Q) Desperately looking to find name of cover artist for Coronet edition of Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan published in 1970’s.

Doesn’t say anywhere in the book and publishers no help at all! Any suggestions?

A) This is another of those questions which we wish we could answer, but after a some hefty searches, and asking some people ‘in the know’, we’ve come up blank.

Suprisingly, even when looking at image specific search engines. This is a shame, as I’m not sure what the 1970s cover of Sirens Of Titan looked like, and some of the older covers are a lot blander, and at the same time more effective, than today’s glossy, colourful cover artwork.

Anyone know the answer? Let us know!

If there’s any Scifi Question you’d like to ask us, then let us know and we’ll bust our brains to find the answer!

Interzone : Britain’s Longest Running Scifi / Fantasy Magazine

25th Anniversary OFFER FOR SCIFI UK REVIEW Readers!

A bit more information on this offer.

It is running through the whole of 2007.

SCIFI UK REVIEW readers can obtain 25% extra issues on a 12-issue subscription (that’s six months worth) from the Interzone Subscription Site. (That’s three whole issues, free!)

Remember to include ’scifi.uk’ as your Shopper’s Reference so they know to include your extra free issues!

The Official Interzone Site.

The INTERACTION Interzone / TTA Press Forum.

Read past reviews and articles on Interzone, it will give you an idea of the content and how it has matured into the beast it is today.

The Adventures Of Prince Ziph

Ever imagined how Mars was millions of years ago when it had oceans flowing on its surface? And what about Martians? They were not green, they were … ehmm…different… And had such busy lives that life on Earth was later mostly their fault.

But that’s another story.

What about the meaning of life? Does God have a beard? Does it matter? And what does all this have to do with Area 51?

Who built the Face on Mars? Is Heaven a private club? Is life after death real? How boring is it?

Who runs the universe anyway and does this entity have weekends?

This and plenty of other stupid questions will be answered in this fantasy/scifi saga spread over a few volumes so the author can get some extra bucks, after two years making up all this stuff with watercolors, inks, acrylics and buckets of sweat.

Ziph Comics is certainly a bright, colourful and dazzling place. The comic (and site) is available in Portugese and English, with a French version coming soon. You can see the digital version of Prince Ziph, Part One online, and the printed version is available too, along with concept art and the backstory.

So, it’s a good a reason as any to spend surfing during your lunchbreak.

I’ll do a full review once I’ve bought a pair of shades…

Q) Just wondering if Earth: Final Conflict will ever come back to our screens.

It just finished about 18months 2 years ago with no explanation.

A) Judging by the various episode listings, it appears that six series were made. As I’m not sure what the last one was to be shown (I’m presuming you’re from the UK), then I don’t rightly know if they showed them all or cut off halfway through. To be honest, Earth: Final Conflict was never one I watched. It didn’t grab me while I was watching it, and it was just so boring, and really nothing new.

But, hey, you can always get it on DVD and watch it as much as you like.

If there’s any Scifi Question you’d like to ask us, then let us know and we’ll bust our brains to find the answer!

Q) Hi i’d just like to say that I love the new drama “hero’s” (sic) but….. as each epesode is only about 45 minuter long, is or would it be possible to watch the whole epesode in one go? As the breaks every ten minuter are verry anoying and just pointless!

A) Thank you for your enquiry. It’s the old arguement that adverts during shows are a royal pain in the scifi’ness., and should be moved to inbetween programmes. The thing is, they need to sell ads during airtime, and during shows so people actually ‘have to’ watch them. I agree, they should stop commercials during shows, but, unfortunately, it ain’t gonna happen.

If you try speaking to The Scifi Channel, I’m sure they’ll give you a definite answer.

By the way, I agree that Heroes is good entertainment.

Find all articles on Scifi UK Review for Heroes.

Q) I have been a big fan of the 50’s movie Forbidden Planet for years but have only got it on VHS tape.

Does anyone know if it has been released as a restored print on DVD as the original print on VHS, or when shown on TCM is faded.

A) Forbidden Planet was released on HD-DVD on 28th November 2006.

It was in honour of its fiftieth anniversary, the film was restored by the Warner Bros. reconstruction crew.

Very, muchly, cool.

Interzone (and TTA / Crimewave) Gets A Shiny New Forum

This is a bit belated: Interzone (and Crimewave and TTA) now have a new forum.

So if you’re even a little bit into SF, whether you’re a writer, reader, publisher, director, actor or just plain inquisitive, click over and say hello.

You’ll be able to discuss pretty much anything about the genre, discuss all things TTA Press, and have a generally interesting time!

Read what Interzone is all about, and see previous articles and reviews.

Night Is Day : Episode 3

Fraser Coull has finished the final touches to Night Is Day Episode 3.

Following on from Episode 2 (suprise!), this part introduces new characters, including Amy’s (Shian Denovan) college newspaper editor (Karen Barkte), which Amy writes for, Emma Healy (Louise) and Vivien Taylor (Sarah) - both friends of Amy’s. They decide to have a night on the tiles (technically called a girls night out) as Amy is distracted by her relationship with Jason (Chris Somerville) and her work. Things then go from bad to worse.

This episode stands out as being a lot more professionally shot. The lighting, both interior and exterior, is a lot better than previously, and makes the camera shots and direction shine from the screen. As this part of the story takes place during the night, there are some nice shots of Glasgow, and they reminded me of the skyscraper night shots which Michael Mann (Collateral, Miami Vice) is fond of.

With the introduction of more characters, the story has arced slightly, become broader, and thankfully, the writer hasn’t tried to cram all characters into one episode.

I believe that the editing is better this episode too, as there seems to be a lot more crammed into the 15 minutes or so of viewing.

One thing which made me laugh is the shop in Glasgow called ssoM. (See if you can spot it).

Upto the minute information from nightisday.com.

Watch Episode 3 (and 2 and 1 if you haven’t already seen them!). There’s also a preview for Episode 3 which is free, so if you’re still not sure you want to download the episodes, check this piece out, you won’t be disappointed.

Read other articles/reviews on Night Is Day.

Bogles, Reevers, Grinnlings and Nickers

Monster Blood Tattoo, Book One: Foundling (MBT1), is the first of a trilogy and was published in February by Random House Children’s Books.

By the way, although MBT1 is published through a children’s publisher, this fantasy novel is by no means only for children or younger teens, so don’t stop reading if you’re over fifteen.

Rossamünd, a boy with a girl’s name (reminds me of Jayne is Serenity), seems destined to be stuck in Madame Opera’s Estimable Marine Society for Foundling Boys and Girls. Raised as a Foundling (not knowing his mother or father), he hopes, and expects, to become a sailor. When he’s recruited by a Lamplighter, he agrees, even though the repetative life of looking after Lamps on a monster infested road, in monster infested territory, sounds boring and dangerous.

He sets out on his journey with some basic, though necessary, equipment.

The setting is in a small part of the Half Continent, following Rossamünd on his journey to start his life a Lamplighter. As the story progresses, the text brings the experience to life. So much so that there are times when the story slows down to describe the surroundings. On his path Rossamünd meets a Lahzar (Europe) (my favourite character in the book), Licurius, her helper, The Misbegotten Schrewd and The Rever-Man to name but a few.

The books is lavishly decorated with pages of hand drawn pencil sketches, which breathe life into the book. Everytime a main character is introduced and described, the following page or so has a picture of them - you really do see them for the first time. There are maps of the world, which show just how little of the land is explored within the first book, and shows just how much there is to explore in the following books.

This is by no means a complete story, but sets the scene nicely, introduces characters and brings the environment to life for the reader.

MBT1 is thoroughly recommended for readers who enjoy a good, solid fantasy, and as it includes an extensive explicarium, a place for the child in your to write your name at the front as a ‘Bookchild’, and lavish illustrations by the author, D M Cornish, it is great value for money.

Monster Blood Tattoo Official Site
Monster Blood Tattoo Blog

Electric Velocipede: Issue 10: Spring 2006
Edited By John Kilma

Electric Velocipede has a wide spectrum of story type, from spine chilling terror to completely weird, with plenty of SF thrown in. This is issue ten, so twice a year publication without fail makes it the fifth year it’s been running, which is quite an achievement.

Comprising of an eye catching, yet simple, black and white, bold front cover, it is fifty-five pages long with two novelettes and four short stories.

Novelettes
A Walking Of Crows: Tim Akers
A strange, yet enticing story of a young man who tries to discover the truth behind his father’s death. Contain’s some great imagery of man and clockwork metal fused. It’s a tale of someone searching for truth, but doesn’t degenerate into tears.

Jacket Jackson: Richard Bowes and Mark Rich
Blimey, talk about smokin’ something. It’s a jacket, a sentient jacket, a sentient jacket which travels around time, utilising people as it goes; and it’s made of leather. This is weird; I had to read it a couple of times just to see if there were multiple layers. Like I said, I think the author(s) were smokin’ something. Seems to include time travel. Possibly. And it’s surreal, and messes with metaphysics. Overall, it seemed to jump from one scene to another without links throughout, so it was somewhat difficult to work out what happened when. Probably intential to add to its weirdness.

Short Stories
The Way He Does It: Jeffrey Ford
Ah yes, my kind of story. Minimal, in the sense that the narrator goes a long way to explain the way he does it, but never actually says what the it is. A fascinating read.

Il Duca di Cesena: Alistair Rennie
This piece read like a letter to a sixteenth century priest (which I believe it is), but even so I found it difficult to complete, simply because I find this style of writing annoying. That said, once I did complete it, I appreciated the story as a whole. Philosophical and somewhat disturbing.

The Naval Of The Universe: Andre Oosterman
A simple, short story, which is somewhat predictable. The protagonist is a researcher for a drugs company, looking into old wives tales, or mystic treatments for staying alive longer, staying younger. He ends up travelling to a distant country to track down an elixir of life. And he does.

Travels Along An Unfurling Circular Path: Robert Freeman Wexler
Another of my favourite kinds of stories. A story of a lead character who journeys through various states of emotion, only to come back to his original emotion, mirrored by his location. Neat piece which resonates deeper interrigation.

Overall
With only a few adverts and just one page of non-fiction (which is the contributors page), it is an excellent ‘zine of stories, most of them strong, all worth reading.

Subscriptions and information (including some excerpts of stories) are available at Electric Velocipede.

See other reviews & articles on Electric Velocipede.

Interzone Issue 209

Interzone’s Silver Anniversary

1982: Margaret Thatcher, her son Mark missing in the desert, Falklands War, a Republican President (Reagan), Isreal invades Lebanon, a princess (Grace) dies in a car accident in France (Monaco), bombings in London, and Interzone is launched. Doesn’t it all seem a lifetime ago?

So Issue 209 (March/April 2007) celebrates the 25th birthday of Britain’s longest running science fiction and fantasy magazine. It still contains superb new SF and fantasy stories.

This issue features M John Harrison, who appeared in Issue 1, Gwyneth Jones, and Alastair Reynolds, who made his reputation in IZ in the 90’s. Additionally rising stars Hal Duncan (also interviewed), Daniel Kaysen, Jamie Barras, Edward Morris (his novella available for free download from the IZ website) and ‘Afterlife’ creator Stephen Volk’s top ten TV programs from the last 25 years make this a bumper package.

Other features include David Langford’s Ansible Link (news & gossip); Nick Lowe’s Mutant Popcorn (film reviews); book reviews; more interviews (Kim Stanley Robinson); views from Arthur C Clarke, Bruce Sterling, Stephen Baxter, Greg Egan and many others on Interzone.

Top it off with an original Jim Burns painting as cover art is and story illustrations by Richard Marchand, Jesse Speak, Stefan Olsen, Pamelina H, Chris Nurse and David Gentry. How can you resist? Subscribe now and, for the 25th anniversary, if you order a two year, 12 issue, subscription you will get fifteen issues. A 25% birthday gift from IZ.

Fiction:

The Whenever at the City’s Heart by Hal Duncan
illustrated by Richard Marchand

Rumpled, stumpy, the old watchman ascends on the clockwork spiral of escalator, steel scales grating underfoot, gyring up into the ticks and talk of turning gears and sproinging springs, the whirl of mirrored cogs and jam of hammer-and-bell that should be knelling, telling time in rhyme and reason, chimes and seasons…but is not. The pendulum that stretches down the whole height of the watchtower, hung on wire as thin as a dimension, snicks and cocks and rocks this way and that still, but it seems it’s marking off one second to midnight, one long second to midnight, one drawn out and stretched second to midnight, time and time again.

So, with his tools ajangle on his belt, the watchman clambles up the ringing rungs of ladders, raises a trap door overhead, and huffs himself up into the Mechanism.

Winter by Jamie Barras
illustrated by Christopher Nurse

Christian’s visitor touched her hand to his cheek. “Khan,” she said, touching off one of the viral packets that she had just transferred. It burst open, spilling its contents into Christian’s brain. He frowned. “What does the Security Service want with me after all these years?”

The Good Detective by M. John Harrison
illustrated by David Gentry

… All she was doing was making a phone call, answering a text. She looks up and he’s gone. He’s taken the children with him.
Where is she supposed to start looking for him? The world’s full of harassed men his age, with two daughters and a suitcase. The trains and buses are full of them.
Eventually someone puts her on to me.

Big Cat by Gwyneth Jones
illustrated by Stefan Olsen

… They had the TV on with the sound turned down. The room was gloomy in lamplight, warmed by the big wood-burning range. A black and white cat called Selby was curled in a tight ball on the rag rug. The other cat, Frost, was up on the kitchen table, settled plumply on a sheaf of farm accounts. The adults were drinking tea, black tea from South Asia: one of those everyday comforts that was getting very hard to find.

The Sledge-maker’s Daughter by Alastair Reynolds
illustrated by Jesse Speak

She stopped in sight of Twenty Arch Bridge, laying down her bags to rest her hands from the weight of two hogs’ heads and forty pence worth of beeswax candles. While she paused, Kathrin adjusted the drawstring on her hat, tilting the brim to shade her forehead from the sun. Though the air was still cool, there was a fierce new quality to the light that brought out her freckles.

Tears for Godzilla by Daniel Kaysen
illustrated by David Gentry

…And I hadn’t been twiddling my thumbs either. Since we’d last seen each other I’d published seven lurid horror novels, available at all good bookshops, and a riskier crossgenre novel which my publishers made me call Tears for Godzilla to try to suck in my fanbase. It didn’t work. Tears got good reviews from the broadsheets, but died on its arse in the shops. Nobody bought it at all. But still, I’d done alright.

Journey to the Center of the Earth by Edward Morris
illustrated by Pamelina H

It was a beginning that only got to begin, and never got to be.

Read it free from www.ttapress.com/Journey.pdf

Features:

Editorial: 25 years of Interzone
25 IZ: reflections on Interzone’s 25 years by Arthur C. Clarke, Greg Egan, Michael Moorcock, Christopher Fowler and many others (with more to come for the rest of the year)
25 TV: Afterlife creator Stephen Volk’s personal top ten TV programs (first of a series of such 25 years in review articles this year)
Ansible Link by David Langford: news and gossip

Mutant Popcorn by Nick Lowe: film reviews
Bookzone: book reviews
Mangazone by Sarah Ash: Sarah looks at manga for grown-ups (Eternal Sabbath and Basilisk)
Interviews
Blood for Ink: Getting Serious With Hal Duncan: interviewed by Neil Williamson
Science in the Capital: Kim Stanley Robinson interviewed by Rick Kleffel
Last but not least: Readers Poll Results and comments for 2006.

25th Anniversary OFFER FOR SCIFI UK REVIEW Readers!

SCIFI UK REVIEW readers can obtain 25% extra issues on a 12-issue subscription but you should include ’scifi.uk’ as your Shopper’s reference so they know to include your extra free issues!

Interzone Shop: http://host2.clickandbuild.com/cnb/shop/ttapress

The Interzone website is http://www.ttapress.com/IZ.html

Thanks to Roy for news of this interesting exhibition.

Alien Nation
Saturday 17 March 2007 - Monday 7 May 2007
Manchester Art Gallery
Admission Free

Tues-Sun, 10pm-5pm and 10am-8pm.

17/03/07 - 07/05/07
Manchester Art Gallery
Mosley Street
Manchester M2 3JL

information: +44 161 235 8888

Laylah Ali, Hamad Butt, Ellen Gallagher & Edgar Cleijne, David Huffman, Hew Locke, Marepe, Henna Nadeem, Kori Newkirk, Yinka Shonibare MBE, Eric Wesley and Mario Ybarra Jr.

Alien Nation explores the relationship between science fiction, race and contemporary art. Twelve contemporary international artists use science fiction and extra-terrestrial forms to explore racial difference as a metaphor for the threat of the outsider. The artworks include film, sculpture, photography and multi-media installations.

Much has been written about the connection between sci-fi cinema of the 1950s and ’60s and the Cold War, where fear of invasion, communism and nuclear war was played out in films that projected the anxieties of the present onto the future. In recent years many artists have similarly used science fiction and extra-terrestrial forms as a way of exploring racial difference and as a potent metaphor for the threat of the outsider.

Alien Nation presents the work of twelve contemporary international artists all of whom explore themes of ‘otherness’ and ‘difference’ through the language and iconography of sci-fi. The witty and provocative artworks on display expose a disturbing contemporary narrative in which the media perpetuate a terror of ‘invasion’ from immigrants, asylum seekers (indeed any racial, cultural or ethnic ‘other’) and position such ‘outsiders’ as the dominant threat to both family and national stability.

Mingling fact and fiction, science and art, Alien Nation will also show a collection of original sci-fi film posters from the 1950’s to present day, courtesy of The Reel Poster Gallery, as well as extracts from contemporary and archive science fiction films as part of this unique exhibition that reveals our innermost fears and fantasies about the outsider.

Alien Nation is co-produced by the Institute of International Visual Arts (inIVA) and the Institute Of Contemporary Arts (ICA) touring exhibition supported by the Arts Council England and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.

http://www.iniva.org/season/winter/project_01
http://www.manchestergalleries.org/whats-on/exhibitions/index.php?itemID=23

Also on at (may go elsewhere as well.) Not sure if Manchester and Norwich on at the same time and can’t find anything else on the web.

Sainsbury Centre for Visual Art
University of East Anglia
Norwich
NR4 7TJ UK

01/10/06 - 09/12/07
information: +44 1603 593199

Polis: a city-state . policy . politics . metropolis

As previously mentioned, A Loop In Time, from author Rowena Wright, is an novel where art, science and timetravel combine in a smart and silly telling of the myth of Osiris set amid issues of post 9/11-New York.

The first thing I noticed when reading this book is added trinkets of artwork while adorn the first page of each chapter. They look like ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. They’re a nice touch and help to set the scene of the book.

The story is about a single mum (Sophia) who has to deal with raising her child (Ericca) in a foreign land. Sophia hides her true heritage from Ericca, but Ericca realises as she gets older, that something is amiss.

She finds out that she is Ringgold, and has magical powers like time travelling and altering the past. Ultimately, she has to ‘grow up’ and seek out her father who died years before. She is assisted by various cool items, including her baby blanket which has Albert Einstein and Leonardo Fibonacci magically embedded. The bantering between them is quite surreal and I chuckled quite often when Albert went off on one about his discoveries and theories.

I’m a real time travel story lover, ask anyone who knows me how many time travel books I have, and it’s more than you can count on two hands. Some of the twists and turns had me scratching my head, and I had to re-read a couple of sections to make sure I knew what was going on. Although, if I’d carried on, it actually explains itself. A Loop In Time is a story I’d class as fun, yet realistic, and (of course?) science goes out the window.

It’s fun because a lot of aspects are light hearted and jovial; realistic because of the way Sophia protects her daughter and the growing up of Ericca, as she faces the world. As for the science - well, there really isn’t any. None of this is by no means negative. The way it all fits together makes it only once-removed from believable.

The associated website has a load more extra information on the world of Polis, and even one of the characters has a Myspace page.

There’s an excerpt of the first five chapters of A Loop In Time in PDF format here. Other downloads are available here, which include a 2007 calendar!

Find out more about the book, the characters, the life style and the games which can be played, at polisgames.com.

Skaters, Trekkies And Cool Dudes. Rock!

A while back we mentioned Skaters, Trekkies And Cool Dudes, which is the debut novel from Derek Lawrence.

The blurb on the back starts off… “When God and Lucifer go missing and Heaven and Hell start to descend into chaos, the Joint Darkness & Light Emergency Committee decides that urgent action is needed…”

This had me half smiling even before I’d started to read it. It mentions a punk rocker and a teenage skateboader arriving in the English Midlands, along with pop star and Star Trek look-alikes. Hmm..

I find fantasy comedy a bit tedious. Douglas Adams did it well (mostly) in Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, Neil Gaiman and Terry Prachett try a bit hard to be funny in Good Omens, and Prachett on his own is kind of fun in a ‘travelling on a train when you’re not on holiday’ kind of way. Mostly they got a good ‘heh’ and a half laugh, or a sigh when the jokes were a bit predictable.

So you can imagine what I felt like before starting Skaters, Trekkies And Cool Dudes. Anguish, a bit. Hopeful, a lot.

The way that God and Lucifer are described make them seem like down to earth, erm, human beings. Their interplay is amusing, as are the other key characters (the Head of a Cherbub, Archangel and a Three Headed Hell Hound). The humour ranges from plain hilarious to down right side splitting (as a few people will atest to sitting on train while I was reading it.)

This is a a nicely flowing story, which trekkies, cool dudes, geeks, nerds skatboarders, punk rockers, BMXers and trainspotters et al will find funny and be able to relate to it perfectly. The humour is in a natural comical, on the stage at Comedy Central, with three hours of floor time (including intervals), so not rushed, kind of way.

If you can get past the clichéd good vs evil in a biblical setting, and focus on it as a two overworked, important guys, who need a break from their job/career, and so persue their dreams, then you’ll probably like this. The narrative seems to ramble sometimes, but soon gets back on track, so it doesn’t really deter from the story, and as the jokes come left, right and centre, they’ll distract in a positive way.

Derek Lawrence certainly has a knack for comedy, and as this is the first novel in the Divine Cock Up Trilogy, I look forward to the next Divine Cock Up.

Fresh from Boing Boing: a new sub genre of scifi has appeared, posts Cory Doctorow.

I guess one has to appear once in a while - Cuberpunk, Steampunk, etc.

Punkpunk would be interesting. Oh no, wait, that’s been done, it was the Sex Pistols.

“Clockpunk can be divided into historical and non-historical Clockpunk. Historical Clockpunk explores how the world would have turned out if certain technological developments that occurred later had happened in the Renaissance and or certain inventions in the time of the Renaissance were created on a mass scale in the time period.Non-historical Clockpunk is set in settings similar to the Renaissance but on alternative worlds, planets etc.”

Also, this post has something to do with the synchronicity of everything, but that’s another story… .. . .. . .