Reasons to be cheerful...

Part One:

The Ice Warriors are back! Yay! It was confirmed a little while ago that everyone's favourite Martian marauders would appear in Season 7b of Doctor Who and now, courtesy of the ever-wonderful SFX magazine, we've had our first glimpse of their updated look. As with the Daleks and the Cybermen, the production team have realised what an iconic design the original monster had, and have only slightly tweaked it, making it more modern and convincingly real. Well, as real as Martian lizard-warriors get, anyway. Please click on the picture to see larger-scale scales :-)
I wonder what Madam Vastra would think of them...?

Part Two:

I know I keep dribbling on about Bowie's return, but I am getting pretty excited about his forthcoming new album. New single The Stars ( Are Out Tonight ) is a cracking rocker, of the sort I never would have thought The Dame would produce again. OK, it may be a whinge about celebrity stalkers and paparazzi but who's more qualified to sing about such things than Bowie? A man whose every move is scrutinised and obsessed over? Just like I'm doing now? Oh, and the video stars Tilda Swinton, which is cool.



Part Three:

Spring has sprung! It's been a beautiful day here in the Shire and has certainly been a tonic for this ol' blogger who has been feeling a bit down just lately. Being the stereotypical suburbanite that I am, at the first hint of sunshine I sprinted outside to mow the lawn. ( Well, maybe not "sprinted " ) That was about as much as I could manage in my present "delicate" condition ( I sound like a Jane Austen heroine... ) so, the next thing I knew, I was falling asleep in the sunshine, listening to a robin singing. Perfect :-)

I'm cheating slightly here  -  this pic of Hero ( with Sarah gardening in the background and Jasper looking on from the sidelines ) is from last Spring. But you get the general idea...

Soundtrack: Dance Yrself Clean by LCD Soundsystem
                   The Stars ( Are Out Tonight ) by that Bowie bloke

Super SFXy

I was pleased to see I've had a letter published in this month's SFX magazine ( no. 231, March 2013, buy it now! )  -  my first appearance in the mag for quite a while, but under my "real" name this time. The "letter" is actually a combination of two comments I posted on the SFX website's forum, in response to the first official poster for Zack Snyder's forthcoming Superman reboot, Man Of Steel. I was alarmed by the way this image ( Supes in chains! ) was such a downbeat, gloomy introduction to the new Superman. It just seemed a crazy choice to promote the movie and, for me, a total misrepresentation of what the character is all about. I prefer to see our favourite Kryptonian bursting  out of chains as in Neal Adams' iconic image above. The recent movie trailer has gone some way to dispelling those concerns... but I'm going to reserve judgement until I actually see the film. SFX Reviews Editor, Ian Berriman, very kindly contacted me, saying he liked my comments and wanted to publish them in the magazine...

Here's the letter as published:

Re: The Man of Steel teaser poster
I wonder if, in the usual Hollywood eagerness to make things “darker” and “more realistic” that they haven’t thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Superman isn’t Batman, he isn’t a dark knight, a lone avenger etc. He has always been defined as the best humanity can aspire to… but with super powers :-)

( After this first comment a couple of other Forum-ites replied, both effectively saying that the character and film of Superman needed to be dragged, kicking and screaming into the "modern" world. I replied... )

We may not be in an age of optimism, heroism or nobility… but were we ever? I don’t think that has any bearing on the character. The Christopher Reeve Superman movies came out of a time of rampant inflation, unemployment, terrorism, Presidential abdications and so on. But the character rose above it… literally. 

( One of the other commenters, "Bobcat", had said that it was unrealistic for Superman to be as I described him above  -  did I think Supes got all that nobility over night...? )

And, yes, Bobcat, I do think Superman got all that overnight: as John Byrne once said, Clark Kent / Superman was raised that way… ( This last paragraph wasn't published )
Hopefully I’m reading too much into what is just a teaser poster… I hope to be proved wrong…

I loved Mr. Berriman's reply:  "I think we can put this down to the success of Christopher Nolan's Bat-movies, can't we? Same goes for the tone of the Star Trek teaser trailer; suddenly everything's got to be dark. It wouldn't surprise me if the Smurfs 2 trailer features the Smurf village in flames and Papa Smurf clapped in irons..."

Here are a couple more versions of that "Kryptonite Nevermore!" cover  -  for me, one of the most defining images of the true Man Of Steel...

It's a little early for April Fool jokes, isn't it?

According to SFX, the House Of The Mouse is buying out Lucasfilm to the tune of $4 billion and will release a new Star Wars movie in 2015. Really?

I've got a bad feeling about this...

Ahhh, that's better...

SFXy Firemen

No, not that kind...

I'm talking about the book-burning, totalitarian kind as seen in Ray Bradbury's famous dystopian novel, Fahrenheit 451.

Firemen in the world of this seminal SF novel are not concerned with putting out fires, but setting fire to books... and sometimes the people who read them. The main character, Guy Montag, is a loyal fireman who is seemingly content in his work of destroying any kind of information or entertainment which doesn't spew out of a TV screen. Until, one day, he begins to question his role in society...

I wrote a mini-review of the book for the SFX website and was pleased to see an edited version published in this month's issue of "The World's #1 Sci-Fi mag."

Here's the full ( less negative-seeming ) version:

Re: SFX BOOK CLUB 69: Fahrenheit 451

---

It's been probably 20 years since I last read Fahrenheit 451 and, to be honest, I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would. Apart from the fireman, Montag, the characters are cyphers and there is little sense of the rest of the world beyond the immediate drama. Saying that, Bradbury's poetic style shines through, especially during the breathless scenes of Montag's desperate escape from the authorities, and the implications of this book-burning society are chilling. The scariest thought is that Montag's society is self-censoring: "It didn't come from the Government down," explains his fire-chief, "There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with..."

__________________

And here are Oskar Werner and the gorgeous Julie Christie in a still from Francois Truffaut's 1966 adaptation of the book. It's a strange, cold little film and I'm not sure if Truffaut really related to the subject matter... but it does star Julie Christie. Who is, as I said, gorgeous...

Caution! Dalek Crossing!

Just seen this, and a few more like it, over at the always-wonderful SFX website. That Dalek wouldn't stand much of a chance against the speed-ramps round our way.....

Something SFXy This Way Comes

I've had a small snippet of my Something Wicked This Way Comes review printed in this month's SFX magazine. You can read the full review ( written in a fake Bradbury-esque style ) here, as well as my reviews of Lucius Shepard's Life During Wartime and Roger Zelazny's Lord Of Light.

For anyone who's got this issue, be aware that only that one sentence is mine: the two paragraphs immediately below with the "cerebus660" credit were written by somebody else, who's probably feeling a bit pissed-off at the moment :-(

Reading Update: Something Wicked This Way Comes

Suitably for Halloween week I've recently finished ( re- ) reading Ray Bradbury's spooky classic of small-town American Gothic, Something Wicked This Way Comes. That's my battered copy of the book above, which is about as old as me :-)

I've posted a short review on the SFX Book Club forum:

( I was going for a Bradbury-esque vibe, but I think it just came out pretentious..... )

Re: SFX BOOK CLUB 57: Something Wicked This Way Comes

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Beneath the tattooed skin of this book, with its nightmare circus and gruesome sideshow freaks, the meat of the story deals with the joy and pain of growing up and growing old. Bradbury's prose is a hymn to late summer days, blood brothers, skinned knees and the approach of Halloween. Two teenage boys and an old-before-his-time father have to face their fears and desires as Cooger and Dark's carnival pulls into town in the dead of night, promising renewed youth for some, a fast-track to adulthood for others. And from the sideshows and tents, out come the freaks: the Dwarf, the Illustrated Man, the Skeleton and the terrifying Dust Witch. Bradbury's characters are put to the test by this bizarre crew of misfits, and their souls are the prize. With its decaying, autumnal feel Something Wicked... is a unique fantasy of life, death and all the moments inbetween.

Bringing SFXy back

As the next issue of The World's Number One Sci-Fi Magazine is out soon, I thought I'd better mention my mini-review in the last issue. It was the turn of Roger Zelazny's 1967 novel, Lord Of Light, to er, shine in the SFX Book Club.

Lord Of Light is a suitably psychedelic novel of a colony world where the crew of an Earth starship have used technology to become virtually superhuman, and cast themselves in the roles of Hindu gods. The main character Sam ( aka Siddhartha, Mahasamatman, Binder Of Demons ) is a classic trickster/troublemaker who tries to bring about the fall of the gods, but is executed for his crimes. Luckily, reincarnation is always an option when you're a Hindu god.....

It's quite a confusing book, with an awkward framing device: most of the story is told in flashback, so when you return to the "present" it's hard to remember where it all started. I suppose this is all to do with the cyclical nature of karma, but it is a bit of a headache.

But that's my only quibble ( love that word! ) with a book that is dazzling, witty, sensual and glitteringly complex - a real tour-de-force by a sadly-missed author at the height of his powers. Zelazny overwhelms the reader with the plots and counter-plots of his godlike characters and the sheer detail of his world, with its prayer-machines, technological Heaven, phantom jungle-cats, Demons, martyrs and warriors. What I'm saying is: check it out; it's good karma.

( I won't go into the crazy-but-supposedly-true story of the Lord Of Light theme park, Jack Kirby and a CIA plot..... but you can read about it here and make your own minds up. )

cerebus660 is SFXy

I must say it felt pretty good ( if not actually SFXy ) to wander into my local WH Smith at the weekend and find a ( tiny ) cerebus660 byline in the latest issue of The World's Number One Sci-Fi Magazine. This was a capsule review I posted on the SFX website about Lucius Shephard's Life During Wartime - previously mentioned here. Page follows, needing maximum clickage for bigness.....

The problem is that cyber-me thinks "Great! The cerebus660 brand name is expanding into new territories. The world will soon be mine! Hahahahahaha etc."

However, real-world-me thinks: "Bugger! Should have put me real name on it!"