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Coming Soon: Mirkwood — A Movie *About* Tolkien

Cinema Blend recently reported (through The Hollywood Reporter, apparently) that a fictionalized account of Tolkien’s life called Mirkwood is currently being adapted for the screen.  Here’s an excerpt from the article: Steve Hillard’s book Mirkwood: A Novel About J.R.R. Tolkien, is being adapted into a feature-length film by EMO Films and producers Joel Eisenberg and Timothy Owens, The Hollywood Reporter writes. Amazon says that the work of fiction — which initially was blocked by Tolkien’s estate but has since resolved its differences — turns Tolkien into the hero of a story that takes place in our world and that of Middle Earth. It paints the author “as a man haunted by the very myths he rewove into his famous works” and “explores the blurred borderlands where ancient tales, lost heroines, and epic journeys are stalked by dim monsters that will not be still.” I don’t know about you, but this sounds really fascinating.  When I initially saw the article, I thought it was going to be a dramatization of Tolkien’s actual life.  Instead, it’s a fictionalized, fantastic account of his life.  That’s something I can get into. What about you?  Are you interested in Mirkwood?

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Eric Brown to Head Abaddon's Weird Space Series

Abaddon Books has announced a new shared-world space opera series called Weird Space.   The series is set to begin in Summer 2012 with Eric Brown’s The Devil’s Nebula as the opening installment. Here’s the synopsis for the series and Brown’s introductory novel: Starship Captain Ed Carew and his crew of two – ex-marine Lania Takiomar and ex-convict Gord Neffard – lead a carefree life of smuggling, gun-running and other illicit pursuits in a far future ruled by the fascistic Expansion Authority. But when an Expansion judiciary ship captures Carew and his crew leaving the planet of Hesperides, an out-of-bounds world governed now by the fearsome Vetch extraterrestrials, Carew, Takiomar and Neffard are sentenced to death… Unless they agree to travel through Vetch territory in pursuit of an human colony vessel which set off for the Devil’s Nebula one hundred years ago. But why are the Expansion authorities so eager to track down the ship, will Carew and co. survive the journey through Vetch territory – and what might they find when they arrive at the Devil’s Nebula? The Devil’s Nebula is the first book in a thrilling space opera series, Weird Space. An evil race is threatening not only the human Expansion, but the Vetch Empire, too – an evil from another dimension which infests humans and Vetch alike and bends individuals to do their hideous bidding. And only if humans and Vetch cooperate to fight off the fearsome Weird do they stand a chance of ensuring their survival… Sounds interesting, no?  And the cover is bloody gorgeous!  Good on Abaddon for taking a shot at space opera!

Torture Cinema Polls

Torture Cinema Poll #4: Pick Our Next Movie

It’s time to pick another movie.  We hope you make the right choice, because the last one you all picked as awful… And don’t forget that you can always suggest new movies to add to our larger list.  We don’t watch anything you don’t let us know about!  After all, we watch bad science fiction, fantasy, and horror movies so you don’t have to…

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Lit Bits: Arctic Rising Cover and Blurb (Tobias S. Buckell)

You all remember Tobias Buckell, right?  He wrote some really awesome books and finally came onto the show for episode 3.0 after we begged him for years and years.  We even sent him stuffed bears with his face on them to convince him to grace us with his presence… Okay, so none of that is true (sadly), but he did come on the show all those episodes ago.  If you haven’t listened to that episode, you probably should (because it’s awesome, obviously). In any case, we finally have some news about Arctic Rising, his latest book.  First, the back cover blurb: Global warming has transformed the Earth, and it’s about to get even hotter. The Arctic ice cap has all but melted, and the international community is racing desperately to claim the massive amounts of oil beneath the newly accessible ocean. Enter the Gaia Corporation. Its two founders have come up with a plan to roll back global warming. They plan to terraform Earth to save it from itself—but in doing so, they have created a superweapon the likes of which the world has never seen. Anika Duncan is an airship pilot for the underfunded United Nations Polar Guard. She’s intent on capturing a smuggled nuclear weapon that has made it into the Polar Circle and bringing the smugglers to justice. Anika finds herself caught up in a plot by a cabal of military agencies and corporations who want Gaia Corporation stopped. But when Gaia loses control of their superweapon, it will be Anika who has to decide the future of the world. Sounds interesting, right? Now for the cover:

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A Book By Its Cover: Grave Dance by Kalayna Price

Book Cover Blurb: Darla Onomatopoeia  is an amateur Grave Dancer, one of the few people in Manhattan who still practices the ancient, misty art.  But unlike her mother, who once made a cemetery of Civil War veterans come to life and do the cha cha, Darla can barely raise her recently deceased grandmother long enough to teach the old bitty to line dance.  And with the 3,000th Annual Grave Dance Competition coming in two months, she’s desperate to spruce up her skills to show all her Grave Dancing friends that she’s not a loser after all… Enter Alex Craft, dance instructor extraordinaire.  Having out-danced the Grave Witch of Brooklyn, Alex might be the only one who can turn Darla into an effective Grave Dancer.  A half-immortal, half-fae wererabbit, Alex has the skills and determination Darla needs to teach the dead how to dance the “Thriller,” which hasn’t been done…ever.  But Darla has another problem:  an unexpected sexual tension between her and Alex.  Can she resist Alex’s misogynistic charm and rustic good looks?  Or will she let her baser instincts take over and sweep her wererabbit dance instructor off his furry little feet? Grave Dance is a dark tome which hides a great deal of its world in misty obscurity.  Price has created a remarkable piece of curvaceous eye-candy here, cleverly placing character traits at just right angle to direct the reader’s attention to the truly interesting aspects of Darla’s character.  But she has also attempted to hide Darla’s past in a shroud, leaving a great deal to be discovered by the reader in future books. One of the interesting aspects of the book is the fact that it is actually set on an alternate Earth.  Many readers may find

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Feed the Machine: Genetic Time

Clicketh You all should realize now the the Long Now blog has some of the best story starters on the web, especially if you’re into concepts like time. This one is about the different times scales in our body, and what controls them, and what would happen if we could control them. What would happen if we could slow down our metabolism to barely above hibernation? Could we live for hundreds, thousands of years? When we got old, could we reverse our reproductive cycle to regress our bodies to their pubescent or even pre-pubescent state, rendering us immortal? Could we reverse this and make infants adults? What sort of cultural consequences would this have on issues such as marriage and sex? What sort of economic benefits would this reap for the creators? What would religious do in the face of legit immortality? Go explore young ones, old ones, and transitioning ones.  

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