First ORPHAN BLACK Season 2 promo pic and interview

Entertainment Weekly have the first interview with the producers of Orphan Black, John Fawcett and Graeme Manson, and the first official publicity photo from the first episode of Season 2.

If you've seen the Season 1 finale, you may have an inkling of why Sarah might be a 'little vexed' at her clone.

We're still four months from transmission, but it's good to see BBC America and SPACE are publicising the show well ahead of time (for comparison, we're closer to the start of Season 4 of Game of Thrones, and almost no material at all has been released for that).

CHUNG KUO to be put on hiatus?

According to author David Wingrove, the Chung Kuo series may be put on hold after the eighth volume, The White Mountain, is released on 6 March 2014. According to the publishers, Corvus, the series has not been selling as well as they'd hoped (after the apparently initial solid performance of the first volume or two). Wingrove attributes the problems to difficulties in getting the books on the shelves of the UK's biggest chain, Waterstones (I certainly haven't seen any since the second volume, Daylight on Iron Mountain).

I would add my own theories to why the series has not sold well: surprisingly little interest from bloggers (myself and a couple of others excepted), the lack of a US publisher, and the highly unwise decision to publish the series as twenty relatively short volumes (300-350 pages or so) instead of ten reasonably-sized ones (600-700 pages, still vastly shorter than most novels by say Steven Erikson or Peter F. Hamilton). There also appears to have been a decline in interest in the series since Wingrove's original editor at the company left: the hardbacks stopped being published and the sending out of review copies has become spottier.

Still, Wingrove has confirmed that, even if Corvus do drop the series altogether, it will still see the light of day somewhere else or as a self-published work. And, somewhat bizarrely, the series has attracted the interest of Hollywood even as the publishers seem to have lost faith (more at the link).

In the meantime, Wingrove will be published a major trilogy through Random House, entitled Roads to Moscow. The first volume, The Empire of Time, will be released in April 2014. It will be followed by The Ocean of Time and The Master of Time. This work will focus on a war using time travel technology ranging through history (mostly European) from the 13th Century into the future.

FALLOUT 4 incoming?

For the past month or so, there have been growing signs that Bethesda are close to announcing the next Fallout computer role-playing game, likely to be called Fallout 4. Having published their last game, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, two years ago, it's certainly about the right time for them to be announcing their next title.

On 14 November, this site - The Survivor 2299 - appeared without explanation. The typeface is reminiscent of that used in the previous two Fallout games and '2299' is a date close to those games: Fallout 3 took place in 2277 and Fallout: New Vegas in 2281. A countdown soon appeared on the site, apparently counting down to 11 December this year, when it is theorised the game will be formally announced.

However, doubts over the site's authenticity grew when a number of apparently related sites on Tumblr, Reddit and Twitter were exposed as fakes. There was also confusion over a simultaneous trademarking of the 'Fallout 4' name by Bethesda in Europe, which appeared to disappear soonafter (however, it was later revealed that the 'Fallout 4' trademark would probably be rolled into the generic 'Fallout' trademark listing, explaining why it cannot be found; a separate 'Fallout 3' trademark also does not exist, for example). There were also suggestions that the site was a fake concocted by the same person who recently faked trademark claims and announcements for both Shenmue 3 and Half-Life 3.

That said, in both those cases the sites were exposed as being fake very quickly and the official licence-holders confirmed they were fake. Bethesda has remained conspicuously silent on the subject of The Survivor 2299. It has also failed to take any kind of legal action against the site, despite being fairly litigious when it comes to its trademarks being used without its permission. As the weeks have gone by, the text on the front page has changed and morse code messages have also been added. In some cases, these have been backed up by odd radio transmissions in the Boston, Massachusetts area which are tied to clues on the site. These suggest that an Alternate Reality Game is actually going on, laying down clues to the storyline of Fallout 4 before its official unveiling. It should be noted that strong rumours circulated last year claiming that Bethesda researchers had been seen in and around Boston taking photographs and making notes.

This document (constantly updated) outlines what is known so far, including translations of the morse code and broken text messages. The Fallout Reddit community is tracking developments, and has created the following map which shows all the locations mentioned so far.

Based on the information revealed so far, the following conclusion can be reached:

Fallout 4 would appear to be set in 2299, eighteen years after the events of New Vegas. It opens with Vault 119, located near the Quabbin Reservoir west of Boston, being destroyed by forces unknown. You play 'the Survivor' (following on from the previous game character titles: the Vault Dweller, the Chosen One, the Lone Wanderer and the Courier), presumably the last survivor of Vault 119. By all indications, the Survivor travels to Boston, where radio signals indicate that the settled area of Black Row (presumably located in the former Boston area of Merchants Row) is also threatened. It is suggested that the Institute (formerly the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), mentioned in Fallout 3 as a site of scientific research and the home to some advanced androids, might be involved with or behind the attacks. The area around Boston is known as the Commonwealth, although this is a historical term (to the New England Commonwealth, which in Fallout's alternate history controlled the northern half of New England as an additional division between the federal government and the individual states), not a reference to the civilisation level of the area.

It is assumed that Fallout 4 will be, like most Bethesda games, an open-world title where you choose which quests to pursue and how to customise your character against a big background story. You will be able to get involved with this story or not as you choose. Fallout 4 will almost certainly be released on PC, X-Box One and PlayStation 4, though cut-down versions for the X-Box 360 and PlayStation 3 are possible. It is assumed, based on Bethesda's previous comments, that Fallout 4 will continue to use the Creation Engine used for Skyrim (and, in an earlier form called GameBryo, all of Bethesda's games since Morrowind in 2002). However, if the new game is not going to be released on the XB360 and PS3 it will be free of the memory limitations of those machines, and may feature a considerably larger playing area and 'open' cities which do not need to be broken up into smaller zones (a notable problem with both previous games, particularly within the cities of Washington DC and New Vegas themselves).

What is interesting is that Skyrim was announced at the Spike Video Game Awards in December 2010 (before its release in November 2011), but the countdown is to a time after the 2013 VGAs are finished. This indicates that the announcement, if true, will be made as a special, possibly online-only event.

If this does turn out to be a hoax, it's an impressively elaborate one and one that Bethesda themselves seem to be indulging. We should know for sure in less than two weeks.

86th Academy Awards Documentary Shortlist

From the one hundred forty-seven films that originally qualified in the category, fifteen (15) will advance in the voting process in which Documentary Branch members will select the five nominees.

Have seen only two, excellent Sarah Polley's opus Stories We Tell and a documentary that mesmerized me because I could not believe what I was seeing and hearing while impressing me as there is nothing shown but you intensively feel all the horrors, Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing. There are too many American documentaries for my taste but was good news to discover that Lucy Walker has a new documentary which perhaps will see even if know that the story is VERY different to her previous work, and unfortunately there is not much more that calls my attention but believe that the two mentioned above have high possibilities to be nominated and maybe one will win.

The Act of Killing, Joshua Oppenheimer, Anonymous and Christine Cynn, Denmark, Norway and UK

A documentary that challenges former Indonesian death squad leaders to reenact their real-life mass-killings in whichever cinematic genres they wish, including classic Hollywood crime scenarios and lavish musical numbers.



The Armstrong Lie, Alex Gibney, USA

A documentary chronicling sports legend Lance Armstrong's improbable rise and ultimate fall from grace.



Blackfish, Gabriela Cowperthwaite,USA

Notorious killer whale Tilikum is responsible for the deaths of three individuals, including a top killer whale trainer. Blackfish shows the sometimes devastating consequences of keeping such intelligent and sentient creatures in captivity.



The Crash Reel, Lucy Walker, USA

Fifteen years of verite footage show the epic rivalry between half-pipe legends Shaun White and Kevin Pearce, childhood friends who become number one and two in the world leading up to the Vancouver Winter Olympics, pushing one another to ever more dangerous tricks, until Kevin crashes on a Park City half-pipe, barely surviving. As Kevin recovers from his injury, Shaun wins Gold. Now all Kevin wants to do is get on his snowboard again, even though medics and family fear this could kill him. We also celebrate Sarah Burke who crashed in Park City and died January 19, 2012.



Cutie and the Boxer, Zachary Heinzerling, USA

For years, Ushio Shinohara has been one of the leading, and most underappreciated, alternative artists in Japan and New York City with an wildly esoteric style. For many of those years, his wife, Noriko, has been a faithful companion to this idiosyncratic man, but grew want to be more. This film covers the relationship of these special couple as Ushio struggles for commercial success on his own terms. Meanwhile, we also follow Noriko pursuing her own artistic vision with her semi-autobiographical line art project that reveals much about her own soul as eloquently as her husband's work.



Dirty Wars, Rick Rowley, USA, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kenya, Somalia and Yemen

Dirty Wars follows investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill, author of the international bestseller Blackwater, into the hidden world of America's covert wars, from Afghanistan to Yemen, Somalia, and beyond. Part action film and part detective story, Dirty Wars is a gripping journey into one of the most important and underreported stories of our time. What begins as a report on a deadly U.S. night raid in a remote corner of Afghanistan quickly turns into a global investigation of the secretive and powerful Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). As Scahill digs deeper into the activities of JSOC, he is pulled into a world of covert operations unknown to the public and carried out across the globe by men who do not exist on paper and will never appear before Congress. In military jargon, JSOC teams "find, fix, and finish" their targets, who are selected through a secret process. No target is off limits for the "kill list," including U.S. citizens.



First Cousin Once Removed, Alan Berliner, USA

This is filmmaker Alan Berliner's intimate portrait of his distant cousin, friend and former mentor Edwin Honig, who is living out the last years of his life with Alzheimer's. Honig was once a prominent and highly successful poet, translator, literary critic and university lecturer. In the final stage of his disease, however, he has lost almost all connection with his own past, his family and his personal identity. But sometimes in conversation his poetic soul flickers back to life again, producing beautiful moments in the film. This sensitive documentary tackles Edwin Honig's illness with compassion and humor, describing the story of his life with the same raw candor that characterized his poetry. Conversations with friends and family members paint a fragmentary picture of a life marked by tragedy, love, loss, irony and literary daring. Together, Honig's personal history and the study of his mental decline are more than the sum of their parts: this is a film essay on the function of memory and the importance of our ability to remember and forget.



God Loves Uganda, Roger Ross Williams, USA

A powerful exploration of the evangelical campaign to infuse African culture with values imported from America's Christian Right. The film follows American and Ugandan religious leaders fighting sexual immorality and missionaries trying to convince Ugandans to follow biblical law.



Life According to Sam, Sean Fine and Andrea Nix

'Life According to Sam' is about one family's courageous fight to save their only son from a rare and fatal disease, progeria. The average age of death from progeria is 13, there is no treatment, and no cure. Dr. Leslie Gordon and Dr. Scott Berns are set on changing this. When their son Sam, now 16 years old, was diagnosed with progeria at age two, doctors told Leslie and Scott to enjoy Sam while they could. They refused to believe this was the answer. In less than a decade, their advances have led to identifying the gene at fault, creating the first drug trials for treatment, and revealing the amazing discovery that progeria is linked to the aging process in all of us.




Pokazatelnyy protsess: Istoriya Pussy Riot (Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer), Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin, Russia and UK

Three young women face seven years in a Russian prison for a satirical performance in a Moscow cathedral. But who is really on trial in a case that has gripped the nation and the world beyond, three young artists or the society they live in?



Al Midan (The Square), Jehane Noujaim, Egypt and USA

'The Square' is an intimate observational documentary that tells the real story of the ongoing struggle of the Egyptian Revolution through the eyes of six very different protesters. Starting in the tents of Tahrir in the days leading up to the fall of Mubarak, we follow our characters on a life-changing journey through the euphoria of victory into the uncertainties and dangers of the current 'transitional period' under military rule, where everything they fought for is now under threat or in balance.



Stories We Tell, Sarah Polley, Canada

In this inspired, genre-twisting new film, Oscar-nominated writer/director Sarah Polley discovers that the truth depends on who's telling it. Polley is both filmmaker and detective as she investigates the secrets kept by a family of storytellers. She playfully interviews and interrogates a cast of characters of varying reliability, eliciting refreshingly candid, yet mostly contradictory, answers to the same questions. As each relates their version of the family mythology, present-day recollections shift into nostalgia-tinged glimpses of their mother, who departed too soon, leaving a trail of unanswered questions. Polley unravels the paradoxes to reveal the essence of family: always complicated, warmly messy and fiercely loving. Stories We Tell explores the elusive nature of truth and memory, but at its core is a deeply personal film about how our narratives shape and define us as individuals and families, all interconnecting to paint a profound, funny and poignant picture of the ...



Tim’s Vermeer, Teller, USA

Inventor Tim Jenison seeks to understand the painting techniques used by Dutch Master Johannes Vermeer.



20 Feet from Stardom, Morgan Neville, USA

The backup singer exists in a strange place in the pop music world; they are always in the shadow of the feature artists even when they are in front of them in concert while they provide a vital foundation for the music. Through interviews with veterans and concert footage, the history of these predominately African-American singers is explored through the rock era. Furthermore, special focus is given to special stand outs who endeavored to make a living in the art burdened with a low profile and more personal career frustrations, especially those who faced the very different challenge of singing in the spotlight themselves.



Which Way Is the Front Line from Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington, Sebastian Junger, USA

A moving portrait of the acclaimed war photographer and filmmaker Tim Hetherington by his RESTREPO co-director - journalist Sebastian Junger.

Blogosphere SOS

My fellow SFF blogger Bookworm Blues has had some major problems just drop on her and is looking for some help. If you can, either through financial donations or are able to provide info or leads on jobs, please check out her post. Many thanks.

Parasite by Mira Grant

2027. Millions of people across the world are enjoying unprecedented good health thanks to a genetically-engineered tapeworm designed by the SymboGen Corporation. One of the poster children for the treatment is Sally Mitchell, put into a coma by a near-fatal car crash but whose tapeworm repairs the damage and allows her to live again. Six years on from her accident Mitchell has made an almost-full recovery, but is at the centre of events when other people with the Intestinal Bodyguard start behaving very oddly indeed.

Mira Grant is a pseudonym of SF writer Seanan McGuire, winner of the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. As Grant, McGuire has published the zombie-based Newsflesh trilogy as well as a series of urban fantasies under her own name. Parasite is the first novel in a new series called Parasitology, which is important to know going in: the book doesn't actually climax but instead is cut off almost in mid-flow as soon as an appropriate cliffhanger is reached; those looking for a complete novel best look elsewhere.

The book is told almost entirely from the POV of Sally Mitchell. Since her life was apparently saved by the SymboGen Intestinal Bodyguard, she has contacts that allows her to observe the growing crisis from both inside the company and outside. This is rather handy, since it means she has a clearer idea of what is going on than almost anyone else in the world, but it also negates one of the points of having a limited POV in the first place: that they only have part of the puzzle and must work out the rest themselves. Since Sally is on top of everything from the off, this limitation does not apply and indeed makes for a curious structural choice, as it lessens tension from the narrative.

In terms of prose, Parasite is acceptable and probably a bit above average for this sort of biological thriller. In particular, McGuire does a good job of nailing the different voices of the feuding scientists whose biography extracts open every chapter. This doesn't extend too well to the dialogue, which often feels clunky and falls into the cheap Lost trap of having characters not ask the blindingly obvious questions and as a result delaying the delivery of vital information to the reader for quite some time. It also doesn't help that Sally is a bit of a blank character, a recovering amnesiac who appears to be extremely rational but also a bit on the slow side: almost every major plot twist (including the Shyamalan-class example at the end) is so heavily foreshadowed that even less-than-careful readers will likely predict most of the things that are going to happen chapters (or in the case of the big one, three-quarters of the book) ahead of time.

Beyond Sally, most of the characters are uninteresting; I spent most of the novel more worried about the fate of Sally's newly-rescued dog than any of the other humans. I also found the fall-back on zombies to be tedious, especially from an author who's already written a major zombie trilogy. It may turn out that the 'sleepwalkers' are rather different to traditional zombies (and there are hints to this effect), but for most of the book they are employed in a similar enough manner to make such differences moot.

Despite predictable plot twists, clunky dialogue and dull characters, the book moves with a fair bit of pace and McGuire is pretty good at action sequences and occasional moments of suspense. These prevent the book from bogging down in its numerous flaws. The book also has a big ask of its readers: the revelation of what is actually going on is so utterly implausible - especially given the robust science the author employs up to that point - that it will likely cause many to throw it down in disgust whilst others swallow it down and press on (also known as the 'Night's Dawn Trilogy Effect').

I found myself vaguely enjoying Parasite (***) despite it having a huge number of flaws. Ultimately, McGuire is an effective thriller writer and keeps the action and suspense beats coming at enough of a clip that it maintains just about maintains interest even over the problems with dialogue, characterisation, predictability and plausibility. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

An Adventure in Space and Time

London, 1963. The BBC's new, flamboyant Head of Drama, Sydney Newman, is alerted to a crisis in scheduling: a 25-minute gap has opened between the daytime sports programming and the evening pop music show. He needs to find something that will retain the adult audience whilst warming up the kids for the evening's entertainment. He hits on the idea of a science fiction series that will educate, scare and entertain, in which characters travel to different worlds and times. The show will alternate between historical dramas set in the past and serials set on alien worlds or in the distant future.

To develop the project, Newman upsets the old guard at the BBC by bringing in the young, talented and notably female Verity Lambert to produce the show. The even younger Waris Hussein, the first BBC director of Indian descent, is assigned to helm the first episode. All they need is their star, and in the distinguished film actor William Hartnell, eager to escape being typecast in military roles, they may have found a very unconventional one.

An Adventure in Space and Time is a one-off TV drama about the creation of Doctor Who, the world's longest-running science fiction TV drama. Written by long-term Who writer Mark Gatiss (who has been writing in the Who universe in one format or another for over twenty years), it's a tribute to the programme and to the many people involved in its creation. Gatiss walks a fine line between over-lionising the programme in its early days and giving a warts and all account. Some of the more controversial elements (the outrageous sexism and racism that Lambert and Hussein respectively faced in the early days of the show) are present, but William Hartnell's contradictory prejudices - speaking dismissively of a Jewish crewmember but being extremely close to both Lambert and actress Carole Ann Ford, who were both also of that faith -aren't examined very far. However, Hartnell's irascibility and grumpiness are present and correct.

David Bradley, most recently seen in the most controversial TV episode of 2013 (on Game of Thrones), plays Hartnell with the required mix of irritability, charisma and sparkle. It's a difficult role to pull off, making Hartnell sympathetic without playing down his negative sides (though, as mentioned earlier, his prejudicial side is all but missing), but Bradley's performance is sublime. He doesn't sound much like Hartnell, but he commands the screen and the make-up and costuming give him an uncanny resemblance to the role he's playing. This is more impressive given that Hartnell was actually only 55 when cast as the Doctor, whilst Bradley is 71. Bradley's performance is faultlessly brilliant and easily worthy of awards.

Other castmembers are also excellent: Jessica Raine (recently seen on Doctor Who itself ) gives the role of Verity Lambert - one of British television's most famous and influential producers - the required mix of command and steel. Brian Cox brings all of his formidable presence and charisma to the role of Sydney Newman, the larger-than-life figure who dragged the BBC kicking and screaming into the 1960s, and his interactions with Raine are superb: seeing him admit he was wrong about opposing the introduction of the Daleks after they triple the show's ratings is a satisfying moment. Lesley Manville has a small but critical role as William Hartnell's wife Heather, whose well-judged interventions with the production crew allow them to spot his declining acting abilities in time to do something about it. In fact, of all the castmembers only Reece Shearsmith hits the wrong note as Patrick Troughton, Hartnell's successor, failing to evoke almost anything at all about the real-life figure. Fortunately, his appearance is extremely brief.

But where the drama really succeeds is in building a gripping story about the creation of a TV show and making what sound like dreary production meetings explode into life. There's a mild coating of social commentary on the mores and prejudices of the 1960s and the over-conservative nature of the BBC, but what really makes this tick is the unlikely story of how Doctor Who was created and brought to the screen. That it actually made it in the face of opposition from the serious BBC executives, an awful pilot episode (which had to be reshot) and the first episode tanking in the ratings due to the news of John F. Kennedy's assassination breaking just the day before is incredible. The fact it's survived for fifty years (a fact nodded at in a scene that could have been mawkish but manages to be appropriately touching instead) is even crazier.

An Adventure in Space and Time (*****) is a brilliantly-acted, superbly-written drama that features one of the strongest performances of the year with David Bradley in the central role. He is ably supported by a superb supporting cast and the whole thing acts as an appropriate tribute to the TV show it's celebrating. The TV movie is available now on DVD in the UK. Despite being shot and shown in HD, there is inexplicably no Blu-Ray release currently listed. Shamefully, there no American release currently listed either.