Scifi Watch

What Can We Expect from Pyr Books in the Future?

While at this year’s WorldCon I had the fortunate pleasure of meeting Lou Anders, head editor of mid-sized book publisher of Pyr Books. In recent years, Pyr (an imprint of Prometheus Books) has stood out in science fiction publishing as a publisher with a fantastic list of authors, a standard for great editorial quality, and [...]

Tor Launches Print-on-Demand Imprint with Year’s Best Fantasy 9

It’s a big week for Tor.com and they’re proud to announce the immediate availability of David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer’s anthology, Year’s Best Fantasy 9.

This highly anticipated release also marks something they’re particularly proud of: Tor.com’s debut as a publishing entity, distinct from Tor Books and as a separate imprint under our shared corporate [...]

Book Review: Julian Comstock by Robert Charles Wilson

Julian Comstock isn’t a book, it’s a force, plain and simple. The fictional biopic of Julian Comstock written by his long-time friend, Adam Hazzard, is far from science fiction in my opinion. While the book utilizes tropes from the post-apocalyptic sub-genre it doesn’t dwell on them, nor does it exploit them to either further the [...]

Writers of the Future Winners Announced & Writers of the Future XXV Released

Firstly, I’d like to say that the Writers of the Future XXV anthology was released this week with the stories from this past year’s winners included.

The grand prize winners of the 25th Annual Writers of the Future Award and the 20th Illustrators of the Future Award were announced in a ceremony Saturday night at the [...]

The Gathering Storm Tour Kicks Off in October

The 2009 national author tour for The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson, Book Twelve in the Wheel of Time, and the first of three novels concluding this magnificent series, on October 27th.

Tour events kick off with a Midnight Party at Brandon’s local bookstore right at midnight Oct. 27th (Monday night) and continue [...]

Tesseracts Fourteen Open For Submissions (Sept. 1, 2009 – Nov. 30, 2009)

Submissions are now open (from September 1, 2009 to November 30, 2009) for volume 14 of the Tesseracts anthology. Tesseracts is the premiere anthology for Canadian short fiction published annually by Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy, so if you are a Canadian author, feel free to submit your stories, poetry, radio plays, and flash fiction [...]

What Can We Expect from Pyr Books in the Future?

While at this year’s WorldCon I had the fortunate pleasure of meeting Lou Anders, head editor of mid-sized book publisher of Pyr Books. In recent years, Pyr (an imprint of Prometheus Books) has stood out in science fiction publishing as a publisher with a fantastic list of authors, a standard for great editorial quality, and [...]

TV Review: Does the Vampire Diaries Measure Up?

Welcome to Mystic Falls, where high school students look years older than they should, teachers get angry at students for not knowing historic facts about their town, and fog machines appear to be peppered throughout the small town, set to go off whenever anyone is left alone for too long. This is the Vampire Diaries. [...]

Viewers Choose Labor Day Star Trek Episodes on SPACE

A few days ago I announced the SPACE Channel’s plans for Labor Day viewing (Click Here to View). In a nutshell it consists of six Original Series films on Saturday, Sept. 5, and the four Next Generation films on Sept. 6, and nine viewer’s choice episodes of the Original Series starting at 12 noon EST, [...]

Flashforward Sneak Peek Released

With a new television season looming on the horizon, one of the most anticipated shows to be watched this fall is ABC’s Flashforward, set to debut on September 24, 2009 at 8/7 Central.

For those that don’t already know the premise, I’ll try to distil it as best I can. One day a global event causes [...]

Eureka Renewed for a 4th Season

Fans of the popular Syfy original Eureka will be happy to know that the show has been green-lit for a fourth season for 22 episodes, which will likely to air next summer. The original announcement came in late July at last month’s ComicCon in San Diego.

The announcements included some intriguing news items:
• One or two episodes [...]

Stargate Universe Trailer Released in Theaters

For those of you that had the fortunate pleasure of seeing either Halloween II or Final Destination 4 this weekend, you would have noticed a new trailer for Stargate Universe just before the film. For those of you that have no idea what I’m talking about let me just say that Stargate Universe is the [...]

New New Moon Trailer Shown at MTV Awards

Now most people know that I’m not the biggest Twilight fan in the world. Yesterday at the MTV Music Awards international audiences got their first look at the first (in my opinion real) full-length trailer for the film and I have to say I was impressed. Now having only read the first book in the [...]

9 Opens Second at Box Office Amidst Mixed Reviews

While many had high hopes for 9, the computer-animated sci-fi/action film directed by Shane Acker and produced by Tim Burton, however, the actual box office numbers tell a different story. In its opening weekend (as the film debuted last Wednesday on September 9) the release was marked by rather lackluster numbers in terms of box [...]

What Can We Expect from Pyr Books in the Future?

While at this year’s WorldCon I had the fortunate pleasure of meeting Lou Anders, head editor of mid-sized book publisher of Pyr Books. In recent years, Pyr (an imprint of Prometheus Books) has stood out in science fiction publishing as a publisher with a fantastic list of authors, a standard for great editorial quality, and [...]

Rambo V Going Sci-Fi?

For the last couple of weeks rumors have been circulating on the net that not only is there a fifth Rambo movie on the horizon but that it will likely involve many science fiction elements as well. The fifth installment in the franchise (which has been called “Rambo V: The Savage Hunt”) will be a [...]

Astro-Boy Trailer is Now Live

So it seems they’ve made an Astro-Boy movie. It will be released on October 28, 2009 by Imagi Animation Studios and will be distributed Freddie Highmore, Nicholas Cage, Donald Sutherland, Kristen Bell, Eugene Levy, and Nathan Lane.

According to Wikipedia (both because I’m lazy and because Astro-boy has been around for sixty years), Astroboy is an [...]

Rant: Is Expanding the Best Picture Category a Good Thing?

A few months ago when I first heard that next year’s Academy Awards was expanding the ‘Best Picture’ category from five nominees to 10 nominees there’s been one question lingering in my head ever since. Why? The obvious explanation is that a majority of the Academy for Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (or whichever association [...]

What Can We Expect from Pyr Books in the Future?

While at this year’s WorldCon I had the fortunate pleasure of meeting Lou Anders, head editor of mid-sized book publisher of Pyr Books. In recent years, Pyr (an imprint of Prometheus Books) has stood out in science fiction publishing as a publisher with a fantastic list of authors, a standard for great editorial quality, and [...]

Chip Kidd on Book Design

If you’re in publishing or an avid reader then it’s likely you’ve come across the name Chip Kidd one way or another. Kidd is currently an associate art director for Knopf and has been for the past 22 years. His book covers have made him a celebrity among artists and graphic designers alike and Publisher [...]

Blockbuster or Lackluster? September DVD/Blu-ray Releases

While August was a somewhat lackluster month for science fiction and fantasy DVD/Blu-ray releases it seems that with kids going back to school as we roll into the new fall television season, September seems to more than make up for the difference. Check out below for what we can expect from DVD/Blu-ray releases in September

September [...]

Why Tweet Adder Can Be the Best thing for Your Blog

Normally most of my blog posts centre around the subject of science fiction, fantasy or horror, but every so often I’ll do a post that is completely off the mark, and this is one of those posts. As a person with a full-time job who has very limited time to run a blog any piece [...]

WorldCon 2011 (most likely) to be Held in Reno

It’s very likely that the 2011 WorldCon will be held in Reno, Nevada two years from now after the second most promising contender (Seattle, Washington) apparently withdrew its bid citing difficulties in securing preferred venues for the event.

“We had initial options on facilities, but when it came time to reduce them to formal writing, we [...]

The Turkey City Lexicon (Part 6 – Character and Viewpoint)

Alas we come to the final section of the Turkey City Lexicon, character, viewpoint and other miscellaneous things. Sufficed to say if these are your only problems with the story after managing to accomplish every else in the other five parts of the turkey city lexicon then fixing these mistakes should be a cakewalk. On [...]