Tolkien's FALL OF GONDOLIN to be published as a stand-alone work

J.R.R. Tolkien isn't letting having died forty-six years ago hold back his writing career. In August he will publish The Fall of Gondolin, as edited and compiled by his son and literary executor Christopher Tolkien.

"The Fall of Gondolin" was the very first story Tolkien ever wrote about Middle-earth, writing it down whilst on convalescent leave following the Battle of the Somme in late 1916 or early 1917. The story was written "in army huts, crowded filled with the noise of gramophones." Sometimes cribbing manuscript paper from any source to hand (part of the story is written on the back of a paper outlining the "chain of responsibility in a battalion"), Tolkien wrote and completed the narrative, the first instalment in a work he called The Book of Lost Tales. This book would collect together various stories from an ancient work between a dark force and the wise and powerful "Gnomes" (named for gnosis, or wisdom) who opposed it, through the framing device of a hapless mariner washing ashore on an island called Tol Eressea and learning about the ancient conflict. The original "Fall of Gondolin" was written in a severely archaic and studied style, which Tolkien later found over-laboured.

By 1930 Tolkien had abandoned the framing device and instead planned to tell the story "straight", under a new title, The Silmarillion, which required a total rewrite (including replacing the name "Gnomes" with "Elves," after the 1930s craze for garden gnomes made the name unbearable to him). However, he was interrupted first by a children's story he had started writing for his children, which became The Hobbit, and then urgent publisher demands for a sequel, which became The Lord of the Rings. Whilst working on both books, Tolkien did continue to develop The Silmarillion, but increasingly came to write the story in very broad brush strokes, lacking the fine detail of "The Fall of Gondolin." "The Fall of Gondolin" therefore only existed as the archaic 1917 manuscript (later amended and edited by Tolkien circa 1920) and a very brief summary of the story that Tolkien had written as part of the Grey Annals of Beleriand (which formed much of the published Silmarillion).

Around 1951, after The Lord of the Rings had been completed but whilst its publication was in question, Tolkien wrote a new version of the Gondolin story. His plan had been to depict the fall of the city in a detailed, more sophisticated mode of writing more akin to Lord of the Rings. However, after depicting the hero Tuor's arrival at the city gates and his first meeting with Ecthelion, Warden of the Grey Gate, Tolkien abruptly broke off the narrative and did note complete this version of the story. This incomplete narrative - totalling just 34 pages and retitled "Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin" - forms the opening part of Unfinished Tales (1980), with Christopher Tolkien noting that his father's failure to complete this story may rank as the greatest tragedy of his literary life.

Christopher Tolkien began publishing all of his father's drafts in The History of Middle-earth series. The original 1917-20 version of "The Fall of Gondolin" finally saw print in The Book of Lost Tales, Part II (1984), the second volume of the series. A 120-verse poem, "The Lay of the Fall of Gondolin," also appeared in The Lays of Beleriand (1985), the third volume of The History of Middle-earth.

The "new" Fall of Gondolin will, as Beren and Luthien (2017) did before it, contain all of the extant versions of the text, collected together with editorial commentary and artwork by Alan Lee. There'll be nothing new here, but it should be worth it for the Lee artwork alone.

The Fall of Gondolin will be published on 30 August 2018.

A HISTORY OF EARWA updated through THE UNHOLY CONSULT

My History of Earwa PDF, a guide and story-so-far to Scott Bakker's Second Apocalypse series, has now been updated through the events of The Unholy Consult. This will stand readers in good stead for when Bakker publishers the next book, whenever that might be. You can read or download the PDF here.

As before, thanks to Jason Deem for his amazing artwork which really fleshed out the project.

STAR TREK: DISCOVERY casts Captain Pike

CBS has confirmed that it is casting the iconic role of Captain Christopher Pike for the second season of Star Trek: Discovery.

The role will be played by Anson Mount. Mount is best-known for playing Cullen Bonhannon on Hell on Wheels and Black Bolt on Marvel's Inhumans.

Christopher Pike is famous in Star Trek lore for being the second captain of the original USS Enterprise, following Captain Robert April and preceding Captain James T. Kirk. Jeffrey Hunter played Pike in the original Star Trek pilot, The Cage, but the character was retired after Hunter chose not to return for the series proper. Sean Kenney played now-Commodore Pike in the two-part episode The Menagerie, accompanied by his famous chair and beeper. Bruce Greenwood played the role in the 2009 Star Trek reboot movie and its 2013 sequel, Into Darkness.

Anson Mount is expected to debut as Captain Pike in the first episode of Star Trek: Discovery's second season, since the Enterprise appeared briefly at the end of the first season.

This news suggests the possibility that the iconic role of Spock may also be recast - as Spock served under Pike as his first officer - and also seems to confirm that Inhumans has been cancelled, which was almost certainly the case (given its terrible ratings and critical reception) but had not yet been officially confirmed.

Star Trek: Discovery will return at the end of this year or the start of 2019.

SF&F Questions: Will there ever be a BABYLON 5 reboot?

The Basics

Babylon 5 is a popular space opera television show which aired from 1993 to 1998. Set on a massive space station, it was notable for being a heavily serialised story which unfolded over five years. It’s been cited as a major influence on everyone from Joss Whedon to Damon Lindelof to the Wachowskis.

After the main series wrapped up twenty years ago, it was resurrected for a series of TV movies and a spin-off show, Crusade, which only lasted half a season. In 2007 there was a further straight-to-DVD movie which sold very well, The Lost Tales, but since then no further Babylon 5 material has been released. Since then fans have asked for either a continuation of the series via a movie or new TV show, or a HD remastering of the original series of the kind that many contemporary shows (such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Star Trek: The Next Generation) have received, to keep it relevant and watchable for future generations.

Who owns the rights?

Babylon 5’s TV rights are held by Warner Brothers, who produced the first four seasons of the original series and the pilot movie, as well as the Legends of the Rangers and Lost Tales TV/DVD movies. TNT funded the fifth season, Crusade and several of the TV movies, but no longer have the rights to them.

Babylon 5’s creator, J. Michael Straczynski, held onto the movie rights and he alone has the right to make and market a Babylon 5 film for theatrical release.

Authorship

Babylon 5 is unusual in that it is almost completely identified with the work of one man, its creator J. Michael Straczynski. Straczynski wrote 91 of the show’s 110 episodes, most of Crusade and all of the TV movies, as well as acting as executive producer and showrunner. Most Babylon 5 fans would be reluctant to watch or accept a B5 project that Straczynski was not involved in or did not at least have his seal of approval. Although Warner Brothers have the legal right to make a new B5 series without Straczynski’s involvement, it’s clear they are reluctant to do so due to the negative coverage this would engender from fans.

Success of the Original Series

A B5 reboot, remake or remaster is only viable if the original show was successful in the first place. Babylon 5 actually had reasonably strong ratings when it was on-air, often outperforming its alleged rival, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It had a very strong and passionate fanbase. Most crucially, it has made a lot of money for Warner Brothers. Given the original show was made on a shoestring budget – 110 episodes for $91 million – it had made Warner Brothers over $500 million in profit by around 2010 in overseas sales, licensing, merchandising and DVD box sets alone. Podcasts, YouTube rewatches and rewatch blogs for the show are all very popular. Straczynski has a popular and well-followed Twitter account where he talks about the show and his other projects.

The show also has major name recognition, first among fans from that era and people who’ve watched it since, and also due to the show being the subject of a long-running joke on popular (but terrible) sitcom The Big Bang Theory.

The name recognition and the strong profits made by the show mean that the series is ripe for resurrection in some form.

Why a reboot or remake? Why not just make more stories with the original cast?

Tragically, despite having a relatively young cast and only airing a quarter of a lifetime ago, Babylon 5’s cast has had a ridiculously high attrition rate. Since the show ended the following castmembers have passed away:

• Michael O’Hare (Commander Sinclair)
• Jerry Doyle (Security Chief Michael Garibaldi)
• Andreas Katsulas (Ambassador G’Kar)
• Richard Biggs (Dr. Stephen Franklin)
• Johnny Sekka (Dr. Benjamin Kyle)
• Jeff Conaway (Security Chief Zack Allan)
• Stephen Furst (Vir Cotto)
• Tim Choate (Zathras)
• Robin Sachs (Satai Hedronn and Warleader Na’Kal)

Making a new Babylon 5 TV movie or series not involving any of these characters (almost all of whom survive to far beyond the lifespan of the series) would be logistically difficult, if not impossible.

Why not just remaster the original show in HD to introduce it to a new audience?

This has been mooted several times but it is particularly challenging for Babylon 5 due to the sheer volume of CGI (computer-generated imagery) used in the show. All of this CG was rendered in standard definition only and mastered on video, so it would need to be re-rendered from scratch. This includes not only every space scene, but every composite scene, every scene with weapons fire, every scene with the characters on a virtual set and every scene with a CG creature. A conservative estimate has it that Babylon 5 had approximately three times as many scenes involving a CG or effects element as Star Trek: The Next Generation, despite having 68 fewer episodes to work with.

This makes putting Babylon 5 through a HD remaster prohibitively expensive. Another conservative estimate of the process is that it would cost between $30 million and $40 million, twice what ST:TNG cost to go through the same process, and ST:TNG struggled to make a profit on its remastering despite being the most-watched and most popular space opera TV show ever made (which is why a HD remastering of Deep Space Nine and Voyager has not taken place yet).

In addition, Babylon 5 had production restrictions when it was made which might make remastering it less feasible: many of the sets were made out of wood and painted to look like plastic or metal, and the limitations of this would show up more in HD. In addition, all of the viewscreens in the show are actual CRT monitors, and of course it’s not possible to “fix” those without invoking time travel, otherwise you’d have pristine HD images of people looking at fuzzy viewscreens.

B5 was also digitally upscaled (a little) for the DVD release and running the DVDs through a Blu-Ray player (which upscales them further) results in a very fine, good-quality (almost 720p, but of course nowhere near 1080p) image that looks pretty damn sharp. The quality decreases whenever effects scenes take place, but the non-effects footage already looks perfectly decent. The whole show being shot in widescreen has already helped it age better than many of its contemporaries, which have had to run through hoops to be converted to widescreen (like Buffy and The X-Files) or it’s simply been impossible to render them in widescreen in the first place (ST:TNG).

Okay, so is anyone interested in doing a remake or reboot?

Yes. Warner Brothers has said they consider Babylon 5 to be a valuable franchise to them and it’s certainly in the zone for a remake/reboot. I can imagine Amazon or Netflix being interested in the idea if they proceed, especially if they can keep the budget down to a sane level (which is what led to Sense8’s cancellation). J. Michael Straczynski also said a few years ago he had plans for a Babylon 5 reboot movie before he started work on Sense8 with the Wachowskis. Both projects appear to have stalled – and never got beyond idle musings at Warner Brothers – but I imagine behind-the-scenes discussions on the idea take place on a regular basis.

One thing holding back the idea is that, at this point, Straczynski seems to favour a movie over a TV series. As he notes in this interview, he’s already made the TV show once and it was an extremely stressful and time-consuming process. So, making a film as an alternate (and presumably much more concise) way of telling that story is understandable. However, most B5 fans, I suspect, want to see a version of the story unfolding over the long-term, as that’s what Babylon 5 was most successful at. Reducing 80½ hours of storytelling into maybe three or four coherent movies would be extremely challenging.

The result of this appears to be a logjam: Warner Brothers are at least open to the idea of doing a new Babylon 5 series but seem to be reluctant to proceed without Straczynski’s involvement due to the fan blowback they’d likely receive. Straczynski seems more interested in the possibility of a feature film, which Warner Brothers don’t seem to be as interested in. If this logjam can be cleared, progress could be made on a new project.

Answer: A Babylon 5 remake or reboot seems inevitable at this point and there is interest from all quarters (studio, creator, fans), it just depends on the creative personnel having an alignment of vision and agreeing on a project that is acceptable to all of them.

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The BBC release all of THE CITY AND THE CITY online

The BBC has released all four episodes of The City and The City on the BBC iPlayer service. They aired the first episode in the traditional manner last night.

The BBC's impressive adaptation of China Mieville's novel has already picked up strong critical reviews, although some casual viewers were apparently confused by the bewildering premise of two cities built around and through one another where the citizens of one city cannot "see" or interact with those of the other on pain of arrest, which makes the investigation of a cross-border murder a complex affair.

THE LAST KINGDOM cancelled by the BBC but saved by Netflix

The BBC has decided not to continue with its Saxon-era historical drama The Last Kingdom, based on author Bernard Cornwell's Saxon saga which currently runs to ten novels. However, Netflix have stepped in and will continue the series, with the third season due to air later this year.

The first season of The Last Kingdom was a co-production between the BBC and BBC America, but BBC America dropped out after the first season, citing disappointing ratings in the US, although UK ratings were strong. Netflix took over as international distributor and co-funder of the series. The BBC has decided not to continue the series, so Netflix have taken over production completely.

The news does make sense, as The Last Kingdom has received good critical notices since debuting. In addition The Last Kingdom gives Netflix a toehold in the historical drama field without the monstrous price tag of some of their other shows, like The Crown and the cancelled Marco Polo. By Netflix standards, The Last Kingdom's budget is very modest and even with a moderate budget increase (which would be helpful to sell some of the bigger action scenes) it would still be one of their cheapest programmes.

Season 3 of The Last Kingdom will air before the end of 2018, with Netflix to make a decision on continuing the programme based on how it fares as a Netflix original.

Slightly paradoxically, the BBC have cited competition from Netflix and Amazon TV as reason why they can't continue production of drama programmes like The Last Kingdom, and have even advised that in the future, predicted budget shortfalls for British broadcasters may threaten shows like Doctor Who and Sherlock.

Peter Jackson in talks with Amazon over the LORD OF THE RINGS TV series

Amazon is in talks with Peter Jackson about him possibly being involved in the new Lord of the Rings TV series they are developing.

As previously reported, Amazon, New Line and the Tolkien Estate came together late last year to commission a new TV series which will be set between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Due to the rights issues with MGM (which were overcome only with incredibly expensive difficulties and ever greater creative ones to make the three Hobbit movies), the new TV series will draw on Lord of the Rings and its appendices alone.

Peter Jackson was not involved in these initial talks and it was unclear if the TV series was going to be set in the same continuity as his existing movies, meaning they would use the existing production design, or if they would be complete reboots, potentially paving the way for a fresh take on the classic Lord of the Rings story once the initial prequel series wrapped up. Based on the new report from The Hollywood Reporter (print edition), it sounds like the series can now officially take place in the same continuity as Jackson's existing films. This potentially opens up the possibility of Jackson, Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh contributing scripts, and Weta Workshop providing the effects for the project.

Jackson's full role is unclear, but it sounds like it may be a producer and advisory role. I suspect Amazon will also try to tempt Jackson to direct the first episode to attract the maximum amount of attention to the project. Jackson's slate of projects is as full as it's been for years - he's working on a TV series based on Naomi Novik's Napoleonic War fantasy Temeraire, is producing a new remake of The Dambusters and is due to direct and co-direct the second and third Tintin movies for Steven Spielberg - but these projects have also all been on hold for a while and it's unclear what Jackson's current venture is, with shooting on the Mortal Engines movie (which he produced) wrapping last year.

Jackson's involvement will likely result in mixed reactions: the Lord of the Rings trilogy was both critically and commercially acclaimed, but the Hobbit trilogy was critically mauled, particularly for the decision to expand a very slim novel (only one-fifth the length of Lord of the Rings) into three long movies. However, this latter development was apparently forced on Jackson by the studios involved against his wishes for a two-movie project, particularly MGM, who are not involved in the new TV series. In fact, the idea of a "bridging story" linking The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings was developed by Jackson and Guillermo Del Toro some years ago as a stand-alone movie, and it could be that Amazon's new project will now draw on the ideas they developed for that story.

Amazon's decision to tap Jackson was likely driven by the need to get the ball rolling on the series. No showrunner or producer is so far attached to the project and there is no script being developed. Even the premise of the series is unclear, with some believing it may focus on the adventures of the young Aragorn serving in the armies of Gondor and Rohan, or Gollum searching for the Ring, or a combination of several ideas. Amazon want to launch the series in late 2019 or (far more likely now) 2020 to allow them to compete directly with Disney's new streaming service, which will be launching with both a new Marvel Cinematic Universe show and the first-ever Star Wars live action TV series (produced by Jon Favreau). With the Disney service likely to also use the full (and vast) Fox TV and film archive, once that deal is cleared, it presents a formidable threat and competition to Amazon and Netflix.

It remains the case that the TV production team will not have access to The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The Children of Hurin or Beren and Luthien (the posthumously-published Middle-earth books), nor to Tolkien's extensive notes and drafts collected in The History of Middle-earth series. Intriguingly, the new deal did require the Tolkien Estate to sign a new rights deal with New Line and Amazon, as the original deal (signed by J.R.R. Tolkien and United Pictures in 1968) did not stipulate TV rights were included and that clarification was required. This marks the first time that the Tolkien Estate has authorised a new screen adaptation of Tolkien material, a position unthinkable just a year ago before Christopher Tolkien resigned from the board of the estate.

More news is expected about the new Lord of the Rings TV series in the coming months.

Correction: The rights to the Temeraire novels have returned to Naomi Novik and Peter Jackson is no longer involved in a screen adaptation.

With apologies (click to embiggen).

FX commissions Y: THE LAST MAN pilot

FX has formally commissioned a pilot episode for a TV series based on Bryan Vaughan's critically-acclaimed comic, Y: The Last Man.

After three years in development hell, the project is now moving forward at FX with Michael Green (American Gods, Logan, Blade Runner 2049) and Aida Croal (Jessica Jones) on board as producer-showrunners, with Melina Matsoukas (Master of None) set to direct the pilot.

The comic ran for 60 issues between 2002 and 2008 and told the story of Yorick Brown and his monkey companion Ampersand, the only two male mammals left in the world after an unknown virus or genetic mutation wiped out the rest of male-kind. With the human race doomed to extinction, Yorick and Ampersand quickly become the target of governments, scientific organisations and criminals looking to either reverse the crisis, continue it or profit from it.

Once the pilot has been produced, FX will decided whether to proceed to a full series, although given the credits of everyone involved (including Vaughan himself, who has spent time working on TV series such as Lost and Under the Dome) it seems reasonably likely.

Happy 20th Anniversary COWBOY BEBOP

The popular and influential Japanese anime Cowboy Bebop celebrates its 20th anniversary today. The 26-episode series debuted on 3 April 1998 with the transmission of the second episode; the series was broadcast out of order, resulting in low ratings and the show's cancellation after only twelve episodes had aired. The series aired, in full and in proper production order, the following year and immediately picked up significant critical acclaim. In 2001 it became the first anime to air on the American Adult Swim channel, introducing a whole new American audience to the genre.

Cowboy Bebop is set in the year 2071, when the Solar system has been colonised and Venus and some of the moons of Jupiter have been terraformed (most notably Ganymede, which becomes the key setting for many episodes). Hyperspace gates link the planets, allowing for rapid travel across the system. Fifty years earlier, the first gate, located in Earth orbit, malfunctioned and exploded, shattering half the moon and sending billions of asteroids into orbit around Earth (and some onto collision courses), almost sealing the planet off. The rest of humanity has scattered across the planets.

The show follows the adventures of the spacecraft Bebop, a starship/boat hybrid. At the start of the series its only crewmembers are odd couple Spike Siegel, a former Red Dragon Syndicate criminal, and ex-cop Jet Black, who are now working as bounty hunters or "cowboys" in the show's parlance. The crew rapidly expands over the course of several episodes (a similar way of introducing the main characters as on Blake's 7 - itself a precursor of Cowboy Bebop - and Babylon 5) with the arrival of the beautiful amnesiac Faye Valentine, "data dog" Ein and Ed, a young child who is also a genius computer hacker.

Cowboy Bebop is notable for its Western influences, particularly several episodes which are clearly homages to film noir. The show has an incredibly eclectic soundtrack, courtesy of genius composer Yoko Kanno, which takes jazz as its main inspiration. Other episodes feature country, rock, classical, electronic and even heavy metal influences. The show also relaxed the obsession with detailed story arcs other anime series suffered from, instead consisting of mostly stand-alone episodes with a couple of recurring character arcs (including Faye's search for her past and Spike's repeated confrontations with his friend-turned-nemesis, Vicious).

Cowboy Bebop is also notable for how little of it there is. Director and co-creator Shinchiro Watanabe was keen not to milk the franchise, so designed it as a story with one definitive ending. A couple of years later he did return to direct a movie (which takes place before the final episode of the series proper), and a two-volume manga of the series was created but that's it. Watanabe has resisted making a sequel, reboot or continuation ever since. This relatively limited amount of content, together with the show's less-serialised nature and Western influences, has made Cowboy Bebop a much-recommended "gateway show" to the world of anime, being light on the insane tentacle monsters and brain-melting, convoluted backstories some other shows in the genre are known for.

The show has picked up significant critical acclaim and celebrity followers: Quentin Tarantino, Rian Johnson and the late Robin Williams were all big fans of the show. A live-action version of the show has been mooted for the last year or so, whilst some believe that the show was an influence on Joss Whedon's Firefly and the animated series Archer (particularly the use of music and the very similar title sequence).

By random coincidence, I've been watching Cowboy Bebop for the past couple of weeks and am about to wrap up the show, so expect a review later this week. In the meantime, congratulations to the cast and crew of Cowboy Bebop for having created something that still means a lot to people twenty years later and, impressively, not having run it into the ground with sequels and reboots.

Neil Gaiman developing a GORMENGHAST TV series

Neil Gaiman is working on a new adaptation of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast novels for television. Fremantle Media, which produces Gaiman's American Gods for Starz, is set to produce the series and it is already meeting with possible showrunners and writers, as Gaiman's expanded role on American Gods Season 2 prevents him from taking a more direct hand in Gormenghast.

Also producing is Akiva Goldsman, who has worked as a writer and producer on Fringe and Star Trek: Discovery, but is best-known for writing the script for the movie A Beautiful Mind.

Mervyn Peake (1911-68) published two novels in the Gormenghast sequence whilst he was still alive: Titus Groan (1946) and Gormenghast (1950). The two books form a single story, recounting the birth and rise to adulthood of Titus Groan, heir to the vast, crumbling city-sized castle Gormenghast, whose inhabitants are mired in ritual and nostalgia. The kitchen boy Steerpike ruthlessly rises to power as well, orchestrating a web of murder, robberies and manipulations to gain fear and influence in the castle.

Peake wrote an additional short novel, Boy in Darkness (1956), although its relationship to the first two novels as ambiguous; he later confirmed that the book recounted a dark and sinister episode from the young Titus Groan's life. Peake started writing a third full novel in the series, exploring the strange, steampunk-esque world beyond Gormenghast Castle, but Parkinson's disease prevented him from making speedy progress. The book was published as Titus Alone in 1959, but Peake was unhappy with how the book was edited, with entire chapters cut. After Peake's death, the novel was restored to its original manuscript and reissued in 1970.

 Peake planned as many as ten Gormenghast novels, sketching out later titles including Titus Awakes and Gormenghast Revisited, and had written some experimental early material for Titus Awakes before his death. His wife Maeve wrote an experimental continuation of the novel, which ended in surrealist fashion with Titus arriving on the real-life island of Sark. This was published in 2011 as Titus Awakes: The Lost Book of Gormenghast, although it had a muted reception.

In 1999 the BBC produced a mini-series based on the first two Gormenghast books, starring Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as Steerpike and (among others) Christopher Lee, Stephen Fry, Ian Richardson and Zoe Wanamaker. The TV series was well-received but budgetary and effects limitations meant that the true rambling strangeness of the castle could only be implied. There's also a board game based on the series.

Gormenghast is not an epic fantasy, instead a vast, rambling Gothic work of the imagination. However, it was influential on later fantasy authors: the huge, rambling castle is a clear influence on both the Hayholt of Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow and Thorn and Harrenhal and Winterfell in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire.