Your team of crack geek-reporters at Skiffy and Fanty has learned that filmmaker Peter Jackson will be returning to Middle-Earth one more time. Correction: 14 more times. In an exclusive sit-down with S&F, Jackson confirmed he would turn The Silmarillion into a series of shared-universe adventure films, with up to 14 planned over the course of the next two decades.
When I was asked to write a blog post about my top female influences in the sci-fi/fantasy arena, I had to think about who it was I wanted to write about. There’s Kathryn Bigelow, a woman who is best known now for Zero Dark Thirty and The Hurt Locker but who cut her teeth on Near Dark and Strange Days; Anne McCaffrey, a Hugo and Nebula award winning writer whose Dragonriders of Pern series has recently been optioned by Warner Brothers; and JK Rowling, a woman who needs no introduction here. All of these women have influenced me over the years. For me, though, when it comes to a lasting impact there is one name that comes shining through. And that name? Ellen Ripley
Here are some of the exciting things we’ve been listening to in the past few weeks: On Awards Paul Weimer joins the new crew at Adventures in Sci Fi Publishing to discuss the Sad Puppies and the Hugos. Justin Landon, henceforth known as The Guy Who Talked About Hugos, brings in Renay and TheG to discuss, well, the Hugos. The fine folks at Galactic Suburbia host a special Galactic Suburbia Award episode! Take a listen! On Science StarTalk Radio brings on Elon Musk to talk about the future of space travel and humanity!
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Bearing the subtitle “Love is a monster,” the movie poster for Spring boasts a color scheme like a sunset, and an overlay of the faces of two lovers. If you ignore the tentacles and claws rising up against the silhouette of the woman central to the poster, this could almost stand in for another goddamn Nicholas Sparks movie. Thankfully, there’s far more complexity, meat, and… tentacles to it than that.
The price of humanity’s use of computing technology was high. The Syndrome caused degenerative physiological and neurological problems to an ever increasing amount of humanity. The wired age, as we in the 21st century might know, meant a radical change in humanity. Even as genetic engineering came up with cures for The Syndrome, the sheer amount of labor and effort needed to keep the world going during the transitional period meant that a different sort of genetically engineered being was needed. Beings designed who could lift more, think more, do more, to keep society functioning even as the world came to grips with the fallout from The Syndrome. Called Gems, after a century of propping up the world, these beings are no longer necessary for the functioning of society, but how can humanity keep them in shackles? And what rights does a superhuman being designed in a test tube really have? Or should have? These issues come to a head in Gemsigns, the debut novel by Stephanie Saulter.
