We can’t wait for this Doctor Who/Star Trek: The Next Generation crossover. Maybe the Doctor will go back in time and prevent the death of Tasha Yar and Geordie will start using a sonic screwdriver exclusively in engineering. Also, Riker will likely make a move on Amy and Rory will have to fight him. “Um...Will...I’m going to have hit you now...” (We fought Riker once, and won.)

In addition to this awesome crossover news, there are some other great off site links in the morning roundup!

Highlights include:

1. Lots of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace 3-D hate.
2. Space: 2099 is coming.
3. Dr. Zaius reads Mark Twain.

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A woman uncovers a mystery when she gets ten days’ compassionate leave to attend her sister’s funeral at home in South Dakota, and finds her sister’s ghost waiting to meet her at the airport. And that’s just the start of the novel Wide Open by Deborah Coates, out March 13! We’ve got 10 ARCs right here for you, so enter and you might win!

Check below for the rules:

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The Look of Love: You sometimes have to do a little work to help love along. (2:19 minutes)

Ninja Love Story: And sometimes that work can be a bit dangerous.
(1:29 minutes)

[Watch the films after the jump]

Insofar as it marked the emergence of an innovative and exhilarating new voice in dark fantasy fiction – or in fiction, full stop – Mr. Shivers’ publication in early 2010 was a watershed moment of sorts. Indeed, the very next year it earned its originator the prestigious Shirley Jackson Award... not for Best Newcomer, or Best Debut, or some similarly subordinate category, but for Best Novel proper, and such was Mr. Shivers’ primal power that I dare say the eminent honour was well and truly warranted.

Of course, certain expectations come hand in hand with that sort of success. The Company Man, an effective and unsettling love letter to airships and acid noir – by way of steampunk, sci-fi and murder mystery – crushed these to pulp and a waste of paste. In a good way, I mean to say. Because instead of trotting out another borderline apocalyptic Southern horror show – instead, in other words, of contenting himself and his hard-won readership with more of the same – Robert Jackson Bennett changed the rules of the game, ably demonstrating that his talents were not to be constrained by either the requirements or the restrictions of any one genre amongst the many.

In The Troupe, Bennett’s third novel in as many years, the ambitious author is at it again. Riding the crest of a weird wave of speculative and indeed superlative circus stories – with The Night Circus, Cyber-Circus and Genevieve Valentine’s marvellous Mechanique bringing up the esteemed rear – The Troupe is a tall and ineffably tender tale about nothing less than “the warp and weft of the web” of the world.

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A world simulated in the mind, where fortresses of bone rise above a sea of blood. Where a pantheon of wrathful and serene deities assemble in precise arrangement.  Where multi-limbed beings dance, cyclopean architecture looms high and a mountain bridges Earth to the cosmos.

That’s the rich world of the Mandala (Sanskrit for “circle”), an artistic visualization tool that allows Tibetan Buddhism ’s most advanced psychonauts to enter heightened states of meditation.

It’s essentially an imagined palace, not unlike the dreamscape architects in the sci-fi film Inception, or the famed “memory palace” mnemonic device that emerged in ancient Rome. It all basically boils down to employing spatial memory to memorize information by placing it all in an imagined “palace” filled with memorable symbols.

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Richard Cox’s novel Thomas World is yet another symptom of our collective identity crisis. Today even 20-somethings are suffering from an anxiety that used to be relegated to mid-life, and this is having a weird effect. Everyone secretly hopes that something like a Gmail theme might let them in on the big secret of life, or that getting a pedicure can repair their broken relationships. Why is this? Somehow our sense of unreality, our uncertainty, is turning us to toward the mundane. None of us know who we are or what we are doing and that is why articles that teach you how to have a conversation about the weather or that promise to explain what to do with your hands while riding the elevator are so necessary.

In that vein I want to offer you this: How to Read Richard Cox’s Thomas World in Three Easy Steps

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“The Best of Both Worlds” (Part 1)
Written by Michael Piller
Directed by Cliff Bole
Season 3, Episode 26
Production episode 40273-174
Original air date: June 18, 1990
Stardate: 43989.1

Captain’s Log: The New Providence colony on Jouret IV is one of the Federation’s outermost colonies. The Enterprise responds to a distress signal from the world, but arrive to discover no life signs, no communications, and no colony. Every indication is that the colony was destroyed by the Borg, as it matches the damage done to the Neutral Zone outposts and to the planets in System J25.

The ship is soon joined by Admiral J.P. Hanson and the head of Borg Tactical, Lt. Commander Shelby. Shelby is a bright, ambitious young officer, whom Hanson credits with cutting through the crap at Borg Tactical and getting them on track — having said that, they’re still months away from being properly ready to defend themselves against the Borg. New weapons designs are still on the drawing board. They thought they’d have more time given the distance from their first encounter, but the Borg appear to be faster than expected.

[Will this be the end of our civilization?]

Okay, we know you just have to find out what happens to Myfanwy (that is way too much fun to say out loud) Thomas! So we’ve got four copies of The Rook to give out to you lucky people. Check the rules below and you might win... and finally see just how much trouble this woman has gotten herself into.

Check below for the rules:

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Welcome to the Malazan Re-read of the Fallen! Every post will start off with a summary of events, followed by reaction and commentary by your hosts Bill and Amanda (with Amanda, new to the series, going first), and finally comments from Tor.com readers. In this article, we’ll cover Chapter Twenty-Two of Midnight Tides by Steven Erikson (MT).

A fair warning before we get started: We’ll be discussing both novel and whole-series themes, narrative arcs that run across the entire series, and foreshadowing. Note: The summary of events will be free of major spoilers and we’re going to try keeping the reader comments the same. A forum thread has been set up for outright Malazan spoiler discussion.

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Welcome back to A Read of Ice and Fire! Please join me as I read and react, for the very first time, to George R.R. Martin’s epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire.

Today’s entry is Part 6 of A Clash of Kings, in which we cover Chapter 11 (“Theon”), and Chapter 12 (“Daenerys”).

Previous entries are located in the Index. The only spoilers in the post itself will be for the actual chapters covered and for the chapters previous to them. As for the comments, The Powers That Be at Tor.com have very kindly set up a forum thread for spoilery comments. Any spoileriffic discussion should go there, where I won’t see it. Non-spoiler comments go below, in the comments to the post itself.

And now, the post!

[Together they’re 73 points!]

Before Jules Verne and H.G. Wells came onto the literary scene with their scientific romances, another genius inventor took the stage: Frank Reade, the 19^th century whiz kid who tackled the globe with his fleet of electronic-powered vehicles in a series of popular dime novels. Scholars like Jess Nevins argue that Frank Reade and other Edisonades were the proto-sci-fi figures that influenced the steampunk subgenre today. If you ever picked up a classic Frank Reade story, (there are some available online), you’ll also find that they were very much pulp stories of their place and time, filled with adventure, innovative machines, juvenile writing, and the whiff of imperialist attitudes and racist stereotypes.

[Global exploits by land, by sea, and by air. Mild spoilers ahead.]

In one month, on the centennial of the publication of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ first short story “Under the Moons of Mars,” the film John Carter will see one of the oldest science fiction protagonists returning to mainstream culture. But does mainstream culture know who this John Carter guy is? How many are aware he is immortal? A Confederate solider? A failed gold prospector? Chances are most people know none of this, nor are they aware that this action-flick complete originates from Edgar Rice Burroughs, who also happens to be the inventor of Tarzan. Further, does everyone know Hugo Award and Pulitzer Prize famed author Michael Chabon is a screenwriter for the film?

Assuming most people know none of this, who exactly is the John Carter movie for? And what does it say about how the zeitgeist really regards classic pulp heroes?

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A supermodel dabbling in dark magic curses her competition, plucking them off one at a time, only to be foiled and locked away. An episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer? No, that was cheerleaders, not models. A mysterious creature devoures zoo animals’ bone marrow and collects electronic equipment? An episode of Fringe? Could have been, but wasn’t.

Perhaps it is unfair, but it’s impossible for me, as a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Fringe, to talk about Kolchak: The Night Stalker without thinking of the shows it so clearly influenced. I don’t know if the creators of either of those shows ever directly credited Kolchak, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least. Chris Carter cited it as a significant inspiration for The X-Files. I’ve only seen a few episodes of The X-Files so I’ll refrain from comparing it to Kolchak, but feel free to do so in the comments.

[Zombies and robots and moss, oh my]

Friday is here. Have you reserved your 3-D glasses for The Phantom Menace? Maybe you should go see Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy instead. Does this image of Cumberbatch hugging Oldman not make you want to see it? Don’t you wish you could be in the middle of this hug? If you don’t we’re pretty sure you are a spy, a Sith Lord, or a meanie-face.

We’ve also go some offsite links for you:

Highlights include:

1. Bear McCreary talks SF musical scores.
2. Re-cutting of that Star Wars ad.
3. Popular television character Superman to continue his adventures as a comic book character!

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A new behind the scenes video from Game of Thrones season 2 reveals the look of several important new locations coming in the series. Check out a bunch of new locations in Westeros and beyond below the cut.

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The Best American Comics series published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has been going strong since 2006, each year with a different guest editor who chooses the works to be included — last year, it was Neil Gaiman and you can read his take on it here — and managed by the series editors Jessica Abel and Matt Madden. This year’s edition was high on my radar for its guest editor, Alison Bechdel, author of the fabulous long-running series Dykes to Watch Out For and the critically acclaimed graphic memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic.

I was not disappointed.

[An appreciation]

The future is a terrifying place. Three years after the end of the War, what’s left of the United States is almost unrecognizable. Major cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. are abandoned and off-limits. The all-powerful Federal Bureau of Reformation controls the populace with an iron grip, enforcing the Moral Statues which have replaced the Bill of Rights. Those who violate the rules vanish in the middle of the night, never to be seen again. It’s a crime to follow any religion save the Church of America. The motto of the day is “One Whole Country, One Whole Family,” and families are defined as one man, one woman, and children. Welcome to our national nightmare. Ember Miller has just been declared an unperson under Article 5, which requires all children to be born in wedlock….

[Read More]

Consisting of 13 books, and two companion volumes, A Series of Unfortunate Events chronicled the tragic lives of the Baudelaire orphans in the voice of the narrator Lemony Snicket. More than just a pen name for the real-life author Daniel Handler, Lemony Snicket was an actual character in the Baudelaire mythos, always a few steps behind the children in the narrative.

Now, Lemony Snicket’s youth is to be revealed in a four-part series from Little Brown. The first book is titled Who Could That Be at This Hour? which will launch the “All the Wrong Questions” series. With Daniel Handler returning to this excellent character and universe, celebration is definitely in order. Who Could That Be at This Hour? will release on October 23^rd.

[News via Publishers Weekly]