The SFF Weekly Round-Up 17/01/13

Welcome back to the Fantasy-Faction weekly round-up of all the best SFF news, fun and nonsense from around the web.

This week has been a bumper one for videos. Seriously, I hope you like Youtube because we have everything from the entire Toy Story movie done in live-action and a Dark Knight Returns clip to live-action Sonic, A GoT teaser and Eoin Colfer on Who. We also have cover reveals, Star Wars stuff and Casper in a conch… There’s Danger Mouse, X-[Wo]Men and Back To The Future GTA. Not to mention some very cool Hurrah For Science.

But first…

Today I learnt how Burgers are made:

Here in England the biggest item of general news this week dropped yesterday. It turns out that massive amounts of horse DNA has been found in ‘all beef’ beef burgers, with some Tesco burgers being up to 29% Black Beauty.
What I thought was interesting was that most articles say ‘horse DNA’ which doesn’t necessarily mean horse meat. So I’m thinking a bunch of stallions may have been doing the McDonalds Mayonaise trick with the burger mince…

The only other explanation is this:

Enjoy!

Books and publishing

Exclusive on FF – The Oathbreaker’s Shadow book cover release

This week, Fantasy-Faction exclusively revealed the stunning cover to The Oathbreaker’s Shadow, the debut novel by Canadian author Amy McCulloch. I am sure you’ll agree it’s a truly gorgeous cover.

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Physicist Adam Weigold is using Kickstarter to hopefully launch a new series of sci-fi books that detail how his fictional EMP devices can be used to win wars. AND THEN he’s hoping to use the money generated from book sales to manufacture these EMP devices in to actuality. Crazy! Here’s his Kickstarter page. (via io9)

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Is world building the main reason fans love fantasy? Throne Of The Crescent Moon author Saladin Ahmed sure thinks so and argues it elegantly here at NPR.

Sticking with Throne Of The Crescent Moon – Gollancz have got chapters up on their site for you to read for free. Here’s the link to chapter one with the other links via the Gollancz home page.

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Lovecraft on writing – This is great. H.P Lovecraft advises new writers to avoid magazines, read the King James Bible and develop a love for unusual words.

Ben Galley graphic novel Kickstarter

Ben Galley, the poster boy for successful self-published fantasy has taken to Kickstarter to turn his first book ‘The Written’ in to a graphic novel. The initial artwork looks fantastic and the packages he’s offering buyers are pretty brilliant.

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James P Blaylock – one of the grandfathers of steampunk – returns to the genre after 20 years. IO9 have an exclusive excerpt.

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Dan Brown’s next novel will (possibly) involve Dante’s The Inferno. That is all.

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Orbit books have revealed the cover to Francis Knight’s second book ‘Before The Fall’. It gives you vertigo just by looking at it. This one’s out in June and Francis’s first book, ‘Fade To Black’ is out on 01 February.

Toy Story

This was inevitable… Someone has recreated Toy Story as a live action movie. I mean, they’ve recreated the entire thing! All 1 hour and 20 minutes of it. Stunning. 

Sonic The Hedgehog

So the acting is more wooden than an aroused Pinocchio and Robotnik’s been taking voice acting lessons from Christian Bale but who cares because LOOK! It’s a live-action Sonic The Hedgehog film! Hollywood, I demand that you take note and make this movie.

StarWars

The US Government were recently petitioned to consider building a Death Star and the White House actually responded!
The response was penned by the Chief of Science And Space for the White House and is one of the greatest and nerdiest things I’ve read in ages.

AND THEN…

The Galactic Alliance responded to the US Government here.

Stuff like this makes the world a better place. Well, apart from the initial want to build a planet destroying space station that is.

 + Aliens…

These are not the Aliens you are looking f– argh! Aaaaaargh! Yup, Star wars meets Alien. You can find more images here

More Films

GOT Season 3 Teaser

http://youtu.be/RN7e_Oo0Bis

Even your mum teases better than this…

New Clip for the Dark Knight Returns

One of the best graphic novels ever made has been given the treatment and is coming out as an animated movie. IMDB lists Superman as appearing which means they’ve included that part of the story (yay) but it’s not Mark Hamill as the Joker (boo). I’m sure it’ll be a good Joker regardless but for me, it ain’t jokes without Skywalker.

Casper In A Conch

Casper in the conch, a.k.a Ghost in the Shell is coming back! The latest installment is called ARISE which I must admit, I read at first as ARSE. No idea why… (vis Geektyrant)

Marty McFly Meets GTA4…

The Hobbit

This is simply stunning. Deviant Artist *Breathing2004 had created this incredible, stained glass-style image depicting the entire story of The Hobbit. Click the picture for a better look or head on over to the artist’s DeviantArt page for this and more.

Busey on Hobbitses

http://youtu.be/WhLvwIUuLWg

To be honest, I kind of feel sorry for the guy as he is nuts but still, this is worth a watch.

Comics

This is big big news. As part of MarvelNOW, the main X-men comic book is being taken in an exciting new direction, in that it will be made up entirely of female characters and what a stellar cast it is. Psylocke, Storm, Jubilee, Hope Summers, Rogue and Kitty Pryde. This is incredibly cool! My only question is, why did they have to regress Storm to her 90s mohawk look?

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DC Comics go in to detail on their 2012 sales and look forward to 2013 at the link here. 

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(via FashionablyGeek)

Dr Who

Last week I mentioned that both Gaiman and Rowling may or may not be writing a Dr Who short. Now we have the first real confirmation of anything about this project and that is, the first Dr Who story featuring the very first Doctor will be written by Eoin Colfer. Above is the man himself discussing why he’s doing it and for those of you who prefer the written form, here’s a piece he wrote for the Guardian about it. 

And here’s a better look at that cover:

Dr Who – 50th anniversary audio book

Big Finish Productions, the team who produce the licenced Dr Who audio books are bringing us eager fans a 100-minute DW audio play titled The Light at the End. The best bit? It will star Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann as the respective doctors they played. 5 Doctors in one audio book. Awesome.

More, more film

Jack the Giant Killer posters are out and they finally give us a good look at the giants. Personally I’m not convinced. Aside from Superman Returns, I have absolute faith in Brian Singer so fingers crossed the CG looks a little more 2013 than 2003 by the time it comes out. (via Geektyrant)

Hurrah for Reddit

So a while ago, a Reddit user put forward this question: “Could I destroy the entire Roman Empire during the reign of Augustus if I traveled back in time with a modern U.S. Marine infantry battalion or MEU?”

From that Reddit thread, this question has been picked up by Warner Brothers to be movie-fied. The internet wins again.

Danger mouse turned 30!

He’s the greatest! He’s fantastic! Wherever there is danger he’ll be there!
Yup that eye-patchio’d mouse and his poor lackey Penfold turned 30 years old this week. 
The Most Amazing Fact In The World! – I once had a maths teacher whom we nicknamed Penfold as he was a dead ringer. Now you’ve learnt something.

Hurrah for Science

Gene Cutting = Good Things

Geneticists have developed a technique to insert or remove genes in DNA. This is pretty incredible stuff! Check out this exceprt from the UC Berkley press release:

…replacing one specific gene in a person infected with HIV can make him or her resistant to AIDS.

This could mean the most amazing things for humanity. It could also mean bad, bad things but we’ll forget about that for now. For the full report and a better explanation than I could ever give, head on over to IO9 here. 

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Nearing A Cure For Deafness?

Researchers in the US have developed a drug which has proven to restore hearing in deaf mice… kinda. It works by regenerating sound-detecting hairs. While it didn’t give the mice the ability to hear normally it did allow them to detect noises again. Could we be on the way to beating deafness? We can only hope. (via the BBC)

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Catch you in seven.

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Also, while you’re browsing the internet, if you spot anything that you think might fit in this weekly column then email it to Paul@Fantasy-Faction.com or @PaulWiseall. If I use your link I’ll be sure to give you the kudos.

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