Other worlds: Walton, Gaiman win Hugos

Awards. The Hugo Award winners were announced at Worldcon this past weekend. Taking Best Novel was Jo Walton’s Among Others, beating out George R. R. Martin’s A Dance With Dragons and works by China Miéville, James S. A. Corey and Mira Grant. (Walton also won the Nebula for the book.) Other writing prizes went to Kij Johnson, Charlie Jane Anders, Ken Liu and more.

The dramatic presentation awards went to Game of Thrones S1 and Neil Gaiman for his Doctor Who episode ‘The Doctor’s Wife.’ (Gaiman took the opportunity to announce he’s writing another episode for the show.) Also noteworthy to us, SF Signal winning for Best Fanzine!


Tolkien. With Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit adaption now being three films, the second has been retitled The Desolation of Smaug, with There and Back Again now being the third installment. I fully expect it to contain at least an hour of various slow-motion endings. But seriously, it looks like there was a lot of hints dropped at DragonCon.


A Song of Ice And Fire. A hilarious Storm of Swords ‘It Gets Better’ PSA. Yes, of course there are spoilers. Or, you can read what GRRM has revealed of the Targaryen conquest of Westeros from the upcoming The World of Ice and Fire.


Lists. io9 picks fall’s must-read SF/F books and explores the mermaid trend in YA.


Records. The Hunger Games series has outsold Harry Potter – at least on Amazon.


Also: Ray Bradbury’s FBI file / Lev Grossman interviews Terry Brooks / Ursula Le Guin’s Noble Prize odds / Dark Tower adaption not so dead after all?

Doctor Who is back this Saturday!

Don’t forget that the new series of Doctor Who starts up this Saturday with “Asylum of the Daleks”. The Doctor, Amy and Rory are back, and this time they’re headed to a place that even regular Daleks fear. For those in the US, Doctor Who starts up on BBC America on Saturday at 9pm/8c. Helping get us back into the timey-wimey mood, BBC has been posting a series of fun shorts, called Pond Life, focusing on Mr. and Mrs. Pond since we last saw them.

  • Pond Life – Part 1 – Voice mail from the Doctor
  • Pond Life – Part 2 – A late night visitor
  • Pond Life – Part 3 – A new houseguest
  • Pond Life – Part 4 – Living with the houseguest
  • Pond Life – Part 5 – Things take a turn

What does writer and producer Stephen Moffat have to say about writing his first Dalek episode? RadioTimes has his episode guide.

Also celebrating the start of series 7, Nerdist Channel has a few programs related for their Doctor Who-eekend: For wacky fun, the Doctor Who cast and crew takes on Chris Hardwick, Wil Wheaton and more in Chris Hardwick’s All Star Celebrity Bowling on Friday (preview here – “Bowling is cool”). On Saturday, check out the Doctor Who Premiere Q&A at 10pm/9c, with Chris Hardwick talking with Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Executive Producer Caroline Skinner after the premiere.

EDIT: BBC America just put up a new Her Universe Doctor Who shirt for sale, combining the logo and the Amy Pond introduction. Go check it out / buy it!

Back on TV this weekend: Doctor Who, The Venture Brothers special

Just a reminder that Doctor Who returns this Saturday, with a look at a classic time travel trope in ‘Let’s Kill Hitler’. This start to the second half of the season is followed by the last ‘Doctor Who: Best of’ show: ‘Best of the Companions’. Check out this exclusive sneak peek of the new episode, or, if you’re not caught up on Series 6 yet, BBC America will be doing a marathon of the first half of the series before the new episode at 9 PM.

Also, in news that may only be exciting to Dunc and myself, The Venture Brothers returns on midnight on Sunday, August 28 with a special mockumentary on Hank’s band: From the Ladle to the Grave: The Shallow Gravy Story. The new 15-minute episode follows a VB marathon starting at 9:30 on [adult swim]. Crave more gravy? Get more info on Shallow Gravy EP from Amazon and iTunes. Go Team Venture!

Comic-Con 2011: And all the rest…

It’s the last San Diego Comic-Con 2011 post, I swear! Here’s some different thoughts and recaps on what came out of Comic-Con this year:

  • DC Comics opened up a new can of worms with their whole universe relaunch in September when a fan asked in Q&A: “Why did you go from 12% in women [creators] to 1% on your creative teams?” – Check out some commentary on ComicsAlliance and then an official reply on the DC blog, and Newsarama does some fact checking.
  • Tangentially related to the topics of gender and the DC comics universe, LAWeekly has a write-up and photo gallery of the Gender-bent Justice League cosplay group at Comic-Con.
  • Jill from Newsarama gives her recap of the con, including being on the Oh You Sexy Geek panel, cosplay, and meeting George R. R. Martin.
  • Big Shiny Robot sums up the Doctor Who panel and finds out why bow ties are cool.
  • Gamespot takes a look at Kinect Star Wars, bring Jedi adventures and podracing to motion-controlled gaming.
  • SirStevesGuide sums up the Star Wars collectibles panel. And what’s this? Sideshow Collectibles is bring out a life-size Han Solo in Carbonite.
  • Missed The Old Republic MMO panel? TORWars has the whole thing online to watch.
  • The Official Star Wars blog catches some of the best in Star Wars costuming at the convention.

And let’s end our wrap-up with a photo gallery progression of the artwork drawn on the Volkswagen Passat in the Star Wars pavilion by a Sharpie-wielding comic artist, Ken Lashley. 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8.