Table of contents for February 2018 in SFX

Happy New Year, and welcome to our first issue of 2018! It’s always good to see Mulder and Scully on the cover of SFX – only Buffy can rival the FBI’s finest spook/alien hunters in terms of number of appearances – and we’re always happy to celebrate one of the biggest shows of our lifetime. Indeed, The X-Files’ colossal mid-’90s popularity helped establish us as the biggest sci-fi and fantasy mag on the planet. Welcome back, guys! So, with Mulder and Scully getting back to what they do best, we get the lowdown on season 11 from Chris Carter and David Duchovny. Our massive 17- page feature (p37) also sees us reopening some classic files, with a map of X-Files cases, interviews with a real-life Fox Mulder and classic baddie…

HAT TIP If adventure has a name, it’s that of the movie trilogy that most inspired the Maze Runner films… “Looking back on it, we probably share more with Indiana Jones than anything,” Wes Ball tells Red Alert. “The first one, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, is this great introduction to a character and a world and it’s fun and it’s exciting. The second one… It’s pure craft. It’s fantastic to watch. It’s super entertaining. You can just watch it whenever… And the third one, The Last Crusade, is a super-emotional farewell to the fans and the character. That’s where we’re at now.” THE SHAPE OF THINGS “Each Maze Runner film’s kind of distinct and different,” says Ball. “Even visually. In the first one, there’s rust and concrete and overgrowth,…

FAVOURITE SF/FANTASY MOVIE Top of the list would always be Brazil. It actually inspired me to give up my job working in a packing warehouse. I watched the film and was in tears. I ended up walking out of my job two weeks later, and going to art college. Also, Harry Tuttle’s torch glasses are the Orbital torch glasses. That’s where I first saw them and thought, “I want a pair of those.” So, Harry Tuttle is the honorary third member of Orbital. FAVOURITE SF/FANTASY TV Game Of Thrones has to be there, Children Of The Stones and The Prisoner. More recently, the Battlestar Galactica reboot, and even more recently The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s so strikingly close to reality that I almost dare not call it sci-fi, what with Donald…

Top trailers dissected SCI - FACT ! Marvel movie boss Kevin Feige says there are two MCU periods: “Everything before Avengers 4 and everything after.” OUT 27 APRIL 2018…

Conventions, shows and beyond It’s aliiiiiiive! Alive on stage, that is. 40 years after HG Wells’ defining alien invasion yarn was turned into a devastatingly catchy musical by composer and all-round great guy Jeff Wayne, the show is returning to tour the UK in 2018. Lengthily titled (deep breath) Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version Of The War Of The Worlds, the show will again be conducted by Wayne himself, who’ll command the nine-piece Black Smoke Band, plus a string orchestra consisting of 36 performers. “It will be the most exciting arena tour we’ve ever performed,” says Wayne, whose double album was released in 1978 and sold over 15 million records. “No one would have believed...” Promising to turn captive audiences into “a battleground of fear and curiosity”, the show will again…

SFX HAILING FREQUENCIES OPEN! THIS MONTH’S COMMUNICATIONS MONITOR RICHARD EDWARDS, EDITOR While a few of you loved Justice League, most of your comments ranged from “okay” or “better than I expected”, to “waste of time”. Hardly a ringing endorsement for the flagship of the DC Cinematic Universe… Star Trek: Discovery also fuels chat (that’ll warp back on to our screens this month), while we’re delighted to have a letter from Paul Calf. Not the Steve Coogan one, as he points out, but he is this month’s winner of a book from our chums at Black Library – he’ll be receiving a copy of Sons Of The Hydra by Rob Sanders in the post soon #JUSTICE LEAGUE Martin Horne, email I think its critics are way too harsh – it’s a…

THE INFLUENCES KOLCHAK THE NIGHT STALKER (1972-1975) Chasing down paranormal menaces from swamp beasts to killer androids, crumpled newshound Carl Kolchak was Chris Carter’s key inspiration for Mulder. Star Darren McGavin earned a recurring X-Files role in tribute. MOONLIGHTING (1985-1989) Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd defined the kind of slow-cooked sexual tension that made the Mulder and Scully pairing crackle. This smirky ’tec show also had a postmodern vibe echoed by The X-Files at its most playful. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977) Spielberg’s UFOlogical fable hinted at the kind of high-level machinations that kept the truth under wraps. Single-minded hero Roy Neary is a blue-collar Mulder, one with no option but to believe… TWIN PEAKS (1990-1991) Never quite as wilfully weird as David Lynch’s TV game-changer, The X-Files still poached some of its visuals,…

WHAT WAS THE ORIGINAL PITCH TO YOU FOR KRYCEK’S ARC IN THE SERIES? If my memory serves, it was supposed to be three episodes when Gillian was pregnant. I remember being told that it was highly probable that he was going to be a pretty shady character who came and went, and created difficulties for Mulder. I was just supposed to come in and be a foe for a short period of time, but I think it went on to be 24 episodes. At the time, I was really excited to get the part, for sure, just because I hadn’t done TV at the time. It turned out to be kind of a life-changer. Who’s to say what would have happened to my career if I hadn’t been on that…

THE FLINTSTONES Nick Park grew up with The Flintstones and it’s easy to see Early Man as a spiritual successor with its juxtaposition of the ancient and modern. We’re talking electricity, cafes and gas stations among the rocks, and friendly dinosaurs playing in the garden. ONE MILLION YEARS BC Another childhood love of Park’s was the stop-motion pioneer Ray Harryhausen. For this 1966 prehistoric epic, Ray Harryhausen famously animated all of the dinosaurs using a combination of stop-motion techniques and real creatures, such as iguanas, tarantulas and warthogs. CAPTAIN CAVEMAN AND THE TEEN ANGELS Another cartoon to meld old and new is Hanna-Barbera’s Captain Caveman. The main character is a caveman with a magical club who’s revived by three female detectives to solve crimes and take down baddies, including a…

“The Liberator, perhaps the real star of the show, is my number-one Blake’s 7 effect, visual, special or otherwise. The bold sweeping tripod shape, with echoes of 1930s Art Deco combined with recognisable modern SF tropes, looked great in pretty much every shot and left the design of other ships in the series struggling to keep up. The Liberator met its spectacular end in the series three finale, “Terminal”, flying apart in spinning pieces with real weight and scale – an epic farewell for one of SF TV’s iconic creations.”…

Unlike its closest contemporary, the Friday The 13th series, the Nightmare On Elm Street franchise generally highlighted directors who went on to blockbuster CVs – from Wes Craven to part three’s Chuck Russell (who launched Jim Carrey with The Mask) and part four’s Renny Harlin (of Cliffhanger and Die Hard 2 fame). Unfortunately, though, Jack Sholder – the man behind Freddy’s Revenge – mainly had the likes of Wishmaster 2 (1999) and Arachnid (2000) to look forward to. Still, before he became a fixture of direct-to-DVD creature-cheapies, Sholder did have a further fling with minor film fame when he took on the reins of The Hidden (1987), an alien-invasion sci-fi shocker that still stands as his finest moment. Featuring a pre-Twin Peaks Kyle MacLachlan as a spacedetective, The Hidden is…

SPOILER WARNING! We still don’t know where Snoke came from, how he established the First Order, or got his clutches on Kylo Ren. Luke says Snoke had already been at work twisting Ben Solo’s mind when he took a peek inside – was that all done telepathically, or had the two met? From the flashbacks, we know that some of Luke’s Jedi pupils were killed by Kylo Ren, and others became his disciples. Are they the Knights of Ren we see in the flashback in The Force Awakens? Has Yoda had a big rethink on Jedi training in the time he’s been dead? He’s happy to let Rey go off and learn from her mistakes, which was a big no-no for Luke. Is he really okay with the next generation…

RELEASED 5 JANUARY 15 | 129 minutes Director Kornél Mundruczó Cast Zsombor Jéger, Merab Ninidze, György Cserhalmi Hungarian filmmaker Kornél Mundruczó scored an international hit with his 2014 parable White God, in which a mistreated mutt led a canine uprising on the mean streets of Budapest. He follows it up with a film he wrote earlier, and though Jupiter’s Moon is intermittently stunning as it repeats the trick of blending social realism and fantasy, love and hate, sadness and joy, it’s also overlong, with too many elements jostling for attention. Shot dead after making it into Hungary, Syrian refugee Aryan (Zsombor Jéger) rises with the ability to fly, and is paraded like a circus freak by a corrupt doctor (Merab Ninidze) who spies wads of cash under those invisible wings.…

RELEASED 8 JANUARY 2017 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD Directors Shinji Aramaki, Masaru Matsumoto Cast Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyer, DeRay Davis, Luci Christian Twenty years after Paul Verhoeven turned beautiful young people into dinner for interstellar bugs, Starship Troopers is back for a fifth outing. Following fellow CG animation Starship Troopers: Invasion, Traitor Of Mars finds Johnny Rico training inept cadets in orbit around Mars, when the arachnids launch an attack on the Red Planet... While the returning Casper Van Dien (voicing Rico) and screenwriter Ed Neumeier provide a degree of continuity, this fails to emulate the satirical humour that made Verhoeven’s film more than your average blow-stuff-up action movie. There’s also an over-familiarity (soldiers trapped by swarms of arachnids; a morally dubious military leader), while bringing Dina Meyer’s Dizzy…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2017 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD This sequel prequel slots in after the original movie and before Jeepers Creepers 2. The Creeper struts around in broad daylight looking like a rejected Buffy villain (where exactly do demons buy their leathers from?), while a succession of idiots line up to try to kill him. Virtually plotless, entirely lacking in tension (we already know the Creeper survives) and interesting characters, it irritates by hinting at an origin story. Back into hibernation, please. Extras None.…

RELEASED 15 JANUARY 1979 | 18 | Blu-ray Director Jean Rollin Cast Franca Maï, Brigitte Lahaie, Jean-Marie Lemaire, Fanny Magier BLU-RAY DEBUT Fascination? This characteristically enigmatic effort by cult French director Jean Rollin holds a fair amount of it, though frustration and fornication are also high in the mix. Set in 1905, it sees a thief hiding out in a chateau, whose two supremely unconcerned female inhabitants are expecting visitors for a secret ceremony... Barring shoot-outs between Marc (Jean-Marie Lemaire – who seems to have stepped out of Carnaby Street circa 1965) and his fellow bandits (which have all the conviction of a playground game), it’s essentially one long, seductive dance, with Elizabeth (Franca Maï) and Eva (Brigitte Lahaie) flashing mocking smiles at the cocky chauvinist as they hint darkly…

RELEASED 18 JANUARY 67 pages | Hardback/ebook Author Lidia Yuknavitch Publisher Canongate Climate change, worldwide war, burning oil fields… we’ve come up with myriad ways to end Earth, or at least our dominance of it. But what if the real end for us wasn’t just what we did to our planet, but the de-evolution of our own bodies? How could the human race continue without hope or reproduction? The easy answer is, well, it wouldn’t, but a more thoughtful, lyrical examination of these issues makes up The Book Of Joan. Within a lifetime, humanity has devolved into smooth-skinned, hairless bodies with no sexual characteristics – and no way for life to continue. One woman led armies across the planet: Joan of Dirt, a young woman filled with energy, electricity and…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 269 pages | Hardback/ebook Author Louise Erdrich Publisher Corsair Books What would it take to unmake the world? In Louise Erdrich’s latest novel, it’s something both simple and monumental: evolution goes sideways. Humans, animals and even plants start growing in bizarre, prehistoric ways. Unable to trust science, people turn to religion – and to rounding up pregnant women, desperate to find a way to breed normal Homo sapien children. Told via diary entries by Cedar Songmaker, a pregnant 30-something, the story unfolds like a found-footage movie that’s actually got respect for the format. Cedar only writes about things after they’ve happened, and only knows what she’s personally witnessed or been told. Erdrich’s prose is perhaps more poetic than a desperate woman on the run could muster, but…

RELEASED 16 JANUARY 160 pages | Hardback Author Jeff Bond Publisher Titan Books A behind-the-scenes guide to Seth McFarlane’s sci-fi comedy show. Features TV concept art (with commentary) for all the main elements: the ship, the uniforms, the main sets, the alien Krill, and so on. Make-up photos include an early test for security officer Alara, featuring bigger ears! Highlight: various crude “back of an envelope”– style concept sketches by MacFarlane himself. Detail we hadn’t spotted before: on the planet Sargus 4 (in episode seven) all the locals have double lapels. Surprisingly sparse at times – like when a two-page character profile barely sneaks past 60 words. The £29.99 RRP feels very steep for something containing about as much as info as a tie-in magazine.…

Pick of the paperbacks: Cory Doctorow’s cyberpunk thriller WALKAWAY ( 11 January, Head Of Zeus), which follows anarchistic “walkaways” from society as they strive to build a new world, in abandoned spaces on the margins. We said: “The first Doctorow novel where he’s created characters so memorable that you miss them when you finish the final page… Big-hearted, funny, exciting, sensual and visionary.” Callie Bates’s THE WAKING LAND ( 25 January, Hodder & Stoughton) centres on Elanna, who was held hostage between the ages of four and 19 to keep her rebellious father in line; now she’s returning home to a land she barely remembers. We said: “It’s an engaging story, and well told, but Elanna is a little too perfect, conveniently possessed of incredible magical powers.” Finally, with a…

RELEASED 11 JANUARY 368 pages | Paperback/ebook Authors Sasha Alsberg, Lindsay Cummings Publisher HQ There’s no denying that there’s something compelling about a ruthless gang of female mercenaries zipping around the galaxy in a starship named Marauder. Mind you, aside from the fact that they’re all women, it’s hardly an original premise – there are shades of everything from Firefly to Guardians Of The Galaxy here, with members of the crew displaying facets of Marvel’s Scarlet Witch or Kick-Ass’s Hit-Girl. Thankfully it makes for a cracking combination, as we find out what happens when their leader Androma (nicknamed the “Bloody Baroness” – anyone else thinking of a certain Hogwarts ghost?) is blackmailed into a rescue mission in exchange for falling off the Most Wanted list. There are faults: the male characters…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher Titan Comics Writer Peter Milligan Artist Alberto Foche ISSUES 1-3 First appearing in the pages of The Eagle in 1950, in the years since Dan Dare has often resembled a relic from a bygone era rather than the Pilot of the Future. Reinvented almost beyond recognition in first 2000 AD and then The New Eagle in the late ’70s and ’80s, he last soared the spaceways in Garth Ennis and Gary Erskine’s nihilistic 2007 seven-parter for Virgin Comics. Cleverly pitched between his youthful Eagle days and the twilight years of his career as depicted by Ennis and Erskine, this new Titan Comics series features a middle-aged Colonel Dare who’s grown bored with his lot. War with the Treens is long-since over, and Earth is now enjoying…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher Image Comics Writer Simon Spurrier Artist Caspar Wijngaard ISSUES 1-3 Simon Spurrier and Caspar Wijngaard’s new all-ages comic takes place in a post-human world inhabited by genetically enhanced flying monkeys and weaponised cybernetic dolphins. But despite the potential for whimsy overload, Angelic has a serious issue at its heart. Qora is a young girl monk. Her primate clan is devoutly religious and ruthlessly patriarchal, neither of which sits well with her. Her inquisitive nature leads to an encounter with one of the Mans – a mysterious, technologically advanced oceanic species, loathed by the monkeys – and sets her off on an adventure that will cause her to question everything she has been brought up to believe. “Finds beauty and horror in the world” Angelic looks superb,…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 300 minutes | CD/download Publisher Big Finish AUDIO CD Having Derek Jacobi as the Master felt like one of new Who’s great achievements. So it’s gratifying to see Big Finish following up their War Doctor audios with this War Master set, which explores just what he was up to before “Utopia”. Opener “Beneath The Viscoid” is a slight but entertaining tale illustrating the Master’s willingness to deceive and exploit anyone in his way – and hearing those friendly, reassuring tones inflicting casual cruelty and death sends a shiver down the spine. By contrast, in “The Good Master”, he picks up his very own companion and possibly even begins to care about others… Maybe. Third instalment “The Sky Man” by James Goss is the standout. The Master himself…

RICHARD EDWARDS EDITOR RAVES Much more excited about Spielberg’s new film, Ready Player One – the latest trailer made me feel Ernest Cline’s book is going to work brilliantly on the big screen. RANTS It’s got dinosaurs and Jeff Goldblum, yet the Jurassic World trailer felt strangely flat to me – hopefully they’ve saved the best stuff for later. IAN BERRIMAN REVIEWS EDITOR RAVES Loved the first episode of Hard Sun. Agyness Deyn is so bad-ass in it! Belatedly saw Thor: Ragnarok: best MCU movie to date, I’m saying. Certainly the most fun. Fan of classic Who? You will adore Clayton Hickman’s obscure-reference Red Bubble designs inspired by the show: http://bit.ly/claywho JONATHAN COATES ART EDITOR RAVES Can’t wait for Early Man. Nick Park is a genius. Could the possible Disney…

JOSH Looks like Marvel meets Lord Of The Rings! Love everyone’s new hairdo, but I’m not keen on Spidey’s upgraded suit. And Thanos as a big CGI gorilla? I’m on the fence. RICH It’s all a bit dour and portentous, isn’t it? I also can’t help feeling that Thanos looks like a pink Homer Simpson, but I still have faith in the Russo bros to bring it all together. KIMBERLEY I personally love the feeling of dread coming off the trailer, and seeing a moody and bearded Steve Rogers emerge from the shadows shot tingles down my spine. I love you, Cap! NICK Thanos looks like sentient Spam without his helmet, and the solemn, melancholic tone feels a little jarring for a Marvel romp, but that final hero stampede is…

DATE 6-8 February LOCATION RichMix, London Movie effects become more spectacular every year, which makes the sixth VFX Festival a tantalising prospect. Presented by Escape Studios, it celebrates the best in VFX, games, animation and graphics. This year, Framestore – which boasts Gravity, Harry Potter and Avatar on its CV – will offer an exclusive peek at one of its upcoming projects, and talk about Thor: Ragnarok. Meanwhile, Ridley Scott will explore the anatomy of his Alien, with a look at the creation of Alien: Covenant. There’ll be talks from effects company MPC, and animation studio Blue Zoo will screen its new short, Mamoon. “Whether you’re established in the industry, looking to network, or find out how to break into it, we’ve something for everyone,” says Dr Ian Palmer, director…

The Shape Of Water picks up numerous nominations for the Golden Globes, with Best Picture (drama), Best Director for Guillermo del Toro, and acting nods for Sally Hawkins, Richard Jenkins and Octavia Spencer. Get Out also bags a couple of noms, while on the small screen, Game Of Thrones, The Handmaid’s Tale and Stranger Things fight it out for Best TV Series (drama). Rance Howard, character actor, Babylon 5 recurring star, and father of Ron and Clint, passes away aged 89. You know that Miles Moralesfocused animated movie directed by The Lego Movie’s Phil Lord and Chris Miller? It’ll be titled Spider- Man: Into The Spiderverse, and it’s out late 2018. Alex Garland’s Annihilation, originally set for a cinema release, reportedly coming to Netflix in UK. Premiere date for Jessica Jones season 2…

Subscribe at myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/sfx INGLOURIOUS BAT’LETHS! STAR TREK None other than Quentin Tarantino is teaming up with JJ Abrams on the next Star Trek movie. Like a true pop culture junkie Tarantino has Trekkie leanings – remember the “old Klingon proverb” quoted at the start of Kill Bill Vol 1? – and has spoken in the past about how he’d like a shot at some big-screen Starfleet action, favouring a riff on Next Gen episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise”. Deadline reports that he pitched his idea to Abrams, who’ll serve as producer, and now a writer’s room will help turn the treatment into a screenplay, with The Revenant’s Mark L Smith the frontrunner to script. QT reportedly favours an R-rated Trek. The big question, of course, is whether he’ll direct it himself. We…

“TRAVEL AND EXPERIENCES ARE FOOD FOR A WRITER’S BRAIN” Ever since I was a kid, travel has sparked my imagination like nothing else. When my family vacationed in the desert, I’d look out at the dust-andorange landscape and visualise lonely, shadowy horrors that might slip through from another dimension between the weird rock formations. When we went to the mountains, I’d picture dragons on the peaks, lifting their wings to the sun. When my husband and I honeymooned in Rome, we whispered to each other about the sort of fight scenes we’d stage in Renaissance churches, or what would be the best survival strategy if you were down in the catacombs and all the ancient bones rose up as undead. Visiting Yellowstone National Park with my children this past summer,…

SEASON 10 GAVE US AN ESTRANGED MULDER AND SCULLY THAT FOUND THEIR WAY BACK TO EACH OTHER. WHERE ARE THEY THIS SEASON? Yeah. As realistic as that estrangement might be for some other shows, it’s kind of a hindrance for us, because you don’t want Mulder and Scully to be talking about their relationship while they’re doing a case. This iteration of Mulder and Scully is focused on what they’re doing, and not as much on what they’re feeling. What they’re feeling is important, and it comes out along the way, but it comes out as it’s brought out by the case at hand, which is I think the better way for us to do it, rather than Mulder and Scully in therapy, which nobody really wants to see. LAST…

WE KNOW THERE’S A SKINNER-CENTRIC EPISODE IN THE UPCOMING SEASON. HOW DID THAT COME ABOUT? I was actually on set one day [last season], and I was kind of whining, “Is Skinner hard to write for, or what?” Gabe Rotter, the long-time assistant of Chris Carter, was standing there when I said that. And he said a light went off in his head and he thought, “I’m going to write a Skinner episode,” and he did. DO WE GET SOME INSIGHT INTO SKINNER’S BACK STORY, OR IS THE EPISODE ABOUT A NEW ARC? Gabe wrote a great episode where you find out a lot about Skinner: who he is, why he is the way he is, and what brought him to where he is. You see a lot about his…

What appealed to you about the role? I find the ideas in the story and the world [Richard Morgan] has created here fascinating. I play somebody who’s 375 years old. What does that mean, and how do you behave with other people? What do you learn, over a period of 375 years, about yourself? And we’re creating a whole world. I did Rome for HBO, and that world had a similar sense of authenticity. It’s full of context, and that’s always an interesting thing to step into, as an actor. How do you project the sense of a centuries-old character? One of the things I thought about is that thing of stringing a sentence together. Children make the same mistakes over and over again, and eventually they learn not to…

Hard Sun marks a return to the TV landscape for Euston Films, makers of classic series like The Sweeney and Minder. It’s the production company’s first commission since its revival in 2014 – and according to managing director Kate Harwood, it very much belongs in that Euston lineage. “We spent a lot of time going, ‘What is Euston Films? What does it mean?’” Harwood says. “We looked back at everything they did, and decided that what it meant was intelligent mainstream. Yes, it was on ITV at nine o’clock, but it wasn’t just what everyone else was doing – it did push things forward a little bit.” The Euston ethos partly comes through in the characterisation. “In The Sweeney and Minder those characters are quite worldly and knowing,” Harwood explains.…

Every so often, a science fiction novel comes along that escapes the genre ghetto. Even more rarely, this occurs with a debut novel and the experience, you would imagine, must be overwhelming. Yes it was, says Pierce Brown, whose Red Rising was just such a book, but previous unsuccessful attempts to get into print kept his feet firmly on the ground. “I think the rejection makes you old quickly, it makes you wiser,” he says as he looks back on the moment he hit the New York Times bestseller list. “When you get rejected you realise that success isn’t grown overnight. Success is very fickle, especially in the writing world, so all getting on the list made me want to do is write better books.” Books such as his new…

The Elm Street series, as a whole, has been a tad unpredictable with its teen-orientated messages. The 1985 sequel addresses male-on-male attraction and Mark Patton’s Jesse is nothing less than sympathetic, while 1987’s Dream Warriors and 1988’s The Dream Master retread the classic Carrie scenario of a mousy teenage girl finally finding her strength and inner (and outer) beauty through adversity. Parental negligence is a factor in both sequels – but by the time of A Nightmare On Elm Street Part 5: The Dream Child (1989) things take a turn to the right as Freddy attempts to be reborn through a pregnant victim, leading to forceful and lengthy anti-abortion discussions. For Freddy’s Dead (1991) a threadbare (and quite offensive) link is made when Freddy’s evil actions are revealed to be…

RELEASED 19 JANUARY PG | 109 minutes Director Lee Unkrich Cast Anthony Gonzalez, Gael Garcia Bernal, Benjamin Bratt, Alanna Ubach Assuaging worries that Pixar is driving headlong into a future filled with sequels to its popular hits (and Cars), Coco sees the animation team firmly back in original territory. Despite some surface similarities with 2014’s The Book Of Life, this exploration of family, clashing ambitions and the Land of the Dead is colourful, creative and very different. Drawing input from Latin American consultants (and co-director Adrian Molina), Toy Story 3’s Lee Unkrich has another winner on his hands with the emotional story of Miguel (Anthony Gonzalez), who dreams of being a musician despite his grandmother’s strict rule against it. When he disobeys, while trying to follow in the footsteps of…

Did you get to visit Iceland for the filming of “Crocodile”? I did, and the day I arrived, they had record snowfall, and I didn’t realise! I woke up the next day and it was up to your waist, basically. I just thought, “This is what Iceland’s like.” I ended up traipsing around thinking, “God, they’ve got a terrible infrastructure here – there seems to be chaos.” I discovered later that it was the heaviest snowfall they’ve had in 60 years! It gave us a bit of a continuity nightmare, but we got around that by incorporating it into the story – someone refers to the snow. Do you worry that people will think you’re having a pop at Trekkies with “USS Callister”? I don’t think it’ll come across as…

RELEASED 15 JANUARY 2017 | 12 | Blu-ray/DVD Director David Lowery Cast Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara, Will Oldham After dying in a car accident, C (Casey Affleck) wakes up in the morgue. He returns home covered in a white sheet and has to watch his partner, M (Rooney Mara), grieve, unable to talk to her. Without sound or expression, C’s sheet becomes a shroud of perpetual misery; unable to let go he drifts, standing forlorn in rooms where life has moved on, brushing up against people who will eventually forget him. A Ghost Story is incredibly moving, especially if you’ve ever experienced intense attachment to physical spaces. Affleck and Mara are also perfect together: an early embrace creates the impression that C and M are a single entity that will…

RELEASED 22 JANUARY (15 January on download) 2017 | 15 | DVD/download This half-baked sci-fi actioner feels like it never quite got past the proof-of-concept phase. It’s got some great visuals – the aliens are suitably otherworldly, and the South African backdrop is stunning – but doesn’t have enough ideas to fill 20 minutes, let alone 84. Lee Pace’s character is on a mission to figure out who he is and why he has no memory of the invasion, but a more pertinent question might be: how the hell did he even end up in this? Extras Making Of.…

Brutal murders blight a ballet school in SUSPIRIA (out now, Blu-ray & DVD – dual format). Dario Argento’s 1977 magnum opus has had a HD release before, but CultFilms’ 40th anniversary edition warrants double-dipping for, as it makes use of a new 4K restoration which restores the even more glaring colour palette of the original release. New extras include a director interview and a piece on the restoration process. We said: “A perverse fairy tale that banishes rationality in favour of delirious style.” Also reissued: three anime features by director Mamoru Hosoda, all of which we awarded five stars. THE GIRL WHO LEAPT THROUGH TIME (out now, Blu-ray & DVD – dual format) is the tale of a girl who uses her time travel ability to erase events that don’t…

RELEASED 11 JANUARY 480 pages | Hardback/ebook Author John Gwynne Publisher Pan Macmillan A Time Of Dread is a novel that feels more like classic epic fantasy than most. Set in the same world as John Gwynne’s Faithful & The Fallen quartet, it takes place 150 years later. You don’t need to have read the earlier series to understand what’s going on; the author uses it for an undercurrent of lore, imbuing the plot with a sense of history. Trapped in the middle of the eternal conflict between angels and demons, humanity must choose to either serve the angelic Ben-Elim and fight, or live on the fringes of civilisation. Riv, a young soldier, is eager to fight for her people; Drem, a tracker sheltered by his protective father, has spent…

RELEASED 18 JANUARY 432 pages | Paperback/ebook/ audiobook Author Josiah Bancroft Publisher Orbit The Tower Of Babel is a tourist trap. Not the Biblical tower, but the one that dominates the fantasy landscape in Josiah Bancroft’s new series The Books Of Babel, drawing humanity like water to a drain. This Babel is a vast edifice, so tall its top is hidden by clouds. Nobody is sure how tall it is; some rumours suggest it’s still being built. Each storey is a kingdom – or “Ringdom” – and each is very different in character. Guide books list it as a place of wonder. When a rural headteacher, Thomas Senlin, loses his wife there on their honeymoon and has to travel up the Tower to find her, he discovers that few visitors…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 384 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Adriana Mather Publisher Walker Books Author Adriana Mather has a controversial surname, being descended from Cotton Mather, the man who (whether wittingly or unwittingly) instigated the Salem Witch Trials. She wanted to write a book that paralleled “hanging a witch in Salem to modern-day bullying”, which is admirable, but the result isn’t quite as layered as it should be, given the intention behind it How To Hang A Witch follows a teenager named Samantha Mather (meta alert!), who moves to Salem and discovers that a curse is picking off the descendants of the Salem Witch circle. There’s a friendly ghost who helps out, a love triangle, a decent twist or two and a gang of schoolkids who’ve stepped out of the Big…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher Rebellion Writer Dan Abnett Artists Karl Richardson, Lee Carter, Patrick Goddard COLLECTION Border control gets a sci-fi twist in the first collected volume of this 2000 AD serial. The Global Eco Segregation Zone is a holding pen in Arizona for representatives of many alien species. A few are dangerous, but most are just trying to get by in a new and largely hostile world. The men and women of Exo Transfer Control must deal with translation problems, drug smugglers, violent bigots and the occasional monster in the course of an average day’s work. Grey Area wears its politics on its sleeve, exploring its themes of immigration and cultural differences in an engaging sci-fi procedural format. Most of the stories here are short, punchy tales about the…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher Titan Comics Writer Dan Abnett Artist Tom Mandrake ISSUES 1-3 The second offering from Titan’s Hammer Comics line, this four-parter’s historical milieu means that it captures more of the British horror studio’s vintage vibe than the contemporary take on The Mummy. Picking up immediately where Brian Clemens’s 1974 movie left off, Dan Abnett’s story begins with the vampire hunter and his companions travelling to another remote Eastern European village, where they encounter an even more sinister threat in the shape of vampire lord Slake, whose undead army seemingly defy all the usual lore. Abnett makes one vital change to the film’s conclusion, as young gypsy Carla no longer stays behind. Instead, she not only comes along for the ride but becomes a formidable opponent in her…

American Gods showrunners Bryan Fuller and Michael Green leave the show. A new take on Sabrina The Teenage Witch is the way, as Netflix orders two seasons. The streaming service has also confirmed Stranger Things 3 and a second season of Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Return... ...and picked up the rights to John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War novels... ...and is reportedly rebooting He-Man spin-off She-Ra. Patrick Macmanus, who worked on Grant Morrison’s Happy!, adapting Kurt Vonnegut’s classic Slaughterhouse- Five for Universal Cable. Hit podcast Welcome To Nightvale may be heading to TV – FX is developing a series. The identity of the Walking Dead star joining Fear The Walking Dead has been revealed and it’s Lennie James, aka Morgan. Lost and Taken star Maggie Grace is also joining the zombie spin-off. “DON’T QUOTE ME” “IF THERE WAS THE…

SCI - FACT! Sid Vicious also appeares in the Hellblazer story “No Future” written by Peter Milligan. 134 ANDREW-LEE POTTS Connor Temple in Primeval In 2007 Andrew-Lee Potts debuted as Connor Temple in ITV’s Primeval, the cheeky tech geek helping shut down time anomalies and keep the UK free from dinosaurs. Since then he’s gone to Wonderland for Syfy’s Alice, helped launch the US Version of Primeval, New World, and created acclaimed AI-car-themed web series, Wireless. Would you like to play the role again? I’d find it very hard not to! Especially now that I’m a bit older, like six years has passed and I’m a bit wiser. I’d love to see where he was at now. I don’t know if it could exactly pick up where it left off,…

What’s your protagonists’ story? Tom and Kate are addicted to the Feed. It’s social media direct to the brain: all knowledge and unlimited communication at the speed of thought. It does everything for us, from storing memories to communicating with bursts of thought, so suddenly living without it is impossible. But Tom and Kate survive the Collapse and live in this post-Feed world. Then their daughter’s kidnapped, and they have to fight to find her. What sparked the idea? I remember being a kid and thinking, “Wouldn’t it be easier if we could send each other bundles of thoughts, saying exactly how we’re feeling?” More recently, Twitter gave me insomnia, because I was checking it until the second I closed my eyes. I hadn’t realised how interlinked we are with…

HORRORON-SEA 19-28 January Celebrate the genre in all its g(l)ory in Southend, with 30 feature films and 40 shorts. Expect bear-headed demons, killer clowns and a very bad Santa. http://bit.ly/SFXSouthend SCIFI BALL 24 2-4 February Sparkly stars like Star Trek’s Terry Farrell and Gary Graham descend on The Grand Harbour Hotel in Southampton. You’ll have a ball! (We’ll get our coats.) www.sfbevents.com PORTSMOUTH COMIC CON 5-6 May Sea and sci-fi meet at this new event, with guests such as Walter Simonson, Tess Fowler and Dave Dorman. www.portsmouthcomiccon.co.uk SAN DIEGO COMIC-CON 19-22 July The original (and biggest) con returns with A-list movie and TV guests, plus more comic-books than you can possibly fit in your garage. www.comic-con.org DESTINATION STAR TREK 19-21 Oct The Birmingham NEC goes galactic for the ST convention…

SCI - FACT! Douglas Adams’s archive at Cambridge University includes a Doctor Who story that he developed with John Lloyd. Author James Goss discovered Douglas Adams’s proposal for Doctor Who And The Krikketmen (originally conceived as a potential Doctor Who film) while he was researching the episode “The Pirate Planet”, and he got more than he bargained for. “Every Doctor Who fan thinks they know exactly what The Krikketmen is – a rejected Doctor idea that ended up as Hitchhikers book Life, The Universe And Everything – and shamefully I was one of those people,” Goss tells Red Alert. “Until I read the treatment, which wasn’t just the standard couple of sheets of paper but 33 closely-typed A4 pages, going into a great deal of detail and including a large…

Liu Yifei playing the title role in Disney’s live-action Mulan… Ryan Reynolds to star in Detective Pikachu… Matthew Vaughn in the frame for high-concept SF thriller Courage… James Mangold bringing Katherine Applegate’s kids’ book Crenshaw to the screen… Neill Blomkamp behind a remake of Flight Of The Navigator… Jude Law to play Mar-Vell in Captain Marvel… Lizzy Caplan the female lead in Gambit… Jake Gyllenhaal rumoured to be Matt Reeves’ pick for Batman… The Paddington team adapting Enid Blyton’s Magic Faraway Tree books… Captain Phillips’ Billy Ray polishing the script of the next Terminator… Constantin Film adapting ’90s spy-fi comic book Danger Girl… F Murray Abraham voicing the villain in How To Train Your Dragon 3… The creators of Despicable Me developing a Super Mario Bros movie for Universal… IT screenwriter Gary Dauberman adapting ’90s anthology show Are You Afraid Of The Dark?... 20th Century Fox adapting Boom! Studios comic Imagine Agents… Hellboy reboot arriving…

by TH White, 1938 CELEBRATING CLASSIC SF & FANTASY NOVELS A few years before the Second World War, a charming, popular, utterly conventional young schoolmaster by the name of Terence Hanbury White had something of a breakdown. He holed up in a derelict cottage with his dog, his gun, a goshawk which he tried and failed to train, and a copy of Malory’s Morte Darthur. The result was two extraordinary books; The Goshawk and The Once And Future King. White spent most of his life terrified of himself. He was afraid that he was a coward, a sadist, gay. He was afraid of heights, so he took flying lessons. When the war came, he fled to neutral Ireland, where he barricaded himself in a remote farmhouse, petrified of the IRA.…

THE BEGINNING 1947’s Roswell crash marks the government’s first contact with a race of sentient alien oil that can inhabit host bodies (including the classic Grey form, which they use here). The aliens announce that Earth will be colonised on 22 December 2012. THE SHAPESHIFTERS The colonists are not the only ETs. There is also a race of shapeshifters. Some of these work as bounty hunters for the colonists, while a rebel faction wage war against the invaders. They seal up their orifices so that they can’t become hosts for the oil. THE HYBRID PROGRAMME The Syndicate is formed. They agree to help the aliens, but secretly plan to fight back. Bill Mulder gives up his daughter Samantha for experimentation. The Syndicate attempt to create alien/human hybrids, ostensibly as slaves…

Did Guillermo del Toro talk to you about your character as the romantic lead? More than I can even remember! I’ve played so many creatures for Guillermo before, he knows my style, and he said to me, “This time I don’t want a Dougie performance! I need you to be the romantic leading male!” So going through the rehearsal process, the costume fittings, the make-up tests was all about finding that sexiness, that lovability, that potential for not only Elisa to fall in love with me on screen, but for the audience to buy it too. Is it true they wanted you to have a great backside? Well, the first day I was at the Creature Shop at Legacy Effects in LA, they invited me to look at the full-sized…

Quell isn’t in the book. What’s her role here? You really see her as a tool for our hero. You see him use her for his ability to stay in this world when he wants to leave it. In the most extreme moments, he calls on her. She wants him to be his highest self, to be the Envoy that she trained him to be, and to find the real mystery underneath the mystery. What I think is really beautiful about Laeta’s work is that there’s a poetry involved in some very disturbing moments. In this very, very dark world there’s a love story that parallels through the whole thing. Philosophically, what do you find most interesting about the series? As a team, I’m sure we’d all consider ourselves very…

An early bone of contention during production on Blake’s 7 was the design of the Liberator. Ian Scoones was miffed when he found out that the design of the ship had already been assigned to the main designer on the series, Roger Murray Leach, who also designed the ship’s interior. Scoones had prepared his own design sketch for the Liberator, but it was felt that it lacked the visual appeal of Murray Leach’s existing blueprint. The actual construction of the Liberator was handled by an outside contractor, Space Models. The three-foot-long Liberator model was delivered to Scoones just a few days before filming was due to begin. He wasn’t entirely happy with the model and approached Martin Bower to add intricate detail to it. “I was at Bray Studios when…

RELEASED 25 JANUARY 15 | 120 minutes Director Kentaro Hagiwara Cast Masataka Kubota, Nobuyuki Suzuki, Yo Oizumi, Fumika Shimizu Tokyo Ghoul is a pleasingly competent horror drama that caters well to the different audiences who’ll see it; those coming to the story fresh, and those familiar with the previous manga and anime versions Keeping close to them, it’s the story of Ken, a chronically shy university student whose new girlfriend turns out to be a ghoul, a creature that eats human flesh and attacks using hidden bodily appendages (these vary from ghoul to ghoul, but include wings and tentacular blades). Ken survives, but an unlikely transplant leads to him becoming half-ghoul himself. Eventually he learns that not all ghouls are predators, and the story becomes a “monsters as oppressed minority” drama.…

Get sci-fi news, reviews and features at gamesradar.com/sfx RELEASED 15 JANUARY (Out now on download) 2017 | 15 | Blu-ray (4K/standard)/DVD/ download Director Andy Muschietti Cast Bill Skarsgård, Jaeden Lieberher, Sophia Lillis, Jack Dylan Grazer This Stephen King adaptation could be the first genuine blockbuster horror movie of the modern era. It was treated like a tentpole: teasers and multiple trailers were released; the cast appeared on major chatshows; the movie screened at the IMAX. It was a horror phenomenon. It’s good, but it’s more than that – it might have just ushered in a new era of horror. As with many of King’s stories, the action takes place in the small town of Derry, Maine, where a bunch of outsider kids (self-styled as The Losers’ Club) notice something rotten…

RELEASED 8 JANUARY 1976 | 15 | Blu-ray Part of the post-Jaws craze for animal-based terror, this grisly suspenser unleashes killer hounds on ’70s America. There’s an SF twist: the dogs go nuts due to a nearby particle accelerator. David McCallum brings his usual chilly babyface vibe, while the canine carnage is competently staged, peaking with a furry homage to Psycho’s shower scene. Bad dogs! Extras Chatty retrospective “The Making Of Dogs”; “How American Cinema Changed Hollywood Forever” celebrates the studio that made the film; TV spot; trailer.…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2017 | 18 | DVD Beowulf meets From Dusk Till Dawn in this low-budget fantasy, co-written by Colin’s Alastair Kirton. Courtesans, some sinful monks and a trio of Vikings gather at a remote abbey to settle old scores, but end up fighting side-by-side against invading tree creatures. Horror or comedy? With theatrically spurting blood, it looks like a joke, and the shambling extras with branches on their heads don’t truly terrify. But – brutality and profanity aside – it flaunts a cheerful Hawk The Slayer vibe. Extras Trailer.…

RELEASED 8 JANUARY 1977 | 12 | Blu-ray Director Jack Smight Cast Jan-Michael Vincent, George Peppard, Dominique Sanda, Paul Winfield BLU-RAY DEBUT Lovers of ’80s cheese will want to see Damnation Alley. This action-adventure hokum pre-dates the decade of the deely-bopper, but it teams two TV titans: The A-Team’s George Peppard and Airwolf star Jan-Michael Vincent. Loosely based on a 1969 Roger Zelazny novel, it’s set two years after a nuclear apocalypse. Peppard and Vincent play two airmen who, after their missile base is destroyed, head across the nuclear wastelands for New York, in search of the source of a radio transmission. You may be surprised to learn that 20th Century Fox lavished $17 million on the film, as in many respects it screams “Roger Corman production”. That goes double…

RELEASED 25 JANUARY 220 pages | Hardback/ebook Author Gregory Norminton Publisher 4th Estate In Gregory Norminton’s first novel in a decade, several characters, separated by millennia, reach the same conclusion: a patch of land isn’t one place, but many. Wait long enough and your shiny new Roman road will become a sandy heath and, eventually, a scorched wasteland. Set over 3000 years in the same location – Bagshot Heath in Surrey – The Devil’s Highway is, effectively, three intertwined novellas. A boy gets caught up in a Druid rebellion against the Romans; in the present day, an emotionally scarred war veteran and a young girl find themselves at loggerheads; and in the barren wastes of an environmentally ravaged future, a gang of scavengers fight among themselves as they cross the…

RELEASED 11 JANUARY 384 pages | Hardback/ebook Author Tyrell Johnson Publisher HQ There’s an obvious parallel to be drawn between The Wolves Of Winter’s Lynn McBride and another heroine of dystopian fiction. Both of them live in post-apocalyptic nightmare worlds, both of them are doing their best for their families, and both of them are handy with a bow and arrow. But Lynn’s not Katniss. For one thing, she can remember a different world, a world before nuclear war wiped out most of humanity and plunged North America into an unending winter. For another, she’s actively interested in human company, so when a stranger with piercing blue eyes turns up at Lynn’s family’s camp, she’s drawn to him even before she hears his tragic backstory. Still, it’s hard not to…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 402 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Anna Day Publisher Chicken House A divided humanity, a terrifying dystopia, a tragic love story… but this isn’t the world of The Fandom, it’s the universe of The Gallows Dance, The Fandom’s equivalent of fantasy novels like The Hunger Games, Twilight and Divergent all rolled into one. This bestselling YA novel and movie is adored by Violet, The Fandom’s protagonist, as well as her best friend and younger brother. But when they’re knocked out by a ceiling collapse at London Comic-Con, they wake up trapped in the world of their favourite film – dirt and terror and random hangings included. Can they see the plot through, ensuring that the storyline completes correctly, true love conquers all and the ruling class sees the…

As ever, there’s a teetering stack of releases that we couldn’t quite crowbar in. Sam Stone’s supernatural thriller POSING FOR PICASSO (10 January, Wordfire Press) revolves around a detective investigating the deaths of artists’ models, and the lost diaries of Pablo Picasso. The second in Charles Stross’s Empire Games series, interdimensional techno thriller DARK STATE (11 January, Tor) features USAs in alternate timelines: one experiencing a technological revolution; the other a hi-tech police state. Pierce Brown returns to his Red Rising universe with IRON GOLD (16 January, Hodder & Stoughton). Set 10 years after 2016’s Morning Star, the book explores the consequences of lowborn hero Darrow’s successful rebellion. Terry Goodkind’s The Nicci Chronicles continues with SHROUD OF ETERNITY (11 January, Head Of Zeus), which sends sorceress Nicci on a perilous…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher BOOM! Studios Writers John Carpenter, Anthony Burch Artist Jorge Corona ISSUES 1-3 The cult 1986 John Carpenter flick has lived on in comics for a while now. This new run moves the action onto 2020 and finds Jack Burton (Kurt Russell in the movie) somewhere unexpected: heaven. Well, kind of. Ching Dai, the demon god of the East, has been unleashed and conquered the world. That’s on Jack – he unwittingly set the beast free, and has been granted a safe haven while the rest of Earth burns. His nemesis Lo Pan, meanwhile, has been cast out by Ching Dai and rendered mortal. The two must strike up an unlikely alliance in order to defeat the demon once and for all. Old Man Jack doesn’t look…