NeilGaiman

SXF, the Brit Sci Fi Fantasy mag, has announced their awards. And why should you care? Because it's a very interesting list. The magazine announced the awards at their annual convention earlier this month. Curious as to what they think about science fiction on the other side of the pond? Not surprisingly, it's brit heavy, but it's still interesting. Here are the sci-fi highlights:

Best Film Director: JJ Abrams (Star Trek)
Best TV Episode: Torchwood "Children Of Earth" Episode Five
Best Actress: Eve Myles (Torchwood)
Best Actor: David Tennant (Doctor Who)
Best Novel: The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman
Best Comic: Batman: Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader? Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert
Best Game: Batman: Arkham Asylum (Rocksteady)
Best Collectible: The Journal of Impossible Things (Doctor Who)

Hope for the Future: Steven Moffat (succeeding Russell T. Davies on Dr. Who)
Lifetime Award: Gerry Anderson (Thunderbirds, UFO, Space 1999, Terrahawks and much more)
Cult Hero: Ianto Jones (Actor Gareth David Lloyd on Torchwood)
Sci-Fi Phenomenon: True Blood (they've only seen season 1)

Unfortunately, some of the most interesting categories are not available online, such as the Best Death Scene, Biggest Disappointment, and Best Dialogue. But my favorite award up there is easily Gerry Anderson. Not only did his work influence the SFX team as children, it made me very nostalgic.

Just like the bat signal, there's a big ol' question mark lurking in the sky when it comes to Doctor Who. Russell T. Davies did a whole heck of a lot for the science fiction series, wowing us with Christopher Eccleston and then managing to top it with David Tennant. But now he's out, Steven Moffat is in, and we've got a whole new Who. But we've also got one heck of a guest writer on the way.

BBC News reports that Neil Gaiman has written an episode for the show, and its working title is The House of Nothing. Gaiman hasn't shared any details about his stab at the Doctor, but he did say the show will air in 2011 if everything comes to pass. From the writer himself:

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.

I can only begin to imagine what the writer will create for the new Doctor. Thoughts?

The World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) has been awarding the Hugo Awards to reward excellence in science fiction and fantasy since 1953. However, there has not been an annual anthology of award winners until now. Hugo Award winners have been published, and the shorter fiction award winners have often appeared in anthologies, but not in an exclusive (and official) Hugo Award anthology.

The WSFS is not a publishing company, but they have licensed Prime Books to produce an anthology including the 2009 award winners. The 2009 Hugo awards were announced in August, with winners in categories such as Best Novel, Novella, Short Story, Graphic Story, Editing, and more. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories.

The anthology will be edited by Campbell award winning writer Mary Robinette Kowal with a cover designed by 2009 Hugo Awards Best Artist winner Donato Giancolo. The image is a mock-up of the proposed cover.

Other 2009 Hugo Award winners include Neil Gaiman for Best Novel (The Graveyard Book) and Nancy Kress for Best Novella ("The Erdmann Nexus" published in Asimov's Oct/Nov 2008).

(via Hugo Awards website)

"Don't Panic" is a common, every day phrase; a calming gesture to hear when things get a little too out of the norm. That was, however, before Douglas Adams took a hold of those two words. Now, thanks to The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, those two words are synonymous with intergalactic adventure, encounters with bizarre alien races, and an unhealthy obsession with keeping track of towels.

Any person who is been a longtime fan of Adams stellar masterwork about a humble Earthling named Arthur Dent who zips around the universe with his best friend, an alien named Ford Prefect, has likely read Don't Panic: Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy at some point. The book, originally written as a solo project by Neil Gaiman (yep, that Neil Gaiman!), was first published in 1988, ten years after its subject was first introduced to the world, and chronicled the quite distinctive birth of Adams' career, and more specifically, the huge success of his greatest work. But Hitchhiker's success didn't stop in the '80s. Adams' baby kept growing and growing, and thus a second edition of the book was published in 1993, this time with updated information covering the latest and greatest in Hitchhiker's lore.

Welcome to Captain's Log -- your (semi) daily round-up of sci-fi randomness from around the web. Here's what's happening:

Ian McKellan talked with Empire about The Hobbit recently, and he says not many of the LotR characters will be coming back, save for Andy Serkis. He notes, "The scripts for the two films will be delivered very soon. Then they'll be budgeted, and then they'll be cast. And they'll be going when they've always said they would be, which is next spring – March or April. Guillermo even told me at one point, 'We're going to film for 383 days.' He's got that artistic autism! Jackson's the same; they're very, very, very alike. They also very different, but they've so much in common. They both can't stand Hollywood and have wonderful imaginations, and they're both obsessed with gore and fantasy." McKellan also knows nothing of a Magneto movie, hasn't seen a script and figures he won't be involved at all.

Don't worry -- Dollhouse's ratings might be super-low as they air, but The Live Feed reports that DVR is really helping the series and Fox will air all of this season's 13 Dollhouse episodes.

Are you a fan of Dirk Gently? According to Total Sci-Fi Online, news has emerged from Hitchcon that Douglas Adams' holistic detective will be heading to the BBC.

Lars von Trier, now that he's spooked hordes of people with Antichrist, is getting busy with planetary doom by getting busy with Planet Melancholia, so says Variety.

Airlock Alpha is fighting rumors that Caprica will be axed before it airs, and according to Jane Espenson, things are going well.

Neil Gaiman, BBC Audiobooks, and Twitter are circling together for an exquisite corpse experiment, according to EW.

Over at AMC's SciFi Scanner blog, author John Scalzi takes a look at the five nominees for 2009's Hugo Award for Best Novel and examines the chances any of them will one day be adapted into a film. It's an interesting perspective on how a studio may view a popular science fiction/fantasy property (What's it about? What's the pitch? Who wrote it?) rendered even more insightful considering Scalzi himself is up for the award.

Though out of fairness, Scalzi abstains from putting his own novel, Zoe's Tale, under the film audit. The four other nominees for this year's Hugo are: Anathem by Neal Stephenson (yay!), The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, Little Brother by Cory Doctorow and Saturn's Children by Charles Stross. However, I'm actually a little late to this post. This year's Hugo Awards ceremony were held yesterday with The Graveyard Book nabbing top honors (read all the winners here).

With that acclaim in its pocket and Neil "I wrote the books for Stardust and Coraline and co-wrote the screenplay for Beowulf"Gaiman's prowess in Hollywood on the rise, I'm starting to think Scalzi was dead-on when he pegged the tome about a boy raised by ghosts as destined for the big screen. The Graveyard Book is already in the option stage, perhaps this win will push it into production.

Past Best Novel Hugo winners later adapted to film have included: Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers, Frank Herberts Dune (soon to make its 4th trip to the land of motion pictures) and J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.