The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 22nd Annual Collection (10 page)

The Magic Realist movie
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
, based on a story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, came out right at the end of the year, to mixed but generally pretty good reviews; you’re on your own there, since I haven’t seen it either.

The best hope for a science fiction movie for next year seems to be the upcoming
Star Trek
prequel – which is kind of sad. Not surprisingly, there are a number of superhero movies in store for lucky audiences as well.

Coming up on the more-distant horizon are a version of Joe Haldeman’s
The Forever War
, directed by Ridley Scott, and a version of John Wyndham’s Chocky, directed by Steven Spielberg. On the even more distant horizon is a version of Isaac Asimov’s
Foundation
, directed by Roland Emmerich.

The Writers Guild of America strike swept over the television industry early in 2008, leaving downed trees and wreckage in its wake, and probably contributing to the demise of a few already shaky shows – but even though some of the biggest genre shows on television,
Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Dr Who, Torchwood
, were forced by the strike to go “on hiatus” until 2009 or even (in the case of
Dr Who
) until 2010 (as were some lesser shows such as
Kyle XY
and
Fear Itself
) – ratings are down across the board this season and some of last season’s biggest hits are wobbling in the ratings and in danger of being cancelled – there’s still plenty of genre shows to watch, with a large number of hopeful replacements waiting in the wings, and yet another row of potential shows looming beyond that. In fact, it’s clear that genre shows – mostly fantasy shows, although there are still actually a few science fiction shows left here and there – have come to dominate the TV airways to almost as great a degree as they dominate the Hollywood top-grossing films list, although cop/forensic/detective shows are still holding their own (last year’s wave of hybrid fantasy/SF cop shows largely failed to establish itself, with only
Saving Grace
surviving).

Shows like
Moonlight, New Amsterdam, Cavemen, The Bionic Woman, Journeyman, Flash Gordon
, and
UFO Hunters
were swept out to sea by the writers’ strike, and show no sign of coming back; many of them, like the jaw-droppingly awful
Cavemen
, probably wouldn’t have made it even without the strike.

Jericho
, a watchable after-the-atomic war show that had been given a new lease on life after a massive fan write-in campaign, was granted a partial new season, still failed to attract audiences large enough for the network, and finally died for good, although the usual rumors that it might be picked up by another network swirled around for a while before fading away. One of last season’s big hits,
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
, has struggled in the ratings this year, having become even more grim and apocalyptic than it was before, and may be in jeopardy; I’d like to see it survive because it’s one of the few new SF shows in a sea of fantasy shows.
Eureka
, another SF show, seems to be doing well, although it’s pleasantly quirky and even comic instead of dark, intense, and violent, which may explain why.

They also seem to be darkening
Heroes
, which made it through the strike intact, but which has been taking substantial hits in the ratings recently, which may be cause and effect (in economic hard times, audiences don’t particularly want grim and depressing, getting enough of that in everyday life; the show has also become complicated enough that it’s almost impossible to keep track of the plot, which probably doesn’t help), and which has sunk low enough quickly enough that it may actually be in danger of being cancelled, in spite of its Mega-Hit status last year; towards the end of the year, there was a big shake-up at
Heroes
, with several writers and producers fired, and we’ll see if that helps, although it may be too late. Smallville lost villain Lex Luthor when Michael Rosenbaum, the actor who has played him so vividly since the beginning of the series, decided to move on, a major blow that may eventually sink the show, although they’re gamely carrying on at the moment.
Battlestar Galactica and Stargate Atlantis
, both in hiatus at the moment, have announced that their upcoming seasons will be their last, although heartbroken fans can console themselves with the fact that each show will be followed by “two-hour special events” set in the same universe, and later by new spinoff shows,
Caprica
for
Battlestar Galactica, Stargate Universe for Stargate Atlantis.

Perhaps the best of the new SF series is BBC America’s
Primeval,
which has been accurately referred to as “
Torchwood
meets
Jurassic Park
,” with a Torchwood-like team of investigators dealing with the incursions of dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts who for some unknown reason are popping through “anomalies” and wreaking havoc in the modern world. It’s a cleverly written show, intense and fast-moving, and the producers have been smart enough to vary the Prehistoric-Monster-of-the-Week formula with the occasional monster from the
future
, as well as bringing in timetravel paradoxes and Alternate Reality scenarios.
Dr Who
and
Torchwood
are in hiatus (although, unlike most shows that are “in hiatus,” they’re expected to actually return), but BBC America also has a Young Adult Dr
Who
spinoff,
The Sarah Jane Adventures
, ongoing as well.

If last year was The Year of the Cop, this year seems to be the year of the updated
X-Files
clones, with new shows
Fringe, Eleventh Hour,
and, to some degree,
Sanctuary
(with a splash of Hellboy thrown in), all repeating variations of
The X-Files
formula, some pretty blatantly. It’s too early to say if any of these shows are going to establish themselves, but although
Fringe
has the biggest guns behind it and has gotten the most praise and press coverage to date,
Eleventh Hour
seems to actually be edging it in the ratings. A hangover from the Year of the Cop is
Life on Mars
, about a present-day cop who’s mysteriously thrown back in time to 1973; this is actually the American version of the popular British limited series of the same name, and, unsurprisingly, I’ve already heard connoisseurs saying that the British version was better, but the American version may yet establish itself.

The campy old 1970s’ show
Knight Rider
, about a crime-fighting boy and his talking robot car, has come roaring back from oblivion revved up and ready for action, although the question that haunted the old series haunts this one as well: with everything the car can do, what do you need the
boy
for? (The answer: for the love scenes and the occasional fistfight.) So far, its ratings have been unspectacular, and it may be sent back to the garage.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
is the series TV version of this year’s feature film with the same name, and so far seems to be doing better than the movie did.

My Own Worst Enemy
and
Chuck
danced on the borderline between SF and the spy thriller, with
My Own Worst Enemy
having perhaps the most SF-like element, technology that can infuse two very different personalities into the same person’s body, which they time-share unwittingly until the barriers between them start to break down; in spite of an interesting premise, though,
My Own Worst Enemy
has already been cancelled, while
Chuck
seems to be doing fairly well.

Pushing Daisies
was still much too self-consciously and self-congratulatory “weird” for my taste, and perhaps wore out its welcome with the rest of its audience as well, since ratings plummeted from last season, and its was cancelled late in the year. Perhaps inspired by the initial success of
Pushing Daisies
last season are two new supernatural shows more lighthearted in tone than the rather grim
Medium
and
The Ghost Whisperer
, a Thorne Smith-like show called
Valentine
, about the problems faced by lingering mythological figures in dealing with the modern world, kind of like
The Beverley Hillbillies
with Greek gods instead of hillbillies, and The
Ex-List
, about a woman inspired by a prophecy to seek her One True Love.
Valentine
is doing very poorly in the ratings, and its future is doubtful, and
The Ex-List
has already been cancelled.
Legend of the Seeker
, a rare high fantasy show, something not often seen on TV, is based on a Terry Goodkind novel,
Wizard’s First Rule
; and HBO is giving us a smalltown Southern take on vampires, True Blood, based on the bestselling “Sookie Stackhouse” novels of Charlaine Harris. I still can’t deal with the returning
Saving Grace
(cop talks with her own personal angel) either, and I never warmed to the lawyer-has-vivid-hallucinations-or-visions-perhapssent- by-God show
Eli Stone
– which was cancelled by the end of the year anyway. I don’t pay much attention to the long-established “supernatural” shows such as
Medium, The Ghost Whisperer
, and
Supernatural
, but they all seem to be doing fine, as are a number of “reality” shows based on investigating weird phenomena, such as
Ghost Hunters, Monster Quest
, and
Paranormal State
. The newer supernatural show
Reaper
is wobbling in the ratings a bit but still has a chance to survive.

Most of the buzz about upcoming shows seems to be being generated by Josh Whedon’s
Dollhouse
. The creator of former mega-hit
Buffy
,
the Vampire Slayer
, Whedon gained a huge cult following for
Buffy
and for other shows such as
Angel
and
Firefly
, and a lot of people have high hopes that Whedon’s return to series TV, whose cast is peppered with
Buffy
and
Angel
alumni, will produce something similarly good. The premise doesn’t look promising to me, and its “downloading fake personalities and memories into spies to make them more effective agents” gimmick has already been pre-empted to some extent by
My Own Worse Enemy
, but Whedon is an extremely talented writer who has spun unlikely thread into gold before, so it’ll be interesting to see if he can do it again with
Dollhouse
.

A TV mini-series version of Terry Pratchett’s
The Colour of Magic
was released in the United Kingdom, but if it’s got on to the airwaves in the US yet, I so far haven’t been able to find it.

Coming up from AMC is a new version of the old British show
The Prisoner
, another cult favourite, which
Prisoner
fans seem to be either dreading or looking forward to with anticipation, depending on who you talk to, and mini-series versions of George R. R. Martin’s
A Game of Thrones
from HBO and Kim Stanley Robinson’s
Red Mars
from AMC. Let’s hope that they can do a better job with them than the Sci Fi Channel did with Ursula K. Le Guin’s
A Wizard of Earthsea.

The 66th World Science Fiction Convention, Denvention 3, was held in Denver, Colorado, from 6 August to 11 August, 2008. The 2008 Hugo Awards, presented at Denvention 3, were: Best Novel,
The Yiddish Policeman’s Union
, by Michael Chabon; Best Novella,
All Seated on the Ground
, by Connie Willis; Best Novelette,
The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate
, by Ted Chiang; Best Short Story, “Tideline,” by Elizabeth Bear; Best Related Book,
Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction
, by Jeff Prucher; Best Professional Editor, Long Form, David G. Hartwell; Best Professional Editor, Short Form, Gordon Van Gelder; Best Professional Artist, Stephan Martiniere; Best Dramatic Presentation (short form),
Doctor Who
, “Blink”; Best Dramatic Presentation (long form),
Stardust
; Best Semi-prozine,
Locus
, edited by Kristen Gong-Wong and Lisa Groen Trombi; Best Fanzine,
File
770, edited by Mike Glyer; Best Fan Writer, John Scalzi; Best Fan Artist, Brad Foster; plus the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer to Mary Robinette Kowal.

The 2007 Nebula Awards, presented at a banquet at the Omni Austin Hotel Downtown in Austin, Texas, on 26 April, 2008, were: Best Novel,
The Yiddish Policeman’s Union
, by Michael Chabon; Best Novella,
Fountain of Age
, by Nancy Kress; Best Novelette,
The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate
, by Ted Chiang; Best Short Story, “Always,” by Karen Joy Fowler; Best Script,
Pan’s Labyrinth
, by Guillermo Del Toro; the Andre Norton Award to
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
, by J. K. Rowling; plus the Author Emeritus Award to Ardath Mayhar and the Grand Master Award to Michael Moorcock.

The 2008 World Fantasy Awards, presented at a banquet in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, on 2 November, 2008, during the Seventeenth Annual World Fantasy Convention, were: Best Novel,
Ysabel
, by Guy Gavriel Kay; Best Novella,
Illyria
, by Elizabeth Hand; Best Short Fiction, “Singing of Mount Abora,” by Theodore Goss; Best Collection,
Tiny Deaths
, by Robert Shearman; Best Anthology,
Inferno
, edited by Ellen Datlow; Best Artist, Edward Miller; Special Award (Professional), to Peter Crowther, for PS Publishing; Special Award (Non-Professional), to Midori Syner and Terri Windling for the Endicott Studios Web site; plus the Life Achievement Award to Patricia McKillip and Leo and Diane Dillon.