Image via Wikipedia

Starting this Labor Day, PBS stations will start airing a slice of fandom with the one-hour documentary, Four Days at DragonCon. Filmed by Atlanta- based documentarians, Jack Walsh and Gordon Ray during the 2009 con, the film is set to debut 9 p.m. (ET) Aug. 28 on WPBA PBS 30 in Atlanta and then roll out nationwide to other PBS member stations in the following months.

Dubbed in the media as “Woodstock for nerds,”  ”the ultimate pop culture convention” and “the South’s sci-fi fantasy Mardi Gras,” this is no small regional sparsely-attended fan convention as Dragon*Con has grown to become the largest fan-run science fiction and fantasy convention in the world with tens of thousands of attendees taking up more Atlanta hotel space than the 1996 Summer Olympics (true, ComiCon is larger and gets more attention – but it is put on by a large corporation, not volunteer fans – and it shows.)

Below is a sneak preview of “Four Days at DragonCon”

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spring 2011 after first airing on BBC One in the UK starting in September 2010.

“We are thrilled that Syfy will be broadcasting the third series of Merlin. The upcoming season will add an exciting new twist to Merlin’s ongoing struggle to protect Prince Arthur, as well as thrilling audiences with bigger and bolder action sequences, stunning CGI monsters, mysterious villains and comic fun for all the family,” Merlin creator and executive producer, Johnny Capps said in a written statement.

Syfy citing ratings as a prime reason for the announcement. Merlin almost doubled Syfy’s Friday 10 p.m. timeslot overr the previous year. “The enchanting imagination of Merlin proved very popular with our audience and we’re delighted to bring the series back for a third season on Syfy,” Chris Regina, Syfy VP of programming, said.

Anna Paquin at DragonCon (Image via Wikipedia)

topping the list at $1.25 million an episode – outpacing the next-highest paid performer, Two and a Half Men, co-star Jon Cryer’s $550,000 per episode salary by almost a million dollars an episode.

Of the stars of genre TV, only four stars made TV Guide’s list, with Anna Paquin, of HBO’s Ture Blood, topping the list of returning stars at $75,000 per episode. Tied with her is Blair Underwood, star of the new NBC entry in genre TV, The Event. Next up is The Vampire Diary‘s Ian Somerhalder at $40,000 an episode. The last genre TV star is Selena Gomez, start of Disney Channel’s  veteran fantasy kid’s comedy, Wizards of Waverly Place.

[table id=3 /]

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Bryan Fuller (Image via Wikipedia)

Finally, someone is trying to bring back space opera to television, at least, according to Entertainment Weekly.

In “The Ausiello Files” TV section, EW columnist Andy Patrick reports that Syfy has hired Bryan Fuller to adapt John Chrisopher’s novel, The Lotus Caves into s script for a possible series.

Among SFTV fandom, Fuller is known both as the creator of Pushing Daiseis as well as the main writer for some of the best episodes of Heroes (or, when Heroes didn’t suck) and as the creator of cult classics, Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me.

PREMISE FOR THE NEW SHOW:

It’s set on a future Lunar colony where the colonists tumble upon the fact that intelligent aliens have set up shop on our moon in the caves for a very long time.

But a final caveat – this is just a production deal. It’s for a pilot script and series treatment. There is no guarantee that this show willa ctually make it on the air.

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You can email at the address (e-mails to meredithxyz at googlemail dot com) where well-wishes will reach Diana.

A prolific writer and Hugo winner, among her better-known works are:

• Howls Moving Castle
• Fire and Hemlock
• Archer’s Goon
• A Sudden Wild Magic
• The Tough Guide to Fantasyland

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Of course his first love was science fiction – and these two stories are, indeed SF. I’m hoping that they do get translated into English.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

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Image by Daniel Semper via Flickr

The kid-friendly book-to-screen animated fantasy, How to Train Your Dragon, swooped in and took over the box office this past weekend in its debut, knocking Tim Burton‘s Alice in Wonderland down to the second spot for the weekend ending March 28.

The other genre film debut, Hot Tub Time Machine, the Generation X science fiction bromance comedy came in at No. 3.

Up next week: the remake of the 1980s classic, Clash of the Titans, starring Sam Worthington (Avatar), Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes.

The Top 10 Genre films this past weekend are as follows:

[table id=1 /]

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That “junker” is the Lunokhod 2, a Soviet-era space exploration vehicle was abandoned by the USSR space program in 1973 after it broke down during one of its missions.

In 1993, for $68,000 Garriott bought the Lunokhud 2 vehicle at an auction at Sotheby’s in New York.  At the time, that purchase was widely derided in the international press as an embarrassing showing of American hubris – especially because the lander/rover was lost and unseen for decades.

Unseen, that is, until earlier this month when a team at the University of Western Ontario, using photographs from NASA’s Lunar Orbiter,  discovered the rover – after 37 years of being lost in space.

But now that it’s been found, Garriott has no interest in returning the rover to Earth.

A true Heinlein-esque capitalist, he says the rover is much more valuable as a stake of claim on prime Lunar real estate. And, he says, international treaties back this claim up. You can hear more about this in this attached audio link.

For a transcript:

http://ww.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=124956591

Here’s an interesting bit of tivia: This was not Garritt’s first brush with space.

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The son of Owen K. Garriott, a NASA astronaut who spent more than two months in space back in the 1970s, the younger Garriott instead made a name – and a fortune – for himself in entertainment gaming software. In 2008, some of that high-tech fortune was spent paying the Russian space agency to take him up on a trip to the International Space Station in 2008 – making Richard the first second-generation man in space.

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“Vampirella is one of the most well known and longest running comic characters in the history of the business,” Nick Barrucci, Dynamite’s president said in a March 17 press release. “Outside of Marvel and DC characters, very few comics characters that debuted in the 60′s still resonate with fans today.”

Created by N3F member, the late Forrest J Ackerman, as a mix of costumed superhero and horror heroine, Vampirella joins Dynamite’s growing stable of household name titles such as Green Hornet,  Red Sonja and Buck Rogers. Niether a price tag nor a target launch date for the first issue of Vampirella under the Dynamite brand was announced with news of the sale.

Vampirella debuted in 1969 as a black-and-white title, but with memorable art by Frank Frazetta, the comic – the first to feature a vampire as the lead hero – quickly made a name for itself, spawning horror title imitaions at both Marvel and DC.

During its storied past, many writers have penned issues of the comic, including Alan Moore, Mark Millar, Grant Morrision, James Robinson, Jeph Loeb and Warren Ellis. After Frazetta left, other artists to step into his shoes in the following four decades included  Joe Quesada, J. Scott Campbell, Michael Turner, Jae Lee, Adam Hughes, Mark Texeira, Joe Jusko, and Arthur Suydam.

Read the official Dynamite press release here:
http://www.dynamiteentertainment.com/htmlfiles/pressrelshow.html?display=PR03161083144