“For every problem, there is a solution, that is simple, clear and wrong” : A veteran in hospital talks about ’simplicity’.
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Rogue scientists perform violent experiments on an unstable man.


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BSFA’s 50th Anniversary

The British Science Fiction Association is celebrating their 50th Anniversary this year and they’ve got a range of events and plans going on:

• Publishing an original anthology of British SF.
• The 50th Anniversary BSFA Awards at Eastercon – including a range of panels looking back over the last 50 years of fandom at the Con, picking this year’s best novel and a “retro” award for 50 years ago.
• A new website.
• Their AGM will feature a panel of fans who were around at the founding of the BSFA.
• And they’re having a birthday party in November!

BSFA 50th ANNIVERSARY SHORT STORY COMPETITION
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Hungry

By Chris Silva

Somewhere between cryogenic sleep and consciousness Az felt his synapses beginning to thunder. Slowly, awareness returned. The thaw continued and Az was able to begin his mental calisthenics. He carefully went over the cryo-checklist one step at a time. The stinging in his toes, ignore the pain. His fingertips burning; must move each one very slowly to increase blood flow. Leg muscles should be flexed and released every few seconds. His checklist progressing he felt the remaining images of his last dream fade into obscurity, reality coming forward.

He and his crew were on a long journey through the dark nebula Epsilon11. They had entered the cryogenic containers just after inputting Jin, the Neuro-comp, with the proper coordinates. The ship must be nearing its destination, for Jin had disengaged the Cryogenic systems. Az felt the warm infusion starting to flow into his limbs from the Kelvin unit. Not much longer and he and his team would reach the 36.8 degrees Celsius needed to be released from the containers.
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Watchman
Babel Series Part One

By Tom Crask

Those who have never laid eyes on the Watchmen, standing tall and proud in the desert twenty five miles due North West of Babel, whether at sunset, silhouetted against the rapidly darkening sky, or on a summer’s morning as dust devils kick up their distinctive brand of chaos, would find it hard to claim that they truly understood how much of a rare and exquisite thing we lost when the era of the Construct finally came to its spectacular close.

There are six of them in total, one hundred and fifty foot tall totemic spires of Growth Bone, Calcine, and Blossom Glass, bedecked on all sides with terraces, platforms and loggias, sun-bleached and standing to attention like nine pins spilt upon the desert or deep sea hydro-thermal vents rising from unfathomed depths. They are a culmination of sorts, a denouement of what the Life Programmes, of what the Construct era itself set out to accomplish, a proud proclamation of what the Bio-tects thought themselves capable of.

These days they are said to retain only a fraction of the cognisance that they once possessed. That they were alive at all now seems somehow unlikely. That they were once aware, in their own strange way, of the world that they inhabited seems almost implausible, but then I only work for Bill Hatton’s governorship. I have never pretended to fully understand the Construct phenomenon, that period of life creation, in all of its bizarre and richly imagined guises. Even in these post-Taint days, the Meat Salons and Biology Houses still seem to me to possess a certain dreamlike quality, an air of unreality, as though such things never existed at all and were only ever a figment of our collective imagination, a story dreamt up by tellers of tall tales.
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Interviews / Screenshots / More Info Here.

Read about the series here.

Night Is Day : Full Feature

Fraser Coull at Silly Wee Films are to release the episodes of Night Is Day as a feature length edit.

The sci-fi/drama series follows the life of Jason Mackenzie, a young Glaswegian who is bestowed with the power of ancient lightening demi-gods, allowing him the power of foresight whenever he touches another human being.

However when he does, a charge of electrical energy transfers from his body into the person he touches. This can be fatal to both Jason and anyone he comes into contact with.

The feature length DVD is due for release in January. It will include a 50 minute behind the scenes documentary, outtakes from all 6 episodes, cast interviews, a photo gallery, promotional trailers and a music video for Transaudio’s “Frequencies” which is the official theme tune to the series.

Seeing the outcome of the editing will be interesting: will it be edited straight off as it is, sequentially, or will it be edited (as much as can be) across episodes…

You can get upto the minute information from the newly designed nightisday.com.

Watch episodes of Night Is Day.

Read other articles/reviews/background on Night Is Day.

A world where men and women carry magic in their blood, and spilling it can unleash terrible power

Near the start of its development, we reviewed episode one and episode two of BloodSpell.

It has now been edited together, and the entire story has been released as a feature film, available for free download.

BloodSpell has been four years (and one month) in the making. It’s a “punk fantasy” adventure
story, about a world where some people are infected with magic in their blood. When that blood is spilled, the magic comes out, to harm or heal.

These people have been forced into slums and magical hiding places by the Church of the Angels, who believes they must hunt the “Blooded” down and bring them to their Angelic master to be “cleansed”. The story starts when a young warrior monk in training with the Church discovers that he has magic in his blood, and has to flee into the world of the Blooded…
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Short Fiction Review Magazine, The Fix, Relaunches Online

TTA Press, publisher of renowned short fiction showcases Interzone, Black Static, and Crimewave, also published The Fix. The latter in its print incarnation, provided critical analyses and reviews of an extensive range of short fiction.

Now, The Fix has relaunched in a new, online format, once again providing a venue for critical coverage of speculative short fiction across the full spectrum of magazines, webzines, anthologies, and single-author collections.

Publisher Andy Cox predicts that The Fix will grow into the hub for aficionados and practitioners of short fiction to visit for news and commentary relevant to the community.

Managing Editor Eugie Foster, arriving to helm The Fix fresh from a distinguished career as managing editor of Tangent Online, plans to spotlight short fiction in all its myriad mediums: print, online, audio, and film.
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Dirtside Atomic: Where The Boots And Weapons Are Bigger Than The Skirts

Dirtside Atomc is an online only, freeview scifi series filmed entirely ‘on location’ in a garage and on a beach. Deb Spoopoo says, ‘Most of the props and sets are constructed out of rubbish or stuff from the poundshop.’

The story is based on a intel’ mission which goes kind of skew. It involves surreal planets, time travel, spaceships, weapons and computers..

Deb Spoopoo plays the intel officer, in her very draughty clothes, she gets dragged into enabling a nuclear bomb, fighting weird female human entities and … time travel (I’m hooked already). She hopes her neighbours understand about the strange noises eminating from her garage at 3 in the morning.

Pete plays the non-stop-get-from-a-to-z with weapons persona who gets to use Big Guns (capitalised). He also added to the scripts and made up characters and even got to use the chaingun for therapy!

Simon plays the communcator. And looks very swish in his Farscape-ish clothes. The way he talks works well within the film. He says, ‘It was an amazing experience.” It would be in those outlandish clothes, and he plays the character well, in a somber kind of way.

All of the main three characters look like they’ve taken their costumes from a mix of 21st century goth/punk - it reminds me of when I used to go to Goth/Rock/Indie clubs in the ’90s, and people wore black leather and bits of chains and big biker boots. Thing is, it all fits into the film perfectly.

There is more info in the tech section, but in a nutshell its all done as creatively as possible, as cheaply as possible.

The plot doesn’t really invent any new sci-fi wheels, but quite amazingly, makes up for that in other areas, for example, some of the scripting is laugh out loud hilarious, which is unusual in scifi, and even though CGI is used in quite a lot of scenes, it isn’t ‘in your face’.

If you don’t even make a snorting noise during the ’setting the nuclear bomb’ scene, you’re just plain dead. I particularly liked the sound effects. A lot of the music tracks are looped, but this adds a kind of edginess to it, and the whirls and bleeps are just beautiful, especially when they whir and bleep to visual triggers. And the chaingun, pure bliss.

The technical aspects of the filming are pretty impressive too. Most of the shots with Deb in, seem to be done with a static camera, with Deb filming herself. And imagine how crazy it is to see her fighting herself. A lot of blue/green screening was used; from the photos on the site, it looks like a nice green sheet sellotaped together, but it works so well.

Think: Non corporate Farscape, with creative people behind it who love what they do, and aren’t in it just for the money.

Currently seven episodes, each lasting around six minutes.

The amazing 3D environments and renders are done by AlisonGoth.

She finishes by saying, “It’s the best fun ever, even better than Doom 3 and pancakes”.

You don’t want to miss Dirtside Atomic; a bunch of friends messing around, creating something new and which is worth watching. You won’t be disappointed!

Fiction Magazine : Issue One

Reviewed By Gareth D. Jones

With the recent demise of both Scifantastic and Here and Now it was time once again for the doomsayers to emerge from the woodwork and proclaim the imminent end of the short fiction market. Fortunately we’re able to counter that with the launch last month of Hub, the forthcoming Murky Depths and this week issue #1 of Fiction magazine.

The team behind Fiction also come with that essential element for the launch of a new magazine – boundless optimism. In the editorial on the first page they acknowledge that the full-colour glossy paper hasn’t actually materialised, but throughout the magazine there’s a vibrancy and positivity that it can only go from strength to strength. The editorial and reviews are written in a friendly, informal style, and there are plenty of comments thrown in between to make you feel really involved in this new endeavour. The whole mag has the feel of a website brought to paper and, like the other two new magazines, this gives it a style and feel that stands out as something different.

So what of the fiction, which is, after all, the title of the magazine? There are three stories in this issue, a little mean I thought, but they are all of decent length and make the magazine a respectable 60 A5 pages.

The first story, Sam, is by Terence W Martin, who is coincidentally the editor of Murky Depths and who even more coincidentally lives about ½ a mile from me. The eponymous Sam is a mysterious old man who befriends and adopts an orphan boy. The two obviously have some kind of connection, and Sam is more than he seems, but while several years are briefly condensed there is still a good feel for the relationship that develops between them. What Sam wants out of the relationship and who he actually is are not startling when revealed, but the story comes across with a warmth and a sense of history that make it a pleasant read.

Paul May’s Motorway Madness is set on the automated motorways of the future. It mixes gadgetry and gimmicks with the old adage of a woman scorned; for the unfortunate chap driving along in his automated car his ex-lover happens to be one of the designers of the system. The tension builds nicely and the pages flashed by as quick as the billboards, keeping me hooked to the end.

An entirely too plausible crusade in the not too distant future is the setting for Martin McGrath’s Soldier of God. It’s full of action and adventure and portrays an air of cynicism and irony that lend it a convincing voice. It adds a nice variety to the collection and I’m looking forward to seeing what they bring us next time.

Now here’s an idea: Put together ideas for a full length script, film it initially as a 15 minute mini-movie, screen it FREE to scifi enthusiasts with the view to accumulating feedback and ideas for the full length feature film to be filmed later on.

Beth Timbrell of Retro-Juice Productions Ltd is spreading the word on just such an idea:

“Here’s hoping that some of you will be interested in coming along to see a great new mini-movie for FREE in London. Basically I’ve been working on a short film (just got accepted into the Brussels Festival of Fantastic Film!) with a great new director making a mini version of his feature script which is going to be filmed next year. Its “a pumped-up overblown thriller of a teen-flick that gets rudely invaded by sci-fi as the class reject stalks the prom queen but gets more than was advertised on the packaging…”

We’re really looking for as many true sci-fi fans to come along as possible to give us some genuine feedback but I’m sure you’ll like it, we even have some limited edition DVDs that’ll be available afterwards.

Theres going to be a Q&A with the director and actors afterwards and hopefully Noel Clarke (Doctor Who) will also be able to be there as he cameos in the film and is set to star in the feature version too.

Be great if you let me know if you are interested so I can send you all the details on it, so email me on beth@retro-juice.com. If you want, you can check out the Retro-Juice site which will give you a few sneak previews but be great to see you down here & might even chuck in a free tub of popcorn too!”

I’ve included the Director Mark Davis’ blurb sheet which Beth sent which contains his reasons and goals behind the movie. You can download it here.
A snippet of which is, “I mean to question the very formulaic construction of these films [Hollywood high-concept movies] and ask whether the audience is demanding them or whether commerce is dictating them.”

Also, the press pack is available here. I just love the tagline to Plastic - “…and I knew there was something wrong with the girl, the first time I killed her…”

Both downloads are zipped and in PDF format.

The viewing is at the Curzon Soho, from 6pm on Wednesday March 1st.

And if that isn’t enough you’ll find some promo images from the Plastic mini-movie below.

Plastic Mini-Film Screen Stills

A Plastic Grin

Plastic Lucys

A Plastic Gun

A Plastic Bed

The Plastic Stalk

If you wish to go and do get in contact with Beth, then please include a reference to SF UK Review.

And of course, I’ll be there (let’s just hope it’s not plastic popcorn they provide!). Seriously though, I think it will be an experience for both sides of the fence; the people working on and in the movie and for the people viewing it.

There will be a writeup of the experience once I’ve been to the screening.

See all posts regarding Plastic: including a review, more screenshots, a bit of fun, and an interview with the director M. Davis.