By Any Means by Charley Boorman

Having previously travelled on motorbike from London to New York via Europe, Central Asia, Siberia, Alaska and Canada on Long Way Round, and from John O'Groats to Cape Town on Long Way Down, Charley Boorman sets out on another adventure. This time the motorbikes (and previous wingman Ewan McGregor, who was busy filming) have been left behind as Boorman sets out from his childhood home in County Wicklow, Ireland, aiming to get to Sydney, Australia, travelling by any means of transport he can find. The result is a 20,000-mile odyssey through twenty-five countries.


Having enjoyed Long Way Round when the book and TV series appeared in 2004, I was disappointed with Long Way Down when it appeared. Aware of the mishaps and problems they'd had on the first journey, Long Way Down had been timetabled and planned to such an extent that a lot of the fun spontaneity of the earlier mission was lost, and the strict timetable meant that Ewan and Charley had to skip interesting areas they were passing in order to hit certain locations at certain times. This proved to be a point of contention on the African trip, and it wasn't until past the halfway point that they could finally relax and chill out a bit.

For By Any Means the goal was to reinstate this sense of spontaneity. As well as that, the decision to ditch the bikes was taken because travelling by motorbike through some of the areas they were heading to - particularly island-hopping from Malaysia down through Indonesia to Australia - would have been logistically difficult. Dropping the bikes and travelling through mostly inhabited areas along the way also meant that there was no need for the support vehicles and teams which, although important from a safety perspective, had eroded the 'two guys against the elements' feel of the two trips, particularly the second. Finally, whilst the bikes had been important for eating as many miles as possible per day (particularly on the first trip, which almost circumnavigated the globe), it also meant that contact with the locals was fairly limited. The new approach conversely relied on talking to local people and making use of local means of transport.

The book successfully complements the TV series. Interestingly, the book relates stories not mentioned at all in the TV series, whilst skipping some elements that were much more heavily focused on in the series. Charley's visit to Angkor Wat was a major part of the TV show but is here covered only briefly, whilst a visit to another, lesser-known temple wasn't even mentioned on the show but is given coverage in the book, for example. This avoids the problem of repetition between the two mediums, and is helpful if you're planning to get both the book and the DVD.

The steps taken by the team do mean that By Any Means is a more engaging story and trip than Long Way Down. Many of the locals they meet whose stories they hear simply wouldn't have been encountered with the bikes roaring past at 70mph. Logistically the expedition isn't perhaps quite as spontaneous as it first appears: a support team in London arrange several modes of transport ahead of time and at one point the gang is defeated in their attempts to enter Burma and have to take a commercial flight to get to China instead.

Still, the journey is an impressive achievement, and Charley Boorman's down-to-earth style is readable and entertaining. 'Proper' travel writers appear to be a bit snooty about these expeditions (a sequel to this journey, in which Boorman travels on from Sydney, up through Papua New Guinea and the Philippines to Tokyo, is currently airing on BBC-2 in the UK) since Boorman doesn't really get to grips with the politics or socio-economic backgrounds to these countries, but that's not really the point. Boorman's concern is meeting the local ordinary people and finding out how they live their lives under different circumstances. This 'theme' is actually successfully handled, as the way of life between bus drivers in Turkey, one of the few female taxi drivers in Tehran and cattle drovers in Australia's Outback is contrasted. The conclusion - people are people wherever you go - might not be shockingly revelatory, but it is nicely handled nonetheless. There's also some ironic interest to be gleaned from the fact that Iran, the country the team was most concerned about crossing, turned out to be one of the friendliest and most welcoming they visited and had possibly the least security concerns.

By Any Means (***½) is a breezy and entertaining account of a genuinely impressive journey around the world. The book is available now in the UK and USA.

By Any Means 2 is currently airing in the UK and a new McGregor/Boorman motorbike trip, possibly through South America, is being planned for next year with the working title Long Way to Go.

A GAME OF THRONES: Almost there...

A recent flurry of minor roles have been cast for the series, although I was waiting for the final word on the last few parts before putting up the last big casting update. As of right now, we have 100% confirmation of Isaac Hempstead-Wright as Bran Stark, Bronson Webb as Will and Esme Bianco as Ros (the first created-for-the-show character, a prostitute in King's Landing), whilst Twitter posts indicate that Jamie Campbell Bower (who is appearing in both the new Twilight and Harry Potter movies) has landed the short but memorable role of Ser Waymar Royce. We're also waiting for 100% confirmation on Ser Rodrik Cassel, Gared and Benjen Stark as well.

As of right now, the sole speaking part in the pilot that remains unconfirmed is Khal Drogo. Maester Luwin and Ilyrio Mopatis were the last roles to be cast, although their actors have not been announced yet (although Donald Sumpter has been suggested for the former and the excellent Ian McNeice as Ilyrio; whether that works out or not we'll have to wait and see).

Finally, shooting for the pilot beings on 26 October. An at least partial and possibly full cast reading was held yesterday, and apparently was a solid success. Some additional crewmembers have also been added to the roster, with the recent news that Modern VideoFilm will apparently be working on the project in some capacity, probably involving digital effects.

So it's looking like we should have the full cast list in a matter of days. It's been a bit of a long haul to get here, but it looks like the pieces have finally fallen into place.

The Worlds of D&D: Overview

Since its inception in the early 1970s, the Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game has attracted millions of fans, both of the game itself and the numerous worlds that were created as settings for its adventures. After the demise of the original publishers, TSR, in 1997 and the sale of the game to Wizards of the Coast, most of those worlds were unceremoniously dumped, including the more quirky and original ones, in favour of the somewhat more traditional and popular 'basic' settings which became the bread and butter of the game's 3rd Edition (2000-2007). The new 4th Edition, launched last year, has proven highly controversial with fans but Wizards have won some support for their decision to resurrect some of the old, classic campaign settings for the new game.


The major D&D campaign settings (not counting one-offs produced for Dragon Magazine) were (in roughly chronological order):

• Blackmoor (1975), the home setting of co-creator Dave Arneson's games. A generic medieval campaign but with a Renaissance level of technology brought about by the discovery of a crashed spacecraft.
  
• Greyhawk (an adventure in 1975 and then a full boxed setting in 1978), the home setting of co-creator Gary Gygax's games. A generic medieval fantasy world, noted for its frequent wars.
  
• Mystara, the setting of the D&D Basic game, introduced in 1980. Blackmoor was later retconned into being part of this world. Mystara itself resembles the Earth of some 150 million years ago and is a hollow planet, with a whole other world on its inner surface accessible by tunnels at the poles.
• Ravenloft, a non-traditional setting invoking a sense of gothic horror and dread. Introduced as a single adventure in 1983, but later expanded to an entire world of darkness (cough), undead races, vampire rulers and general unpleasentness.
  
• Dragonlance, introduced in 1984 as D&D's answer to The Lord of the Rings, a world riven by a struggle between good and evil in which the players were heroes out to save the world. Gave rise to the multi-million-selling novels by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.
• Kara-Tur was created in 1985 as the setting for the Oriental Adventures line of products which introduced martial arts and other eastern ideas to the D&D game. The setting was later retconned into the Forgotten Realms world.
• Lankhmar (originally published in 1985) is, perhaps surprisingly, one of only two officially licensed D&D settings. Based on Frit Lieber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories, it is set on the world of Newhon and principally the city of Lankhmar.
• Forgotten Realms is the most popular D&D setting. Originally published in 1987, the setting is a high-magic, highly-detailed medieval fantasy world which has become the 'default' D&D setting, despite some changes to the basic D&D rules. The Realms have continuously been in print since 1987, making it most closely-supported setting for the game, and have given rise to the best-selling Dark Elf series of novels by R.A. Salvatore and Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights series of computer games from BioWare and Black Isle/Obsidian.
• Spelljammer, introduced in 1989, is probably the barmiest D&D setting, featuring sailing ships which can cross the interstellar void to other worlds. A mixture of high magic, medieval weaponry and retro-space opera, the setting was not commercially popular but has legions of diehard fans who liked its craziness.
• Dark Sun (1991) is sometimes regarded as the most approachable of D&D's 'non-traditional' settings. It is set on the post-apocalyptic world of Athas, where a vast magical war has transformed the planet into a baking desert world gradually being swallowed by a vast sea of silt. Magic as is known elsewhere in the D&D multiverse does not exist, with 'defilers' instead drawing on the life-force of living creatures to create magical effects. There are also no gods, and psionic powers are preferred over magical ones. Despite strong rumours they were considering it, Wizards of the Coast mildly surprised the fanbase when they recently announced that Dark Sun would be resurrected for the new 4th Edition of the game.
• Al-Qadim (1992) is an Arabian-flavoured D&D setting, featuring genies, scimitars, corsairs, evil viziers and other Arabian Nights-flavoured elements. Set on the continent of Zakhara which was officially located in a remote part of the Forgotten Realms world, Al-Qadim has built up a strong fan following over the years but has been largely ignored since the late 1990s.
• Masque of the Red Death (1994) is another horror setting which uses the rules laid out in Ravenloft, but rather than the Demiplane of Dread the setting is 'Gothic Earth', an alternate-history version of our own world in the 19th Century incorporating magic and non-human creatures.
• Planescape (1994) was not a new setting as such, but a setting developed out of the multi-dimensional cosmology that D&D had been using for over a decade and a half by this point. Featuring numerous factions and ideological concepts, the setting attempted to move vigorously away from the traditional elves 'n' orcs of many of the other settings in favour of something new, a setting that challenged many of the underlying ideas of the whole game and forced players to confront the ethical realities of their decisions. The setting also favoured roleplaying over combat. With a unique art style not shared by any other D&D product, the setting was a massive critical and artistic success but proved to be somewhat on the highbrow side of things for most players, and did not sell as well as could be hoped. It was soon discontinued, but later gave rise to one of the single greatest computer roleplaying games ever made, Planescape: Torment.
• Council of Wyrms (1994) was a very short-lived setting which allowed players to control dragons as player-characters. Despite a strong concept, the limitations of what a dragon can do compared to a human player outside of combat soon presented themselves and there were no expansions, although it was briefly reprinted by Wizards of the Coast in 1999.
  
• Birthright (1995) was another 'traditional' cod-fantasy setting, but had a unique spin to it: the players are painted as the rulers of a powerful kingdom or faction, and between quests have to deal with the day-to-day running of their kingdom and its place in the world, fighting wars and dealing with economic factors. Essentially a D&D campaign crossed over with a board game. The split focus proved challenging and the setting was later abandoned, but interestingly some of its ideas, more cohesively presented, have found their way into the two later Song of Ice and Fire roleplaying games by Guardians of Order and Green Ronin.
• Rokugan (2001) was a second Asian-themed fantasy setting, licensed from the Legends of the Five Rings roleplaying game. It was used in the Oriental Adventures book published for D&D 3rd Edition and several associated adventures, but was not expanded upon, and the licence later reverted to the creators.
• Eberron (2004) is the newest D&D campaign setting, introduced specifically for 3rd Edition and featuring a traditional world with somewhat more advanced technology than is standard, including magical robots ('warforged') and some elements of industrialisation. The setting has proven fairly popular and is the official setting for the Dungeons and Dragons Online computer game.

At this current time, Wizards of the Coast are continuing to support both Forgotten Realms and Eberron through new products for the 4th Edition of D&D. It has been officially announced that Dark Sun will be resurrected for 2010, with a strong chance that Dragonlance will follow in 2011 and Greyhawk for 2012. Planescape and Ravenloft have been absorbed into the base cosmology of the D&D multiverse and will apparently appear as adventures and as asides in the rulebooks, but probably not as fully-blown campaign settings in the future.


Hopes that Mystara, Spelljammer and Birthright will reappear seem somewhat premature so far, but if the new version of Dark Sun is a big success it is possible we will see other settings revisited. The new 4E business model is also more favourable to these old, less commercially popular settings. In the old days, TSR would release a boxed set featuring the setting and then follow it up with lots of expansions, adventures and novels. The new model instead only has three products released for each setting: a general campaign book, a player's guide and a single adventure. Other material is then released online via the D&D Insider website, based on the sales of the physical books.

Future instalments of this series will visit some of these individual worlds and finds out what made them tick, what made them work (or in some cases fail rather badly) and whether we will see them again in the new edition of the game.

Looking for reviews of THE GATHERING STORM?

The twelfth Wheel of Time novel, The Gathering Storm, the first book in the series for four years, is due to be released in the UK and USA in about two weeks' time. By now, we should have a number of early reviews about the book, contributing to a building buzz about the long-awaited tome.


Instead, there is only a deathly silence. Only two reviews have appeared, one on Dragonmount and one on Tarvalon.net, but obviously they are not independent reviews. Independent bloggers, even those who are well-inclined to the series such as Pat of Pat's Fantasy Hotlist, have been effectively refused review copies before release date.

Under normal circumstances this perhaps should be expected. The Wheel of Time is a massive, international best-selling series which has sold almost 50 million copies over the past twenty years. The new book will likely be, with the exception of the new Terry Pratchett book, the biggest-selling fantasy novel of the year. It will certainly be the biggest-selling epic fantasy of the year, no question. Review copies for the previous books in the series from about the seventh book onwards were also very thin on the ground, because frankly they weren't needed any more. The series' fanbase had grow to such a vast size that they could get the books onto the bestseller lists with no problems at all.

But The Gathering Storm is also the first book in the series not wholly written by Robert Jordan. Brandon Sanderson had to write most of the book based on Jordan's notes and even hardcore fans of the series (the ones who think Crossroads of Twilight is a good book) are uneasy about this situation, especially after a preview chapter was put up last month which indicated that the book will feature a radically faster pace and a more concise form of writing than they are used to from Jordan. There's a great deal of doubt about this book and a lot more people than normal are saying they'll be holding back on buying the book and waiting to see what the reaction is and what reviewers are saying. Getting review copies out early for this tome would have been a vote of confidence by Tor Books and I also very strongly expect would have built up a positive word-of-mouth about the book. The two reviews, as somewhat unreliable as they are from people with official ties to Tor and Sanderson, are very positive and for my money the three preview chapters are extremely strong. Based on Sanderson's superb Mistborn trilogy, I am expecting a very good book.

As it stands, The Gathering Storm will likely have a bit of a faltering start (if only compared to the previous books in the series; I still expect it to make the bestseller lists in its first week) as people look at the new name on the cover warily and with suspicion, which will likely only be reinforced when they find there are no reviews of the book online. In the film industry studios usually only refuse to hold press screenings if the movie is a total dud and some of that suspicion has now crept onto publishing as well.

I also understand that Tor at least will be vigorously enforcing the book's street-date, which is unusual for an author who isn't J.K. Rowling or Dan Brown. In the UK Bantam recently did this for Steven Erikson's Dust of Dreams which led to a bit of a backlash: booksellers simply chose not to have the book taking up stock room space for a week before being allowed to put it out, so simply didn't order it until after it had come out, meaning that on release day fans up and down the country couldn't find a copy on shelves anywhere, and in some cases had to wait a week or more before they could finally buy it. Even the Book Depository didn't get any stock in for the same reason, with the book unavailable for ordering on their system for several days after release (even more frustrating for overseas fans anxious to get the book ASAP). Erikson, of course, is nowhere near Jordan's sales level, so it is unlikely the same situation would happen again here, but you never know.

This blog will, of course, bring you a review as soon as possible :-)

FOUNDATION to become a movie

Director Roland Emmerich was recently announced to be developing a movie based upon the Foundation novels by Isaac Asimov, in particular the original trilogy of Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952) and Second Foundation (1953). Originally it appeared the project was doomed to development hell, but Emmerich recently announced the film will be his next project after his current film, the William Shakespeare movie Anonymous, wraps up (his previous movie, 2012, hits cinemas in a few weeks).


The news is of concern: Roland Emmerich is the director of Stargate, Independence Day, Godzilla and The Day After Tomorrow, movies noted for having tons of special effects and having things explode, sink or be cataclysmically destroyed (usually New York) with thousands of people killed. He doesn't do 'quiet', although Anonymous appears to be a brave attempt to tell a character-driven movie, although I'm not ruling out Emmerich somehow causing Elizabethan Richmond to explode in slow-motion with a dog successfully outrunning the blast by turning down a corridor at right-angles to the blast and thus surviving due to the director's ignorance of ballistic reality. But you never know.

Emmerich seems to get off on the right foot by agreeing that the recent film version of Asimov's I, Robot was rubbish, had nothing to do with the book and his approach would be a faithful adaptation of the Foundation Trilogy (the continued popularity of this term suggests the existence of the latter four books seems to have been forgotten by a lot of people at this point). So how was he going to faithfully adapt a series of episodic stories featuring radical shifts in cast and geopolitical situation across some 400 years of future history? Well, he's going to merge all the events into a shorter period of time and all the separate protagonists will become one character.

Right.

You don't have to be Hari Seldon to accurately predict that this will not end well. And I'd put money on Trantor being destroyed in a slow-motion, skyscraper-tumbling firestorm at some point as well.

Fallout 3: DLC Expansions 4-5

Shortly after the release of Fallout 3's three initial downloadable expansions, Bethesda announced that two more were in the planning: Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta. Both games are 'plug-ins'. After installing them you get a new radio message informing you of radio messages that lead you to locations where the new quests begin. Annoyingly (especially so in Point Lookout's case), you can't bring followers with you, so it's a good idea to dump them before beginning the quests.


Point Lookout (****) sees a ship arriving on the Potomac with news of trouble in Point Lookout, Maryland, a swamp community some miles from DC. Arriving at the location, you are drawn into a conflict between two neighbouring communities. There are also a number of different side-quests to undertake, and a significantly large area (one-sixth the size of the gigantic main map from FO3 itself) to explore. Because this expansion replicates the free-roaming nature of FO3, the limitations meaning you can't bring a companion with you is rather inexplicable and annoying. That said, the free-roaming nature of Point Lookout works in its favour, and is truer to the spirit of Fallout than the linear missions of Operation Anchorage and The Pitt. The demented Deliverance-style hillbillies armed with insanely lethal weaponry (at high levels the enemies on this map pose quite a challenge) also make a fine addition to Fallout's arsenal of crazy influences. Overall, this is a very satisfying expansion, but it was also the one I found to be the most unstable, with occasional crashes to desktop and sometimes the screen going totally black, forcing me to quit out.

Mothership Zeta (***½) is the final downloadable episode for the game and is probably the most individual. Investigating an SOS from the Wasteland, you find a crashed alien spaceship. A rescue vessel arrives and you find yourself 'abducted' in the classic X-Files format and have to undergo a 'probing' from first-person viewpoint (luckily you pass out before having to see anything too weird). You learn that the aliens have been abducting people from throughout Earth's history and freezing them, and as you attempt to flee the vessel you amass quite an array of companions, including a cowboy and a samurai (who doesn't understand anything that's going on, but is handy with a katana). You have to make your way through the ship, disabling a 'death ray' which is going to incinerate the Earth along the way, and take out the alien captain before you can return home.

It's very silly and it also has to be said, very linear, possibly even moreso than Operation Anchorage. It is entertaining throughout, however, and you have to respect the work Bethesda put into this one, creating a completely new art style for the alien ship and designing a number of new enemies, NPCs and weapons completely from scratch, with very little reused from the existing Fallout 3 art and technical assets. It is also a little too easy, especially since you regain all of your high-level gear you were stripped of upon abduction within a few minutes of waking up on the alien ship. The puzzles are not particularly challenging, although some of the writing and dialogue is quite strong by Fallout 3 standards (particularly the moments when your various companions learn that the Earth is a burned-out, post-apocalyptic wasteland). You can also revisit the spaceship and your new friends at will once the mission is completed, which is nice but not particularly of value.

Completing Mothership Zeta means the final completion of Fallout 3 itself. Amusingly, the last thing I did before returning to my house in Megaton and hanging up the old gatling laser and power armour for good was randomly bump into Dogmeat (the canine NPC most players meet and recruit about five minutes after leaving the vault at the start of the game, but I'd somehow completely missed and then gone through 90-odd hours of gameplay with never meeting him) and taking him home with me.

The two expansions are available now via Microsoft's Games for Windows Live website or on X-Box Live. They'll be available on the PS3 Network in the next few weeks, and will be included in the Fallout 3 Game of the Year Edition for all three formats due in a few weeks as well. Obsidian Entertainment, including several writers and designers from Fallout and Fallout 2, are currently working on Fallout: New Vegas, a new, stand-alone game using the same engine, for release in late 2010.

SONGS OF THE DYING EARTH and MISTBORN 1 now out in the UK

Just a word to let UK readers know that Songs of the Dying Earth and Mistborn: The Final Empire are both now out in the UK, in swanky new editions. Both are excellent and should be available from your nearest bookshop or favoured online retailer.

Triumff: Her Majesty's Hero by Dan Abnett

It is the year 2010 and the Anglo-Hispanic Unity is the greatest force on Earth. Ruled over by Her Divine Majesty Gloriana, Queen Elizabeth XXX, the Unity is defended by a mighty army and navy and also by the forces of the Magickal Arte, rediscovered five centuries ago by Leonardo of Vinci. Technology has stagnated, but the Arte has flourished under the control of the Church.


Sir Rupert Triumff, lately returned from a mission of discovery in which he discovered a land named Australia, is a noted adventurer and consumer of alcohol. Curiously reluctant to make a formal report to the Queen about his newly-discovered continent, Triumff is soon drawn into an attempt to thwart a murky conspiracy with a most foul goal. For the safety of the country, Triumff has to go undercover, aided by allies unlikely and most redoubtable, as he attempts to discover who is planning to use sourcery most foul to endanger the life of the Queen...

Triumff: Her Majesty's Hero is the first original adult novel by noted comics and Warhammer 40,000 author Dan Abnett. One of the launch titles for HarperCollins' new imprint, Angry Robot, Triumff is a flamboyant alternate-history story with elements of George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman books mixed together with a slice of Blackadder and left to simmer over the stove of Very Bad Puns.

Abnett has created a rollicking world (neo-Elizabethanpunk?) which is basically a mash-up of our own and that of the Elizabethan period. Gentlemen fight duels of honour, but may choose to employ Swiss Army swords (which have an unfortunate habit of replacing the sword blade with a potato peeler at inopportune moments during combat) in lieu of a standard rapier. Firearms are around, but still relatively primitive, whilst those versed in the Arte may employ significantly more powerful magical weapons as well.

Triumff himself is a splendid hero, a colourful man of action perhaps a little too fond of the bottle but generally out to do the right thing. Interestingly, whilst the central character he does not exist in a vacuum and a number of other major characters feature throughout the book, such as Mother Grundy the witchlock (independent witches and warlocks have been outlawed, but there's a loophole), Triumff's girlfriend Doll, a 'noble savage' named Uptil who is more than he seems and the book's narrator, Wllm Beaver, esq, a stalwart fellow whose assistance to our heroes is laudable but who also suffers from perspective confusion (unsure whether to refer to himself in the first or third person, and settles for both, to much hilarity).

Events unfold at a rattling pace, although rather than charging straight through the reader is advised to savour the comical lines, the almost-missed references to movies and other stories and the increasing prevalence of puns, which at times arrive at such a velocity that they batter the reader's cultivated stoicism to such a degree that they must eventually surrender and find themselves laughing to references to a religious order named the Exeter Terrestrials and a young London musical artiste known as the Diseased Rascal.

The book ends on a triumphant note with a promise that Sir Rupert Triumff will return for further adventures, which I find myself looking forwards to immensely.

Triumff: Her Majesty's Hero (****½) is a superior slice of amusement and is available now in the UK from Angry Robot. Those of a Colonial persuasion can enquire for copies via Amazon. The author has a blog here, and will be signing copies of the book at Forbidden Planet in London this coming Saturday.

New ring discovered around Saturn, solves long-standing mystery

For many decades, the mystery of why Saturn's moon Iapetus has a very dark hemisphere and a much brighter one has stumped astronomers and scientists. It has been great fodder for SF authors, inspiring Arthur C. Clarke's ideas in the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey (the conclusion to which happens at Saturn, not Jupiter as in the movie). In the former the explanation is the Monolith (what else?), which is acting as a giant stargate in the surface of Iapetus, whilst in the latter Iapetus itself is revealed to be a vast alien spacecraft in disguise.


Today, it was revealed that scientists have discovered the, sadly somewhat more mundane, reason behind the mystery: Iapetus is orbiting Saturn in the on the inner edge of an absolutely vast 'new ring' of dust discovered orbiting the planet at a distance of 8 million miles. The ring is approximately 20 times thicker than the diameter of Saturn itself. The ring is being 'generated' by the outer moon Phoebe, and like that moon is in retrograde orbit. This is why the impact of the dust fragments on Iapetus is highly marked, as the fragments are hitting Iapetus with tremendous force, even though the fragments are not particularly large.

DEATH RAY to come to an end

British science fiction magazine Death Ray is to cease publication after its 21st issue (October 2009). The news broke today that due to the credit crunch and the separation of the magazine's publishers, Blackfish, from their parent company, Rebellion, it was no longer viable to carry on with either Death Ray or its sister magazine, Filmstar. However, there is a very slim ray of hope that another company may pick up the magazine, or the publishers may be able to remount publication at some point in the future.


Death Ray launched in May 2007, just one month after Imagine Publishing's SciFiNow. The near-simultaneous launch of two new SF magazines was a surprising move, since Future's SFX had been the sole science fiction glossy magazine on the shelves for some considerable time, whilst two older SF titles, TV Zone and Starburst, had both folded in 2008.

Generalising greatly, of the three titles Death Ray was arguably the most in-depth, featuring a greater emphasis on SF literature than other media. The last few issues also featured some original fiction, including a new Revelation Space story by Alastair Reynolds. However, Death Ray's release schedule had become somewhat erratic, with the magazine switching from a monthly to a quarterly to a bimonthly format, leaving readers unsure when a new issue was going to appear. It also suffered sales-wise, and failed to achieve as large an audience as the considerably more lightweight SciFiNow or the more established SFX.

This is sad news. Whilst Death Ray never became a must-buy magazine for me, it looked like it was heading in a very interesting direction when it folded, and leaves the British genre magazine market poorer for its absence.