Trailer Trash | The Walking Dead Summer Special

Well, I know what I'm going to be doing this weekend.

You guys too?

400 Days is apparently a bridge between seasons one and two of Telltale's take on The Walking Dead. You'll recall that the phenomenal first season won any number of game of the year awards, including mine, and though this special standalone episode doesn't look to follow it directly, given the creative team's talent for character building — and for fashioning fascinating narrative out of a milieu which is, if we're honest, a lot like hundreds of others — I expect nothing less than excellence from 400 Days.

Incidentally, it occurs to me that the Microsoft Points card I bought to purchase this DLC with will probably be the last Microsoft Points card I ever have to buy. In part because the company are going with real money for marketplace transactions on the Xbox One, but largely because I'm still on Sony's side — never mind Microsoft's dramatic back-tracking after this year's E3. By then they'd made it crystal clear where there loyalties lay, which is to say, nowhere near me... or any other consumers, in truth.

I've pre-ordered a PS4, obviously. Knowing my proclivities, I'll probably cave and get an Xbox One eventually, but only once I'm sure Microsoft aren't planning to pull a fast one with DRM delivered via dashboard update or some similarly insidious bait-and-switch.

Either way, I won't miss Microsoft Points.

Coming Attractions | The Abominable Mr. Simmons

Yesterday, Deadline reported that one of my favourite books of recent years is being turned into a TV series by AMC. The Terror is the incredible tale of two ships which were lost in the late 1840s whilst searching for a once-impassable route through the Arctic: the legendary Northwest Passage.

In Dan Simmons' awesome novel, the crew become frozen into the ice for a period of years: The Terror is the story of their survival in these extreme conditions, with limited supplies, fraying tempers, and—here's where it gets particularly interesting—an impossible monster with an appetite for people.

I've always had a soft spot for survival narratives. Also the Arctic. And boy, I do like me my monsters! Indeed, reading The Terror ticked all these boxes before I even realised they existed. So the news that AMC mean to make a TV series out of Simmons' alt-historical story leaves me with... mixed feelings. I'm sure it could be good. Hell, it could be really, really good. On the other hand, the way AMC have "dealt" with The Walking Dead, despite its surprising success, is dismaying.

(Side note: io9's most constructive comment about the announcement was that The Terror isn't The Thing. Well said, sirs! Or... wait. No. I take it back.)

Anyway, though Simmons has had the odd hit since The Terror—Drood was pretty good—by and large he's fallen out of favour again, so I wanted to draw your attention to his next novel, which I only discovered today. It's called The Abominable, and it sounds enticingly like a return to the territory of The Terror: 

In June 1924, famous British climber George Mallory and his climbing partner Andrew Irvine disappeared on the North East Ridge of Mount Everest. Most of the subsequent publicity did not mention that two other climbers were missing: the future Lord Wessex and an unnamed German support climber. 

A year later, climber, poet and war hero Richard David Deacon sees a way he and his friends can reach the heights of Mount Everest. He tells Lady Wessex that they will look for her son if she bankrolls the operation. Now the danger Deacon and his group face is not only from the treacherous conditions; they are also warned of the mythical 'man bear' demons of the mountain - which they dismiss until they hear roars so loud they drown out the 100 mile-per-hour wind that is tearing their canvas tent to shreds around them...

Amazon, however, seem to be doing their very best to garble the facts about the book. They're saying The Abominable will be out this April in the UK, weighing in at 432 pages, yet a quick trawl of the forums Simmons himself visits suggests we should be expecting another behemoth, at approximately 800 pages—and in October rather than a mere six weeks from Sunday.

Let me make no bones about it: whenever it's released, and however long it is, I can't wait to read The Abominable.

But after the ghastly Flashback, is anyone else willing to give Dan Simmons another chance?

Guest Post | Bryce of Only the Best SF&F Considers... Pretty Much Everything?

Ladies and gentlemen: welcome once again to The Speculative Scotsman!

You may or may not know that I’m in America at the moment – if not, yes, it’s true... in fact I’m as far AFK as I’ve ever been before – but never ye fear! For in my absence, a few good men and women have volunteered to make the site their own, albeit only momentarily. They’re bloggers, by and large, but also friends; fine folks one and all that I’ve met on the internet (and occasionally off) in the course of keeping this shared space set aside for burbling about speculative fiction of all shapes and sizes.

They all have blogs of their own, of course, and I’d urge you to seek them out. I care a lot about what goes on here on The Speculative Scotsman, so let me stress this thing before I get to giving over the floor: the fact that I’m hosting the work of each of these excellent writers here speaks to my admiration and my respect for every last one among them.

If you enjoy some or all of these terrific reviews and opinion pieces, do the decent thing and click through the links in the intro and outro of each. Follow a few of my favourite internet critics. :)

Speaking of which: Bryce Lee, of Only the Best Science Fiction & Fantasy. Bryce was one of the first folks I met when I started doing this thing in early 2010, and even today, nearly three years later, I look forward to those all too rare occasions when our paths cross, because he's honestly one of the warmest, friendliest, most generous people I know -- not to mention one of the very best bloggers I currently keep up with.

Today, for your pleasure and mine, Bryce has set his inimitable sights on... well, it's not so simple as that, actually. In fact, I'm going to let the nice man tell you himself.

***

I’m really honored to be here today. I’ve been keeping up with The Speculative Scotsman since its infancy and it continues to be one of my favorite blogs even without all that cute baby fat. [You see what I mean? :) - Niall]

One of the main reasons for that is Niall’s way with words, so I apologize in advance for not being nearly as erudite or eloquent in this post. Ah look at that, I’ve already exhausted my vocabulary.

My initial plan was to post about one single subject, but I had a hard time sticking with one idea, so my solution – shotgun effect - write about all of it. You’re welcome in advance. I’ll go from subjects such as Self-Published books to ratings to navel-gazing... oh my!

• Blogging and Self-Pubs --- When I started blogging, I had this idea that I needed to read a bunch of Self-Published books to sort of earn my way in the scene. What was I thinking? Don’t worry, I was really bad at it.

• Independent and Self-Published Books --- I have a love-hate relationship with Indie and Self-Pubbed books. Admittedly, I’ve read some amazing books that were not published by one of the Big 6, but then again I’ve read some of the worst books of my life because of them. Anymore, I’ll wait until they’ve been reviewed elsewhere and read ones others have enjoyed. But that’s not fair is it? I think Justin has a pretty good solution.  

• Two and a Half Men --- I don’t only wonder how it’s still on the air, but how is it the number 1 comedy? “That girl is soooobangable” “I’m no good with women” *pushes glasses up nose* I just wrote 5 episodes. Now Community is a show to watch and it just barely scrapes by.

• In Defense of Ratings --- Lots of people don’t use ratings such as said Scotsman (luckily he’s out of the country at the moment so he’ll never see this) and I understand their reasons, but for me it’s the perfect punchline to the review. I can’t always read the full review, like what if it’s a sequel to a book I haven’t read? But I can still see how a trusted reviewer felt. Sometimes you don’t really have anything bad to say about a book, but it still wasn’t a perfect book. Tack on a rating to keep it in check.

• Speaking of Ratings --- I propose a new rating system in addition to “out of 5” or “out of 10.” I admit the number system is a bit flawed. How do you compare the complexity of Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire and Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen to let’s say, The Dresden Files. I love them all but in different ways. So, new categories are “Long in the Wind (not a fart joke…okay it is),” “Fast and Furious,” “Complex as a Cat [or insert alliteration or complex animal here],” “Fun and Funny.” Then you can give the book a number rating. I’m only half joking on this one, I do think ratings need a bit of a push, but at least need to be read in conjunction with the review. Incidentally and while I write this, Patrick (the YetiStomper) just changed up his rating system.

• Ever enter the freeway and think, “You always told me to stay off the freeway…” “Then let us hope…that I was wrong.” (the “…” was my Morpheus impression)

• Publishers Not Finishing Series --- There are few things I hate more than getting into a series only to find out the final volume won’t be released because of low sales of the first book(s). This has happened to a few authors recently and it drives me up the wall! LianeMerciel, Harry Connolly, and David Anthony Durham are a few off the top of my head. I get publishers’ reasons, but I don’t think publishers are thinking long term. You’re teaching readers not to trust new authors, thus opting to wait until series are complete. In the long run, this is a bad call. 

• The Walking Dead TV Show --- I am a HUGE fan of this series and I can’t wait for more, especially after that last scene in season two, you know, the one with guy who … But there’s something I gotta know: what’s the deal with their surprise zombie attacks? Lots of zombie films get this right by having someone in the house, usually at the beginning of the movie before it’s well-known that there are zombies everywhere. But The Walking Dead keeps doing surprise attacks out in the middle of nowhere. The human turns around and suddenly – zombiefied! And then afterward the zombie is moaning and stumbling along just like every. other. zombie. Wha? How did the character possibly not hear that?

These were my thoughts, it’s now time to wake up. Thanks again to The Speculative Scotsman for the chance to grace a great blog. At least take heart in the fact that Niall will be back in no time! 

***

The man tells it true. Alas, we're already in our final week of great guest blogs... I'll be home before it's even over, and come Monday, the blog will be back to boring old me, and me alone, mostly. So sad. :(

But let's keep our chins up. It's easy enough, really, particularly given how happy I am that Bryce was good enough to go on record on all of the above subjects for TSS. You should know this by now, but he blogs away his days over at Only the Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, and trust me when I tell you you really need to be along for the ride. Thanks again, Bryce!

Tomorrow: the last guest blog you'll be seeing on The Speculative Scotsman for some time, given that this holiday of a lifetime I've been on is almost at an end. And of course I've saved some of the best for last, haven't I?

Stay tuned, in short, for Stefan the Second! :)

Screen Shot | The Walking Dead Walk Again

I know it's late, and I've still three or four more chapters of Every Dead Thing to read before I let myself sleep, but I could hardly wait to say...

...it's on. :D

Yes sir. While I might have had my reservations about the latter half of the first season of The Walking Dead - yes indeed I did - nevertheless, I'm so very ready for season two.


Season two, which is officially shooting as of this screenshot.

And goodnight.

###

Source: TV Guide

News Flashing | Point and Click Zombies in The Walking Dead: The Video Game

Having gone from a comic book to a smash-hit TV series, courtesy of The Shawshank Redemption's Frank Darabont and Gale Anne Hurd, mistress to The Terminator franchise, taking in a line of adorable zombie plushies along the way, and going from there to a series of original-ish novels coming later this year, what else is The Walking Dead to do?

That is, other than being adapted into a series of episodic video games from the developers who've given us - just of late - The Secret of Monkey Island, a lovingly throwback point-and-click iteration of Back to the Future, a third season of the hound-dog detectives Sam and Max. That's the scuttlebut doing the rounds at the moment, for Telltale Games have announced a forthcoming announcement - video game marketing people, you should be ashamed - in which they'll dish up the gory details on a new game "based on a just-launched property from the TV and comic book world whose popularity is changing life as some know it."

I think it's pretty safe to say we'll be hearing more about The Walking Dead: The Video Game come the 17th of February. And by gum, I'll be ecstatic to, if this pans out. Telltale haven't disappointed me yet. Add to that they're just about the only developer capable of making the short-lived episodic format video games looked likely to adopt only a few year ago actually work.

More as the point-and-click zombie uprising develops.

TV Review | The Walking Dead (Season One)

Oh well.


But didn't it start strong?


With The Shawshank Redemption director Frank Darabont at the helm, it'd have been stranger, all things considered, if it hadn't have done; if the breakout talent behind one of the greatest films of all time had suddenly gone to ground, particularly given such fertile territory to stake a claim on. Sadly, what begins with a bang - literally, with Andrew Lincoln as Sheriff Rick Grimes separating a pitiable little zombie girl from her skullcap - ends with a fizzle (albeit an explosive one) symbolic of all this show's woefully misspent potential.


But let's not get ahead of ourselves just yet. Wounded in a shoot-out before the outbreak, Rick awakens alone from a coma to find society in utter disarray. But for the rotting, flea-ridden corpses piled one upon the other, the streets are unnervingly empty. Those survivors that there are seem to have gone feral in their desperation - shovel, let me introduce you to face - and the undead responsible for driving them to such depths aren't particularly chipper either. They seem oddly... what? Hungry?

Despairing, Rick goes where I expect we'd all go under such circumstances: he goes home, and though his wife and son are absent, so too are their family albums. Sure against all good reason that they've not been gobbled - what would a zombie want with a collection of sentimental photos, after all? - the county Sheriff puts a bunch of guns in a bag and takes to Atlanta, where the word on the street is some survivors have gathered. Who knows? Maybe there's a family reunion on the cards after all.


Following the events of the comic book by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard near-enough panel for panel, The Walking Dead begins brilliantly, perfectly replicating some powerful imagery and twisting things for television just so. A superb pilot and a more moderately impressive second episode leave you with the distinct impression that we could be looking at a truly great show, here - certainly with Darabont and Kirkman pulling the strings behind the scenes and an at-times virtuoso performance from Andrew Lincoln, who carries the lightweight narrative handily, all signs point to the positive.

And then... well. Then the milk sours. The moment we've all been waiting for - the pay-off of all the tension and dread established throughout the escapade in Atlanta, the coming together of the various survivors, not to speak of Rick's decidedly unlikely luck - the moment is a nonsense: fudged, awkward and unconvincing. The uneven ensemble cast assembles at last, foregrounding all its myriad flaws. Certainly the strongest link in the great chain of survivors, Rick puts on his conflicted family man hat and sadly recedes from the forefront of the action, the better to attend to a wife who seems to have been rutting in the woods with another guy the second she heard of his death (reports of which have been greatly exaggerated). And ill in conception and execution both - I don't suppose we can hold Darabont accountable for this much, given the similar beats of the source material - the very real threat of the undead fades away to make room for the more traditional dangers of desperate people taking desperate measures in desperate times. Precisely the sort of stuff The Walking Dead needs to be getting right if it's got any hope of remaining engaging in the long term - however much it might diverge from the comic, this show can't very well be about the zombies every week.


Instead, it flounders. The tension so deliberately established in the first few episodes dissipates like so much smoke - and the fire's gone out too, except for a couple of guttering embers here and there amongst the ashes. The creature effects are great, the visuals often tantamount to iconic, and Battlestar Galactica's Bear McCreary offers up a spare yet effective score. As the main man, Andrew Lincoln holds his own even when presented with some truly excruciating scriptwriting and supporting actors whose performances approach the cartoonish, and when the big movers and shakers are involved beyond a yay or a nay in the latter half of the show's short first season, The Walking Dead sparks briefly back to life. Whether or not it can sustain for any length of time remains to be seen, but at this rate, front-loaded and flat thereafter, I'm afraid The Walking Dead is apt to burn out well before its due.


Alas, poor zombies... alas. I had hoped to know you well.

Undead Unemployed

The Walking Dead

Kills Its Writers

So goes the headline of an article on Dark Horizons which popped up on my RSS reader this second. Say what?

"Despite the renewal for another season, The Walking Dead showrunner Frank Darabont has fired the entire writing staff of the AMC hit series reports Deadline.

"Along with the scribes, writing executive producer Charles H. Eglee has been let go and Darabont is reportedly looking to assign scripts to freelancers rather than having a writing staff. Darabont himself penned the first two episodes of the first season and polished the scripts for the other four - one of which came from the comic's creator and two from non-staff writers. Acclaim for the pilot and second episode ran pretty high, but critical enthusiasm has slightly dropped off in subsequent weeks [...] Darabont also has the issue of a much longer thirteen-episode second season [to contend with]."

So tell me, all y'all who've been keeping up with The Walking Dead: is it true? The other half and I only sat down to start watching this show last night. We made it through the feature-length pilot and episode two, and had, I'm not afraid to say, a very fine time indeed. She hasn't read the comic, I've only read the first trade, and I think it pleased us both in equal measure.

Now I'm worried. Has The Walking Dead really gone off the deep end? A scaling of the infamous sewer shark so quickly? God, but I dearly hope not...

Karmic Chameleons

So I've got good news, and bad news.

Shall we get the bad juju out of the way first? We shall. That way we can end on a high. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is --- oh, I can hardly bear to say it... it's coming back.

Maybe.

Sadly, if and when it does - and sickeningly there seems to be something of an appetite for some sort of reboot (if not necessarily the one that's been mooted about the interwebs this past fortnight or so) - everyone's favourite vampire slayer will be returning short ANYONE who had ANYTHING to do with the original, touchstone series.

Kristy Swanson - what was Buffy in the dodgy movie, remember her now? - seems to be the only voice in support of this filth. Someone been out of work a little too long, maybe? Well, take a hike, Kristy Swanson! You keep out of this, you hear?

Anyway, io9 had the story originally, cobbled together from a press release issued on November 11th. Apparently Whit Anderson, who if you'll pardon the play on words we know not one whit about - not even an IMDB page, would you believe it - went to Warner Brothers with a unique new take on the Scoobs, and lo, the scent of money pervaded the air. But don't worry! As the sales pitch assures us, "this is not your high school Buffy [but] she'll be just as witty, tough, and sexy and we all remember her to be."

Mmm. Lucky that. That's almost exactly what I remember Buffy being. Good to know those WB folks totally get it, right?

You know, I'd get up in arms about all this, but I have a real hard time believing this is even a real thing. Not to suggest io9's talking hooey or anything, but their headline - "It's really happening" - is true only insofar as some people somewhere have an inkling to reboot Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Things are no further along than that, and I don't expect they'll get much further along. Thank Christ. Though I suppose stranger things have happened...

Moving along. The good news? The good news is the latest development as re: the proposed Locke and Key TV series. Locke and Key, for those who don't already know, is a comic book. Now I like comic books - not too much of a surprise, I hope - and given Joe Hill's involvement, I expect I'd like this comic book very much indeed, except... umm. Let's say I gave up on single issues many a year ago (more like I went cold turkey), and even the cost-to-time-spent ratio of trade paperback collections has gotten hard to reconcile of late, so Locke and Key is - alongside The Walking Dead, Ex Machina and a hundred hundred others - one of those series I've been dying to get my teeth into.

Well, what with the news of the TV series, now I won't have to!

Oh, but I'm only teasing. :)

But the news as per the mooted adaptation of Locke and Key has gone from great to incredible. As if having onboard the showrunners of far and away the best genre series currently on television - why Fringe of course - wasn't significant enough of a class act, add to that the likely involvement of Mark Romanek, director of One Hour Photo and most recently Never Let Me Go (which, damn it all, still hasn't hit theatres here in the UK). Romanek's reportedly set to direct the pilot episode.

If that all doesn't speak highly of this show's massive swag bag of potential, I don't know what finally will.

I'm certainly hyped. You?

Talking The Walking Dead

My oh my, those zombies... they do get about!

Earlier this year, we started hearing that Robert Kirkman's acclaimed long-running comic book The Walking Dead would be coming to television in the form of a six (or is it eight?) episode miniseries from AMC and Frank Darabont, fan-favourite director of some of the greatest films of all time - no shit.

 

Well we don't have long to wait for it now, do we? Would that I were in the States on Halloween to catch the premiere episode of the show - what better way to spend the night, I wonder? Alas. I'll be watching on (remember, remember) the 5th of November instead.

Still and all, the show looks and sounds a treat; I've high hopes and a great deal of excitement for it. And now the cross-media machine has stepped up its game again: Tor UK just issued a press release announcing that they'll be bringing a trilogy of The Walking Dead novels to this side of the Atlantic in 2012. New stories, even, based on the comic book mythos, not just novelisations. I want!

Here's some of the spiel:

"Tor UK recently pre-empted a trilogy of zombie novels based on Robert Kirkman’s successful and critically acclaimed The Walking Dead comic book series. The books were acquired in a mid-Frankfurt deal by Julie Crisp, Editorial Director of Tor UK, from Thomas Dunne books in the US. A TV series based on the comics will be released in the US on the AMC network on 31st October 2010 and on the FX channel in the UK on 5th November 2010. The series... directed and produced by Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile), follows small town sheriff Rick Grimes as he travels across a post-apocalyptic US plagued by zombies in an attempt to find his wife and son.

"Based on entirely new stories, Robert Kirkman is co-writing the books with horror novelist Jay Bonansinga, author of Perfect Victim and Shattered. The first book, The Walking Dead, will be released in November 2012 alongside the second season of the TV series."

Which sounds fab, doesn't it? No idea who this Jay Bonansinga fellow is, nor whether Kirkman's undeniable prowess in one medium will necessarily translate to another (and another), but hell with it, I'm in.

November 2012, though... that's a ways away, isn't it? I wonder if Tor UK don't mean 2011 - if the stated date is correct, that'd translate to a two-year break between the first and second season of The Walking Dead TV series, and that's not exactly the norm.

I've got my fingers crossed there's been a boo-boo made somewhere, but one way or another, bring them zombies on!