As Gideon The Ninth takes the book world by storm, author Tamsyn Muir talks exclusively to SciFiNow about our love of swords, and the heroes and dickheads that wield them… The sword is humanity’s favourite weapon, and sword-fighters tend to be some of our favourite characters. Excalibur, the legendary sword of King Arthur, has some claim
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It was with great sadness that we learned of the death of Terrance Dicks, fondly known to many Doctor Who fans as ‘Uncle Terry’. A prolific writer, who wrote hundreds of books and worked extensively in television both genre and mainstream, he was best known and loved for his work on Doctor Who, first as
Angelina Jolie’s maniacal Maleficent starts to make threats in this new TV spot for Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil. Check it out: Here’s the synopsis for the upcoming film: Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is a fantasy adventure that picks up several years after Maleficent, in which audiences learned of the events that hardened the heart of Disney’s
“Badass” is one of those terms that almost everyone inherently understands, but isn’t easy to precisely define. There’s no checklist you can run down, marking off things like “good at swords,” “sarcastic and cynical,” or “swagger,” then tally up the count and—based on score—identity whether you have a badass on your hands. I mean, I
I wrote the Steelhaven trilogy between 2012 and 2015. During that period there was a slew of other writers releasing fantasy novels, riding on the popularity of the Game Of Thrones TV show, which were labelled as “Grimdark”. Naturally, Steelhaven was clumped in with those, and having a cast at least partially consisting of amoral,
Britain’s bestselling science fiction author Peter F Hamilton goes behind the scenes on having his work adapted for screen. Why don’t you make this into a film? The question writers get asked almost as often as: Where do you get your ideas from? If only. Authors are not in charge of such things. This is where
The first trailer for Jim Jarmusch’s zombie comedy The Dead Don’t Die has risen. Watch it now: Here’s the poster: The Dead Don’t Die is written and directed by Jim Jarmusch (Only Lovers Left Alive, Paterson), and produced by Carter Logan and Joshua Astrachan. It stars Adam Driver, Bill Murray, Chloë Sevigny, Selena Gomez, Austin Butler, Steve Buscemi, Tilda
A faded, jumpy film reel from the 1970s, part of a correspondence course from the ‘Stockholm Institute for Magnetic Research’, claims to help the viewer deal with the modern age’s ‘duality of the self’. The method used, similar to – but not the same as – hypnosis, promises to allow subjects to reach their ‘full
Genevieve Cogman knows a thing or two about libraries. Her best-selling The Invisible Library series follows magical librarian-spy Irene on covert adventures to different times and realms, likened to Doctor Who and Sherlock. But what is real research actually like? Well, not as shown in the movies… Research In Fictional Libraries In a great many
We’ve got the cover for Dan Moren’s spy-fi The Bayern Agenda and the author’s reasons why James Bond is a terrible spy By Jonathan Hatfull 23-11-18 185 Thanks to the folks at Angry Robot, we have the cover reveal for Dan Moren’s galactic cold war novel The Bayern Agenda, designed by Amazing15! The spy-fi tale hits
Rebecca Hall has been cast in a lead role in Legendary’s upcoming monster showdown Godzilla Vs Kong, according to Variety. Nothing else is known about her character so far. Hall is best known for her work in the likes of The Town, Starter For 10 and Christine, but genre fans will likely know her from The Prestige, Iron Man 3 and Professor Marston
Mike Flanagan’s next project, Doctor Sleep, has added another actor to the cast. According to Deadline, Revenge star Emily Alyn Lind has joined the film as Snakebite Andi, a member of the “nomadic psychic groups who feed off the ‘steam’ of children gifted with ‘the Shining’.” The film is of course based on Stephen King’s The Shining sequel of the
COULD A LOST DINOSAUR CIVILIZATION EVER HAVE EXISTED? It’s a bit of a silly idea, I know. And obviously the answer, before I’ve even started waffling, is very, very probably not. But why not? And how would we ever really know for sure? In my 147th century space opera series The Amaranthine Spectrum (getting the
Aristocrats – aren’t they the worst? Entitled and elitist; cruel and often willfully sadistic. They’re more than wealthy, more than powerful – they believe the right to rule runs in their very veins. That’s what separates them from mere Bond-style supervillains. Anyone can claw themselves up to fortune or position, but you can’t buy class.
In 2014, Unfriended had its world premiere at Fantasia. One of two films that year, along with Open Windows, that takes place on a computer screen – the film’s success has been a pivotal benchmark in a storytelling movement that reflects our increasingly plugged-in lives. Four years later, the sequel, Unfriended: Dark Web drops the
Fox greenlights Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi’s What We Do In The Shadows TV series By Jonathan Hatfull 04-05-18 1,260 Fantastic news for fans of vampires doing their best to live in a flat-sharing situation, as Fox has given a series order to Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi’s What We Do In The Shadows TV
Shapeshifters are a big thing with me – in keeping with my general fascination for looking out from other shapes and faces is the idea of being transformed, willingly or not, from human to Other and back. Here are some of my absolute favourites from the canon and, in keeping with my general malleability, most
The annual Glasgow Film Festival is a haven of genre, not only harbouring FrightFest in GFT1 for two and a half days of the festival’s duration, but also weaving many freaky frights and SF sights into the fabric of its main programme. This comes as no surprise – for genre, combining familiar narrative types with
SFF screen adaptations that need to happen immediately …and a few that are already on their way. Like many avid readers, I’ve always been wary of screen adaptations, particularly when it comes to books I loved. I still haven’t got over the treatment meted out to Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising, adapted for the
Writing historical fantasy should be easy. After all, if you’re going to put gods, monsters, devils, demons, witches or even the odd unicorn into, say, the US invasion of Grenada in 1983, then getting the exact deployment of the enemy communist forces (I always struggle to remember if it was two fishing boats and a
Roxanne Benjamin has directed segments of ace anthology horrors Southbound and XX, and she’s about to make her feature directorial debut with the splendidly-named Body At Brighton Rock. Variety reports that the film is currently in production and that it’s just been picked up for worldwide distribution by Magnet. Benjamin also wrote the film, which
The Earth is in peril and all we’ve got to save us are this groups of amateurs and idiots. It is one of my favourite sci-fi tropes, most often used in my favourite bastard genre sci-fi comedy: Guardians of the Galaxy, Galaxy Quest, Red Dwarf. Even The Fifth Element, though I am stretching the definition
Miguel visits his ancestors in this new UK trailer for Pixar’s Coco
By Poppy-Jay Palmer 21-11-17 661
Read the full synopsis for Disney Pixar’s Coco here: Despite his family’s baffling generations-old ban on music, Miguel (voice of newcomer Anthony Gonzalez) dreams of becoming an accomplished musician like his idol, Ernesto de la
Last weekend saw Nottingham’s Broadway Cinema play host to Mayhem Film Festival, and we headed into screen one for four days full of horror, sci-fi and cult movies from around the world. It was our first time at Mayhem, and it definitely won’t be the last. With an excellent and eclectic selection of features and
Powered armour goes by many names in science fiction – including exosuit, assisted armour, jacket and exoskeleton. As readers we might quibble about the terminology, but we can all agree on one thing: it’s damned cool. Armoured suits are an element of SF that frequently catches the public’s imagination. Join me on a tour de
Writing William Shakespeare’s The Force Doth Awaken was unlike writing the previous six books in the Shakespeare Star Wars series (the original trilogy and the prequel trilogy), because like everyone else I encountered The Force Awakens for the first time on December 17, 2015. No, I didn’t get any advance knowledge of the script and
What makes a story science fiction? It’s a notoriously hard thing to pin down, as a genre, and like most categorization, it’s largely personal. The approach I look for in good science fiction is interrogative. It is journalism, reporting back from a possible future, a distorted present or an alternate past. The science fiction writer
In our book Basic Witches: How to Summon Success, Banish Drama, And Raise Hell With Your Coven (Quirk) we talk about taking inspiration from the historical and cultural idea of the witch: a woman who, whether or not she has magical powers, possesses an uncanny ability to fly in the face of expectations. The witch
Having made the most critically-acclaimed DC Extended Universe movie so far, it only seems fitting that Patty Jenkins would be picked to direct the sequel of Wonder Woman. And we couldn’t be happier. Wonder Woman saw something finally come into action that we have wanted to see for a long time: a female-led superhero movie.
You can’t keep a Universal monster down. Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, The Wolf Man, The Invisible Man, The Creature From The Black Lagoon…all these iconic creations are being exhumed for a new generation, so it seems rather fitting that this new shared universe begins with our action-man hero raiding an ancient tomb: it all starts with