George R.R. Martin signs new development deal with HBO

George R.R. Martin has signed a two-year development deal with HBO. The deal includes extending his 'executive producer' credit on Game of Thrones for another two seasons and also gives HBO exclusive rights to any TV show ideas he creates in that time.

"So, Tyrion and Bronn bromance series?"

Development deals, out of favour in Hollywood during the financial crisis, have recently come back into vogue. J.J. Abrams has such a deal in place, allowing him to develop or produce new shows for several networks (two pilots based on his ideas have been greenlit for later this year). Abrams's deal allows him to develop TV projects whilst working elsewhere: he has been working full-time on his second Star Trek movie for the past eighteen months or so, and is about to plough into working full-time on Star Wars: Episode VII for anything up to three years.

On that basis, fears that this deal will delay The Winds of Winter (the sixth and currently-planned-to-be-penultimate Song of Ice and Fire novel) until the middle of next decade seem somewhat overstated, though it is possible will have an impact of some sort. It's also possible that this deal was made as a sweetner to keep Martin on-board with GoT, or that HBO are actively considering adapting some of Martin's back-catalogue and this allows them easier access to it.

In particular, there has been speculation that HBO are planning to adapt the Dunk and Egg prequel novellas as an ongoing (and perhaps more episodic) TV series. These stories - The Hedge Knight (1998), The Sworn Sword (2003), The Mystery Knight (2010) and The She-Wolves (forthcoming) - are set between 85 and 90 years before the events of ASoIaF/GoT, so would not impact on that ongoing main series. HBO have also done some subtle foreshadowing for the series, with Old Nan mentioning Ser Duncan the Tall to Bran Stark in a Season 1 episode of the show. It was recently confirmed that GRRM's prior deal with HBO did not include Dunk and Egg, so a new deal such as this one would be required to adapt them. With at least one major new character in the later novels set-up much better by the prequel novellas, it is possible that HBO are thinking about going down a similar route.

There has also been speculation that HBO might consider adapting the Wild Cards TV series as their own take on superheroes. However, SyFy and Universal own the Wild Cards TV and movie rights, so HBO would either have to co-produce or buy the rights outright from them, which would be unusual in Hollywood. A TV or film adaptation of Fevre Dream or one of Martin's Thousand Worlds SF stories and novels also cannot be ruled out.

Martin has yet to comment publicly on the deal, but will likely soon do so via his blog.

BEING HUMAN axed

The BBC has cancelled their hit supernatural series Being Human after five seasons.

The first season cast: George, Annie and Mitchell.

The show started airing in 2008, using the premise of a vampire (Mitchell, played by Aidan Turner), a werewolf (George, played by Russell Tovey) and a ghost (Annie Sawyer, played by Lenora Crichlow) living together in a flat in Bristol. Despite early expectations of a more comedy-oriented show, it quickly became a much darker drama with regular deaths and mayhem. After the events of Season 2, the show moved to a new location (Barry in Wales). A series of major events at the end of the third and the start of the fourth season saw Turner and Tovey - who had become quite big stars off the back of the show - depart (the former to do The Hobbit trilogy, where he plays Kili).

In Season 4 a number of new characters came into the show, notably new vampire Hal (played by Damien Moloney) and new ghost Alex (Kate Bracken), whilst recurring werewolf character Tom (Michael Socha) was promoted to a regular. Crichlow departed at the end of Season 4, allowing Season 5 to start with none of the originally-established characters present.

The fifth season cast: Tom, Alex and Hal.

Surprisingly, despite the complete cast change the show remained highly rated by critics. Airing on the low-viewership channel BBC-3, Being Human's first season became the channel's highest-rated original drama by getting more than 1 million viewers twice. Seasons 2 and 3 took this to new heights by very rarely dipping below 1 million viewers. Season 4's viewership took a slight hit to just below 1 million, but remained impressive for the channel.

An American version of the show began airing in 2011 and is currently in its third season.

RIP Robin Sachs

Sadly, the news has broken that veteran actor Robin Sachs passed away last week at the age of 61.

 As Ethan Rayne on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Sachs is known for bringing his distinctive gravelley voice to numerous science fiction and fantasy roles on TV and film. He is best-known for his portrayal of Ethan Rayne, arch-enemy of Rupert Giles, in four episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He also had multiple appearances on Babylon 5, in which he played two roles, although, confusingly, each role had two names. He played the role of Hedronn, a member of the Minbari Grey Council, in two episodes and the TV movie In the Beginning. In the latter his character was inexplicably renamed Caplann. He also appeared as the Narn captain (and later general) Na'Kal in four episodes of the show, with the character now being called Na'Tok in his latter two appearances. Sachs is the latest in a surprisingly large number of actors who worked on Babylon 5 to pass away before his time.

Playing both a Minbari and a Narn on Babylon 5.

Also under heavy prosthetics, he played General Sarris in the 1999 SF spoof movie Galaxy Quest and General Valen in Star Trek: Voyager (in the episode The Void). In more recent years he has become known for voicing roles in computer games, playing multiple roles in Dragon Age 2 and voicing the popular character Zaeed Massani in Mass Effect 2 and 3. His last role was voicing the character of Ataman in the recent Resident Evil CG movie, Damnation.

Games Workshop attempts to trademark generic SF term

Games Workshop have, for a while now, claimed that they own the trademark to the term 'Space Marine'. They were largely ignored, because the term has an extremely long history in science fiction and is so generic (meaning 'marines in space') that the claim is borderline laughable.

A use of the term 'space marine' that predates Games Workshop's by fifty-one years.

However, GW's mailed power gauntlet came crashing down on SF author MCA Hogarth when she published a book called Spots the Space Marine. GW asked Amazon to remove the book from their website and informed the author that she was not allowed to use the term in either the title or text of her book. Hogarth, who is not very wealthy, declined to fight the claim legally but has publicised it, which has led to significant discussion of the subject by sites such as Boing Boing and Scalzi's Whatever (and Scalzi is taking it up with the influential Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America guild, of which he is president). This site also has interesting information for those Games Workshop customers - and that includes anyone who has bought a Black Library novel or Relic WH40K computer game - who wish to protest directly to the company.

Games Workshop's use of 'Space Marines' began in 1987 with the publication of the first edition of the Warhammer 40,000 miniature combat game.

A quick survey of the internet discovers these examples of use prior to that time:

• A short story called Captain Brink of the Space Marines, published in Amazing Stories in 1932.
• A sequel to the above, The Space Marines and the Slavers, published in Amazing Stories in 1936.
• E.E. 'Doc' Smith's Lensman series mentions space marines in Galactic Patrol (1937-38) and Grey Lensman (1939-40) in passing before they actually appear in First Lensman (1950).
• Robert Heinlein's short stories Misfit (1939) and The Long Watch (1941) both feature the phrase. Whilst it doesn't mention the phrase directly, the novel Starship Troopers (1959) is considered the definitive portrayal of space marines.
• H. Beam Piper's Space Viking series of SF novels (beginning in 1963) use characters who strongly resembler space marines.
• The roleplaying game Traveller, which debuted in 1977 and was partially inspired by both Piper and Heinlein, also used similar concepts. It should be noted that Games Workshop was originally founded in 1975 as importers of US roleplaying and wargame materials, including the original Traveller upon its release.
• A popular 'filking' song at American SF conventions in the 1970s was 'Outer Space Marines', created by Jeff Duntemann.
• Fantasy Games Unlimited released a miniature wargame called Space Marines in 1977.
• The popular anime series Space Battleship Yamato (1974-1980) directly uses the phrase. The English-language version, Star Blazers, first appeared in 1979.
• A song called 'Space Hero', by Julia Ecklar, released on her 1983 album Space Heroes and Other Fools, uses the term 'space marines' in its lyrics.
• The movie Aliens, released in 1986, features a Colonial Marine Corps. Director James Cameron had the actors read Starship Troopers as part of their training for the roles. The same term was later used for the ground component of the Colonial military in the newer Battlestar Galactica (which debuted in 2003).

 A tactical miniatures game called Space Marines, released ten years before WH40K.

There is also the small matter of Games Workshop not attempting to protect the alleged trademark prior to this point, namely not when Dark Horse released a number of Alien comics and magazines in the early 1990s which sometimes used the term 'space marine' to refer to the Colonial Marines. They have also taken no action against Barnes and Noble, which has a sub-section called 'Soldiers and Space Marines'.

More notably, GW has not attempted to sue Blizzard Entertainment, despite the latter's creation of the StarCraft franchise in 1998 which is - sometimes breathtakingly - similar to Warhammer 40,000. The Terran Marines in StarCraft not only fulfil the same role as the Space Marines in WH40K but look extremely similar. Coincidentally, Activision-Blizzard is a multi-billion-dollar company with legal resources that vastly outstrip those of GW's by several orders of magnitude.

WITCHER 3 announced, will be final game in the series

CDProjekt have confirmed that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is in development and will be released in 2014. In a major break from the structure of the first two games, The Witcher 3 will be an open-world game similar to Bethesda's Elder Scrolls game (with Skyrim name-checked several times). The game world will be 30 times the size of The Witcher 2's, and about 20% larger than the setting of Skyrim and Oblivion.

Confirmed: The Witcher 3 will have beards, horses and trees.

CDProjekt have also confirmed that this will be the last game set in The Witcher universe. The games are based on Andrzej Sapkowski's novels, though they are not considered canon (as Sapkowski rather brusquely confirmed a few weeks ago) for the future books in the world that Sapkowski is planning. CDProjekt are also working on an RPG based on the Cyberpunk pen-and-paper system, with their first game in the setting, Cyberpunk 2077, expected to be released in 2015.

The Witcher 3 will be released in 2014 on PC and (almost certainly) next-generation consoles.

New THUNDERBIRDS series greenlit

With the sad news of Gerry Anderson's death in December, it was assumed that his plans for a new Thunderbirds TV series had also been abandoned. Happily, this is not the case. Today it was confirmed a new Thunderbirds TV series is entering production for airing in 2015.

The new series will be a co-production between New Zealand's Pukeko Pictures and CITV in the UK, which will also broadcast the show (hopefully in a better timeslot than the new Captain Scarlet, which they pretty much killed through appallingly awful scheduling). Surprisingly, the show will not be all-CGI, instead using a mixture of models and sets along with CGI. The characters will be CG, as presumably will be the more action-oriented scenes. The CGI for the series will be provided by no less a source than Weta, who did the CGI for the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies and King Kong, amongst many other films.

A 26-episode season is now in pre-production for airing in 2015.

A cover you'll remember

Best cover art of the year? Almost certainly.

This is the cover to the limited edition of Bleeding Shadows, a collection of short stories by Joe R. Lansdale, to be published by Subterranean Press in November. I have no idea what the hell is going on here, but now I want to read it.

Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome

It is the tenth year of the Cylon War. The Colonial Fleet is gradually being worn down by their former slaves turned enemies, the Cylons. Bill Adama, a newly-graduated pilot assigned to the battlestar Galactica, takes part in what should be a simple escort mission but turns into a major operation which could have important ramifications for the entire war.

Blood and Chrome started life as a proposed full spin-off series of the new(er) Battlestar Galactica. The first spin-off, Caprica, had been a failure and was cancelled after one season. Popular opinion has it that the show was too talky, too cerebral and simply too dull, having moved away from the dogfights and political infighting that made the original series so compelling. For this second spin-off, the proposal was to make a balls-to-the-wall action show, a Top Gun in space with Vipers and Cylons. Setting the show during the First Cylon War would also allow the show to resolve some storylines from Caprica - which took place about sixteen years earlier - and foreshadow some of the events of BSG itself (which starts about forty-two years later).

In the event, it never happened. Blood and Chrome - the proposed pilot episode of the spin-off - was not picked up and, unless the imminent DVD/Blu-Ray release sells like gangbusters, will not be in the future. As it stands, it is left behind as a curiosity and, it has to be said, not a particularly compelling one.

Blood and Chrome was not filmed in the traditional manner. With the existing (massive and expensive-to-maintain) Galactica sets all destroyed at the end of filming, the producers were forced to rely on greenscreens and digital scans to reproduce the original sets. In fact, they were able to adjust the sets to reflect the fact that it's forty years earlier, with less-advanced technology available. The same 'bones' of the original structures are there, but the detailing is different. This works quite well, giving the sense that this is the same ship at a different point in its lifespan. The quality of the greenscreen sets is rather variable, with most of them falling into the 'somewhat fake but you don't notice after a while' category. Some of them are pretty good: the CIC set is surprisingly well-done, though the fact that it's quite a dark set helps. On the other hand, scenes on the ice planet and inside the abandoned facility there are blatantly fake. There's also rather too much lens flare going on in the CGI scenes, which gets distracting after a while.

Other CGI is reasonable, though the decision was made to use very fast cuts. This meant both an insane number of CGI shots (this 120-minute TV movie has more than 1,800 shots, compared to 1,488 for the three-and-a-half hour cinematic film The Return of the King) and almost no time to appreciate them. Whilst the original show was guilty of fast-paced cutting at times which made it difficult to follow what was going on, Blood and Chrome takes this to a new level. The confrontation between the Colonial heavy cruiser Osiris and a Cylon basestar should be a tense, epic moment, but instead turns into a confusing melee of badly-cut CGI shots and explosions. Given that Blood and Chrome has resources available to it that Ronald Moore and his team would have killed to have on the original BSG pilot a decade ago, it's a shame to see them wasted in such a fashion.

That leaves the writing and acting to back up the effects and, unfortunately, neither are very accomplished. There's some attempts at characterisation which should be a lot stronger than it is, since the show really only has to focus on Adama, his co-pilot Coker and their civilian passenger Becca for most of its length. Instead it's all a bit half-hearted and actors Luke Pasqualino, Ben Cotton and Lili Bordan seem uninspired by the material, which is cliched and trite. A few attempts to lampshade the macho pilot genre of action films and series fall flat (as the show immediately employs many of those tropes with no sense of irony or intelligence). Later in the movie there is an attempt to discuss the rights and wrongs of the war and its immense bodycount, but it's all rather tepid compared to the issues that the original BSG raised on a regular basis. There's also a cameo appearance by a BSG regular which helps place the TV movie a bit better in the timeline, but even this misfires as it causes confusion with the flashback scenes in the BSG TV movie Razor, which supposedly happens two years after Blood and Chrome.

What we are left with, then, is a confusing morass of explosions, a ton of CGI (some impressive, most not), some cliched writing and indifferent performances, with occasional bursts of effort. What Blood and Chrome does prove, conclusively, is that BSG is at its heart about compelling characters, ethical conflicts and difficult-to-answer questions. Removing the ambiguity in favour of explosions and space dogfights clearly does not work. However, given that in a few years (when technology has improved a bit more) a lot more shows may be made this way, it's certainly worth watching as a hint of the future of TV production.

Blood and Chrome (**½) will be available in the UK (DVD, Blu-Ray) and USA (DVD, Blu-Ray) on 19 February. Or you can watch the whole thing (split into 10 smaller chunks) - legally - on YouTube.

Mass Effect 3: Leviathan and Omega

When Mass Effect 3 was released a year ago, it was known that the game would be expanded by the arrival of extra missions via DLC (downloadable content). Because the game's (highly controversial) ending made any more missions set after the game nonsensical, these DLC episodes take place earlier during the game's timeframe, and can be accessed via the save the game automatically generates when you finish it (to just before the assault on the Cerberus base).

The first of the two story-driven DLCs to appear so far is Leviathan. This episode picks up on a dangling plot thread from Mass Effect 2, where it was revealed that a Reaper named the Leviathan of Dis had been destroyed by an unknown force of tremendous power. In the DLC Commander Shepard is contacted by a scientist who has discovered what killed Leviathan, but is killed himself before he can impart that knowledge. Shepard has to follow the scientist's trail of research to discover the location of Leviathan's killer, and whether it can be employed to help in the war against the Reapers.

Gameplay-wise, Leviathan is split into two distinct sections. The first section is set in the scientist's lab and sees Shepard investigating artifacts and computer logs to piece together a fuller picture of what happened. Several excursions via the Normandy to alien planets follow, with traditional combat missions (and one creepy mission dealing with a base full of indoctrinated scientists) leading to the discovery of more clues. The DLC concludes with an underwater showdown between Shepard and Leviathan's enemy, which is a bit cheesy and mainly seems to serve as a bit of retconned foreshadowing for the end of Mass Effect 3 proper (and as such may be enjoyed more by people playing through the game for the first time with all the DLC pre-installed).

Leviathan is, from a gameplay perspective, lightweight but from a lore and story POV, a bit more interesting than expected. There's some major backstory revelations about the Reapers and some very good character-building for EDI, who gets to play a big role in the investigation sections.

The more eagerly-awaited of the two DLCs was Omega, which picks up on another plot thread left dangling from Mass Effect 3 proper. In that game it was revealed that Cerberus had taken control of Omega, the 'hive of scum and villainy' that you spent some time on in Mass Effect 2. Omega's crimelord boss, Aria T'Loak, was unimpressed by this move and spent most of Mass Effect 3 trying to build up a coalition of forces to retake Omega. In the DLC she succeeds, and employs Shepard (and just Shepard; none of the rest of the Normandy crew can take part) to help out.

Omega is a long series of combat missions, undertaken with Aria T'Loak and a new character called Nyreen Kandros, the first female turian encountered in the series. The absence of most of the regular Mass Effect cast and the inability to choose your own squad for the combat missions is grating, but the game is able to turn this to its advantage by focusing on the characters of Aria and Nyreen and developing a complex backstory between them. The DLC is interesting in that it's one of the few chunks of the Mass Effect universe where Shepard is more of an observer of events rather than the crucible around which they revolve, and is more interesting for that. The DLC also features a better-than-average villain in the form of General Petrovsky, a Cerberus officer who is unusually sensible and logical for a bad guy. Arguably the DLC's real triumph is in allowing Aria (one of the most unrepentantly amoral characters in the whole series) to soften a little under Shepard's influence without destroying the character, and doing so through some via good characterisation related to the new character of Nyreen. It's a subtle element that's rather under-developed given the combat-oriented nature of the DLC, but one that gives the episode more depth that it first appears.

Both DLCs (***½ each) are playable, fun and feature some lore and background revelations that enhance the enjoyment of the Mass Effect universe. However, they are also rather short (2-3 hours each) and the degree to which players smarting from the mishandling of the ending of Mass Effect 3 proper will want to play them is debatable. They are available now on the X-Box 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.

Excession by Iain M. Banks

Thousands of years ago, the Culture encountered an Outside Context Problem. A perfectly black sphere materialised out of nowhere next to a trillion-year-old sun from another universe. It did nothing and vanished. Now it has returned, and both the Culture and a hostile alien race known as the Affront are desperate to uncover its secrets.

Excession was originally published in 1996 and is the fourth novel in Iain M. Banks's Culture series. As with all of the Culture books, it is a stand-alone novel sharing only the same background and setting, with minimal references to the events of other books and no characters crossing over.

A plot summary of the novel makes it sound like Banks's version of a 'Big Dumb Object' book, a novel where the characters are presented with an enigmatic alien entity and have to deal with it (similar to Rendezvous with Rama or Ringworld). However, this isn't really what Excession is about. Instead, the novel operates on several different levels and uses the titular artifact as a catalyst for a more thorough exploration of the Culture and its goals, as well as a more human story about relationships and change.

Excession is the first book in the series to explore the Minds, the (mostly) benevolent hyper-advanced AIs which effectively run and rule the Culture (as both spacecraft and the hubs of the immense Orbital habitats). Previous novels had portrayed the Minds as god-like entities whose vast powers allowed the various biological species of the Culture to live peaceful lives of post-scarcity freedom. Aside from their whimsical sense of humour and tendency towards ludicrous names, the Minds had not been fleshed out much in the previous novels. Here they are front and centre as several groups of Minds attempt to deal with the Outside Context Problem, or Excession, and find themselves working at cross-purposes. One group of Minds appears to be involved in a conspiracy related to the object's previous appearance, whilst another is trying to flush them out. Another Mind appears to be operating on its own, enigmatic agenda. There are also Minds belonging to the Elench, an alien race closely aligned with the Culture but who may have different goals in mind in relation to this matter.

Banks depicts communications between the Minds as something between a telegram and an email, complete with hyperlink-like codes (in which can be found some amusing in-jokes). Following these conversations is sometimes hard work (especially remembering which ship belongs to which faction), but worth it as within them can be found much of the more subtle plotting of the novel.

The stuff with the Minds and with the alien Affront (think of the Hanar from Mass Effect but with the attitude and disposition of Klingons) is all great and somewhat comic in tone, but the book also has a serious side. Several human characters are dragged into the situation as well, and it turns out two of them have a past, tragic connection that one of the Minds is keen to exploit. It's rather bemusing that Banks drops in a terribly human drama into the middle of this massive, gonzoid space opera, but the juxtaposition is highly effective, giving heart to a story that otherwise could drown in its own epicness.

Excession (****½) is, as is normal with (early) Banks, well-written and engaging, mixing well-drawn characters (be they human, psychopathic floating jellyfish or Mind) with big SF concepts. The book's only downside is a somewhat anti-climactic (though rather clever) ending. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.