Columbia Pictures is bringing the pulp-era Doc Savage series to life on the big screen. It's in the hands of Shane Black, the guy responsible for the extremely awesome film noir movie Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Here's how Variety explains it:

Shane Black is attached to direct the film from a screenplay he is penning with Anthony Bagarozzi and Chuck Mondry. Neal Moritz ("Fast and Furious") will produce through his Sony-based Original Film banner.

First appearing in pulp magazines published during the 30s and 40s, Doc Savage is a multi-talented man of science. A physician, surgeon, scientist, adventurer, inventor, explorer, researcher, and musician with outstanding mental and physical abilities honed by training form a team of scientists hired by his father. He puts his abilities to the test in a series of heroic, adventures.

James Cameron wants to fill in some of the gaps left in our knowledge of Pandora, and I'm not talking about explaining why Michelle Rodriguez basically commits suicide for no reason. Instead MTV says he's working on writing an Avatar prequel. No, it's not being used as the script for the next movie. Instead the plan is to release it as some sort of companion novel.

"[We] won't have time to do [these stories] in the movie, or maybe in sequels," Landau explained of what Cameron will be writing about. "[So the novel will] give a foundation for the world. "It would be something that would lead up to telling the story of the movie, but it would go into much more depth about all the stories that we didn't have time to deal with — like the schoolhouse and Sigourney [Weaver's character] teaching at the schoolhouse; Jake on Earth and his backstory and how he came here; [the death of] Tommy, Jake's brother; and Colonel Quaritch, how he ended up there and all that," Landau explained.

Before Hollywood announces yet another reboot of some already beloved science fiction movie franchise, let's give them a few better ideas. Since we're talking about the entertainment industry, we can't expect anything to original. But it doesn't have to be. There's a wealth of science fiction out there, just waiting for some movie studio to pick it up and do something with it. No more waiting. Drop that Back to the Future remake Hollywood and do something with these already brilliant sci-fi properties instead:

FuturamaIt worked for The Simpsons and they ran out of jokes ten years ago. Futurama on the other hand, thanks to frequent network cancelling, is still young as when the world was new. Matt Groening's other animated masterpiece has never gotten a fair shake, but with its spacey setting and tendency towards blaster fire, it's far more suited to the big screen than Springfield's favorite family. It's animation, yes, but animation for adults. Feel free to take things up a notch for the theatrical version, hook Bender up with a three-nippled robot hooker, and slap it with an “R” rating. Or if you're really feeling spendy, ditch the animation and give us a live action version.

The Pitch: A pizza delivery boy is accidentally frozen for a thousand years, and wakes up in the future. There he finds employment at the interplanetary delivery company, Planet Express, and struggles to fit in with the company's strange assortment of employees. His best friend is an alcoholic robot, he's in love with a smoking hot kung-fu Cyclops who finds him repulsive, and he's employed by a mad scientist with an increasingly bad case of dementia. Hilarity ensues. Think Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy meets Encino Man.

Quantum LeapWe're running out of time on Quantum Leap. Scott Bakula isn't getting any younger. In fact we're probably out of time and if there's any hope that the early 90s most brilliant sci-fi show will ever get its cinematic due, it'll have to start all over with a new Sam Beckett. Much as I love Bakula, I can live with that. It's Dean Stockwell Quantum Leap can't live without. Stockwell's stint in Battlestar proved he's still spry enough to play the wise-cracking, cigar-smoking Al and Quantum Leap's resonate style of character-driven storytelling is still as relevant as it ever was. Maybe even more so. Imagine Sam leaping into 9/11. Oh boy.

The Pitch: A botched experiment sends Sam Becket leaping through time. But Sam can explain it better than I can. "It all started when a time travel experiment I was conducting went... "a little caca". In the blink of a cosmic clock, I went from quantum physicist to Air Force test-pilot. Which could have been fun... if I knew how to fly. Fortunately, I had help - an observer from the project named Al. Unfortunately, Al's a hologram, so all he can lend is moral support. Anyway, here I am, bouncing around in time, putting things right that once went wrong, a sort of time traveling Lone Ranger, with Al as my Tonto. And I don't even need a mask... Oh Boy" more...

For those of you who, like me, may be on the fence about whether to tune back in for more Doctor Who after the devastating departure of David Tennant, here's an incentive: Neil Gaiman.

Gaiman is the celebrated author of things which are awesome (my favorite is Good Omens which he co-authored with Terry Pratchet) and he's getting involved in Doctor Who. According to SFX Gaiman is writing a Who episode. Neil tells them:

As anyone who’s read my blog knows, I’m a big fan of a certain long-running British SF TV series. One that started watching -- from behind the sofa -- when I was three. And while I know it’s cruel to make you wait for things, in about 14 months from now, which is to say, NOT in the upcoming season but early in the one after that, it’s quite possible that I might have written an episode. And if I had, it would originally have been called “The House of Nothing”. But it definitely isn’t called that any more.

Countdown. You’ve got about 14 months.

In the late 80s authors Sharon Lee and Steve Miller wrote a series of three novels set in a galaxy far far away called Agent of Change, Conflict of Honors, and Carpe Diem. And then no one read them… or so they were told.

Their publisher claimed the series was a flop and so it seemed as though it would die right there. Enter the internet where, one day, Miller and Lee stumbled onto a Usenet group flush with fans who, all but demanded more in the series. The surprised authors went back to work and the series now spans more than ten books with more on the way.

Make it a point to read them all.

The Liaden Universe, the name most commonly used to encompass their work, is unlike anything you’ve read before. What’s most impressive about the Liaden books is the variety of settings and styles in which they take place. Agent of Change for instance, is an intimate spy novel focused on a small handful of characters engaged in a complex game of cat and mouse which is confined primarily to a single planet. Balance of Trade is the story of the crew aboard a massive, intergalactic merchant ship, making their way from one planet to the next. Local Custom is almost a romance novel, set amongst the complex politics of an honor driven society. The series contains massive war stories, smuggler runs, psychic warfare, and nearly every kind of science fiction you can imagine, but all in one universe. Best of all, it fits together. They aren’t random stories but larger parts of the same whole, each told in their own way and from their own angle. more...

I continue to be really worried about John Carter of Mars which is being turned into a live action movie by Pixar. That's right, Pixar, the animation studio. Burroughs' classic sci-fi novels should by all rights, be R-rated, adult fiction when translated on screen but it's hard to imagine the family friendly Pixar folks and their corporate masters at Disney producing anything that's not family. That probably means that when they start filming, Dejah Thoris will be wearing clothes.

At least we know when they'll start forcing body shame onto the beautiful Martian princess. Salt Lake City radio station KSL reports that they plan to start shooting the movie this November in Utah. The Utah deserts will be stand-ins for Mars, where mysteriously transported Civil War soldier John Carter has his off world adventures.

What better place to turn an R-rated sci-fi novel into a watered down family movie than Mormon country. Unintentional symbolism in the extreme.

Science fiction hasn’t always been the nerdy endeavor of slick computer effects, transforming robots, and wise-cracking space ship captains. Just a couple of decades ago it had grit, it had style, it had tits. That’s the sci-fi I grew up loving, a world of imagination where men made out with apes, where alien lizards tortured women in the nude, and where green skin meant three tits and non-stop horniness.

Sex seeped into science fiction early. In 1912 Edgar Rice Burroughs published the first in his John Carter of Mars series, featuring a powerful, sculpted alien princess with a disdain for the trappings of clothes. In the 30s sex and nudity in sci-fi continued and by 1960 it was soaked in it. All through the 60s, 70s, and 80s sci-fi paperbacks came emblazoned with men holding guns next to scantily clad, occasionally naked, pin-up girls. Outer space was a place where astronauts got laid and women cast off the sexually repressed mores of society to take control both of their lives and their libido. Writers like Robert A. Heinlein used their powers to write not just about new gadgets, but about a hopeful cultural shift which freed mankind from all of our hang-ups pushing us into a place where we all finally grew up and felt free to get busy. Once upon a time science fiction foretold not only a time where man mastered technological achievements beyond imagination, but also finally broke free of the cultural shackles of shame to build perfect societies of toned bodies and absent nudity taboos.

That carried over into sci-fi on television and on film too. In the 60s, every week Star Trek’s costume designers competed against themselves to come up with even more deceptively skimpy outfits to show off the female bodies of their guest stars while script writers worked on new reasons for Captain Kirk to rip off his shirt. Around the same time, Barbarella pranced on screen, teasing us with bikinis and laser guns. The late 70s and early 80s brought us movies like Total Recall and Alien, in which Sigourney Weaver, even in the midst of fighting acid-spitting assholes from space, finds time to strip down and show off her barely there underwear. In the 80s it seemed like we were really going somewhere, a place where maybe geeks might even start getting laid. Nerds subscribed to lusty sci-fi publications like Heavy Metal, full of depictions of female skin which were, even more fantastic than the stories they put them in. more...

This year's Hugo Award nominees have been announced. What are they? They're the org dedicated into recognizing the best science fiction the world has to offer. That includes science fiction in print, magazines, and television and film. While awards like the Saturns may be a lot of fun, there's no better honor for hardcore science fiction than the Hugos.

Noteworthy nominees in this year's batch include Joss Whedon's web series Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog, nominated for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form. Also nominated in the same category are excellent, overlooked television shows like Battlestar Galactica and two nominations for Dr. Who.

Check out the full list of nominees after the jump. For more Hugo info visit TheHugoAwards.org.
more...

I was late to the game with Doctor Who. As a kid I saw more than my share of the older, BBC episodes and they never did anything for me. As an adult, I tuned into the first few episodes of the current series to give the whole Who thing another shot, and was instantly turned off by the somewhat shoddy stories.

I gave up on Doctor Who for awhile, but eventually gave it another shot when by chance, I happened to tune in for the first episode of Freema Agyeman. I was hooked. David Tennant as the Doctor and Freema Agyeman as Martha Jones were the perfect pairing and suddenly, now I get it. Unfortunately the new season will restart without Tennant and Agyeman. They've brought in yet another Doctor Who and as usual he'll probably pick up new companions. I'll give it another shot, but to me the show will never, ever be as good as when I first fell in love with it, watching Tennant and Agyeman roving the universe in the Tardis.

Now that I've waxed poetic for two paragraphs maybe you'll understand why I'm so excited about this bit of news: IDW has a run of Doctor Who comics going, Doctor Who comics which currently feature the 10th Doctor and his one and only true companion, Martha Jones. On February 25th of this month, they're releasing a special one-shot Doctor Who comic called "The Whispering Gallery" by artist Ben Templesmith and writers Leah Moore & John Reppion. Here's how Sci-Fi Wire describes it: more...

Beloved science fiction author Robert Asprin died last week, on Thursday. If you don't know Asprin's work, think Terry Pratchet, but in the science fiction realm. I latched on to him via his "Phule's Company" series, the story of a bunch of lowlife space soldiers winning against impossible, and occasionally humorous odds with the help of their brilliant commander.

During his decades spanning literary career, Asprin wrote more than 50 books. He's survived by his mother, sister, daughter, and son.

According to various reports Asprin was found, appropriately enough, lying in bed with a Terry Pratchet book in one hand and his glasses by his side. I can't imagine a better way to go than peacefully reading a good book. No word yet on what caused his death, he was not known to have any serious health problems though word is he was notorious for avoiding doctors.
more...