot of small boat sailing, so I know the basics, but I did research on the Age Of Sail and historical boats. The book is fantasy, so I cheated! It’s a mash-up of ships and settings that didn’t necessarily go together in our world’s history. Did the book…

DATE 1-4 June LOCATION Picturehouse Central, London If you didn’t make it to the Sundance Film Festival in Utah in January, fret not! Sundance London is back and it’s bringing with it some of the finest films independent cinema has to offer – without the snow. Taking place at the Picturehouse Central near Piccadilly Circus, its main genre attractions include Jon Hamm and Lois Smith’s thought-provoking futuristic drama Marjorie Prime, in which the former plays an AI reincarnation of the latter’s dead husband. There’ll also be A Ghost Story from Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and Pete’s Dragon director David Lowery. Reuniting with Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck, it’s a moody, moving meditation on grief delivered with some chilling imagery. Of course, there are loads of other films on show, too…

Subscribe at myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/sfx LET’S TWIST AGAIN! GLASS M Night Shyamalan reclaimed his mojo with Split, springing himself from so-called Director Jail and earning the karmic right to pursue his dream project – a sequel to 2000’s Unbreakable, the slow-burn deconstruction of the superhero myth that starred Bruce Willis as blue-collar avenger David Dunn and Samuel L Jackson as the mysterious Mr Glass. But not only is this Unbreakable 2, it’s Split 2, too. So Unsplittable 3. Or something. “It was always my dream to have both films collide in this third film,” says Shyamalan. Returning alongside Willis and Jackson are Split’s James McAvoy as the malevolent Kevin Crumb and Anya Taylor-Joy as Casey. Following Dunn’s pursuit of Crumb’s superhuman identity the Beast – while revealing that Mr Glass holds secrets crucial…

LADY PARTS Four directors, two X chromosomes (each, not between them), and one smart (but slightly hit-and-miss) anthology movie. XX hits DVD this month. The best is The Birthday Party, directed by Annie Clarke, aka the electropop musician known as St Vincent, starring Melanie Lynskey as a mum trying to throw her kid a party. A true horror (and very funny). The Box, by Jovanka Vuckovic was my least favourite – surprising as it was based on a story by Jack Ketchum – about a boy who looks in a mysterious box and suddenly stops eating. Karyn Kusama’s Her Only Living Son is a sort of cheeky sequel to Rosemary’s Baby while Roxanne Benjamin’s Don’t Fall is reminiscent of Greg McLean’s The Darkness – the four are tied together by…

How does it feel to follow Lynda Carter’s iconic take on Wonder Woman? They’re big shoes to step into. What Lynda Carter did with the character is fantastic and amazing, and I love it. The Wonder Woman that is being introduced – reintroduced – now is different [but] she has a lot of the qualities Lynda Carter brought to the Wonder Woman character of ’75. I wasn’t big on comics, growing up, and I was too young when the Lynda Carter show was out, but I always knew of Wonder Woman. It’s like a household name. It’s like knowing about Superman and Batman. But I never knew what was her story, who exactly she was. How was the physical side of filming? I was a dancer for so many years.…

What can you tell us about Vivian? She’s a professor at Oxford University. She’s English, very single, quite independent, sarcastic and very intelligent. She gets picked up by the car that she’s had forever and driven off to this unknown destination, where she’s plonked in a room with Anthony Hopkins and Mark Wahlberg’s characters. Then she goes on this big adventure. It sounds like it’s no accident she gets picked up? She has been watched by Anthony Hopkins’ character all her life. He knew her father and knows everything about her – but she’s never heard of him. She’s a descendant of someone who was prolific in the Transformer world, so she has a quality that’s needed to complete this particular mission. How does she get on with Mark Wahlberg’s…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 122 minutes Director Ridley Scott Cast Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, Danny McBride, Demián Bichir Two bona fide classics, followed by five movies ranging in quality from the decent-butflawed Alien 3 to the execrable AVPR… Let’s be honest, it’s not a great hit rate for a franchise that remains one of the crown jewels in the sci-fi movie canon. And yet, more than three decades since James Cameron’s Aliens, Covenant gets that acid blood pumping once again and reinvigorates the saga. Ridley Scott’s decision to return to the franchise that made his name finally looks like a wise one – it’s just a shame it’s taken him two films to prove it. Covenant performs the impressive trick of retrospectively turning Scott’s Prometheus into a…

RELEASED 5 JUNE (Blu-ray/DVD/VOD) OUT NOW! (download) 2017 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD/download/VOD Director M Night Shyamalan Cast James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, Betty Buckley, Haley Lu Richardson, Jessica Sula, Sebastian Arcelus “We watch McAvoy shift identities in the space of seconds” When Friedrich Nietzsche penned Twilight Of The Idols in 1888, he probably didn’t suspect that one of his aphorisms would be spat by rappers and inspiring gothic-script tattoos nearly 130 years later: “That which does not kill us makes us stronger”. But it is. Now it’s the unspoken motto of the latest M Night Shyamalan film. Not that that’s apparent initially. To begin with, you may wonder whether Shyamalan is riffing on 10 Cloverfield Lane, as three teenage girls are abducted, wake up in a basement, and try to figure…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 1975 | 18 | Blu-ray & DVD (dual format) Director Kazuhiko Yamaguchi Cast Sonny Chiba, Etsuko Nami, Kani Kobayashi, Yayoi Watanabe “Will you love me, and make me feel that I’m not dead?” If you’re looking for emo dating lines, look no further: this bonkers Japanese film is packed with magnificently overwrought dialogue. Tarantino favourite Sonny Chiba – all Action Man hair and stern stares – plays the titular character and sole survivor of a werewolf clan. Don’t expect things to get hairy, though: the only sign of this lineage is his invulnerability when full moon comes. The plot sends our antihero on an odyssey through a sleazy and stylish underworld of dapperly dressed Yakuza and drug-addicted strippers, investigating a series of killings apparently committed by an…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2017 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD/download Director F Javier Gutiérrez Cast Matilda Lutz, Alex Roe, Aimee Teegarden, Johnny Galecki Dragging itself out of the screen 12 years since the last English-language movie, this latest instalment of the Ring franchise is perfectly serviceable but cursed with redundancy. Quick recap: watching a cursed videotape dooms you to a horrible death seven days later – unless you get someone else to watch the tape. To blame: the vengeful ghost of Samara, a girl with psychic powers who died after being dumped down a well. Rings does a digital upgrade, as an edgy biology prof transfers the VHS’s surreal imagery and ropes in students to watch it as an experiment into, er, something or other. But when the file’s copied for Matilda…

THE WHITE ROAD RELEASED OUT NOW! 304 pages | Hardback/ebook Author Sarah Lotz Publisher Hodder & Stoughton Sarah Lotz’s third novel opens deep underground, with a spelunking expedition gone very wrong. And while the majority of The White Road takes place thousands of feet above sea level, on an arduous trek to the summit of Mt Everest, it never loses the biting claustrophobia of that first part. Simon, a feckless thrillseeker, has faked his way onto a mountaineering expedition that he’s hopelessly ill-prepared for. He plans to bring in hits for his website by filming the many corpses that lie on the slopes. He’s not the only member of the expedition with a secret, however, and he soon finds something haunting his footsteps… The White Road peaks early with its…

THE SPACE BETWEEN THE STARS RELEASED 1 JUNE 402 pages | Hardback/ebook Author Anne Corlett Publisher Macmillan How comprehensively does civilisation have to collapse for a catastrophe to qualify as an apocalypse? It’s probably not the sort of question you routinely ask yourself – although, since you’re reading SFX, maybe it is – but every so often, it’s hard to escape. In Anne Corlett’s debut novel, a viral epidemic has left perhaps 10,000 people alive, out of a population of ten billion. By any standards, that’s colossal. Yet at the same time, humanity’s infrastructure and environment – technology, food sources, buildings – remain largely intact. Maybe civilisation isn’t quite over? Whether the old world can (or should) be rebuilt is the question. As protagonist Jamie joins a ragtag bunch of…

DARKNESS VISIBLE RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher IDW Writers Mike Carey, Arvind David Artists Brendan Cahill, Livio Ramonelli ISSUES 1-3 After chronicling the adventures of Lucifer for Vertigo, Mike Carey is dancing with the Devil once again in this new series. Co-written with Dirk Gently producer Arvind David, Darkness Visible harks back to the urban fantasy of Carey’s Felix Castor books and evokes the unholy spirit of Paul Cornell’s London Falling. Taking its title from John Milton’s Paradise Lost, it’s set in a London, where – as revealed in issue three’s flashbacks – Winston Churchill made a Faustian deal with demons called the Shaitan, enabling them to possess individuals in exchange for helping Britain win the war. The story centres on Daniel Aston, a police detective driven by his devotion to…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Format reviewed PS4 Also on Xbox One, PC, mobile Publisher Telltale Games VIDEOGAME From the opening scene of this first episode (“Tangled Up In Blue”), in which wisecracking Peter Quill grooves to the Buzzcocks’s “Why Can’t I Touch It?”, it’s clear that Telltale Games loved 2014’s Guardians Of The Galaxy movie. That’s not a bad thing, but the studio’s take on the titular band of misfits draws so heavily from the stylings of its cinematic counterpart that it struggles to establish its own identity. This shouldn’t be confused with a movie tie-in game, as it’s an original story set in a separate universe, which ends its first act with a fantastic subversion of Marvel canon. “The first act ends with a fantastic subversion” However, what follows is…

UK Broadcast Highly unlikely... US Broadcast ABC, cancelled Episodes Reviewed 1.01–1.05 A Victorian gent stumbles out of a time machine in a museum exhibit. JANE WALKER WTF!? Who are you?! HG WELLS HG Wells! I’m chasing Jack the Ripper, who escaped in my time machine. JANE WALKER But how could you land it in the same spot where it was on display in the future? HG WELLS Er... may I say I find you quite charming? JANE WALKER And I’m a sucker for Hugh Grant movies. They kiss. Sparks erupt from the time machine. PASSER-BY Good grief. In a bar Jack chats up a woman. THE RIPPER …So, okay, yes, mass murderer. But I have lots of expensive suits and look like a model. WOMAN Let’s have sex. Seeing HG…

QUESTION 1 Lynda Carter wasn’t the first TV Wonder Woman. Who played her in the 1974 pilot? QUESTION 2 What’s the name of Wonder Woman’s mother, the Queen of the Amazons? QUESTION 3 PICTURE QUESTION Who played Wonder Woman in the never-aired 2011 TV pilot? QUESTION 4 William Moulton Marston created Wonder Woman – but who actually drew her first comic book adventures? QUESTION 5 What was the name of Wonder Woman’s Chinese mentor in her 1960s Emma Peel phase? QUESTION 6 DC’s 2011 revamp of Diana’s origin revealed that she was the daughter of which Greek god? QUESTION 7 PICTURE QUESTION Which Marvel movie star voiced Wonder Woman in The LEGO Movie? QUESTION 8 Who played Diana’s love interest Steve Trevor in the 1970s TV show? QUESTION 9 PICTURE…

“DON’T QUOTE ME” “I KNOW NOTHING… I COULDN’T HAVE FOLLOWED IT LESS. IS IT SUPPOSED TO BE GOOD?” William Shatner reaches, er, peak excitement for the upcoming Star Trek: Discovery. The X-Files has been confirmed for a ten-episode season 11. David Morrissey to star in BBC Two adaptation of China Miéville’s novel The City & The City. HBO confirms George RR Martin and other writers are working on ideas for Game Of Thrones spin-offs. Daredevil’s Vincent D’Onofrio signs up for Syfy’s Ghost Wars, with Continuum creator Simon Barry as the showrunner. House Of Cards reator Beau Willimon is off to Mars in new Channel 4/Hulu series The First. Chuck vets Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage get greenlight for Marvel’s new Runaways series at Hulu. Terrence Howard and Anna Paquin sign up for Philip K…

SCI-FACT! Where Game Of Thrones is “tits and dragons”, McShane describes American Gods as “gods and skirts”. AMERICAN DREAM “I wasn’t looking to do a TV series, but American Gods was just so different. The first three scripts blew me away. Every show says that it’s edgy, that it’s ‘pushing the envelope’, but this actually does.” GODS AND MONSTERS “My character, Mr Wednesday, is capricious. He’s confident about every step he’s taking, and it’s fun to play someone who’s that positive, but flies into a rage when he doesn’t get his own way.” IN THE PALE MOONLIGHT “Ricky Whittle’s Shadow is basically the viewer. Because it’s all happening to him. In our scenes we try to develop a camaraderie, but he mostly listens to my endless fucking talking which, god…

Josh Brolin playing Cable in Deadpool 2… Beauty And The Beast’s Bill Condon in talks to direct Bride Of Frankenstein for Universal… Melissa McCarthy joining R-rated Jim Henson Co comedy The Happytime Murders… Indiana Jones 5 moving to 10 July 2020… Christina Aguilera joining SF romance Zoe… Luke Cage star Mike Colter joining SF thriller Extinction… David Fincher directing the World War Z sequel… New Mutants opening 13 April 2018… James Gunn returning to write and direct Guardians Of The Galaxy 3… The Get Down’s Shameik Moore voicing Miles Morales in Sony Pictures Animation’s Spider-Man movie… Hugo Weaving joining Mortal Engines… The Legend Of Conan officially slain… Joachim Rønning in talks to direct adaptation of Michael Crichton’s miniaturisation thriller Micro… Forrest Gump’s Eric Roth penning the screenplay of Dune… Jude Law to play Albus Dumbledore in Fantastic Beasts 2... Dolph Lundgren joining Aquaman… Joe Johnston directing The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Silver Chair……

“I GET ALLERGIC REACTIONS TO THE WRITING EXERCISES IN CONVENTIONAL HOW-TO BOOKS” So I signed up for Oil and Rope Games’ game design workshop because it seemed like a good idea. Once I was there, however, I couldn’t help being intimidated by the number of people, and the fact that everyone seemed to have some pet idea that they were developing. I’d played at making board games before, when I was a kid, including a failed chess variant and a terrible knock-off of Monopoly, but here I was at Gencon in 2014, surrounded by people who lived and breathed games. It wasn’t so much that I was a rookie at game design. I’d designed and written a narrative game for Failbetter Games on commission, which meant I had a small…

Female empowerment is a hot topic right now. How do you see this movie reflecting that? I think Wonder Woman is at the centre of that zeitgeist – to have a character who is so strong and physically adept, but also brings with her a great amount of compassion and love for man. She sees the hope for what human beings can be: the best parts of themselves. Whereas I play a character who’s much more of a jaded realist who’s seen the awful shit that can happen, and he tries to teach her the ways of how awful mankind can be. So we teach each other a wonderful thing. Is Steve a supporting character in this movie? Is he co-lead? I don’t know, man. I mean, the movie’s called…

FACE TO FACE WITH THE BIGGEST STARS Few performers have crafted a film career that so casually demolishes the barriers between media like Sofia Boutella. As a child, the Algerian-born actress studied classical dance and became a rhythmic gymnast on the French national team, before finding fame as a professional street dancer. But a love of film drove her to pursue acting, and she won her first major role as the salsa dancer Eva in 2012’s StreetDance 2. 2015’s Kingsman: The Secret Service, in which she starred as the deadly henchwoman Gazelle, won her the approval of genre film fans. And she followed that super-spy hit with her turn as the Enterprise crew’s alien ally Jaylah in last year’s Star Trek Beyond. Her biggest film, however, is her latest: Universal’s…

JIM WEST It wasn’t the hit in the UK that it was in America, but Robert Conrad’s 19th century superspy in the 1965 TV series The Wild Wild West paved the way for much of today’s steampunk. JONAH HEX John Albano and Tony DeZuniga’s antihero has battled everything from zombies to apocalyptic mutants to Ra’s al Ghul in Batman: The Animated Series. THE GUNSLINGER Yul Brynner’s proto-Terminator in the 1973 amusement-parkgone- wrong thriller Westworld not only led to the HBO hit, but also the dinos in Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park. ROLAND DESCHAIN The Man With No Name-like hero of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series, Roland finally comes to the big screen this year, played by no less an actor than Idris Elba. MALCOLM REYNOLDS Joss Whedon’s Firefly gave us…

2 (Melissa O’Neil) “One of the big themes I think Two deals with this season is that every time they try to help it seems to literally and figuratively blow up in their faces. She shoulders a lot of responsibility for that and her role in decisions that caused the deaths of countless people.” 3 (Anthony Lemke) “He’s a guy who loses most battles he’s in and doesn’t have any special skills, but is kind of a nice guy… That’s not as fun as a character who believes he’s better than he is and has a desire to be the villain. That doesn’t go away through season three, but he’s also incredibly loyal.” 4 Ishida Ryn (Alex Mallari Jr) “Four isn’t Ryo and Ryo isn’t Four. It’s a hybrid of…

Can you tell us about your character, Desi? Just a guy who didn’t sign up for this! He got thrust into this world and he’s terrified. He’s probably the closest to what an audience member would feel. He’s the eyes for those people who’d try to figure it out on the fly. It’s how I would be in real life, running from Decepticons and drones! Your background is in comedy. Did you look for ways to make the role funnier? Michael [Bay] was actually really open and excited by improv and ad libs. The things that work best are when you find the most human reaction, which isn’t necessarily the clever line – it’s portraying fear or excitement in an interesting way. More than “What about this line?” it was…

“I remember going to the East Tower [at BBC Television Centre] and meeting someone who explained what they were going to be doing.” This was how Maggie Philbin’s journey began. “I thought, ‘I’m not sure I get this’. It was only when I arrived at the studio in Bristol it clicked.” Today she recalls: “As it was still new, there was an element of experimentation. The production team couldn’t believe how long it took us to crack some of the puzzles.” That tension made itself manifest when Philbin broke part of the set. “I can’t remember exactly what, but I lost patience and tried to force something. Rather than applying the required logic, I just smashed my way through!” Nonetheless, she remembers The Adventure Game as “a great concept, quite…

Tennessee’s the Covenant’s pilot. How would you describe him? I feel like he feels lucky to be on the ship, which is very similar to me! You have all these scientists and doctors, and my character and Amy Seimetz’s are a couple, and we’re cut from a different cloth than the rest of them; a little more salt of the earth. What’s Ridley Scott like to work with? Everyone was like, “He only does two or three takes.” You have to bring it right from the start. You can’t just be calm and then do 50 takes and hope that they find it. And that influences how he shoots it. Everything’s like four cameras. He talks a lot about how he directs some of those scenes like it’s live television.…

THE SWORD OF OMENS ThunderCats leader Lion-O’s weapon has all sorts of cool stuff, like projecting the Eye Of Thundera into the sky, and energy blasts. It also comes when it’s called, and can fly the wielder about! STORMBRINGER This Michael Moorcock creation (wielded by his albino antihero Elric) is actually a demon in sword form. Even the smallest wound it inflicts allows it to drink an injured victim’s soul… THE SWORD OF SHANNARA Thanks to a magical Druid medallion cast into its hilt, the weapon that gives Terry Brooks’s 1977 novel its name has the power to reveal the truth. If only David Dimbleby could wave it about on Question Time, eh? STING Okay, strictly it’s actually a dagger, but this magical Elvish weapon serves nicely as a sword…

SPOILER WARNING! So: that ending, eh? The final scene cameo positions Split in the same universe as Unbreakable (which Kevin nearly debuted in back in 2000). If we’d been really smart we could have seen the twist coming, because Shyamalan was sneaky enough to drop hints long before the scene where a James Newton Howard cue swells. Take the similarity of the marketing. Unbreakable’s poster featured Bruce Willis and Samuel L Jackson’s faces overlaid with a cracked-glass effect. One of the posters for Split did the same with James McAvoy (above). The most intriguing clue comes in the scene where the Beast emerges. Before getting on an empty train, Kevin lays a bunch of flowers on the platform. Earlier we learnt from Kevin’s psychologist that one day his father got…

RELEASED 12 JUNE 2017 | 12 | 4K Blu-ray/Blu-ray/DVD/download/VOD Director Zhang Yimou Cast Matt Damon, Tian Jing, Willem Dafoe, Andy Lau A ton of chatter accompanied The Great Wall on its theatrical release: it was the priciest film ever shot entirely in China (true); it was the tired old white saviour trope with a greenscreen makeover (not quite true); it was the official future of movies, a cross-cultural hybrid bred for maximum appeal to popcornmunchers in East and West alike (it was a genuine hit in China; it stumbled elsewhere). It arrives on disc liberated from all that conversation. But maybe that conversation was the most interesting thing about it. Certainly the plot is barely more than a premise, designed to deliver bombastic, CGI-spritzed action scenes: during the Song dynasty,…

NEITHER HEAVEN NOR EARTH RELEASED 31 JULY 2015 | 12 | DVD Director Clément Cogitore Cast Jérémie Renier, Swann Arlaud, Marc Robert, Kévin Azaïs Playing like a militarised take on Picnic At Hanging Rock, Clément Cogitore’s slow-burner resists easy answers as much as it defies easy categorisation. Is it supernatural drama? Psychological study? Or metaphysical rumination? Like Peter Weir’s outback masterpiece, Neither Heaven Nor Earth deals with the horror of disappearance. And that’s a very particular kind of horror: the empty, enigmatic kind, absent, blank and unknowable. A lost child, a vanished plane. Or in this instance, the French army, stationed in the Wakhan district of Afghanistan, in edgy co-existence with the locals. Cogitore captures a remarkable sense of place: an infinitely bleak landscape of stony hills and barbed wire,…

ALL THE COLOURS OF THE DARK RELEASED 12 JUNE 1972 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD Director Sergio Martino Cast Edwige Fenech, George Hilton, Ivan Rassimov, Julián Ugarte Suffering from disturbingly surreal nightmares? Don’t bother with medication or a shrink. Simply attend a black mass, quaff some dog’s blood and partake in a satanic orgy – you’ll soon be right as rain! That’s the inadvisable path taken by Jane (Edwige Fenech), a woman recovering from losing her baby in a car crash, after the cobalt-blue-eyed psycho killer of her dreams starts stalking her in reality. The opaque title and personnel of this Italian production suggest a classic giallo (albeit one set in London), but this is a more a riff on the psychological crack-up movies Roman Polanski made in the ’60s –…

AN EXTRACT FROM A NEW BOOK The Author Andrew Lane is the author of 29 books and multiple short stories, television scripts and audio dramas. He is perhaps best known for his Young Sherlock series, which have sold to 42 countries. He has also written three well-reviewed adult crime novels under a pseudonym, the first of which has recently been optioned as a US TV series. Contact with alien species was made forty years ago, but communication turned out to be impossible. Kara is an ex-army sniper turned assassin who is about to learn that she can’t keep her distance from aliens forever… On 15 April 2019, at 14:12:15 GMT, the ninety-three-kilometrewide lunar crater Copernicus turned sky blue. A minute later it changed to turmeric yellow. Forty seconds later it…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Reviewed on PC Also on PS4, Xbox One Publisher Bandai Namco VIDEOGAME Following in the footsteps of puzzle-platformer Inside, Little Nightmares tasks you with leading a hapless child through an overwhelmingly bleak and sinister world. Much of your time is spent manoeuvring around the eerily dark, abandoned rooms of the Maw – a hellish vessel filled with all manner of strange and unsavoury people. The game is divided into chapters, each of which focuses on a different section of the ship. Navigating its rooms takes a clever blend of puzzling and platforming: the young protagonist, Six, can push and pull objects, climb, sprint and illuminate her surroundings using her handy lighter. Solutions to puzzles vary from simple options, like moving a chair to reach an electrical box,…

MR NANCY “Angry is good. Angry gets shit done.” American Gods, Episode 1.02 MARGO “I look like Jack Sparrow if he were played by a man.” ELIOT “I was actually thinking more of a fembot Nick Fury.” The Magicians, 2.13 THE DOCTOR “Hunger looks very like evil from the wrong end of the cutlery.” Doctor Who, 10.01 WEDNESDAY “I offer you the worm from my beak and you look at me like I fucked your mom?” American Gods, 1.01 THE DOCTOR “Human progress isn’t measured by industry. It’s measured by the value you place on a life.” Doctor Who, 10.03…

AWARD SEASON Doing the work of multiple actresses in every episode, Tatiana Maslany finally won a well-deserved Emmy last year. Manson says it was a shot in the arm to season five. “It sure gave a great boost to the morale of the whole crew,” the co-creator tells us. “We had a pretty positive and effective crew going in, and just to have everybody really get behind Tatiana and just be extremely proud of our own work to help get her there was terrific.” THE BODY POLITIC With women’s reproductive rights again under fire in the real world, Manson explains that Orphan Black remains chillingly relevant. “Our science advisor, Cosima Herter, she’s a historian of science and we really have used her throughout to help us define things. But the…

Because famous people are fans too Favourite SF/fantasy film It has to be Terminator 2 – I think I was about 12 when it came out. I was on holiday with my parents going to Spain on a ship and had to beg my mum to come into the cinema with me because it was a 15. She fell asleep while I was having my tiny mind blown! Sarah Connor became the benchmark that I would measure strong female characters against. I love her transition from victim in the first film to warrior in the second. It has also left me with a low-level concern about the machines taking over. I’m becoming more and more convinced that my iPhone is becoming self aware. Favourite sci-fi TV show Buffy The Vampire…

While they will soon be joining forces in the latest Netflix mini-series, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist will first come together as the Defenders in a new monthly comic book. Described by writer Brian Michael Bendis as “a sprawling Godfather-style epic, which is the grittiest thing I’ve ever written for Marvel,” it takes place in the same street-level environment as its small-screen equivalent, though its roster isn’t limited to that core quartet. “In the first few issues alone, we’ll see Blade, Paladin, Punisher, Moon Knight, Spider-Man and Eva Bell,” teases Bendis, who’s once again teaming up with Civil War 2 artist David Marquez. “So many of them are popping up because the streets are populated with all these really interesting characters.” After recently wrapping up his run…

Subscribe at myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/sfx SCI-FACT! Chiang has reams of unused Dantooine designs from Rogue One pre-production, which he hopes to use one day. MIND THE GAP “When I was hired by George Lucas in 1995 to work on the Star Wars prequels, I did a lot of research. I went to the archives, I looked at all the original drawings and I got to know [original Star Wars concept designer] Ralph McQuarrie quite well – that was invaluable for helping me to understand the design history of Star Wars. That foundation really helped because Rogue One was going to bridge the prequel era with the classic era. In terms of the timeline, Rogue One starts a month before Episode IV, so our designs had to fit seamlessly with that.” WINGING IT…

SCI-FACT! The first winner of the Arthur C Clarke Award was Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. NEWS WARP HIGH-SPEED FACTS Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy confirms Princess/ General Leia Organa will not appear in Star Wars: Episode IX, saying “We pretty much started over [on the script].” Like the Han Solo movie in 2018, it’ll have a May release date (or so they say…). Meanwhile, James Cameron’s four – yep, you read that right – Avatar sequels get dates in December 2020, 2021, 2024 and 2025, respectively. Mark Gatiss says The League Of Gentlemen are planning an anniversary special. Janet McTeer nabs as-yetunconfirmed role in Jessica Jones season two. Clifton James, the irascible Sheriff JW Pepper in two James Bond films, passes away aged 96. Once Upon A Time’s Jennifer Morrison…

SFX HAILING FREQUENCIES OPEN! THIS MONTH’S COMMUNICATIONS MONITOR IAN BERRIMAN, REVIEWS EDITOR Here at SFX Towers we have a big reference list of SF&F TV shows currently in production (or in the pipeline) and it now runs to more than 100 series! But there’s still nothing out there that inspires as much heated debate as Doctor Who does – so we make no apology for devoting major space to it again for the second time in as many months. Hey, if you want to see views about The Librarians, The Magicians or The Shannara Chronicles, write in! Rotate your eyeballs to the right and you’ll find all the contact details you need. #THE RETURN OF DOCTOR WHO Dicky Crisps, Facebook I thought we’d have to wait for the new showrunner…

140 The Winter King is the first book in The Warlord Chronicles, which is Bernard Cornwell’s unique take on King Arthur. I love many, many books, but this series has a special place in my heart, up there with Tolkien and Gemmell. Its blend of Arthurian mythos and gritty historical atmosphere encapsulates the perfect version of Arthur. Fantasy is usually found alongside sci-fi in most bookshops, and rightly so – they are closely related. Give fantasy a closer look, however, and it’s clear it has some serious blood relations to history, too. Mixing fantasy with history has a strong pedigree, going back as far as Homer and those adventurous Greeks! In The Winter King, Cornwell reverses the process, taking a mythical, legendary character entwined with magic and mysticism, and re-writing…

Comics in the 1940s weren’t exactly considered high art. However, 48-year-old William Moulton Marston felt differently. One of the most fascinating creators in comics history, Marston imagined that the medium could serve as the perfect tool for educating readers and sharing his view of the world. Wonder Woman was the result. Calling Wonder Woman radical feminist propaganda sounds like a pejorative; in fact, it was exactly what her creator claimed. “Wonder Woman,” Marston said, “is a psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who should, I believe, rule the world.” From a comic career spanning eight decades to her iconic 1970s television series starring Lynda Carter to her new standout role in the DC Extended Universe movies, it’s hard to argue that she hasn’t done exactly that in the…

HEROES & INSPIRATIONS ANTHONY HOROWITZ Anthony Horowitz hands SFX a distressed copy of Dr No. Distressed may be underselling it – this 1962 paperback looks as though it’s endured an especially brutalising torture session by SMERSH. The cover clings to the spine with the kind of tenacity that defines 007. There, just above the photo of Sean Connery in his scowly, sharp-suited pomp, is Horowitz’s own signature, scrawled a long time ago. “This is so sad. I was 14 years old when I wrote my name on that cover. And look, that’s my mother’s signature inside, giving me parental permission to read this book in school.” Horowitz has always loved heroes. He trades in them, too. He began his career writing TV adventures of William Tell and Robin Hood. More…

THE SFX AUTHOR INTERVIEW There’s a reason Sarah Lotz’s new novel, The White Road, deals with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). While living in South Africa, Lotz endured a “horrible home invasion”. This didn’t just happen once. “The gang that attacked us came back and they kept coming back,” she says. “Eventually you go for a month without any sleep.” Lotz had already endured difficult experiences, including time spent on the streets as a teenager in Paris. She was about to learn that PTSD, an anxiety disorder, can creep up on you. “It can be cumulative,” she says. “This experience basically kicked it off. My husband, who was there at the time, and my daughter, didn’t have it. I was like, ‘This is bullshit, I’m just going to get over this…

“I was the punter,” is how Adam Tandy (no relation to producer Chris) sums up his status in the episode, in which he played with Chris Serle and Sandra Dickinson. “I’d been working with Charmian Gradwell in a play, and I happened to mention what a great show The Adventure Game was. She said, ‘You should be on it!’” He looks back fondly on the experience, particularly how it ended. “I was evaporated by the Vortex! But it was hilariously interesting, watching how they programmed the BBC B computer to create those primitive effects.” With his producing hat on, he says it’s sad there isn’t a programme of its type today. “There’s no room for anything other than a perfect three-act story. What was great about The Adventure Game is…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2017 | SVOD Creators The Wachowskis, J Michael Straczynski Cast Doona Bae, Jamie Clayton, Tina Desai, Tuppence Middleton NETFLIX If you like a good montage, Sense8 is your show. As soon as you hear the first few notes of the next track on creator/ writer/director Lana Wachowski’s chill-out mixtape, you know you’re in for another globe-trotting pick’n’mix of stylish slo-mo, showing the series’ impossibly cool and diverse stars in rapturous joy or exquisite sadness. The central concept of the show makes the montage not just an affectation but a slick storytelling tool. It concerns a cell of eight “Sensates”, all born at exactly the same moment but in various different countries. Not only can they meet up in a kind of mental chatroom, they can also swap…

TEEN TITANS: THE JUDAS CONTRACT RELEASED OUT NOW! 2017 | PG | Blu-ray/DVD/download Director Sam Liu Cast Sean Maher, Stuart Allan, Brandon Soo Hoo, Christina Ricci DC’s Animated Original Movies have been building towards a New 52-style shared superhero universe since 2014. While the results have often been mediocre, there are small signs of progress. This latest release follows up last year’s Justice League Vs Teen Titans, this time focusing purely on the Titans by adapting one of their most famous storylines. The Judas Contract sees dissent in the ranks, as troubled hero-in-training Terra is revealed to be a psychotic double agent, who betrays the team on the orders of long-time Titans villain Deathstroke. Like the best X-Men storylines, The Judas Contract plays out like a superhero soap opera, and…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 1960 | PG | Blu-ray/DVD (dual format) Director George Pal Cast Rod Taylor, Alan Young, Yvette Mimieux, Sebastian Cabot BLU-RAY DEBUT It’s surprising that the granddaddy of all time travel tales hasn’t inspired more adaptations. This first cinematic version of HG Wells’s 1895 novel remains the best. It maintains the Victorian starting point, as Rod Taylor’s inventor travels – via short stops in 1917, 1940 and 1966 – to 802,701, where he discovers mankind has divided into the subterranean Morlocks (hairy, Hulk-green cannibals) and the passive, pastel-clad Eloi. The film changes the causes of that division, substituting atomic war for the class division Wells had extrapolated into the future, and lacks the wherewithal for the book’s trip to a weird dying Earth, millions of years in the…

REISSUES The bat’s arse HEART OF GRANITE ( , out now, Gollancz) sees James Barclay leave behind the more traditional fantasy he’s known for. It’s set in a future where alien tech’s transformed warfare, with troops travelling inside giant biomechanoid reptiles and pilots flying “drakes” (dragons, basically) via a neural link. We said: “Makes a whole load of military sci-fi clichés feel fresh and exciting… It’s pure pulp nonsense, but utterly compelling. At times, this could be Star Wars with pteranodons.” Also changing tack with entertaining results is Alastair Reynolds. YA title REVENGER ( , out now, Gollancz) sees the author cutting loose with a tale that may appeal to fans of Firefly. It centres on the teenage Ararfura, who runs away to join the crew of a pirate ship.…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher DC Comics Writer Warren Ellis Artist Jon Davis-Hunt ISSUES 1-3 There aren’t many comics as influential as the first 12 issues of The Authority. The superhero series created by Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch in 1999 defined the decompressed “widescreen” comic storytelling style that dominated the 2000s, and was one of many memorable titles that emerged from the independent imprint Wildstorm. Stormwatch, WildCATS, Planetary and many other series formed a superhero universe that was eventually folded into the DC Universe when Wildstorm was bought by DC. Up until recently it seemed that aside from the characters Apollo and Midnighter, few traces of the Wildstorm universe would ever be seen in comics again, but now a major revamp is happening. DC is rebooting the entire Wildstorm superhero…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Two players Publisher Warlord Games TABLETOP GAME The Doctor Who universe is a slightly weird fit for a wargame. The Doctor’s nominally pacifist outlook doesn’t exactly chime with a game themed around exterminating and deleting your opponents. Still, there’s potent appeal in the thought of building armies of little plastic Daleks and Cybermen – and this starter set gives you just that. Exterminate! is a straightforward turn-based affair. Two opposing alien forces advance on each other, shoot, scrap in close combat and also scout for point-giving Vortex Nodes. Decks of Battle and Adventure cards add more tactical opportunities and the chance to change or modify dice rolls. Naturally, the game can be expanded with the addition of characters including the Time Lord himself and foes like Missy…

STAR-LORD HELMET ot a wad of £50 notes burning a hole in your pocket? If so, a) please be our friend and b) here’s an easy fix. Made from fibreglass, metal and plastic, it comes with a display base and numbered plaque. Classy. DEADPOOL BOOKENDS We imagine the only books Deadpool reads are the “adult” variety, so he likely has no use for this pair of polystone bookends in the shape of his logo. But fans may find them just the thing to grip their graphic novels. LUCILLE REPLICA McFarlane Toys brought out a plastic replica of Negan’s baseball bat last year. This new “Take it like a champ” edition adds bloody fingerprints and blood splatters so you can pretend you’ve just caved Glenn’s head in. You sicko.…