Tabla de contenidos para December 2023 en SFX

BITE BACK Robert MacDonald Loved reading the retrospective article on Ultraviolet in SFX 370. I’d forgotten Philip Quast played a central role. Did he break into his Javert role from Les Mis mid-take? Mr Davenport is giving an excellent resting bitch face in the promo photo too… It’s a shame the show wasn’t given room to expand. Ah well, fangs ain’t what they used to be… DEVELOPING THOUGHTS David Spragg, email In the details paragraph that starts all your game reviews you list the format/s the game is on, as well as the publisher. You don’t list the developer, however, and yet that is who actually makes the game. I appreciate that many people may not follow developers closely, but knowing who made a game can be a good indication…

WHAT WAS THE BIGGEST WTF moment that fledgling superhero Mark Grayson (Steven Yeun) experienced by the first season finale of Invincible? No question, it was finding out that his dad Nolan – the omnipotent superhero Omni-Man (JK Simmons) – is actually a first-wave alien agent for the barbaric Viltrum Empire. And, yes, that majorly sucks for Mark, and for Earth, as they collectively watched Omni-Man fly off into space and disappear. The long-awaited “what happens next” for Grayson in Prime Video’s animated adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s Image comic is finally here, after an 18-month production delay. Kirkman promises Red Alert that it will have been worth the wait. “We dive in right from where season one left off,” Kirkman says, referring to the emotional fallout of Nolan’s betrayal of Mark…

FOUR DECADES AFTER editing the original series, Tom DeFalco is returning to Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars, scripting Battleworld, a new miniseries that fits directly into the continuity of the 1984 12-parter. “Editor Mark Basso asked me if I would be interested in doing a direct sequel – a sort of untold story,” says DeFalco, who replaced Secret Wars writer Jim Shooter as Marvel Editor-in-Chief in 1987. “The challenge of crafting a tale that is directly tied into a story that is 40 years old and also relevant for today’s reader – who may have heard of, but not read, the original Secret Wars – was too great to pass up. “Mark and I wanted to do a story that would be accessible and, hopefully, entertaining to all readers, to…

GROWING OUT OF some artwork of robots and futuristic cars Pye Parr had put online, the post-apocalyptic automobile races of his and Rob Williams’s Petrol Head bring to mind films such as Death Race 2000 and Mad Max. There’s an environmental theme to the creator-owned five-parter. “In the book’s world, the environment has become deadly to humans, so the survivors live in domed cities, and the city administrators run extreme sports events like the Petrol Head races to keep the population entertained,” explains Williams. “Doing this with gas-guzzling cars and robots is pretty dysfunctional, so the Petrol Heads eventually get shut down. Can the environment outside the city be saved? That’s our key MacGuffin, as Petrol Head meets a young girl called Lupa, who might just have the key to…

plus FOUR BBC TARGET BOOKS Four Doctor Who novelisations in the Target range Two classic stories and two from the revival, adapted by the writers All included with every print subscription Great reasons to subscribe ● FREE Four Doctor Who Target novelisations worth £31.96  ● Enjoy 12 months of SFX for just £41.99 – that’s only £3.23 an issue!  ● Delivered direct to your door  ● The gift that keeps on giving A YEAR’S WORTH OF ISSUES. ONE PAYMENT. SIMPLE. Print Edition £41.99 EVERY 12 MONTHS Get 13 issues of SFX in print over 12 months, and save 41% Digital Edition £36.99 EVERY 12 MONTHS Get 13 issues of SFX in digital form over 12 months, and save 35% Treat yourself or gift a magazine subscription today SUBSCRIBE NOW ONLINE magazinesdirect.com/SFX/XE94 PHONE 0330 333…

WHEN WE SIT in executive producer Phil Collinson’s office – adorned with Dalek movie posters – with fellow series producer Vicki Delow, the pair joke about being like presenters Richard and Judy as they decide where to be on the sofa. As they settle down for a conversation about the upcoming Doctor Who specials, we note that watching over them from above, with giant eyes, is an early prototype of the Meep’s head… Ulp. We should probably talk about the Meep in the room. Phil Collinson: You can imagine going from that comic strip into the script to, “How are we going to make the Meep?” Simply the amount of time, the amount of pages of dialogue it had, and how much it had to interact. It was just bonkers.…

NOTHING QUITE prepares you for walking into the actual TARDIS – but that’s taken to a whole new level when “your” Doctor and companion are there, in costume, creating brand new canonical adventures. It’s a surreal, giddy moment for SFX in Studio 1 at Bad Wolf in Cardiff on Thursday 28 September – now you know why Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred were at the Radio 2 concert, fact fans – as we step aboard the Remembered TARDIS… “It’s a mash-up of loads of different TARDIS sets,” writer Pete McTighe explains. “There’s bits of the Davison console, bits of the Eccleston/Tennant console, bits of the Jodie TARDIS. There’s even bits of Ncuti’s TARDIS in there. That’s incredible, the way that they’ve collided all these tiny pieces into one set. “The…

WHEN THE DUFFER BROTHERS, the creators of Stranger Things, asked scribe Kate Trefry to write a stage play based on their Netflix series, her reaction was a natural one: “What the hell are you talking about?” After all, the world of Eleven, the Upside Down and the Mind Flayer was developed for television, and recreating the horrors of Hawkins on stage seemed an impossible task. Yet here we are two years after that meeting, and Trefry’s talking to SFX between rehearsals for Stranger Things: The First Shadow, a prequel heading to London’s Phoenix Theatre. “Everything about it is extremely different,” says Trefry, also an executive producer on the series, comparing her experience writing the stage play – based on a story by herself, the Duffers, and acclaimed playwright Jack Thorne…

SCOTT PILGRIM TAKES OFF STARTS inside a dream. The eponymous dorky 23-year-old’s sleep has been intruded by a mysterious woman with colourful hair skating through subspace. He wakes up next to his cooler roommate Wallace Wells, who wants Scott to move out or find a job. Scott instead goes to band practice, where his girlfriend, Knives Chau, watches him play bass in awe. Later, at a party, he meets Ramona Flowers, the skater girl from his dreams, and the next day orders DVDs from Netflix because Ramona’s a delivery person for them. The two go on a date, sparks fly, and Ramona goes to watch Scott’s band Sex Bob-Omb play a concert; the whole thing’s ruined when one of Ramona’s seven evil ex-boyfriends, Matthew Patel, crashes the gig. So far,…

DOCTOR WHO may be marking a significant anniversary this year, but so is its competition from the other side, The Tomorrow People: its 50th. Produced by Thames Television, this teatime kids’ show saw confused teens discovering new abilities, including telepathy and the ability to teleport, or “jaunt”. Considered the next stage of human evolution, they were referred to as Homo superior. Over the course of eight series and 22 stories, these young heroes (aided by biotronic computer TIM) took on the likes of shape-shifting robot Jedikiah, evil god Sogguth, ameboid aliens disguised as jumpsuits and your actual Adolf Hitler from their secret base the Lab – all without striking a blow in anger, thanks to their code of non-violence. EVOLVING THE IDEA The man responsible for the madness was producer/writer…

Just as ’60s Doctor Who tapped the expertise of Dr Kit Pedler, The Tomorrow People picked the brains of computer scientist Dr Christopher Evans. Listed as “Scientific Adviser” in the end credits, Evans worked conveniently close to Thames Television’s Teddington Studios. “He had a fair bit of input,” says Price. “He picked me up on any science mistakes I might make. He was working on trying to get computers to talk in [governmental laboratory] the National Physical Laboratory, which is literally a few hundred metres away from Thames Television. But we met at Granada. “He’d published a book called Mind In Chains, and was being interviewed about it,” Price says, recalling how the two met. Evans’s 1970 anthology collected stories by the likes of Brian Aldiss, Theodore Sturgeon and John…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 18 | 92 minutes A pair of potty-mouthed Melbourne drug addicts have a high old time when they snort some crystal meth that sends them bouncing back and forth into the recent past and the near future. Coming across like a swearier but less inventive episode of Misfits, this micro-budget flick’s temporal logic doesn’t bear close scrutiny, but it uses its limited locations well (most of it’s set in one house) to create a scuzzy black comedy with a surprisingly sweet ending.…

RELEASED OUT NOW! PG | 76 minutes Drybones is an immortal seeking a wife. Barbara is a strongwoman who refuses to marry. A king wants her for himself, but accidentally pushes the two together. Weirdly, a talking loaf also gets involved. This Russian animation rolls out basic storytelling with occasional flashes of something interesting (like an Escher homage). Small kids may giggle at the silly characters, but an uneven dub – dull one minute, screeching the next – flattens the experience.…

RELEASED 1 DECEMBER 15 | 100 minutes Director Magnus Martens Cast Martin Starr, Amrita Acharia, Townes Bunner, Zoe Winther-Hansen From Trollhunter to The Ritual, the icy mythscapes of Scandinavian folklore have provided a rich seam of inspiration for modern horror. Here the legendary menace is a little more whimsical: a barn elf, a gnome-like bugaboo who sets himself against an American family who’ve relocated to Norway – “the happiest country on Earth” – with plans to transform the murderous munchkin’s home into a boutique hotel. The title promises some enjoyably lurid, self-aware fun, but while this is clearly reaching for the breezy spirit of Gremlins, it proves a muddled blend of broad humour and axe-swinging scares. Presented as crass tourists (“Ever seen a moose on a sign before?”), the family simply…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 1994 | 15 | Blu-ray Director Stephen Chow, Lee Lik-chi Cast Stephen Chow, Anita Yuen, Kar-ying Law, Wong Kam Kong BLU-RAY DEBUT In 1974 the Bond franchise riffed on the Asian cinema boom with The Man With The Golden Gun. Consider this an act of reverse cultural appropriation: 007 by way of Hong Kong; part spoof, part homage, part rip-off. Stephen Chow is the pork merchant turned insouciant secret agent, a cigarette seemingly surgically attached to his lips. On the trail of a stolen dinosaur skull he finds himself pitted against a supervillain with – checks notes – a golden gun, and a hench with sinister dental work. The Bond steals are audacious, made all the more amusing by a straight-faced legal disclaimer that’s immediately followed…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2023 | 16+ | SVOD Director Brian Duffield Cast Kaitlyn Dever, Geraldine Singer, Evangeline Rose, Dane Rhodes DISNEY+ Put the scalpels down: you don’t have to perform a Roswell autopsy to trace the DNA of this alien chiller. It’s as if Signs, Poltergeist and the darkest parts of Close Encounters have been distilled to their nerve-shredding essence, then injected directly into your dreams – with a paranoid chaser of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers to follow. Living alone among a hostile rural community, anxious young orphan Brynn (Kaitlyn Dever) finds her isolated home infiltrated by otherworldly visitors. At first director Brian Duffield keeps his ETs in the shadows: half-glimpsed shapes; scampering, imp-like figures, their tantalising, terrifying power enhanced by immersive sound design. It’s a house encounter of…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2023 | TBC | SVOD DISNEY+ Anna Zlokovic’s debut employs body horror as a metaphor for both anxiety and the hardening required to survive in a competitive environment, as a young NYC fashion designer grows a talking appendage that acts like a critical inner voice. This critter (which soon splits off) is a bit too Muppety to creep you out, and two major twists are visible from some distance. They’re good twists though, and the film ticks along entertainingly, deftly opening out Zlokovic’s original six-minute short.…

Good news, physical media lovers: the following are all now available on shiny disc. BARBIE (4K/Blu-ray/DVD) sees the doll suffer an existential crisis and travel from Barbie’s world to ours. We said: “Hilariously meta, very clever, ridiculously funny.” It comes with around 40 minutes of featurettes on important topics such as casting, costumes and Ken’s “dream ballet”. The fifth in the franchise about a family haunted by demons from a realm known as the Further, INSIDIOUS: THE RED DOOR (Blu-ray/DVD) is directed by star Patrick Wilson, and sees his character Josh uncovering the truth about the father who abandoned him. We said: “A solid legacy sequel that digs deeper into the mythology.” Extras? Just two featurettes, totalling eight minutes. Seriously, Sony? Shark sequel MEG 2: THE TRENCH (4K/Blu-ray/DVD) goes full…

RELEASED 14 NOVEMBER 300 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Caroline Hardaker Publisher Angry Robot Isolation and loss do strange things to you, as young David Porter, the protagonist of Catherine Hardaker’s eerie second novel, gradually discovers for himself. Mothtown is set across two time periods. In the past we follow the young David, who is devastated when his university professor grandfather dies unexpectedly. Gramps always had esoteric interests, and David becomes convinced that he hasn’t really died, simply vanished elsewhere. He wouldn’t be the first – it seems to be a regular occurrence, to the point where these disappearances are simply referred to as “the Modern Problem”. Years later, the twentysomething David continues his search, obsessed with the idea that perhaps his grandfather is somehow still out there. Mothtown is an…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 400 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Matthew Holness Publisher Coronet Garth Marenghi’s TerrorTome marked the reprise of comedian Matthew Holness’s signature character almost 20 years after his wonderful TV show Darkplace. It followed the misadventures of Nick Steen, a pompous paperback horror hack (and thinly veiled avatar of Marenghi) as he variously had sex with a demonic typewriter, beat off an army of Boners (living skeletons – get your mind out of the gutter) and faced his own subconscious coming to life. Incarcerat is very much more of the same. Steen’s demented imaginings are causing chaos in the town of Stalkford, while Nick – now an airline pilot as well as a writer – is imprisoned by the shadowy Nulltec. Can he escape? What’s with the young girl that…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher DC Comics Writer Mark Waid Artist Emanuela Lupacchino ISSUES 1-4 DC’s ever-popular band of teen superheroes are back again, in a new series that spins directly out of the current Batman/Superman: World’s Finest title. Here, we flashback to the early days of the Titans, when the adolescent heroes were learning to work together, delivering adventures that are colourful, entertaining and (mostly) self-contained. The characters here are the original Titans – Robin, Kid Flash, Aqualad, Wonder Girl, Bumblebee and Speedy – not the more familiar line-up from various animated shows, and while there are overarching plot threads (and an unnamed villain lurking in the shadows), these first four issues are refreshingly light on continuity. Veteran comics writer Mark Waid makes this an easy jumping-on point for new…

WITH HIS WORK’S deeply unsettling supernatural themes and his controversial opinions, HP Lovecraft is not an author normally associated with a Young Adult audience. But Norm Konyu’s latest graphic novel A Call To Cthulhu centres on the sinister leviathan that ranks as the American writer’s most famous creation. But despite the Great Old One having first appeared almost a century ago, Konyu hasn’t changed the beast much for a contemporary readership. “Most horror stories are fairly timeless, but what does date Lovecraft’s work is his heavy-going gothic style of writing, so I avoided that entirely,” Konyu tells Red Alert. “His prose is difficult enough for an adult to work through, so it has almost no chance of being palatable to a younger audience. Something I did need to include was…

Tell us about your protagonist. → Hellevir is a young woman with the ability to enter Death and bargain for souls with the being who resides there. When the Princess of the Chron dies and Hellevir must resurrect her, she finds herself in a world besieged by threats, assassination attempts, political intrigue and unexpected desire. How do her powers work? → Hellevir can barter parts of her body – and treasures – in exchange for bringing back the dead. She’s also one of a small group of people who can talk to spirits (such as of the hearth, the ivy leaf) and animals; her familiar is a raven. How long did the book take to write? → I wrote it over the pandemic, when I felt trapped and useless; in…

WE CAN’T TALK about the anniversary, the return of David Tennant, the future of the series, the spin-offs, before addressing one of the biggest comebacks in sci-fi history. Everyone knows where they were on 24 September 2021 when the news broke that Russell T Davies was returning as Doctor Who’s showrunner. To quote a certain Time Lord: “What? What?! WHAT?!” Davies had given up the reins in 2010 after a farewell tour to rival Cher. But now – like the ageless diva herself – he was back and spearheading the 60th anniversary specials. “The original press release just said that I was doing the specials,” Davies tells SFX, “and I absolutely insisted on saying ‘and future seasons to come’. Seasons plural, because I said the future would look insecure otherwise.…

◆ “The Star Beast” draws on an eight-part 1980 Marvel comic strip from Doctor Who Weekly. Written by 2000 AD co-creator Pat Mills and drawn by Dave Gibbons (later of Watchmen fame), it sees kids in a northern town taking in a cuddly alien furball after its spaceship crashes on Earth. But is everything what it seems? And why are the fearsome Wrarth Warriors pursuing him? SPOILERS! The Meep popped up in four more strips in the ’90s (most notably 1996 sequel “Star Beast II”), plus a Sixth Doctor audio (2002); producers Big Finish also adapted “The Star Beast” in 2019.…

“THE NICE THING ABOUT MAKING A holiday movie is you have a very clear deadline,” director Eli Roth jokes as he takes time out from the edit of Thanksgiving, his seasonal slasher. Not that he hasn’t had long to make the movie – it’s actually something he’s been thinking about since he was 13 years old. “My best friend Jeff Rendell [writer of the film] and I would just ingest every single horror movie we possibly could. We started getting to see R-rated films during the [’80s] golden age of slasher movies and the VHS boom. Every few months you knew that a horror movie was going to come out because a holiday was coming up. We saw Halloween, then Silent Night, Deadly Night and April Fool’s Day, Mother’s Day…

The Japanese studio Science Saru – best known for its distinctive method of meshing hand-drawn and digital animation styles – animated the series. “We tried to stay out of what they were doing because everything they were doing was brilliant,” says Grabinski. “We didn’t have to guide them towards anything. In terms of the aesthetic, it was just a bullseye from day one. “For instance, Gideon [leader of the League of Ramona’s Evil Exes], his lair in the first episode is not something from the books or the movie. We wrote two sentences on a page of what we thought it was. I remember sitting in a conference room when some of the team were visiting from Japan. They presented their designs for Gideon’s lair, and I immediately knew that…

GOOD OMENS HAD A CHANGE of location for its second season, but hopefully you didn’t notice. Because Whickber Street in Soho upped sticks from an airfield in Hertfordshire to a furniture warehouse in Bathgate, Edinburgh. It’s the kind of nonsensical geographical shenanigans that could only make sense in the crazy world of film and TV, and production designer Michael Ralph was the man in charge of rebuilding and expanding the show’s vast central set. “I wish we could have built more in season one than we did,” says Ralph, whose previous work has included Primeval and Dickensian. “We built the ground floor of everything and the facades of all the shops. But we didn’t build anything higher than that, because we were out on an airfield in a very, very…

Barking Mad Early on, Victor photographs a couple of dogs fighting. This echoes a moment from the opening of the original film, where Father Merrin sees two dogs fighting in the desert close to the statue of Pazuzu. Author! Author! Victor contacts Chris MacNeil for help because she wrote a non-fiction book based on her experiences. The version of Chris in the 2016-2017 TV series was also an author – although of a cash-in novel, The Devil In My Daughter. The Purple One It could just be coincidental, but the scarf which formerly belonged to Angela’s late mother, Sorenne, is purple – the same colour as the stole worn by Father Merrin during the original film’s exorcism. Sofa, So Good Though it’s unrecognisable, the couch in Chris MacNeil’s house is…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 90 minutes This killer-clown feature grew out of a popular series of short films by director Colin Krawchuk. In it, a pair of sisters and their friends are stalked around a small town on Halloween by a murderous orange-suited jester. Gorehounds may find the film’s focus on creepy atmospherics rather than kills disappointing – it’s far tamer than the likes of Terrifier 2 – but the cast are solid, and Krawchuk’s script makes a decent fist of attempting to actually be about something.…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 18 | 118 minutes Director Kevin Greutert Cast Tobin Bell, Shawnee Smith, Synnøve Macody Lund, Renata Vaca To borrow a bit from another iconic horror movie villain, let’s play a game: name the killer in the Saw movies. Did you say Jigsaw, or John Kramer? Well, you’re wrong. According to him, he’s not a killer: his traps always give his victims the chance to escape. There have always been some moral gymnastics required to accept his reasoning, and here, in the franchise’s tenth film, the filmmakers are basically doing triple backflips. Set somewhere between Saw and Saw II, this mid-quel sees Kramer taking out his frustrations on the fake nurses and anaesthesiologists of a fraudulent Mexican clinic that claimed it could cure his (eventually fatal) cancer. Making…

UK/US Netflix, streaming now Creator Mike Flanagan Cast Bruce Greenwood, Mary McDonnell, Henry Thomas, Rahul Kohli, Mark Hamill, Kate Siegel EPISODES 1.01-1.08 Throughout his five horror shows for Netflix, Mike Flanagan has avoided producing straightforward adaptations, instead using novels for thematic inspiration. The Haunting Of Hill House came first in 2018, a tribute to Shirley Jackson. That was followed up by love letters to Henry James, Stephen King and Christopher Pike. Now Flanagan takes on the most iconic figure in horror fiction: Edgar Allan Poe. His latest series takes its name from his 1839 story of the same name, reimagining its macabre look at family and insanity in a very modern context. The Ushers are pharmaceutical billionaires who’ve made their fortune peddling dangerous medications to an unsuspecting public. The family is…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 1976 | 15 | Blu-ray Director It’s complicated… Cast Larry Justin, J Arthur Craig, James Habif, Robert Clark BLU-RAY DEBUT When it comes to misleading titles, this one (appended to cash in on a certain Texas massacre) takes the biscuit – meatcleavers are conspicuous by their absence. It starts very Last House On The Left, as four stoner pals kill their professor’s family, leaving him paralysed. He then sets a vengeance demon on them. Despite that title, it’s pretty light on gore. The demon is initially invisible, but finally manifests as a fat, hairy bloke painted green. Oh dear. Co-writer Keith Burns was replaced as director after some footage turned out unusably dark. Plan 9 From Outer Space’s Ed Wood is in the frame, but cast…

RELEASED 3 NOVEMBER 2023 | TBC | SVOD Director Christos Nikou Cast Jessie Buckley, Riz Ahmed, Jeremy Allen White, Annie Murphy APPLE TV+ Funny, moving and delightfully weird, Christos Nikou’s first English language feature will draw favourable comparisons to fellow Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Lobster. It’s set in a world where science has created a test to determine whether or not two people are truly in love using their fingernails and some nifty-looking gadgets. Anna (Jessie Buckley) and her boyfriend Ryan (Jeremy Allen White) have been happily paired up for three years, with the test’s approval. But it turns out love and life are not so simple, and Anna cannot deny the connection she is forming with her colleague Amir (Riz Ahmed). The chemistry between Buckley and Ahmed is…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 1987 | 15 | Blu-ray BLU-RAY DEBUT This standalone story (notionally the third in the Italian Ator series) sees our Conan-lite protagonist saving the kingdom from a sorceress and her metal-masked enforcer. It’s atmospheric, with a dreamlike quality; filmed in Malta, the exterior shots are beautiful. But Iron Warrior is also a low-budget mess of second-hand ideas, with scenes shamelessly pilfered from Indiana Jones and Star Wars. + Extras Commentary; producers and cameraman interviews (51 minutes); trailer; booklet; poster.…

A haunted house tale with the ghost swapped for a zombie, Lucio Fulci’s 1981 horror THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY (OUT NOW) sees a family move into a New England mansion once owned by a 19th century scientist – who still lurks in the cellar. Bolstering Arrow’s 2012 Blu-ray bonuses are a third commentary and nine interviews (154 minutes) from Blue Underground’s 2020 US release. It comes with a booklet, poster and six postcards. We said: “As Fulci films go, about as traditional as it gets – though there are many baffling details.” Set in Jersey in 1945, 2001’s THE OTHERS (OUT NOW) sees Nicole Kidman’s character convinced her country house is haunted after her daughter claims visitations from a boy, his parents, and a blind woman. The big twist…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 1962 | 15 | Blu-ray Director Riccardo Freda Cast Barbara Steele, Robert Flemyng, Silvano Tranquilli BLU-RAY DEBUT No, not Alfred (with a T) – though it is a nod, and he might have approved of this slice of ripe Italian gothic. Set in a foggy 19th century London, it has strong echoes of Poe, Rebecca and Gaslight. Sometimes a facial expression can horrify more than gore. That’s the case here, in a film that toys with necrophilia. Nothing’s shown, but as the camera lingers on the titular surgeon’s face, emotions playing over it as he comes to the decision to pop back to the morgue, your skin crawls… And sometimes a face can be the best visual effect – as with Barbara Steele (as Hichcock’s new…

RELEASED 7 NOVEMBER 416 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Naomi Alderman Publisher Fourth Estate If recent years are anything to go by, our collective path through the next few decades could find us collectively encountering much weirdness. How do you write about such interesting times? One approach adopted by William Gibson was to set his stories in the unfolding immediate future, emphasising how we already live in a disconcerting world. While the timelines are fuzzier in Naomi Alderman’s fifth novel, there’s certainly something of this approach at play as she builds around a plot around the idea – odd and compelling because it’s true – that Silicon Valley billionaires might be preppers, people making grand plans to live in comfort while the rest of the world goes to hell. Leaving aside…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 320 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Alix E Harrow Publisher Tor How do you build a life when the odds are so stacked against you as to be seemingly impossible to overcome? You just keep going. You never give up. You treat life as a hustle. Or at least that’s the approach adopted by Opal, the twentysomething heroine of Alix E Harrow’s latest novel. In the ironically named Kansas town of Eden, a community blighted by environmental degradation caused by the mining industry, Opal lives in a motel. She works at Tractor Supply. Her mother is dead. However, Opal is imbued with a sense of purpose by the need to ensure her academically gifted younger brother fulfils his potential. Which is why, despite its inherent spookiness, Opal goes…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 448 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook Author Bethany Jacobs Publisher Orbit Books One of the biggest obstacles facing any space opera is balancing the prerequisite world-building with the need to grab the reader’s attention. It’s a challenge the opening chapter of These Burning Stars navigates in spectacular style, delivering a barnstorming introduction to the future universe of “the Treble”, while setting the scene for a thoroughly entertaining game of interstellar cat-and-mouse. Warrior cleric Esek Nightfoot – an amoral but utterly compelling creation – creates an enemy for life when she cruelly shuns a promising rookie known simply as Six. Over the subsequent decades, their destructive obsession with one another is the catalyst for a dense, cleverly plotted mix of action and political intrigue. With its ocular implants, jump gates…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 229 pages pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Frazer Hines Publisher BBC Books This 1966 seven-parter has been novelised before, by John Peel (not that one) in 1993. However, copies of that rarity now change hands for £50 – and who can resist an actor adapting a story they starred in? It takes the Second Doctor and companion Jamie (as played by author Frazer Hines) from modern-day London to Victorian times and the planet Skaro, caught up in a Dalek plan to achieve invincibility by isolating the “human factor”, using the Scot as a subject. David Whitaker’s scripts give the Daleks some amusingly oddball things to do, such as playing like children, but the means used to lure in our heroes seem overly complicated – and why on earth…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher Frank Miller Presents Writer Frank Miller Artists Philip Tan, Daniel Henriques, Frank Miller ISSUES 1-4 With its pioneering prestige format and creator-owned status, Frank Miller’s Ronin arguably proved just as influential when it first appeared in 1983 as The Dark Knight Returns a few years later. With its black and white art – mostly by Philip Tan and Daniel Henriques, with Miller providing layouts throughout and full pencils for issue four – this belated sequel can’t help but underwhelm. Although he includes some additional background in subsequent issues, Miller throws readers in at the deep end in issue one; before diving in you’d be well advised to brush up on the original series, which centred on a feudal Japanese warrior who’s reincarnated in a dystopian New…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Reviewed on PS5 Also available on PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X, PC Publisher Ubisoft VIDEOGAME While the last few entries in this sci-fi tinged historical fantasy franchise have seen you explore whole continents, Mirage’s Golden Age of Baghdad setting feels refreshing thanks to a more focused approach. Going from street urchin thief to an initiate in the mysterious Hidden Ones (read: assassins), Basim finds himself returning to his home city to unravel and ultimately cut the puppet strings of the evil, shadowy Order Of The Ancients, who’ve taken control in his absence. Pleasingly, this has you unfurling a large Investigation Board of missions at pretty much your own pace, parkouring across rooftops and streets as you go, with plenty of hidden treasures in puzzle box-like buildings…

◆ A new 30-minute behind-the-scenes series chronicling the making of Doctor Who has been filmed for BBC Three and iPlayer. Doctor Who Unleashed is hosted by Steffan Powell. ◆ It was confirmed that Neil Patrick Harris will play the Toymaker in an upcoming anniversary episode. A new trailer was aired before Strictly Come Dancing on 23 September, featuring new material from all three specials. ◆ Doctor Who @60: A Musical Celebration – a concert recorded in Cardiff on 28 September – is now available on BBC Sounds and was also filmed for a future release on iPlayer. ◆ Over 800 episodes of Doctor Who from 1963 to 1989, plus archive material, are now available on BBC iPlayer. These include The Sarah Jane Adventures, Torchwood, Class and Doctor Who Confidential and…

WHEN SFX catches up with David Tennant at Bad Wolf Studios in Cardiff, it’s the day after his birthday, and he’s still a young fanboy at heart(s). “I’m going around taking pictures of everything I can,” he laughs. “I’ll probably have my phone confiscated as I leave…” A little bird tells us that he grabbed a few selfies with the Wrarth Warriors on the set of “The Star Beast”, the first of three anniversary specials being released this month. “Oh, always!” he says, scoffing jovially. “Oh, of course. That’s day one…” But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. This is April 2023. It’s before episode title reveals, before trailers and Toymakers, and we’re still in the time (Lord)-honoured tradition of everything being a secret. What we do know is that Tennant…

◆ This powerful eternal being (played by Michael Gough) debuted in 1966 story “The Celestial Toymaker”, abducting the TARDIS crew to his realm and forcing the First Doctor’s companions to play a series of dangerous games. Only one of four episodes still survives. He was originally set to return in 1986. Graham Williams’s Sixth Doctor script “The Nightmare Fair” had the Toymaker plotting world domination using an arcade game that feeds on human souls, from a base inside Blackpool’s “Space Mountain” ride. When the series was axed, the script was shelved. It was later novelised, and adapted for audio by Big Finish.…

With its final image of Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) holding her baby and wistfully looking on as her family plays in a meadow, the big-screen era of Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games trilogy came to a close in 2015 on a hopeful note. The four-film franchise was an unlikely global sensation, considering its core themes of oppression and the sobering costs of war. However, Lawrence’s bold heroine, who becomes the spark of defiance against an autocratic regime, ignited the global box office. “It was humbling to see how much stories that we tell can resonate and last, and what they can mean to people in such different circumstances,” The Hunger Games producer Nina Jacobson tells SFX. “What they see and how it moves them was an incredible experience the first…

IT WAS AN ARTICLE, SAYS NAOMI ALDERMAN, that set her writing. Specifically an essay published in The New Yorker in 2017, in which reporter Evan Osnos detailed how some of America’s wealthiest people are preppers, putting a percentage of their vast resources into creating well-appointed bunkers and boltholes where they can, if the worst happens, ride out The End Of The World As We Know It. “I think a bunker is a stupid fantasy,” she says. “It’s a psychological, emotional fantasy that ‘I can make sure I’m always fine whatever’. That’s not the kind of planet we live on. Unfortunately, you can get really terrible news on a random Tuesday afternoon, but the thing that you were always terrified of happening never happens. That, I’m afraid, is the type of…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 18 |99 minutes As much about the evils of medical malpractice as those of unthinkable elder gods, this is a depressingly backward-looking psychosexual cheapie. After meeting a patient suffering from the delusion that his father wants his body, Dr Beth Derby decides she does too… albeit in a different way. If the body horror doesn’t make you cringe, the sex scenes will. The original HP Lovecraft source material is credited, but Stuart Gordon’s adaptations are the more obvious reference point. This won’t be as well-remembered.…

RELEASED 3 NOVEMBER 15 | 98 minutes Director Gabriel Foster Prior Cast Scott Haran, Seann Walsh, Andi Jashy, Georgia Mabel Clarke Cinema and television have always loved guardian angels (see It’s A Wonderful Life, Highway To Heaven and so on), but those that look over us are given a hipster spin in Gabriel Foster Prior’s feature debut. It’s a dazzlingly original SF romcom that refashions your Clarences and Jonathan Smiths into Bystanders: protectors plucked from the real world (usually loners and losers, who won’t be missed) who are then given powers to change the destiny of their given subject. Newbie Bystander Peter’s inaugural project is Sarah, a fresh-in-London indie girl working for hip media label Smut Records. But with Peter eyeing up a Bystander of the Year gong, he decides…

UK Icon Film Channel, streaming now Directors Christopher Griffiths, Eastwood Allen EPISODES 1.01-1.04 Running at close to five hours, this crowd-funded documentary (subtitled The Creation Of RoboCop) is almost three times longer than the movie that inspired it. That could easily feel like overkill, but as RoboDoc explores Paul Verhoeven’s violent masterpiece in minute, bloody detail, the extraordinary depth of the dive becomes one of the series’ biggest strengths. As does the independent nature of the project. If this were a studio-backed Making Of, it’s hard to believe that the impressive assortment of talking heads – every inch of RoboCop’s end credits is represented, from lowly behind-the-scenes technicians to director Verhoeven and star Peter Weller – would have been quite so candid. The filmmakers’ love for the subject matter also…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 1987-1996 | 18 | Blu-ray (4K/standard) Directors Clive Barker, Tony Randel, Anthony Hickox, Kevin Yagher (as Alan Smithee) Cast Doug Bradley, Andrew Robinson, Clare Higgins, Ashley Laurence The suffering of the Hellraiser franchise is legendary, even in a genre prone to sequels of diminishing returns. This beautifully scrubbed-up set wisely concentrates on the first four films, before things really went off the rails and the series was consigned to its own Hell: the direct-to-video market. Clive Barker’s 1987 adaptation of his novella The Hellbound Heart remains as compelling as ever, its combination of kink and melodrama making for a uniquely alluring film. Pinhead (Doug Bradley) might be the nail-studded face of the franchise, but he’s an enigmatic presence here, with murderous lovers Frank (Sean Chapman) and…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2023 | 12 | SVOD Director Adam Sigal Cast Simon Pegg, Minnie Driver, Christopher Lloyd, Neil Gaiman PRIME VIDEO Those who’ve spent years poring through the pages of Fortean Times will no doubt know the story of Gef, the strange creature identified as a mysterious mongoose (and self-described as an “earthbound spirit”) who, it was claimed, inhabited a family’s farmhouse on the Isle of Man in the ’30s. The tale has widely been dismissed as a fraud. But that didn’t stop writer/director Adam Sigal from making a film about it. With Simon Pegg slapping on a ’tache, beard and accent to play real-life parapsychological investigator Nandor Fodor, this (like its source material) is an odd one. Played primarily for laughs, it also wants to ruminate on perception…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2023 | 15 | SVOD SHUDDER A botched exorcism unleashes a particularly grotesque form of evil in this desperately bleak Argentinean possession flick. Suitable only for viewers with stainless-steel stomachs, it packs both gut-wrenching tragedy and vomit-inducing gore. Nothing and no one is sacred here, from little kids to grandparents to cute farm animals, and the practical effects are so evocative you can almost smell the waves of stench coming off the demon-infested “rottens”. Feel-bad horror at its gooiest.…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2023 | 15 | SVOD PRIME VIDEO Teenager Jamie (Kiernan Shipka) time-travels to 1987 to undo her mum’s murder by a serial killer in this potty-mouthed horror-comedy, which has much sport showing a Gen Z kid being triggered by the mores of the past. Heavily in debt to Back To The Future and Scream, it does the smart thing by explicitly referencing both, though this does tend to remind you they’re superior movies. Christopher Landon’s filmography also feels like a touchstone – fans of Happy Death Day and Freaky should approve.…

EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 1972 | 18 | Blu-ray Director Giorgio Ferroni Cast Gianni Garko, Agostina Belli, Maria Monti, Cinzia De Caroli BLU-RAY DEBUT Framing devices can be a bore, but not this one. An amnesiac man (Gianni Garko) is wired up to an encephalograph. Images of eroticism and violence follow: a maggot-ridden skull, a woman’s naked body groped; a heart ripped out; a face exploding. We then see what trauma sent him doolally. The mystery man is a lumber importer. Pranging his car in the Balkans (painful), he takes refuge with a nearby family. But they are cursed, barricading the house each night against a witch – who seems more like a vampire. Based on Tolstoy’s The Family Of The Vourdalak, the film doesn’t match director Giorgio Ferroni’s Mill…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 238 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook Author Stephanie Feldman Publisher VERVE Books Stephanie Feldman’s follow-up to her Crawford Award-winning debut must be the most Halloweeny novel ever to not be set during Halloween. There’s an all-night festival, spooky fancy dress, a graveyard and blood sacrifice, but here the occasion for world-turned-upside-down debauchery is the winter solstice. Oh, and the end of the world. In a near-future Philadelphia, climate collapse, virulent disease and desperate refugees are seriously harshing rich people’s buzz. In response, said rich people have established various private clubs to while away the dying-Earth days in networking, entertaining and plotting their escape to the few remaining habitable enclaves. Working-class Nina was an outsider in the Saturn Club long before she left its ranks under a cloud, but at…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 320 pages | Hardback/ebook Author Tim Powers Publisher Head Of Zeus There’s something about Emily Brontë, reclusive author of one of the most compelling gothic novels ever written, that makes people really want to mythologise her. Emily’s own sister Charlotte started the trend after her death in 1848, writing prefaces to Wuthering Heights that depicted her as a shy but mysterious genius. With My Brother’s Keeper, World Fantasy Award winner Tim Powers adds to the author’s mystique by casting her as an indomitable force of supernatural goodness: when Brontë brother Branwell almost succumbs to a werewolf cult, she’s his only hope of salvation. Powers has form for this sort of historical revisionism, and as usual he makes sure to keep all the facts in place even as…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 470 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Thea Guanzon Publisher HarperVoyager Making a “new” series out of a popular fan fiction can work out very well – just ask EL James. It’s a success story many have hoped to emulate, including, we’re sure, the publishers of this romantasy debut, which reworks a Star Wars-inspired fanfic. Try and guess the original characters… In the last days of the Sardovian/Kesath war, young soldier and powerful Lightweaver Talasyn finds herself up against the heir to Kesath’s Night Empire, Shadowforge master Alaric. Both detest each other for the damage wrought by the other’s side in the war, and yet their mirrored powers keep bringing them together. For both good and ill, this is a story that embodies many of the tropes of its…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 469 pages pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Sir Patrick Stewart Publisher Gallery Books With an acting career that stretches back 64 years, Sir Patrick Stewart has no shortage of material for this memoir, but it’s his time in the Captain’s chair that will reel in SFX readers. You can expect about 60 pages on Star Trek: The Next Generation and another nine on Picard. The movies get shorter shrift, with only First Contact dealt with in any depth. This makes sense, as his life among the stars has been well-documented. Most fans will already know, for example, how during season one he scolded fellow cast, priggishly declaring, “We’re not here to have fun!” Though it is news that his LA home of that era was plagued by a…

RELEASED 7 NOVEMBER Publisher Titan Comics Writer Dan Slott Artists Christopher Jones, Matthew Dow Smith, Mike Collins GRAPHIC NOVEL Dan Slott helmed an impressive 10-year run on Amazing Spider-Man, and has written for characters like She-Hulk and the Avengers. He’s also a Doctor Who fan, something that came across in his run on Silver Surfer. So Titan getting him to write actual Who is a big deal. Once Upon A Time Lord is mainly focused on the Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones as they encounter the Pyromeths. These baddies feed off stories and, after capturing Martha, force her to tell some tales to save her life. Yes, we’re in meta territory, as Martha regales them with accounts of the Doctor going fishing, on a quest to find an Osiran starship,…